Tone Poem Tuesday (Page 3)

A month or two ago when I was doing a series of music posts using music inspired by the moon, one post featured a work by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. As I seem to do whenever I find a new piece (new to me, anyway) by Einaudi, I always end up saying something like “I need to explore Einaudi’s music more!” And then I don’t, really, until the next time I’m looking for inspiration. Which brings us to the current series, which is “Music inspired by water”. Yes, I need to listen to the album this comes from, which isDown the rabbit hole….

Continuing our self-guided tour of classical music inspired by water, we have perhaps one of the two greatest works ever directly inspired by a river (well, maybe three, depending on how strongly we consider Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen to have been inspired by the Rhine). The other work will surely show up in this series, but for now, we’ll stick with Bedrich Smetana’s Vltava, known to English-speaking audiences as The Moldau. The work opens with a quiet shimmering that evokes the flow of Vltava, the longest river in the Czech Republic. Written as part of a cycle of tone poems evoking Smetana’sDown the rabbit hole….

This theme ought to yield some good things! That’s right: after completing an exploration of music inspired by the moon, we’re going to explore music inspired by water, in all its forms. And we’re going to start with a work premiered over 300 years ago, the usefully-titled Water Music by George Frideric Handel. And maybe this isn’t the best place to start, because the work wasn’t actually inspired by water. Handel wrote it for the water…or rather, the boats upon it. Let me explain…no, is too much. Let me sum up. In 1717, King George I decided to take a barge up the Thames in London,Down the rabbit hole….

Today we’ll conclude my exploration of music inspired by the moon, with a work I had no idea at all existed until just the other day when I was searching for a piece to wrap this mini-series up with…and as soon as I saw it, I realized that it’s one of the most obvious things in the world, and I should have assumed it existed somewhere. American composer Eric Whitacre, who has written a lot of wonderful choral music (and whom I have featured on this site before!), wrote a setting of the words from the iconic children’s book Goodnight Moon byDown the rabbit hole….

Today a long tone poem by composer Michael Kamen, who is famous for his film scores (Highlander, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Three Musketeers) as well as his work with many rock musicians, often providing orchestrations for their songs that required such services. One notable entry in this part of his oeuvre is the orchestra work on Pink Floyd’s album The Wall. Kamen had a wonderfully engaging musical voice, and his untimely death in 2003 when he was just 55 was a deeply hurtful blow to the music world. This piece is called (in keeping with our ongoing “Moon” theme!) New Moon in the OldDown the rabbit hole….

Continuing, but not completing, our exploration of classical music inspired by the Moon, we have a work that I have been waffling on whether or not to include…because it is not inspired by the Moon, even though it always shows up on such lists because it’s one of the heavy-hitters when it comes to “Moon music”. It’s one of the most famous pieces in all of classical music, to be honest. It is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 14 in C-sharp minor, almost always called “the Moonlight Sonata”. Why on Earth would I possibly exclude the Moonlight Sonata from a featured list of musicDown the rabbit hole….

Returning after several weeks to our series of music inspired by the moon, we have a work by Julian Anderson, a composer with whose works I am unfamiliar. One bio of Anderson I read provides this information: Julian Anderson is one of the most talented composers of his generation and has been commissioned by organisations including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Boston Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Born in London in 1967, he studied with John Lambert, Alexander Goehr and Tristan Murail and first came to prominence when his orchestral Diptych (1990) won the RPS Composition Prize in 1992.  Anderson hasDown the rabbit hole….

Yes, we’re still here! I’ve been posting more on social media lately than here, but a return to the longer-form thing is definitely in the offing. Basically the last several weeks have seen a whole bunch of things all come to a head at the same time: a hugely busy period at work as we prepped The Store for a visit from the folks whose name is on the front of the building, followed by my annual getaway with The Wife to Ithaca and the Finger Lakes, and then followed by a surgery for The Wife, which we hope willDown the rabbit hole….

My long string of overly busy, and just this side of crappy, days continues. So, here is Rossini: the overture to La Cenerentola. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

Lots going on right now, so I’m putting the Moon Music series on pause. Here, as is my tradition when I haven’t had time to vet something new, is an overture by Franz von Suppe. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….