Category: music

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Mieczysław Karłowicz was a Polish composer who was just coming into his own, and who might well have become that nation’s greatest composer, when he was killed in an avalanche while skiing when he was just 32. He did not leave behind a particularly large body of work, but what remains is nevertheless fascinating post-Romantic writing, lush and evocative, almost impressionistic in its tone coloring. This work, “Returning Waves”, was apparently inspired by a trip Karłowicz took to the sea. A YouTube commenter provides this quote, apparently from Karłowicz’s journal:

“We sat on a rock jutted out into the sea, which was boiling. It clung to the rocks, and anger was accompanied by a roar that made a thunderous noise. The rocks were dripping from the receding waves, and when the sun came out for a moment, the whole battlefield was cleared up with white spots like snow, and the green water flashed like glass.”

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this–information on this particular work is hard to find online–but it definitely seems to fit the piece’s general mood. This is earthy, naturalistic music that puts me in mind of other post-Romantic composers like Arnold Bax.

Here is “Returning Waves” by Mieczysław Karłowicz.

(I just did a quick search to see if I’ve mentioned him before, and it turns out that Mieczysław Karłowicz was actually the composer I featured on the very first Tone Poem Tuesday I ever did, back in 2016! How time goes by….)

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Also, this.

Here’s something in the “You learn something new every day!” Department: there is a Chinese reed instrument called the Sheng, which involves several upright pipes in a nifty kind of cross between an oboe and a calliope.

Here a sheng player sets up camp in a public place and plays music from the Mario Bros. videogames. The video includes nifty added animations based on gameplay, and it helps that our performer is dressed appropriately for playing Mario music.

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Here’s something that I’m not sure if I’ve done in this space: shared a work I was literally listening to for the first time, all the way through, as I’m writing the post. I was on the way home from work and I heard a bit of a jubilant, almost jazzy work for orchestra, full of dance rhythms that seem almost Latino in character. I looked up the piece (that our phones can listen to a piece of music and identify it is one of the under-appreciated Great Developments Of Our Time), and I discovered that it does indeed quote extensively from Brazilian folk and dance tunes. The piece, called Le boeuf sur le toit, is by French composer Darius Milhaud.

Milhaud lived 1892-1974, and he is one of those Modernist composers of whom I know very, very little, despite his long life, his prolific output, and his influence on the music of the 20th century. Milhaud’s students included such modern music luminaries as Iannis Xenakis and Steve Reich, along with jazz and pop composers Dave Brubeck and Burt Bacharach. Milhaud spent time in Brazil, hence his incorporation of that nation’s tunes into this work.

Le boeuf sur le toit is a short ballet intended by the composer to be used as a soundtrack for the films of Charlie Chaplain, in the style of a fast and cheerful round that seems to cycle all around a particular dance floor. The energy starts from the very first bar, and just keeps right on dancing, all the way through. I also love the little off-key asides throughout, as if the dance is being joined by someone with no rhythm, and the song is being sung by someone with no pitch. Those touches remind me of Beethoven’s off-the-beat dance tune from his Sixth Symphony.

 

 

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No orchestra? No problem

Franz Liszt, one of the first virtuoso superstars of the music world, didn’t stop at composing his own showpieces to display his own incredible talent at the piano keyboard. He also transcribed for piano many of the great symphonic works of his day, including all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies. Reducing orchestral works to the keyboard results in a very odd kind of listening experience if you know the original work well: you’re hearing all the themes and all the development, in all their compositional glory, but with none of the orchestral timbres.

But it’s still Beethoven, distilled through the piano genius that was Franz Liszt.

Here’s the Symphony No. 7, possibly Beethoven’s greatest symphony and one of his very greatest works, recast as a piano virtuoso work by Franz Liszt. And make no mistake: it’s all here. Liszt transcribed it, but he sure didn’t simplify it.

 

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Something for Thursday

Continuing my little series on “One-way Conversation Songs”, when the lyrics are literally one side of a conversation, we take an infrequent trip into Country music this week. In this song, Jo Dee Messina is catching up with a friend she hasn’t seen in a long time, and though her life isn’t perfect and is sometimes a struggle, she’s doin’…well, let her tell you.

 

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Tone Poem Tuesday

Film music today!

This weekend was, among other things, the twentieth anniversary of the release of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which is one of my favorite installments in the series. Even now, when the Prequel Trilogy has benefitted from the passing of time and some much-needed critical reassessment (way overdue, but I remain proud of having done a lot of that lonely heavy-lifting myself back when hating the Prequels was still the mainstream position), AotC still seems to be the one that gets picked on the most, which I continue to not understand.

The movie’s music is something of an oddity. John Williams turns in a lot of his usual inventive brilliance, even though the film’s last act was apparently still under heavy revision so late in the production game that the entire last act is largely scored with music re-used from the previous film, The Phantom Menace. Williams’s original work is typically amazing, centering on a new Love Theme for the romance of Anakin and Padme, which even at this point we know is (a) doomed to failure, and (b) going to produce the baby twins of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa.

As the romance is doomed and tragic from the get-go, Williams wrote a lush love theme that leaps and yearns in suitably sad and tragic fashion. But he does some more with it: he gives that love theme a darkly militaristic middle section, for one thing, in line with the fact that Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side (which helps give the Empire its beginnings) is borne from this very love affair. Williams also crafts the love theme itself from a kind of minor-key inversion of the Star Wars main theme, and the theme’s final bars form a quote from the classic Imperial March.

In this selection, the Finale and End Credits Suite from the film, we start with some suspenseful music as the Battle of Geonosis winds down and the traitorous Count Dooku flees to Coruscant, so he can report to his master, Darth Sidious (the Sith alter-ego of Chancellor Palpatine, who is the puppet master behind everything). Then the music swells as the Republic’s Clone Army is revealed in all its terrifying majesty, setting forth to war–but the music here is the Imperial March from the Original Trilogy. Williams is telling us that this is the true moment the Empire is born.

Then, a blazing rendition of that love theme as Anakin and Padme marry in secret, before the film’s smash-cut transition to the end credits. This is the best of these transitions in the entire saga, in my opinion, and it’s the last time that Williams would end a Star Wars movie’s narrative with anything other than his iconic theme for the Force.

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Something for Thursday: Conversation songs, No. 2

Here’s another “Conversation Song”! This is my ongoing series, started last week, in which I feature songs whose lyrics give us one side of a conversation, and we are left to infer the other half.

This week’s song dates from 1976, and the singing duo England Dan and John Ford Coley. It’s a pretty straightforward song: one person is calling the other and suggesting that they get together to, I don’t know, talk old times, maybe rekindle an old relationship.

The lyrics suggest that this is a former love affair, or at least some kind of relationship that ended in a one-sided fashion. For this person to call the other, they have to have not been in contact in a very long time, and there’s a winsome sweetness in the suggestions for a place to go: “We could go walking through a windy park”. The entire song is the suggestion of a get-together; none of the real conversation is in the song at all. But there’s a hint of seriousness in the bridge of the song:

… I won’t ask for promises
So, you don’t have to lie
We’ve both played that game before
Say “I love you”, then say “Goodbye”

Our singer is trying to keep expectations low, downplay the whole thing–but even here they are assuring the other that it won’t get that deep again, even though they’ve “both played that game before”, a game which involves both “I love you” and “goodbye”. One wonders why it’s been such a long time, and what really prompted our singer to pick up the phone. It can’t just be that “warm wind blowing the stars around”.

Here is “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”, by English Dan and John Ford Coley.

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Tone Poem Tuesday

A suite of film music today! We watched Avatar the other night, our first time watching it since we first saw it when the DVD came out after the movie’s initial release, way back in 2009 or 2010 or so. The movie was such a huge hit back then, but it oddly became that huge hit that somehow disappeared down the memory hole, never much being talked about except for when news about James Cameron’s more-than-a-decade of work on a bunch of sequels drips out. In fact, a kind of backlash has arisen around Avatar, for reasons that I might go into in another post. For now, though, here’s a suite culled from the film’s score, by James Horner.

I’ve always had a tough relationship with James Horner; some of his music is indispensable, but his strange habit of self-borrowing and self-repeating is often maddening (in this way Horner was the Aaron Sorkin of film music). For me, Horner’s work peaked in the mid-90s, and little of his work after that period really hit my sweet spot, with one exception: his score to Avatar. This music is evocative and exciting and it conveys the sense of wonder that I find when I look at the stunning visuals of the moon of Pandora.

It’s too bad that Horner died several years ago, and thus won’t be able to write the music for the sequels that are going to finally start coming out this December. I’m sure his work will be quoted, but still, his voice will be missed.

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Something for Thursday (Conversation songs, 1)

I’m going to start something new here: a series within a series! For the next dozen weeks (or more!), Something for Thursday will be devoted to songs with a specific twist: the lyrics are one side of a conversation. The singer is talking to someone, and we only hear what the singer is saying and thus have to infer the other side of the conversation.

I’ve always liked this approach to song lyrics, and it’s a much more common device than you might think. I sent the question out into the Twitterverse a bit ago, and I got a lot of replies, many of which are songs I haven’t even heard before! So that’s exciting: a bunch of these are new to me, which is part of the appeal, after all.

This first one is a song I’ve known for years. I don’t recall when I first heard it, but I think it was sometime when I was in college. Jim Croce was a brilliant songwriter and he was one of those songwriters whose writing skills were matched to his own voice, if that makes sense. Singer-songwriters always write for themselves, but a few of them own their own material so completely that it’s hard to imagine anyone else touching their songs. In this one, Croce is talking to a telephone operator as he tries to call his ex-girlfriend, but he doesn’t know the number. I imagine the operator is being calm and professional as they deal with this sad guy who is calling, late at night, maybe on a rainy night from a payphone outside a bar.

 

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