Category: music

Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg wrote a concert overture, inspired by the familiar landscapes he knew around this time of year, and he titled it simply, In Autumn. That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? The piece is melodic and brooding in precisely the way we’d expect from the composer of one of the best piano concertos of the 19th century, or from the man who wrote “In the Hall of the Mountain King”.

In Autumn has definite rustic feel to it. Grieg seems to be writing about a more turbulent kind of fall than we usually picture when thinking of the season; but maybe he was on to something. As I write this, it’s a cold and windy day outside, and hillier locations south of where I live are reporting dustings of snow for the first time. Hmmmm.

Here is In Autumn by Edvard Grieg.

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Continuing a series of autumnal or autumnally-inspired works, we have quite an avant-garde work today. It’s amazing how new and striking this piece sounds in my ears, given that it is over 55 years old, having been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1967.

Toru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer who was very modern in his sound, and who incorporated many 20th century compositional techniques in addition to his Japanese aesthetic. Takemitsu also evolved greatly throughout his highly prolific career. I’ve only heard a small portion of Takemitsu’s work, never enough, for he was a fascinating musical voice.

November Steps is a work for traditional Japanese instruments and full orchestra. At this point in his career Takemitsu had not done much for traditional Japanese instruments, finding in such music stark reminders of the horror of World War II. He eventually relaxed this stance, but at first–with November Steps being one of the very first such works by him–he was convinced that the Japanese and the Western musical traditions were too starkly opposed to be truly integrated. Hence his juxtaposition of the Japanese and the Western in the pages of November Steps.

November Steps is not a warm work, but it is an introspective one suggestive of the kinds of cold winds that can slice through the November skies which are more gray than blue, once all but the most stubborn of the leaves have fallen and all that remains is the coming of the snow. It is also not a work where Western formalism is taken into account much at all. Takemitsu composes a kind of stream-of-consciousness work here, a sequence of moods more than a formal examination of musical ideas.

Here is November Steps by Toru Takemitsu.

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I suppose we’ll just go ahead and make “Autumnal Classical Music” the theme of the month here, since I’ve already done “Spooky or Scary Classical Music” in previous years. There will probably be a little overlap, but I’ll try to avoid it.

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) was a Finnish composer, likely the most prominent Finnish composer since Jean Sibelius. He was a prolific composer, writing many orchestral works, operas, chamber works, and other pieces, often in a “neo-romantic” style that at times borders on pure mysticism in a way that reminds me of Alan Hovhaness.

Today’s work, “Autumn Gardens”, is a three-movement work for orchestra that reflects Rautavaara’s passion for gardening and how he saw gardening as a metaphor for composing. In his words:

“I have often compared composing to gardening. In both processes, one observes and controls organic growth rather than constructing or assembling existing components and elements. I would also like to think that my compositions are rather like ‘English gardens’, freely growing and organic, as opposed to those that are pruned to geometric precision and severity”.

“The title is derived from a passage in the libretto of my opera ‘The House of the Sun’: ‘…like a butterfly in the garden of black autumn…’ The motif to which these words are sung is used as the theme for the variations of the first movement. It’s texture grows and becomes denser by degrees. The second slow movement, rhythmically and dynamically placid, follows without a pause. The third movement starts off vivacious and brisk, but autumn is a time of leaves falling, of colours, and death, and so soon becomes a solemn dance, perhaps a sarabande in honour of the dying splendour of summer, or as T.S. Eliot said, ‘late roses filled with early snow’.”

The piece is stormy at times, tranquil at others, sometimes warm and sometimes quite cold. Not unlike autumn itself.

Here is “Autumn Gardens” by Einojuhani Rautavaara.

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Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is one of the great stalwart works of all classical music.

It’s also a work that…I just don’t like very much. At all. I’ve never warmed to it. It honestly does nothing for me. For years I concluded that I didn’t like Vivaldi, because I have never managed to turn myself around on The Four Seasons. Luckily, I eventually realized that Vivaldi wrote a lot of music that’s just fine and it’s just the one piece I didn’t much care for; this happens. (See Ravel and “Bolero”, for example…and even my favorite composers have works that don’t thrill me much, such as Berlioz’s Te Deum, which is…OK, I guess, if you like that sort of thing.)

But here’s the thing about The Four Seasons: it’s a concept that surely didn’t occur only to Vivaldi in 1718, right? Surely some composer in the three hundred years since has tried to address this concept.

Enter Argentine composer Astor Piazzola (1921-1992), who was known for his skill at composing for the national dance of Argentina, the Tango. Thus his suite of seasonal-based works consists of a set of tangos, as opposed to a set of baroque concertos, a la Vivaldi. (Also, Piazzola’s suite wasn’t even composed intentionally as a suite but was rather four different works gathered together into a suite. Many works of art come from a messy creation story!)

Still, this suite makes for a fascinatingly energetic and refreshing listen as you let Piazzola guide you through his dance-version of the four seasons of his Southern Hemisphere home. Here is The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, by Astor Piazzola.

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I think that Franz von Suppe is to this blog as cream of mushroom soup is to Mark Evanier’s. Whenever Evanier is really busy, he posts a picture of a can of cream of mushroom soup. I tend to do the same with a YouTube selection of an overture by Franz von Suppe.

So here’s von Suppe’s Jolly Robbers overture. I played this in high school in an arrangement that was wickedly difficult. Rehearsals of this were, at times, quite a lot less than fun…but I still love the piece.

Bear with, lots going on!

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I’m sure there will be something else on my mind eventually, but for now…no.

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