Classical Music Thread
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Mister Qwerty
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Chanson perpétuelle, Op. 37, for female voice, string quartet, and piano, was the last work Ernst Chausson completed (he broke his neck when his bicycle lost control going downslope and crashed into a wall). The poem by Charles Cros is rather workaday (a woman's lover got tired of her and left; she wonders into the woods and hopes to die in a flower-filled pond, Ophelia style). But Chausson was able to wring the sheer emotive force with his melodies: the surging passion in his famous Poème de l'amour et de la mer here reaches incandescent levels.
Jessye Norman is a controversial figure to say the least, and I had loathed to put up her version. But I really cannot find a version on Youtube that is as full-bodied as hers; she really made the most of this song.
Jessye Norman is a controversial figure to say the least, and I had loathed to put up her version. But I really cannot find a version on Youtube that is as full-bodied as hers; she really made the most of this song.
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Music cognoscenti has always recognized Berio's Sinfonia as one of the high points of post-1950 music, just as I have always regarded it as a turkey. For a long time the only version I have is Boulez/ French National Orchestra / The New Swingle Singers. Boulez conducts very well with his typical clarity of musical textures. The problem is in the all-important third movement. Berio uses the scherzo movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 as his starting point, over which he piles upon musical quotations: from Respighi to Ravel, from Berlioz to Brahms to Berg to Berio to Boulez -- and over that he overlays various spoken and sung words, in particular something from Samuel Beckett that courses through the whole movement.
There is no problem with Boulez's conducting; the problem is how the Beckett ("Keep going...") is allowed to dominate in the mix ("mix" is an appropriate word here: Berio stipulates the use of microphones for the voices, and which voice and how much of it you hear is down to the control panel). Beckett writes nonsense, and trying to figure out his nonsense, annoying in itself, draws the listener's attention away from the music.
I just picked up another version, this one by Semyon Bychkov / Orchestra of Paris / Electric Phoenix. You can here how consigning the Beckett to the background, making it one voice among a cacophony -- now you hear it, now you don't, is the correct way. I suspect it is closer to Berio's intention too ("Sinfonia" = "sounding together")
Bychkov's conducting is not ideal; he favors very bombastic fortes that is far from my thing. And compared with the Boulez you'll recognize that the sung voices are not handled as cleanly. Still, shorn of Boulez's grave misjudgment, his version allows me to actually listen to the music itself. People in the know think Chailly's version is the one to have, and one day I'll got to add it to my collection.
There is no problem with Boulez's conducting; the problem is how the Beckett ("Keep going...") is allowed to dominate in the mix ("mix" is an appropriate word here: Berio stipulates the use of microphones for the voices, and which voice and how much of it you hear is down to the control panel). Beckett writes nonsense, and trying to figure out his nonsense, annoying in itself, draws the listener's attention away from the music.
I just picked up another version, this one by Semyon Bychkov / Orchestra of Paris / Electric Phoenix. You can here how consigning the Beckett to the background, making it one voice among a cacophony -- now you hear it, now you don't, is the correct way. I suspect it is closer to Berio's intention too ("Sinfonia" = "sounding together")
Bychkov's conducting is not ideal; he favors very bombastic fortes that is far from my thing. And compared with the Boulez you'll recognize that the sung voices are not handled as cleanly. Still, shorn of Boulez's grave misjudgment, his version allows me to actually listen to the music itself. People in the know think Chailly's version is the one to have, and one day I'll got to add it to my collection.
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Always thought sinfonia was a fancy word for symphony, but then I like baroque so maybe I'm wrong.
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(((Richard Taruskin))) hated Prokofiev's music for Eisenstein's film Ivan The Terrible. He thought Prokofiev was "serving Stalin like a dog" and claims this work is a "blatant a piece of Stalinist triumphalism" and thus "better forgotten" -- all the more reason to listen to it. Those who do will be delighted by the variegated sonic feast of grand orchestrations, folkish stylings, powerful male choruses, and more. Still, what stuck in my mind most is this ballroom music:
Ivan The Terrible - 12a: "At the Polish Court"
It is very ear-wormy in a Prokofievian manner. It reminds me of this snippet from Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet - Act I: "Arrival of Guests"
Valery Gergiev, incidentally, is one of the conductors who told (((Taruskin))) to fuck off.
Ivan The Terrible - 12a: "At the Polish Court"
It is very ear-wormy in a Prokofievian manner. It reminds me of this snippet from Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet - Act I: "Arrival of Guests"
Valery Gergiev, incidentally, is one of the conductors who told (((Taruskin))) to fuck off.
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Brahms's Op. 17: "Four Songs for Female Choir, Harp, and Two Horns", with its very Romantic instrumentation, are set to likewise Romantic, fatalistic poems.
In the first poem (Ruperti), the glissandi of the harp evoked the tears of a lover in despair. The second setting is a German translation of Shakespeare's "Come Away Death", a poem that has always been popular among composers, up to our present day. In the third song (Eichendorff), a gardener wishes to make a garland of his most beautiful flowers and present it to his lady, but he cannot to do so because she is way above his station, and he feels he will soon be digging his own grave. The final lyrics are by the so called "Ossian", a Romantic mainstay whose real name is James MacPherson. A highland lassie is driven to despair because her love has fallen to the sword. The choral writing is uncomplicated, perhaps because the piece was written for an amateur lady choir that Brahms was conducting at the time.
It is interesting to note that Brahms almost never writes for the harp; the instrument is totally absent in all his symphonies, concertos, overtures, and chamber music. while his "rival" Richard Wagner writes copiously for it: Das Rheingold famously ends with six harps playing in unison.
It is interesting to note that Brahms almost never writes for the harp; the instrument is totally absent in all his symphonies, concertos, overtures, and chamber music. while his "rival" Richard Wagner writes copiously for it: Das Rheingold famously ends with six harps playing in unison.
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Written soon after von Bismack defeated France and the proclamation of the Prussian Empire, Brahms's Triumphlied, Op.55 was once his most popular work. Today the chance to hear it in concert is rare, as anything that smack of German Nationalism is deemed suspect.
Brahms uses verses from The Book of Revelation in the Luther Bible to glorify the new Prussian Emperor. This sounds like blasphemy, but as a "secular Protestant" Brahms could not care less. In his essay for the book Brahms In Context, David Brodbeck explains how the Luther Bible, which Brahms studied since childhood, held more value to Brahms as an affirmation of German identity than as messages from God. He has a very dim view of Catholicism for the familiar reasons, and Bruckner the devout Catholic was subjected to his sarcasm.
Reading through Brahms's correspondences Brodbeck identified a religious joke in another choral piece by Brahms, likewise written for national celebration. This is the second of the third songs in Fest-und Gedenksprüche, Op. 109, entitled "Wenn ein starker Gewappneter". The text is from Luke 11:21 and 17, again from the Luther's version.
These look like verses that can be understood as advocation for national unity and strong defense, but, as Brahms wrote to journalist Joseph Victor Widmann, "Did you not even notice the theological, even Jesuitical, sophistry of this verse? I've always meant to ask you whether something like this is allowed. For fun's sake look at it again!" The joke is that Jesus is describing Satan and his domain in those verses.
Reading through Brahms's correspondences Brodbeck identified a religious joke in another choral piece by Brahms, likewise written for national celebration. This is the second of the third songs in Fest-und Gedenksprüche, Op. 109, entitled "Wenn ein starker Gewappneter". The text is from Luke 11:21 and 17, again from the Luther's version.
Space Police
kiwifarms.net
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I'm reading The Cambridge Companion to Serialism, and come across this letter written by Karel Goeyvaerts, one of the adopters of total serialism, to Karlheinz Stockhausen, another early convert. After three attempts to write serial music for accoustic instruments. Goeyvaerts retreated into the electronic studio. He explains:
I find this confession poignant: an artist feeling an inevitable draw, like a moth to a flame, equally fascinated and frightened. He knew the Art would eventually annihilate him, but could not wait for that to happen.
Composition Nr. 4 with Dead Tones is not a pleasurable listen. As one Youtube commentator says, it just sounds like an alarm clock. But try to place yourself in the year 1952. Imagine how the grand organs in cathedrals dematerialize, and in its place, the promise of an infinity of liberated sounds.
Goeyvaerts will soon be disillusioned by electronics, which is understandable: no machine can realize every single sound human beings hear in their dreams. With acoustic instruments we have learned to live with, and accommodate, their limitations, yet we ask for the skies from electronics. 30 years later Pierre Boulez would be disappointed by live electronics in concert halls, even though he had a whole research institute at his disposal.
While you could change all of your works even after they were finished, I was not permitted to. So your music will always sound sweeter, and also more human. It also belongs to you more. Nothing belongs to me. . . . You were then able to write Kontra Punkte; I have to contend with Composition Nr. 4 with Dead Tones, an inhuman, relentless piece, but it fascinates me in all its purity. Then you said that I was retreating from the human world more and more, and that I was losing all contact with people. I cannot help that. But I feel very afraid in the process.
I find this confession poignant: an artist feeling an inevitable draw, like a moth to a flame, equally fascinated and frightened. He knew the Art would eventually annihilate him, but could not wait for that to happen.
Composition Nr. 4 with Dead Tones is not a pleasurable listen. As one Youtube commentator says, it just sounds like an alarm clock. But try to place yourself in the year 1952. Imagine how the grand organs in cathedrals dematerialize, and in its place, the promise of an infinity of liberated sounds.
Goeyvaerts will soon be disillusioned by electronics, which is understandable: no machine can realize every single sound human beings hear in their dreams. With acoustic instruments we have learned to live with, and accommodate, their limitations, yet we ask for the skies from electronics. 30 years later Pierre Boulez would be disappointed by live electronics in concert halls, even though he had a whole research institute at his disposal.
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From Porgy and Bess
Those of you who have written off Schoenberg might give the Gurre-Lieder a try. It could be mistaken for Wagner.
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In the story, not mentioned in the songs, the Queen has her rival Tove killed by scalding her alive, while the man who carries out the dirty deed is executed by being put inside a wooden barrel studded with knives and then rolled downhill, so that every inch of his flesh was shredded to ribbons. Enlightened times.
The center of Gurre-Lieder is "The Song of the Wood-dove" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, which is sometimes performed alone.
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Conductor Seiji Ozawa died on 6 Feb at the age of 88.
His repertoire straddles between the great romantic works (Berlioz, Mahler, Richard Strauss), early 20th century masterpieces (Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky), and occasional ventures into modern compositions (Messiaen, Takemitsu). Unfortunately I don't think his interpretation left a strong impression on me: it is fair to say whatever he does, you can find someone who does it better. For example, his recording of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder is acclaimed, but for my money I'd plump for Riccardo Chailly.
Still, we should be grateful that he left us some very strong recordings of unusual repertoires, such as Poulenc's bizarre surrealist opera Les Mamelles de Tiresias (where the woman Thérèse becomes a man called Tiresias as the titular breasts became balloons and fly off; meanwhile her husband resolves to get pregnant and gets far more than he bargained for -- say why don't people revive it in our age of genderfuckery?) and Honneger's stage work Jeanne d'Arc. Here is the finale of Jeanne, when the heroine accepts her fiery fate.
His repertoire straddles between the great romantic works (Berlioz, Mahler, Richard Strauss), early 20th century masterpieces (Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky), and occasional ventures into modern compositions (Messiaen, Takemitsu). Unfortunately I don't think his interpretation left a strong impression on me: it is fair to say whatever he does, you can find someone who does it better. For example, his recording of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder is acclaimed, but for my money I'd plump for Riccardo Chailly.
Still, we should be grateful that he left us some very strong recordings of unusual repertoires, such as Poulenc's bizarre surrealist opera Les Mamelles de Tiresias (where the woman Thérèse becomes a man called Tiresias as the titular breasts became balloons and fly off; meanwhile her husband resolves to get pregnant and gets far more than he bargained for -- say why don't people revive it in our age of genderfuckery?) and Honneger's stage work Jeanne d'Arc. Here is the finale of Jeanne, when the heroine accepts her fiery fate.
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