It’s a very busy week, so as is customary around here when it’s like that, here’s some Franz von Suppe. Enjoy!
Something that was supposed to be for Thursday but some stuff happened and the problem persisted into Friday but now it’s Saturday and I think the problem is fixed, so….
The problem was that my Samsung Galaxy earbuds suddenly stopped producing audio with my Samsung laptop. They would connect and I could use the tapping motions to make videos stop and start, but the sound refused to come through the buds! It would only come through the main speakers. My buds still worked normally with my phone, so after a couple restarts and a re-pairing of the buds with the computer, I think we’re back on track. That was weird…I love tech when it’s working perfectly, but not so much when it ain’t.
(And yes, I could have just listened to this song on my phone and then posted here, or I could have posted from my phone directly, but I like my workflow and it annoys me when it’s screwed up!)
So anyway, the other night we were watching an episode of The Repair Shop, and one of the people who brought something in to be fixed was an old British folk singer named Ralph McTell. He brought in a large stuff kangaroo that had something to do with a kid’s show he did songs for, but what caught my ear during the “profile” section of the segment was that McTell had a big hit in the late 1960s called “Streets of London”. I gave the song a few listens, and it really hit me. Not only is it a beautiful song with a touching, lilting melody, but McTell’s voice is exactly the kind of deep baritone you would want for a song like this.
The lyrics at first seem to be thematically simple, though the imagery they use is definitely poetic. It’s easy to listen to “Streets of London” and hear a kind of “People have it worse off than you” message, but I think it goes a bit deeper than that. The song seems to me a kind of statement about a society that allows these levels of loneliness and despair to exist at all. Anyway, here is “Streets of London” by Ralph McTell.
Share This Post
Tuesday Tones
Some pieces of music, like Beethoven’s Fifth or the William Tell Overture, become so overplayed as to become virtual cliche. The same can be said of Mozart’s Serenade #13 in G Major for strings, which is better known for the title Mozart gave it: Eine kleine nachtmusik, or “A Little Night Music”.
What kind of night was Mozart thinking of here? Clearly he wasn’t thinking of the night itself, with its darkness falling over Vienna or its surrounding landscape. I think he was rather thinking of inside, with candles and fires burning. This music is too bright, too joyous, and too elegant to suggest an external darkness.
Eine kleine nachtmusik is likely best known for its opening movement and its opening bars in particular. Milos Forman uses those bars to convey how well-known Mozart’s music is known even years after his death, when a bitter Antonio Salieri plays that famous opening phrase for the priest who has come to hear his confession, after the priest has previously failed to identify any of Salieri’s own melodies, each one having been “very famous in its day”. The inner movements and the finale contain their own sparkle and magic, though.
Share This Post
Something for Thursday
Sticking with the theme for this month (which I’ve only just now decided was a theme for this month), here in National Poetry Month, I’ll continue exploring the intersection of music and poetry. Back when I was a serious music student, I sometimes thought about setting favorite poems to music, including what is likely my favorite poem of all time, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe. This complex and meaning-laden poem has thrilled me ever since I first read it, likely in 11th grade:
It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of Annabel Lee;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me.I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea,But we loved with a love that was more than love—I and my Annabel Lee—With a love that the wingèd seraphs of HeavenCoveted her and me.And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsmen cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea.The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,Went envying her and me—Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we—Of many far wiser than we—And neither the angels in Heaven aboveNor the demons down under the seaCan ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,In her sepulchre there by the sea—In her tomb by the sounding sea.
So when I went searching for settings of “Annabel Lee”, one of the first ones I discovered was…a bluegrass setting.
And it works. Listen for yourself!
Share This Post
Tuesday Tones
In keeping with National Poetry Month, here is one of my favorite poems: “The Splendour Falls” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, who also happens to be my favorite poet.
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
I don’t remember not loving that poem. And here it is, set for chorus by Frederick Delius. I love the way the setting captures the repeated “dying, dying, dying….” with falling chords and delayed resolution.
Share This Post
Something for Thursday
Happy birthday, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Born this date. I remain as fascinated by and indebted to his music as I was when I first heard it way back when. I have written a great deal about Rachmaninoff here and elsewhere, including a big burst for his sesquicentennial two years ago. You can find a lot of that categorized here. Sometime soon I really need to write that big, epic essay about his Second Symphony.
Here is the Israel Brass Quintet playing one of his most famous works, Vocalise.
Share This Post
Tuesday Tones
I don’t know if this composer has ever been featured on this blog at all, either in this incarnation or in the Byzantium’s Shores era. So I’ve just done a search, and it turns out that not only have I not featured his music at all, but I’ve only even mentioned him twice.
So: enter Bohuslav Martinů.
Who?
Martinů was a Czech composer of the Modern era who lived 1890 to 1959. And he wrote a lot of music. Music poured out of the guy. Over a dozen operas and ballets each. Six symphonies. A ton of standalone orchestral music. Concertos. Chamber music. Keyboard music. Vocal music. About the only major genre of music that Martinů seems to have not made any contribution is sacred music.
And of all that music, I have heard just a tiny number of works. In fact, that number might now, with this post, stand at 2. I know I’ve heard his oratorio based on the Epic of Gilgamesh, and now I’ve heard The Parables, a suite for large orchestra. Martinů wrote The Parables late in his life. The work is in three movements:
- The Parable of a Sculpture (Andante pastorale)
- The Parable of a Garden (Poco moderato)
- The Parable of the Labyrinth (Poco allegro)
I have not been able to find a great deal of program information about The Parables, which I suppose is at least partly a function of the composer’s relative obscurity. Martinů may be experiencing an era of reassessment now, though, so maybe more will be forthcoming. I did find this brief passage:
The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, H 352, and The Parables, H 367, represent the culmination of the late Neo-Impressionist orchestral output of Bohuslav Martinů, marked by a fantastic, kaleidoscopic style. Martinů transforms his extramusical (visual, literary) inspirations into the principles of musical forms, which are open to associations from mood setting to philosophical inquiries into the essence of human existence.
…
Martinů wrote the first two movements of The Parables in July 1957; he returned to the work after a break in early 1958 (completing the final, third movement on 8 February). The Parables were premiered in Boston on 13 February 1959 by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The mottos of the first two movements of The Parables reference The Wisdom of the Sands (Citadelle) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. For the third movement, Martinů created a motto from loosely associated excerpts from Georges Neveux’s play The Voyage of Theseus, which later provided the subject matter for the opera Ariadne, H 370 (1958). Although the music of The Parables relates to the mottos only abstractly or, in the case of the third movement, perhaps somewhat accidentally, these texts are nevertheless an integral part of The Parables.
That is helpful. I found Martinů’s musical language dreamy and evocative, lyrical at times and forcefully depictive in others. He seems to be writing in a vein that’s a blend of late Romanticism, Impressionism, and Modernism, which is a heady mix to be sure.
Here is The Parables by Bohuslav Martinů.
Share This Post
Something for Thursday
So for Tuesday Tones the other day, I went to feature a piece of music that I know I’ve featured here before but I couldn’t remember how long it’s been, so I looked it up. I featured it less than six months ago. So I chose something else.
Today I want to feature a piece of music I know I’ve featured here before, but I can’t remember how long it’s been. So I looked it up. Almost fifteen years.
Time is weird, y’all.
Anyway, here’s something I discovered after music camp one year. I was playing in the jazz band and we did a number by Chuck Mangione, called “Land of Make Believe”, and it was a really catchy tune, upbeat and happy with a relentless figure underneath it that will make only the deepest comatose people fail to react with toe-tapping glee. At that point I had heard the thing a number of times, always in the instrumental, but at the camp we included vocals. The lyrics at the time struck me as kind of syrupy and childish, but then our band director started pointing things out–the saxes quote “Old McDonald” here, the trombones quote “Farmer in the Dell” there–and gradually it started to make sense why this thing was so peppy and childlike.
Those actually aren’t bad things at all, unless you’re putting up a jaded front.
After the camp ended for that year, I embarked on a usual project of mine after a musical experience in which a new work captivated me: I sought out recordings of the pieces we had played, at least, the ones that I had particularly enjoyed. One was, indeed, “Land of Make Believe”, which I found on a Mangione compilation tape. (Yes, this was in the era of cassettes. Sue me!) But where the version we’d played at camp had been six minutes long or so, this one was over twelve minutes. It had a lot more vocals, it started with a long slow intro (the version we played started with the up tempo part), and it had more solo sections than the version we’d played (which only featured one solo, for trumpet/flugelhorn).
And there was more of those lyrics.
Here’s how it begins:
When you’re feelin’ down and out, wond’rin’ what this world’s about
I know a place that has the answer, it’s a place where no one dies
It’s a land where no one cries and good vibrations always greet you
How I love when my thoughts run to the Land Of Make Believe
Where ev’rything is fun forever
Children always gather ’round Mother Goose and all her rhyme
They fill the air with sounds of laughter
And another sample, farther in:
I once asked the Wizard of Oz for the secret of his land
Now just between us he said “Just take a look around here”
Seven Dwarfs and Little Boy Blue, Uncle Remus and Snow White too
Now just between us, that’s what’s known as integration
Silly? Sentimental? Simplistic?
Yeah, maybe. But if you want to illustrate for someone what the sentimental side of the 1970s was like, I think you can do a lot worse than play Chuck Mangione’s “Land of Make Believe” for them.
A note about this particular performance: it was recorded live, with Mangione and his band being backed by the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra (Hamilton, Ontario). Not only did you have Mangione and his own talented band on stage, but in the Hamilton Philharmonic at the time were five brass players who would go on to be the founding members of the Canadian Brass, one of the most famous chamber music groups in the world.
This is just over twelve minutes long, so give yourself some time…and give yourself permission to go where this music wants to take you. Here is Chuck Mangione (born in Rochester, NY!) and friends with “Land of Make Believe”.