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The Telnyuk Sisters are a Ukrainian folk rock duo. I know nothing about them beyond what I’ve read on their Wikipedia page…but I’ve listened to a bit of their music today, just a bit, via their YouTube channel.
I’m deliberately not posting information about this group or even translations of the titles or lyrics, because that’s not the point. The point is: This is the spirit of what Putin is trying to conquer.
Composer Aleksandr Shymko was born in 1977 in Borschiv, Ukraine. He has led a distinguished artistic and academic career, composing prolifically. And that is just about all I know about him. I haven’t even been able to find any substantial information about the work featured here today…but it is an effectively emotional work, about twenty-six minutes long and cast in four movements. The Neoromantic sound has an almost chant-like, liturgical feel to it, and it’s deeply meditative even in its more intense moments.
Much is being lost right now as Shymko’s country finds itself in a war it did not deserve and did not want.
Here is Alcion by Aleksandr Shymko. The movements are titled: “Beyond Words”, “One Hour to Live”, “The End of Sorrow”, and “On the Edge of Everything”.
This song has been firmly lodged in my head for two weeks, ever since we saw it featured in a particularly good (and funny) scene on Derry Girls. Apparently this song features in a kind of line dance in which people sit in a long row and mimic motions of rowing a boat and then, later, rocking it.
“Rock the Boat” was recorded by the Hues Corporation and nearly disappeared without a trace before disco clubs seized on the song months later, and its infectious beat and its pleasing repetition of lyrics. There are also some neat vocal harmonies and rhythmic tricks in the song, like bars with extra beats in them.
Here is “Rock the Boat” by the Hues Corporation…and if this song is stuck in your head for days afterward, I accept responsibility but I feel no remorse!
“So I’d like to know where you got the notion….”
Some chamber music today, by the great Black composer Florence Price, whose work keeps rising in acclaim these days. I’ve featured Price’s music before in this space, and I plan to continue doing so! Her work, blending European classical forms and idioms with Black spirituals and folk-songs, is always fascinating.
In this case, we have Price’s Piano Quintet in A minor. In this piece the echoes of Black music stand out to great effect, not just in the melodies but in the harmonies and the rhythms, which are almost jazzy in their use of syncopations and resolutions that happen on the off-beats. The work is in four movements that share interconnected thematic material, giving the entire work a cohesion that would make any composer proud. The piece abounds in dance-like rhythms and excellent writing for strings and piano. I love that Florence Price is having a cultural moment. Her work deeply deserves it.
Here is the Piano Quintet in A minor by Florence Price.
I’m not usually one to play the “Ahhh, they don’t sing ’em like that anymore!” card, but…no, they don’t sing ’em like that anymore!
Which isn’t a bad thing, because there is always great music in the offing. But still, I wonder what it was like, in a time when cars were bigger and shinier, and songs like this were on the radio.
Here are The Platters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEzfhclKO8Q
UPDATE 2/18/2022: Broken link fixed.
REPOSTING 2/16/2022 because…see addendum to text.
UPDATE 2/7/19: This post, for some reason, must rank highly on some Google search index or something, because it’s been a relatively consistent driver of traffic to this blog ever since I posted it, nearly four years ago. I have closed off commenting for this post because the only discussion that has ever really occurred here has been people showing up to assure me that yes, John Williams really does rip off everybody under the sun, and in all honesty I’m not interested in entertaining those discussions anymore. That said, it does strike me as interesting how many different composers of wildly varying background and voice Williams is accused of “blatantly stealing”, and how many times a specific piece by Williams is said to be a clear rip from half a dozen specific earlier works. It’s a heck of a composer who can clearly steal four or five different pieces (or so I’m told) just to craft one theme for a Harry Potter movie, innit? Anyhow, here’s the post.
This is one of the trustiest of annoying old chestnuts. What happens is someone hears Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (titled “From the New World”) for the first time, encounters the opening bars of the fourth movement, and immediately races to the computer to post the revelation for the ages that “OMG! John Williams totally ripped off Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” for the theme from JAWS!” This is the most common example of a thing that John Williams has ripped off, but there are a lot of them. A partial list of composers from whom Williams is obviously a plagiarist includes Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Wagner, Korngold, Steiner, Prokofiev, and Penderecki — in addition to the afore-mentioned Dvorak.
By comparison, here’s the Dvorak, and here’s the Williams. The similarities between the two are, to put it kindly, extremely superficial. Both start with low strings intoning a note, and then the note a half-step above it, and then the motif is repeated a few times. But Dvorak repeats it loudly and uses all the lower strings and goes at a quick tempo, building quickly and bringing in the rest of the orchestra before getting to his main theme. He also stays quite clearly in the same time signature.
Williams, however, starts off with similar notes…but slower, and much softer, and lower — I’m not even sure if he uses the cellos at all. It might be just the double basses at first. And then his insistent rhythm starts with those punching chords at off moments, so you’re not even sure what the time signature of the piece is. Williams’s sound is insistent and mysterious and somehow both mechanical and not — pretty much the opposite of what Dvorak does. And yet, “Williams ripped off Dvorak!” is one of those zombie nonsense notions that always comes back, despite being complete nonsense to anyone who bothers to pay attention.
ADDENDUM: I just saw this on YouTube. Clearly Williams was actually stealing the JAWS theme from Beethoven!
In cases like this, for years I’ve been recommending a wonderful essay by Leonard Bernstein called “The Infinite Variety of Music”, which appears in the book of the same title. The essay is actually the script of one of the wonderful episodes he used to do for the educational teevee program Omnibus. In this particular episode, Bernstein described how composers are able to create an astonishing variety of musical works from just thirteen notes of the Western tuning system, by reducing things even further and showing how a number of great composers wrote amazing pieces, many of which are very familiar, by using as their main motif the exact same four-note melody. It’s a worthy reminder that there’s a lot more to music than just what the notes are, and I’ve always found that essay to be a good remedy against the over-used canard that this composer or that composer ripped someone else off.
Of course, the problem with recommending an essay like that is that it’s in a book that isn’t always readily available…but I’ve recently discovered that the audio of that very program is on YouTube, with the musical examples helpfully included so you can see what’s going on as Bernstein speaks. I can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s certainly worth the 48 minutes to listen through. No, Bernstein doesn’t specifically address Dvorak or Williams (in fact, this program was likely recorded while Williams was still a studio musician and Steven Spielberg was a kid), but it does suggest a good way of listening to music to evaluate such silly claims.
Here’s the video:
“To me, Seven O’Clock Shout is a declaration of our survival. It is something that allows us our agency to take back the kindness that is in our hearts and the emotions that cause us such turmoil. … We cheer on the essential workers with a primal and fierce urgency to let them know that we stand with them and each other.”—Valerie Coleman
Valerie Coleman is a flautist and composer who grew up in Louisville, KY, before becoming an influential musician in a number of ways: a flautist who formed the Imani Winds, a prominent woodwind quintet, while following a busy solo career, and a composer of a diverse body of work for soloists and ensembles all the way up to full orchestras.
Coleman’s piece Seven O’Clock Shout was written for, and premiered by, the Philadelphia Orchestra. The work is directly inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the early response to it. From Coleman’s website:
Seven O’Clock Shoutis an anthem inspired by the tireless frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the heartwarming ritual of evening serenades that brings people together amidst isolation to celebrate life and the sacrifices of heroes. The work begins with a distant and solitary solo between two trumpets in fanfare fashion to commemorate the isolation forced upon human kind, and the need to reach out to one another. The fanfare blossoms into a lushly dense landscape of nature, symbolizing both the caregiving acts of nurses and doctors as they try to save lives, while nature is transforming and healing herself during a time of self-isolation.
When a composer has the rare opportunity to create for musicians they have gotten to know, the act of composing becomes an embrace tailored to the personality and capabilities of the musicians with elements of both challenge and appreciation. One such moment is dedicated to humanity and grace, as a clarinet solo written for Ricardo Morales, followed by a flute solo with both Jeffrey Khaner and Patrick Williams in mind, providing a transition into a new upbeat segment. Later, to continue tradition from the first commission the composer received from the orchestra, a piccolo solo dedicated to Erica Peel dances with joy.
The piece is lyrical and optimistic, even in the face of the horrors of the pandemic–especially the early days, when everyone was sequestered from one another, with no real sense at all for when, or even if, things might start to get back to “normal”.
Who knows how we might have responded back then if we had realized that two years would then elapse during which we couldn’t entirely return to “normal”…but that’s a discussion for another time. Seven O’Clock Shout is one musician’s response to the great difficulty of our time. And why not? Much great art is.
Here is Seven O’Clock Shout by Valerie Coleman.
I last featured the work of 20th century American composer Ulysses Kay two years ago, which is probably too long to have allowed to lapse without revisiting him. Kay is an important voice in the Neoclassical tradition, but his music represents a broad array of influences, some of which show up in today’s work. Chariots is an orchestral rhapsody in which Kay’s main literary influence was apparently the use of chariots in the poetry of William Blake. The work was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the baton of the composer himself–and that’s the performance featured here.
Enjoy Chariots by Ulysses Kay.
John Williams was born ninety years ago today.
I’ve written many times in the years I’ve been blogging about John Williams’s influence on my creative world. He has been a central figure in the cinematic stories that shaped my life and stamped their print on my storytelling soul, all the way back to when I was five years old. Williams is, of course, best known for his many filmscores to some of the most prominent movie franchises of the last fifty years: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and more. The Winter Olympics are going on right now, so I’m sure we’re hearing a steady dose of his Olympic Fanfare on the telecasts. He is absolutely a gigantic part of the sonic character of our time.
In addition to being very prolific, Williams is also versatile. He has scored intimate character studies, historical epics, and psychological thrillers. He has done horror as well as escapist fun…and he has also written a good deal of music for the concert stage. Pretty impressive lifetime of work for a guy who was once “Johnny Williams”, a session musician in 1950s Hollywood who did things like play the piano part on the theme to Peter Gunn.
Thank you, John Williams! Here are some selections, which I tried to draw from his “deeper cuts”–i.e., trying to stay away from the Big Hits. John Williams’s body of work really rewards a deeper look, even beyond the “usual suspects”.
(Oh, and a reminder: No, Williams did not steal the Jaws theme from Dvorak.)