The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Jim Croce would have been 82 years old last Friday.
There’s a very special magic at work in Croce’s songs. The blend of lyrics, guitar playing, and his slightly gravely tenor voice with his expert way of not always hitting the note dead on but rather sliding into it…damn that plane crash.
The live performances really get to me nowadays. I don’t know his life story, but every time I watch him perform, it looks like every note of every song is engraved on his heart someplace.
Another new composer to me: Canadian-American composer Colin McPhee, who lived 1900 to 1964. I’m not sure what he is “best known” for, because his influence seems to be more behind-the-scenes than anything else, but McPhee did undertake some of the first serious study of the music of Bali, which he encountered when he and his wife moved there for several years (she was an anthropologist). McPhee brought that music back to the United States, where he shared it with Benjamin Britten, leading to several later works by Britten.
The work featured below, Tabuh-Tabuhan, is a three-movement work for orchestra with extensive percussion and two pianos. It’s apparently McPhee’s best known work, and having just heard if for the first time, I am amazed by its degree of color.
Here is a program note written by the composer himself (via):
Tabuh-Tabuhan was composed in Mexico in 1936, and performed before the ink was barely dry by Carlos Chavez and the National Orchestra of Mexico City. It was written after I had already spent four years in Bali engaged in musical research, and is largely inspired, especially in its orchestration, by the various methods I had learned of Balinese gamelan technic. The title of the work derives from the Baliness word tabuh, originally meaning the mallet used for striking a percussion instrument, but extended to mean strike or beat – the drum, a gong xylophone or metallophone. Tabuh-Tabuhan is thus a Balinese collective noun, meaning different drum rhythms, metric forms, gong punctuations, gamelans, and music essentially percussive.
Although Tabuh-Tabuhan makes much use of Balinese musical material. I consider it a purely personal work in which Balinese and composed motifs, melodies and rhythms have been fused to a symphonic work. Balinese music never rises to an emotional climax, but at the same time has a terrific rhythmic drive and symphonic surge, and this partly influenced me in planning the form of the work. Many of the syncopated rhythms of Balinese music have a close affinity with those of Latin American popular music and American jazz – a history in itself – these have formed the basic impulse of the work from start to finish.
To transfer the intricate chime-like polyphonic figuration of the gamelan keyed instruments and gong-chimes, I have used a ‘nuclear gamelan’ composed of two pianos, celesta, xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel. These form the core of the orchestra.
In form, Tabuh-Tabuhan is more or less that of the classical symphony- there being three movements, Ostinatos, Nocturne, and Finale. There is no place here to point out all the purely Baliness motifs. The flute melody in the Nocturne is an entirely Baliness flute melody, taken down as played. The syncopated finale is based on the gay music of a xylophone orchestra which accompanies a popular street dance. This is heard in its most authentic form at the beginning of the work and given the grand treatment at the end.
Here is Tabuh-Tabuhanby Colin McPhee.
A new composer to me! And thus, hopefully, to you.
One of my favorite eras of “national” classical music is the English music of the 20th century, starting with Holst and Vaughan Williams and continuing on to Britten, William Walton, and others. To that roster I now add Ruth Gipps. (Provisionally, thus far. I’ve only listened to two pieces of hers, after YouTube Music suggested a new album of her work the other day.)
Gipps lived 1921 to 1999, and she had a full musical life in her years: she founded two orchestras, composed fairly prolifically, and taught extensively. Her impact on British musical culture was such that she was appointed an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her work. And yet, her own compositions are mostly unknown. Perhaps this is because her style is Romantic and tonal in nature, and one cannot rule out simple sexism. Whatever the reason, Gipps’s work is only now starting to see some reappraisal, partly because of conductor Rumon Gamba’s ongoing series of recordings of her work.
This piece, the Coronation Procession, dates from 1953, several months before the official coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It’s a fine work in a genre that has produced some stunning classics like the Elgar Pomp and Circumstance marches. Katherine Cooper of Presto Music writes:
It’s a little gem of a piece, relatively light on pomp and circumstance until the final stretch but brimming with colour, energy and excitement as Gipps evokes cavalry, fanfares and the poised elegance of the young queen with almost cinematic vividness. In lieu of the broad string themes which sit at the heart of similar works by Elgar and Walton, Gipps gives us a minor-key melody for her own instrument, the cor anglais (which features prominently in several works on the album) before the music swells to a suitably majestic climax as the Procession enters the Abbey.
Here is Coronation Procession by Ruth Gipps.
This feature was hibernating through December, what with the Daily Dose of Christmas, but we’re back now! We’ll start with observing the bicentennial of German composer Anton Bruckner, who was born in 1824.
So yeah, we missed it. Oops.
I like Bruckner, but I’ve never fully entered his sound world beyond listening to his symphonies here and there. Bruckner wrote massive symphonies, some of which exceed an hour of length, and his sound is such that it often sounds as if he really intended to write for the organ rather than the orchestra. In fact, his writing for organ (he was a professional organist himself for a time) influenced his approach to orchestration, to the point that each of his symphonies is written for almost an identical complement of orchestra musicians, and none call for vocal input in any way.
Bruckner was a deeply spiritual man who wrote a good deal of sacred music in addition to the symphonies that make up the most famous part of his output. His general sound has been described as “Cathedral-like”, and though he was a deep admirer of Richard Wagner, there really isn’t much direct influence to be found. However, hearing Wagner provided Bruckner the inspiration he needed to work much more seriously at his own composing, after which his own work flowered. Bruckner enjoyed little success as a composer during his life, but his stature climbed greatly after his passing.
Today, Bruckner can be a “take him or leave him” kind of composer. For some, his works are simply too long-winded, with too little inspiration to sustain them, for enjoyable listening. I personally find his symphonies highly enjoyable, but it takes a special mood. Anton Bruckner, alas, is not for me in terms of every day listening.
Hardly all of his work is towering organ-like symphonies, though. He wrote a great deal of sacred vocal music, and that’s what I’m featuring today. This is a motet called “Locus Iste”, which Bruckner wrote for the dedication of a new cathedral in Linz, Austria. Listening to this, it’s not hard at all to hear the line connecting Bruckner to earlier sacred music masters like Bach, and even farther beyond. The motet is, after all, one of the oldest forms in Western music.
One more day….
My general tradition when I get to the 24th is to post a grab-bag of favorites that didn’t get their own posts this year. But hardly also-rans–these are greats and favorites that I don’t want to ignore. So, let’s go! No commentary, just music. (Well, maybe a little commentary….)
(These last two offered in memory of Robert John Guttke, who loved these composers and these two works in particular.)
Another year gone by without seeing The Nutcracker live. What in God’s name am I waiting for? Well, I don’t know. This Christmas season has been unusually chaotic and hard to plan. For me the problem was twofold, I think. First, there was the fact that Thanksgiving was as late as it can possibly be, so that once it was over, there was already less than four weeks to Christmas. That’s way too short a time to pack in everything. Second…well, this is the second Christmas since Mom died and…well, I’ll write about Dad some other time. Suffice it to say that it’s really sunk in this year that the old memories are just that: memories, and the old traditions have joined them.
But I still have some traditions, such as this series of posts. And putting aside two hours at some point, even if it is over several lunch breaks at work, to watch The Nutcracker. Here’s the one I took in this year. This is one of the more magical versions I’ve watched, and the music-making is superlative.
(I’m eschewing the Nutcracker Suite this year. Please make time to lose yourself in this fantasy world, if you can. I still think of my old college orchestra conductor, Dr. Janice Wade, when I hear the numbers that make up the Suite. I hope she doesn’t mind that Maestro Gergiev here does the last bars of the “Waltz of the Flowers” in a way that she personally did not.)
As a lover of film music for just about all my life, here are some film music selections from Christmas movies!
First, from 1984’s A Christmas Carol, the one starring George C. Scott:
Next, a suite from the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, the one starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge. Which I have never actually seen, even though the wide-spread consensus is that Sim’s Scrooge is definitive to the point of being iconic. I don’t know about that, but the music is certainly damned good, and it should be: it’s written by Richard Addinsell, that fine English composer who is best known for another piece of music he wrote for film, the amazing Rachmaninoff-pastiche Warsaw Concerto, written for the film Suicide Squadron.
Moving into more contemporary times, but staying in the London area, we have this compilation of the three major love themes from Love Actually. This movie has sustained something of a backlash in recent years, but I will hear none of that. NONE, you hear?
Much has also been said of the Robert Zemeckis adaptation of The Polar Express, which I do in fact enjoy a great deal, even if the animation of the eyes isn’t quite…up to par, I suppose. Alan Silvestri turned in a wonderfully evocative and sweeping score for this one. Silvestri is one of those composers who probably doesn’t rank at the fore, but a second rate hack, he ain’t.
Finally, here’s one that I haven’t had the best relationship with over the years. I think my “I love John Williams” bona fides are well-established by now, but in all honesty, I have never much liked his score to Home Alone. However, I’ve given some selections from it a fresh listen this year and I do find myself warming to it, a bit. I still think he explored moods like this more effectively in films like Hook and the Harry Potter films (the ones he scored, obviously). But I do find myself appreciating his Home Alone music more than I used to. I’m still not a fan of the movie itself, but the music is good. I’ve come to hear it as Williams in “Carl Stalling” mode: he’s basically scoring a cartoon, live-action though it may be, which is loaded with gonzo action.
Earlier in the month I featured a Christmas song by The Killers, a band I’ve been delving much more deeply into this year (more to come on that in my end-of-year summation post). So now I’m thinking, “What about some of my other favorite bands and acts?” So, a tour of Christmas sounds of other bands and artists that I like! (I am limiting this to living performers.)
Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors:
Shannon Dooks:
Dolly Parton:
Kelly Clarkson:
Heart:
Blackmore’s Night:
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: