Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

Urg. It’s been a busy and hectic several days here, what with The Store ramping up for Thanksgiving and an annual visit from the people whose name is on the front of the building, to pounding out words for NaNoWriMo … Continue reading →

I heard this work a few weeks ago while driving home, and made sure to make note of it. Ernest Farrar was a British composer born in 1885, but his life and career were ended in September 1918, when he … Continue reading →

Antonin Dvorak wrote this work, The Noon Witch, after his return to Europe from the United States. It is a musical telling of a horrible story: A mother warns her son that if he does not behave she will summon … Continue reading →

Another hallmark of scary classical music: A Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky.

Here’s something I’ve never heard before: The Mask of the Red Death, a work for harp and string quartet by Andre Caplet. Caplet was a French composer and a contemporary of Claude Debussy, and in fact his most noted work … Continue reading →

It’s October, which is usually my favorite month of the year. We’re off to a rocky start this year, aren’t we…but life still must go on. I’m doing a theme to the Tone Poems for this entire month, starting today. … Continue reading →

Happy birthday, George Gershwin! And also, Happy Birthday, Jim Caviezel! And Happy Birthday, Olivia Newton John! Also, happy birthday to me, but that’s not so important.

Got a spare two minutes? Give this a listen, then. It’s a very short bit of tone painting, in the form of a folk dance, by Percy Grainger. Here is “Shepherd’s Hey”.

It’s increasingly clear that this feature is really “Whatever piece of one-movement classical music I want”, because this isn’t a tone poem but rather a selection of ballet music from an opera. Specifically, the opera is La Gioconda by Amilcare … Continue reading →

OK, this isn’t a tone poem, it’s a piece of film music–but it’s a classic by John Williams, and as such it is as cohesive and well-constructed a piece of music as any great tone poem. In honor of having … Continue reading →