Show 106: Beautiful Music

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 6.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show106.  The July 4th show for this year will be numbered numbered Show201, and so on.  If you didn't figure this out yet, my first show aired the week of July 4th, 2014.]
 
Why do we like music?  * Sometimes a piece or a song has immediate appeal.  It might have a beautiful melody, or harmony.  *  Other times, a piece grows on you, because it has a more subtle beauty, or it is constructed beautifully, or the performer does a great job, or the words resonate with you, or it has a sophisticated melody or harmony.  *Yet other times, a piece attracts us because it is so full of energy, it makes us want to move.

Unfortunately, a piece that has a beautiful melody often doesn’t have the power to keep us coming back to it; perhaps for this very reason, in classical music, the slow, lyrical pieces are nestled between more vigorous movements.  In many symphonies, for instance, the opening movement (which is the one that most people identify with the symphony as a whole) is a vigorous one, whose principal grabber is some melodic fragment, which is developed beautifully.  The second movement is almost invariably the lyrical one, but without the opening movement to provide a contrast, it isn't able to impart grabbing power to the entire symphony.  The third movement is the one which has traditionally been evocative of dance, or, after Beethoven, humor.  The fourth, last movement can go in any direction, but is often a Rondo, with a recurring tune, which is energetic and rhythmic, and satisfies all the requirements of an effective sendoff.

Since the sort of music I’m trying to present is challenging to get, I have worked on the more dramatic, less immediately appealing outer movements, and not the lyrical slow movements.  This next program makes up for that, with all the lovely, gorgeous slow movements, whether they're the middle movements of concertos, or slow arias from operas, or simply pretty music from the late 19^th century.  This is classical Muzak, which is not very educational, but, well, everyone wants to listen to it.

Part A
Part B
Part C
Part D

Music	Text
Introduction Fugue for Percussion	Today’s show is a combination of pretty melodies, beautiful movements, and my favorites.  So far I have taken a sort of educational approach to this show: a sort of music appreciation for people tired out after a long week, and not in a mood to listen to anything, and it struck me that this show might lose all its listeners if people didn’t hear something they liked, sort of nice music.  For most people, that’s what classical music is: boring, pretty music (or ugly music that nobody wants to hear). Actually, classical music is a little like vinegar.  I hated vinegar for the longest time; like, there was this office mate of mine in university who would take me out to lunch, because she would order French fries, and couldn’t finish them.  She was anorexic, I suspect, and drank so much beer that she couldn’t function without beer and a few fries, but too many of them (fries) would make her ill.  But she hated to waste the fries, so...  Anyway, I had the hardest time making her not load the fries with malt vinegar.  I hated it.  But now, when I fix beef, or grill something, I need to have just a little vinegar or even lemon in the marinade.  You know?  The vinegar taste buds kicked in kinda late. I’m betting that, sooner or later, most of my listeners will like classical music more than they like it now, so I’m trying to give you a context for it.  That’s what is happening here. (That's what I have been trying to do in the earlier shows, at least.)  But for today, it's Beautiful Muzak, as Liberace would say.
Meditation, from Thaïs	This piece is called Meditation, from the opera Thaïs.
Air from Bach Suite 3 in D	This famous tune, a part of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, was played by somebody an octave lower and titled the Air on the G string.  Nothing to do with bikinis, it (the G String) is the lowest string on the violin.  (The others are D, A, and E.)
Andante from Mendelssohn Violin Concerto	Violin concertos usually have a beautiful slow movement.  This is from the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor.  We play the last bit of the first movement, and the entire second movement, because they’re connected by a Bassoon passage, which is very interesting.
Adagio ma non troppo from Mozart Clarinet Cto	This is the slow movement from the Mozart Clarinet Concerto.  This concerto was played in Williamsport by Charles Neidich a few years ago (with the Williamsport Symphony), but this is a recording he made with the Orpheus Orchestra.
Pachelbel’s Kanon	A canon is essentially a round, a tune constructed in such a way that once it is started off with one voice, a second voice begins the same tune after a precise delay, so that the two voices together harmonize correctly.  Often additional voices can be added, depending on the tune.  Pachelbel’s Kanon is designed to be played with three voices, staggered by two bars.  Voices two and three have slightly different endings, so that they may all finish together.
Schumann: Traumerei	This beautiful piece is by Robert Schumann, from his collection of piano pieces called Scenes from Childhood.  It is named Traumerei, which means "Reverie".  The harmony is really beautiful.
Mozart: Minuet in D from Divertimento 17	This is another piece that my folks used to play when I was very tiny; it is a minuet from a Mozart Divertimento.
Schubert: Fantasie	This is the Fantasie in F minor, for Four Hands, one of the last pieces that Schubert wrote, before he died at the age of 31.  It is Played by Maria Joao Pires and Huseyin Sermet
Kreisler: Miscellaneous pieces and miniatures	Fritz Kreisler (Fritz is usually a diminutive of Friedrich) was an enormously gifted, and very influential violinist of the late 19th, and early 20th Centuries.  He played many major works, and to this day, his cadenzas are still used for certain violin concertos.  But he did the drawing-room and recital hall circuit, which is what you did if you had a lavish lifestyle, and played miniatures, or Salon pieces.  These next several pieces are played by Itzhak Perlman, and taken from Fritz Kreisler’s programmes.  A lot of the pieces were arranged and edited by Kreisler, for solo violin with piano accompaniment.
[Kreisler]	Caprice Viennois
Gluck	Dance of the Blessed Spirits, from Orpheus in the Underworld
Granados	Spanish Dance no 5
[Kreisler]	Schön Rosmarin
[Kreisler	Liebeslied
Albinoni: Adagio	An Italian musician, Remo Giazotto, claimed to have “discovered” the music of this piece in the rubble after a bombing raid in WW2.  It turns out that Giazotto had written it himself.  (It hardly needs the added notoriety; it is a lovely piece.)
Mozart: Adagio from K 488	Another famous slow movement from Mozart, the Adagio from his Piano Concerto no 23.
Paul Simon: Bleecker Street	A lovely song by Simon and Garfunkel.
Ed Mc Curdy:  Last Night I had the Strangest Dream	Ed Mc Curdy wrote this beautifully ironic anti-war song called Last Night I had the Strangest Dream, which is sung here by Simon and Garfunkel, from their album Wednesday Morning, 5 A.M.
Paul Simon: Sparrow	Simon and Garfunkel sing Who will love a little sparrow?
Rachmaninov: Vocalise	This beautiful song for soprano (or tenor), to be sung to a single syllable, such as "ah", was written by Rachmaninov, and sung here by Silvia McNair, from the album Divine Sopranos.
Elgar: Salut d'Amour	Another Kreisler favorite: Salut d'Amour by Edward Elgar, played by Gil Shaham.
Borodin: String Quartet no 2, Movement 3	This wonderful quartet by the great Russian composer Alexander Borodin has a famous third movement, from which a tune was borrowed for the Broadway musical Kismet.

The broadcast comments were a lot sketchier than the detail given above!  This time, I’m supplying details before the broadcast, so you can wait for a particular piece, if you wish.  I’m sorry that some of the tunes, when dynamically compressed (to moderate --meaning reduce-- extremes of loudness and softness, to make it easier to listen when in a car, for instance) result in lower quality than on the original disks.  Honestly, for a Saturday Night broadcast, I could just give up all this compression, and hit you with the file as is, normalized to a standard volume range!  Maybe I'll do that next time.

Note: for the next program (hopefully on August 23,) the theme will be animals.  Grrr.  [Added later: my apologies to those who are expecting The Trout, the famous piece by Schubert!  I did not manage to squeeze that one in.]

Arch