[Added
on 2015/7/18: This used to be called Show 13. I've renumbered the
shows, so that this one is Show113. For instance, 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.]
Show 13 did finally air, but there were enormous technical errors, mostly centering around the automatic crossfading that the Master Program had been set to do. This is a setting in which each music track is faded out and the next track is faded in, in an overlapping way. Unfortunately, it doesn't work at all well for speech, as it does for music. Normally, crossfading is set for about two seconds of overlap, but I suspect that last night it was set for more. It effectively shortened the 2-hour broadcast to an hour and twenty minutes. It is frustrating, but I take it on the bump as we used to say (a saying that derives from the game of Cricket, which I have not really played.)
Anyway, here we are with the podcast. I don't do a podcast for the actual broadcast because that doesn't allow me to put the performer and the album information into the metadata (the stuff that shows up on your car radio while the music is playing. Actually, I have an older car, and the stuff doesn't show up, anyway.)
Part A (28 minutes, more or less): Handel, Bach, Mozart
Handel: Overture to The Watermusic. Handel was initially the court composer of the court of Elector Georg of Hanover. He was a rising musical star in his youth, and managed to get leave of his master to travel in Italy. He kept extending his leave, and eventually landed in Britain, where his music was so appreciated that he stayed on for several years. To his horror, on the death of the British monarch, Georg of Hanover ascended to the British Throne, and Handel was in the awkward position of having played hooky from his job in Germany for several years. But the resourceful Handel arranged to accompany a water party on the Thames given by George, and play music specially composed for the occasion from a barge (or barges), and regained favor with His Majesty. Anyway, that's the story. This overture is the first movement of the music composed for that occasion. [Raymond Leppard, English Chamber Orchestra]
Some centuries later, Sir Hamilton Harty, who was one of the principal organizers of the London Proms, arranged extracts from the Watermusic into a more Victorian, sumptuous romantic score, which was immensely popular in the 2oth Century, but in the Sixties, the original work regained popularity, with the rediscovery of Baroque orchestras and instruments.
Bach: Overture to Suite No. 1 in C major. This is a grand piece for large orchestra from the time of Bach's stay in the Ducal court of Weimar. The entire orchestral suite is lovely. [Akademie fur Alte Music, Berlin]
Handel: Overture to Messiah. Notice the characteristic dotted rhythms of the slow introduction, which is followed by a faster contrapuntal section, after which the slow section returns. This ABA form is often expanded by repetition into an ABABA form, with greater ornamentation in the later repeats. [London Philharmonic Orchestra, John Alldis]
Mozart: Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. The overture, which was composed at the last minute, is one of the best-known works of Mozart, and is an exciting romp of just about 5 minutes. While musically it is hardly remarkable, it is all elegance and style, and manages to focus all the attention on the play itself, and not on the music. [Origin uncertain! Could be any one of a number of my personal collection of recordings...]
Part B (28 minutes): Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Beethoven
Mozart: Overture to The Magic Flute. The Magic Flute was composed as a singspiel, which literally means musical play. It was a deliberate attempt to depart from the Italian-dominated opera tradition towards a more folk-centered German theatrical tradition which was gaining popularity with the people. As mentioned earlier, it had a strong masonic flavor, though ultimately the masonic elements are of greater interest to the Freemasons and historians than to music-lovers.
The overture is a marvel of construction, in utter contrast to the previous one. The heavy brass in the trombones is a huge contrast to the light, fluffy orchestration of Figaro. [Staatskapelle, Dresden; Colin Davis]
Beethoven: Overture to Fidelio. Beethoven wrote just one opera, Fidelio, and he labored over an appropriate overture to it. (Presumably Mozart was a tough act to follow.) The opera is highly regarded, at least by Beethoven fanatics. Beethoven wrote a total of four overtures to the opera, and this one is the most frequently performed with the opera, at least that's what I understand. I was seriously underwhelmed by the piece, and I apologize for cutting it short. [Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell]
Mendelssohn: Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Mendelssohn family loved Shakespeare to pieces, and in his youth, young Felix wrote this amazing overture, as well as incidental music to accompany the play. I am not sure of the details, but there is enough incidental music to suggest that the play was performed with the music in Mendelssohn's lifetime. The family was very well off, and Felix and his sister and friends often put on various plays and performances in the house, which were attended by a large circle of friends. [London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado]
Handel: Air from Watermusic. This was a centerpiece of the Hamilton Harty arrangement. It is a lovely horn tune, which found its way into easy pieces for piano and practically every conceivable instrument. [Raymond Leppard, English Chamber Orchestra]
Part C (28 minutes): Mendelssohn, Wagner, Frederick Loewe
Mendelssohn: Fingal's Cave Overture. Written to commemorate a visit to Fingal's Cave in the Hebrides, in Scotland. [London Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado]
Brahms: Academic Festival Overture. Written in response to being awarded an honorary doctorate at Breslau U. [BBC Philharmonic Orchestra]
Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger. Most of the overture, with voice-over identifying the various themes. I did not remember to point out that after the famous triple counterpoint towards the end, the Rules and Regulations theme is played to generate a little more excitement, before the big cadenza. [Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan]
Frederic Loewe: Overture to My Fair Lady. This would be hard to guess for a younger audience which hasn't heard the tunes from the musical or movie ad nauseam. You should be able to identify: "You did it", "On the street where you live", "Wouldn't it be loverly", and a couple more. [Andre Previn]
Part D (28 minutes)
Wagner: Overture to Tannhauser. This opens with the Pilgrim's Chorus (horns and trombones, later with strings joining in), then after the Pilgrims go off into the distance, we hear the seductive music of Venusburg, and Venus herself, represented by the clarinet. Our hero enters and sings a paean of praise to the goddess, and just as things are getting out of hand, the Pilgrims are heard returning, this time joined by a huge marching band they have linked up with somewhere. (Believe it or not, the Pilgrim's Chorus is the very first tune I tried to harmonize by myself. It turned out mostly pretty close to the original, but I later heard some really amazing chromatic details I had missed as a 13-year-old.) [Festival Orchestra of London]
Hammerstein: Overture to The Sound of Music. This was puzzle for you to guess. The overture leads straight into the Nun's Chorus. [Original Soundtrack Recording (Irwin Kostal?)]
Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde. This sad story ends with the suicide of the young lovers. The movie of a couple of years ago captures the mood very well. [RSO, Ljublana]
Bernstein: Overture to Candide. [New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein]
Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture. This version has a full chorus singing the first theme, which is a hymn. This is a later addition (see here) by Igor Buketoff. The Russian Orthodox hymn is to the words "O Lord save Thy People". [Gothenberg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi]
Archie
The companion website for the radio program that formerly aired Saturdays 8-10 PM! The program no longer airs, but these posts are a nearly complete record.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Monday, October 20, 2014
Apologies: WXPI was off the air
The station engineers are tinkering with the transmitter, and the station has been off the air for close to a week.
I'm going to leave Saturday's show on the system for next weekend; there's no point putting something new on if the one in the queue hasn't aired!
General News
Omissions. As you can see, some notable items are missing from the shows; for instance, there are tons of duets that you might have been looking for, but did not hear on that show. I recently discovered an entire disc of duets by Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. There is an article about the lovely opera star, talking about her breakup with Mr Alagna, which you might be interested in. I don't listen to a lot of Italian opera, so I will find it difficult to select a duet or two to play on the program. The pop duets available are numerous, and I will try and find some for you on another show!
Overtures, too, are numerous; classical music fans all have their favorites, and might not find all of them on next Saturday's show! The same with the Variations; the Enigma Variations were conspicuous by their absence. I will try to squeeze them in. Also, I want to present a set of variations of the sort: What if Mozart wrote "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas"? I don't know where to look for those sorts of things!!
Running a Radio Station. All I really know is how my particular show is run!
There is a computer in the station, with an enormous hard disc, and a clock-driven program that runs continuously. Like an alarm you might have running on your own computer or on your smart phone, the station program is designed to play music from a particular folder at a particular time. That's mainly it.
At particular times, too: roughly every 30 minutes, according to FCC (radio) rules, the program is instructed to play a station identification, which sits in a particular folder. At these times, brief service messages (Public Service Announcements, or PSA's) are played, to take up a total of two minutes, for announcements and identification. The messages played on the hour are a little more formal than those played at the half-hour.
For some programs, the show host sits right in the studio at the microphone, and plays music he has got ready as MP3s, or conducts an interview, or anything he likes. These are live shows. In these sorts of cases, the show host is in charge of the mid-hour interruptions.
For other programs, the show host sends in (by mail, by Internet, or by actually coming into the studio and uploading it) two 28-minute MP3s. That leaves 2 minutes for the station messages at the half-hour and the hour. This is called a Podcast, and they tried to get me to do this. Unfortunately, when this plays over a car radio, for instance, no information is displayed except the name of the program.
For yet other programs, like ours, all the music files are loaded into the computer, with a playlist, which is just a text file with the music files listed carefully in order. When the Station program plays this playlist, your car radios (and some home stereos) have the ability to display: the Title, the Performer, the Album, and some other information. I like that, because I don't always announce the performer, but I make sure that the performer is listed on this extra information, which is called metadata. If I tire of providing all that, I can go into a podcast format, where the extra information is not broadcasted. I have to organize the playlist so that the music playtime adds up to four groups of 28 minutes (plus a couple of seconds, possibly), so that the program can splice in the station messages every half hour.
Finally, if there are slots where local programming is not available, the Station program is instructed to splice in a program from somewhere else. These are called syndicated programs, which are selected by a sort of committee at our radio station. We only air syndicated shows that are free; commercial stations have to pay for their syndicated shows, and NPR stations have to pay for their shows as well.
The broadcast stream. The signal from the station goes via a trunk Internet line to a computer sitting at the foot of the transmitting tower, where it sends the signal (and a power cable) up the tower to the transmitter. Ours is a tiny 1 Kilowatt transmitter, which only transmits at about 50% capacity, because it is old, and the connections are corroded, and there is a lot of power loss. The station is in a constant battle to get a more powerful transmitter, and a higher location. It so happens that a commercial station in Martha's Vineyard has just upgraded to a more modern transmitter, and we're trying to get their older transmitter for ourselves. But we can't afford the extra juice it will need, and we don't have the resources to lug the transmitter here from Massachusetts!!! Everybody at our station is a volunteer, though some of them would dearly like to be paid a stipend.
We have an agreement with TuneIn Radio to carry our broadcasts live on the Internet. If you click on this link right away, you're going to get an error message because we're off the air. Within a day or two, however, clicking on the link above at 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday should get you our show live.
Ideas for Future Shows
Obviously, I have to keep a list of potential themes for future shows.
Children's Music.
Early Music. This is music from before Baroque times, and even early Baroque.
Unusual Instruments, and Early Instruments.
Unusual performances of well-known music. I do some of this already, but there's a lot more available. Computer performance is a major subclass.
Opera. We've heard a certain amount of opera, but a few snippets could be interesting.
Modern Music. I'm going to be very selective here, and only feature very mainstream music from the 20th century and later.
Music with stories associated with it.
Modern Suites. For instance, the Mother Goose suite of Modest Mussorgsky, and Pictures at an Exhibition.
World Music. There are other programs on our station that are based on this theme, but it's a big world.
Folk Music.
New Age takes on classical music, in other words, fusion music, and crossover music.
[Added later:]
Sonatas for various instruments.
Death, suffering and Grieving. I don't know about this; young listeners are often hostile to this sort of thing. But a lot of music was written in troubled times, and it is useful to be familiar with works that are concerned with suffering, death and anguish, so that when you're in that mood, you know where to go.
Choral music. Writing good choral music is very hard, and when you hear good choral music, it is amazing. It might be an acquired taste, and if you've sung in a choir, you're halfway there.
Marches. This is a more popular genre than anyone would think, ranging from military marches to songs and tunes that just happen to be written as marches.
Music for plucked string: guitars, banjos, mandolins, lutes, and harps. And, of course, harpsichords.
Symphonies. These are just large-scale works according to a certain pattern, or form. We've already listened to a number of them. The 19th and 20th centuries had a surfeit of them, but some of them are excellent, and worth getting familiar with. Obviously I don't know all the good ones, but I'm happy to share the few that I do know.
Halloween!! I'm going to try and get together a nice mix of music, but scary music is not very common at all, unfortunately. Luckily for all of us, another theme in Halloween is humor and comedy, and that might be helpful.
If you have ideas, tell me about them!
Archie.
I'm going to leave Saturday's show on the system for next weekend; there's no point putting something new on if the one in the queue hasn't aired!
General News
Omissions. As you can see, some notable items are missing from the shows; for instance, there are tons of duets that you might have been looking for, but did not hear on that show. I recently discovered an entire disc of duets by Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. There is an article about the lovely opera star, talking about her breakup with Mr Alagna, which you might be interested in. I don't listen to a lot of Italian opera, so I will find it difficult to select a duet or two to play on the program. The pop duets available are numerous, and I will try and find some for you on another show!
Overtures, too, are numerous; classical music fans all have their favorites, and might not find all of them on next Saturday's show! The same with the Variations; the Enigma Variations were conspicuous by their absence. I will try to squeeze them in. Also, I want to present a set of variations of the sort: What if Mozart wrote "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas"? I don't know where to look for those sorts of things!!
Running a Radio Station. All I really know is how my particular show is run!
There is a computer in the station, with an enormous hard disc, and a clock-driven program that runs continuously. Like an alarm you might have running on your own computer or on your smart phone, the station program is designed to play music from a particular folder at a particular time. That's mainly it.
At particular times, too: roughly every 30 minutes, according to FCC (radio) rules, the program is instructed to play a station identification, which sits in a particular folder. At these times, brief service messages (Public Service Announcements, or PSA's) are played, to take up a total of two minutes, for announcements and identification. The messages played on the hour are a little more formal than those played at the half-hour.
For some programs, the show host sits right in the studio at the microphone, and plays music he has got ready as MP3s, or conducts an interview, or anything he likes. These are live shows. In these sorts of cases, the show host is in charge of the mid-hour interruptions.
For other programs, the show host sends in (by mail, by Internet, or by actually coming into the studio and uploading it) two 28-minute MP3s. That leaves 2 minutes for the station messages at the half-hour and the hour. This is called a Podcast, and they tried to get me to do this. Unfortunately, when this plays over a car radio, for instance, no information is displayed except the name of the program.
For yet other programs, like ours, all the music files are loaded into the computer, with a playlist, which is just a text file with the music files listed carefully in order. When the Station program plays this playlist, your car radios (and some home stereos) have the ability to display: the Title, the Performer, the Album, and some other information. I like that, because I don't always announce the performer, but I make sure that the performer is listed on this extra information, which is called metadata. If I tire of providing all that, I can go into a podcast format, where the extra information is not broadcasted. I have to organize the playlist so that the music playtime adds up to four groups of 28 minutes (plus a couple of seconds, possibly), so that the program can splice in the station messages every half hour.
Finally, if there are slots where local programming is not available, the Station program is instructed to splice in a program from somewhere else. These are called syndicated programs, which are selected by a sort of committee at our radio station. We only air syndicated shows that are free; commercial stations have to pay for their syndicated shows, and NPR stations have to pay for their shows as well.
The broadcast stream. The signal from the station goes via a trunk Internet line to a computer sitting at the foot of the transmitting tower, where it sends the signal (and a power cable) up the tower to the transmitter. Ours is a tiny 1 Kilowatt transmitter, which only transmits at about 50% capacity, because it is old, and the connections are corroded, and there is a lot of power loss. The station is in a constant battle to get a more powerful transmitter, and a higher location. It so happens that a commercial station in Martha's Vineyard has just upgraded to a more modern transmitter, and we're trying to get their older transmitter for ourselves. But we can't afford the extra juice it will need, and we don't have the resources to lug the transmitter here from Massachusetts!!! Everybody at our station is a volunteer, though some of them would dearly like to be paid a stipend.
Ideas for Future Shows
Obviously, I have to keep a list of potential themes for future shows.
Children's Music.
Early Music. This is music from before Baroque times, and even early Baroque.
Unusual Instruments, and Early Instruments.
Unusual performances of well-known music. I do some of this already, but there's a lot more available. Computer performance is a major subclass.
Opera. We've heard a certain amount of opera, but a few snippets could be interesting.
Modern Music. I'm going to be very selective here, and only feature very mainstream music from the 20th century and later.
Music with stories associated with it.
Modern Suites. For instance, the Mother Goose suite of Modest Mussorgsky, and Pictures at an Exhibition.
World Music. There are other programs on our station that are based on this theme, but it's a big world.
Folk Music.
New Age takes on classical music, in other words, fusion music, and crossover music.
[Added later:]
Sonatas for various instruments.
Death, suffering and Grieving. I don't know about this; young listeners are often hostile to this sort of thing. But a lot of music was written in troubled times, and it is useful to be familiar with works that are concerned with suffering, death and anguish, so that when you're in that mood, you know where to go.
Choral music. Writing good choral music is very hard, and when you hear good choral music, it is amazing. It might be an acquired taste, and if you've sung in a choir, you're halfway there.
Marches. This is a more popular genre than anyone would think, ranging from military marches to songs and tunes that just happen to be written as marches.
Music for plucked string: guitars, banjos, mandolins, lutes, and harps. And, of course, harpsichords.
Symphonies. These are just large-scale works according to a certain pattern, or form. We've already listened to a number of them. The 19th and 20th centuries had a surfeit of them, but some of them are excellent, and worth getting familiar with. Obviously I don't know all the good ones, but I'm happy to share the few that I do know.
Halloween!! I'm going to try and get together a nice mix of music, but scary music is not very common at all, unfortunately. Luckily for all of us, another theme in Halloween is humor and comedy, and that might be helpful.
If you have ideas, tell me about them!
Archie.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Show 113: Overtures
[Added
on 2015/7/18: This used to be called Show 13. I've renumbered the
shows, so that this one is Show113. 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.]
Introduction
This program did not air as scheduled. We are performing a major overhaul of our system, and until that is completed, the station will be off the air.
When the program finally airs, it is going to consist of Overtures.
The modern meaning of the word is, of course, something that precedes something else, for instance the opening movement of an Opera, or Broadway show, or whatever. This is how things started off; in the time of King Louis the 14th of France, it was a ceremonial promenade during which the King would make his entrance, after which there would be an evening of Dance. Of course, if new music had been written for the occasion, the Overture would be the opening movement of the set of dances. According to Wikipedia, the French word Ouverture literally means opening.
Later on, during the time of Beethoven and after, an Overture began to be a single-movement work that had some literary foundation: a piece about a person, or a scene, or a story, or some such inspiration from outside the realm of pure music.
But first, we start with some famous overtures from Bach, Handel and Mozart.
Handel: Overture to The Watermusic
This is the overture to Handel’s famous Watermusic. I’m taking the position that famous pieces of music are famous for a reason, so I’m trying to squeeze in as many well-known classics as I can. Quite sincerely, if you start recognizing tunes from the classical repertoire as a result of listening to this program, I shall think I have succeeded.
Bach: Overture to the Orchestral Suite in C major
Bach wrote four grand suites for orchestra, to be played when he was a court musician at Weimar. Weimar is a famous German town, where Liszt was a composer, as well as Wagner, and from where the Weimeraner breed of dog originates. Anyway, this is the introduction to the first of these Suites, and is one of my favorite movements.
Handel: Overture to Messiah
The Christmas Season is approaching, and Messiah is a favorite at holiday time. This is the Overture to Messiah by Handel.
Mozart: Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro has this mad, racing overture that is instantly recognizable. We’re told that Mozart dashed this off in a few minutes the day before opening night. Can you imagine? Furthermore, the overture has absolutely no relationship to the opera musically. Nothing. Not a single musical motif from the opera is present in it. Still, it’s one of the most famous overtures ever written.
Mozart: Overture to the Magic Flute
You should know that the Magic Flute had a lot of references to the Freemasons, which was gaining strength as an organization that provided a home to those who wanted some relief from the overwhelming influence of the Catholic Church. Mozart was a fringe member —or maybe a plain old member— of the Freemasons, certainly one of the most famous members, and there are lots of masonic themes in the music, which I am ignorant of, not being a Freemason myself.
Listen to those three great, crashing chords that begin the overture. This overture is just amazingly beautifully written, especially the orchestration.
Beethoven: Fidelio Overture
Beethoven wrote an opera, which is regarded very highly by some, called Fidelio, about a woman who goes into prison to rescue her husband. Apparently this opera was featured in the movie Eyes Wide Shut, which I have not seen. Anyway, here is an excerpt from the overture to Fidelio, conducted by George Szell
Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night’s Dream
Felix Mendelssohn was interested in Shakespeare, as were lots of Germans and Austrians in the late 19th century, and he wrote Overtures to various Shakespeare plays. He was also into fairies in a big way, and one of his best known overtures is the one to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here it is, with the London Symphony, conducted by Claudio Abbado. By the way, Claudio Abbado is said to be descended from a Moorish Prince, Abdul Abbad. Obviously that has nothing to do with how good a conductor Mr Abbado was, which was really great. Anyway, Mendelssohn’s fairy music is unsurpassed. Judge for yourself.
Mendelssohn: Fingal’s Cave
Mendelssohn visited a famous tourist spot in Scotland, called Fingal’s Cave. He wanted to celebrate the occasion by writing a short piece of music. It was increasingly becoming common to call these sorts of pieces overtures, and I can’t think of why that particular term would be used, and I don’t have the energy to do an etymological exploration of it. It confuses things a little bit, when a word is used in a new way. This is called generalization, such as when you use the word Xerox to mean any sort of photocopier, and even photocopying, the verb. These days with the Internet, people do this all the time, and they rejoice when they’ve succeeded in introducing a new usage of a word into common parlance. I’m talking softly, because this is early morning, and people in our house are still asleep. So here’s Fingal’s Cave Overture, by Felix Mendelssohn.
Brahms: Academic Festival
So now we know that, by the time Mendelssohn, Schubert and people of that generation were composing, the word Overture had come to mean the musical equivalent of a short story, or even a journal article.
Johannes Brahms had been awarded an honorary degree from (The University of) Breslau. Brahms wrote an overture to be performed during the ceremony, and it was a jolly thing with lots of undergraduate (read: Drinking) songs from Germany and Austria, including a Latin song called gaudeamus igitur, which translates like this:
I’m going to fade right into the rowdy ending part. Gaudeamus Igitur is the last big tune in the brass.
Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger
We’ve already heard the Meistersinger Overture twice. Some people call it a Potpourri overture. You probably know what potpourri is: a mixture of dried flowers and sweet spices and herbs that you cook in a pot when your house is full of cooking odors. A Potpourri overture is just a mix of songs from a Broadway musical or movie, and the phrase is intended to be a sort of put-down. The Meistersingers overture certainly contains snippets of tunes from the opera, but it is super highly structured, and we know that the last several bars is an amazing combination of three of the themes played simultaneously, combined with counterpoint. So here is a shortened version of the whole thing, just because I love this piece.
Mystery Overture
This one you have to guess.
Wagner: Tannhauser Overture
One of the first pieces of classical music I learned about is the Overture to Wagner’s opera Tannhauser. This overture actually represents, in miniature, the plot of the opera.
First, we hear a softly approaching hymn, which is the song of the Pilgrims, the Pilgrim’s chorus; they’re on their way to Rome, or somewhere. Then the scene shifts to the garden of Venus, which represents the temptations of our hero. The hero enters, and begins a rhapsodic song to Venus, but then the pilgrims are heard in the distance, returning, and their chorus drowns out Venus, and our hero is saved. Wagner was a rather simple fellow, who wrote complex music. He was vilified, about the time of World War 2, because the Nazis loved Wagner’s music. Today, we take the view that if we start a witch-hunt to posthumously persecute anybody who was an inspiration to the Nazis, it would never end. There were lots of people who were associated with the Nazis: Wilhelm Furtwangler, Herbert von Karajan, Konrad Lorenz. They liked the color brown. So, what are we going to do, not wear brown? I hate the Nazis, of that time and of this time, but I wear plenty of brown, so sue me. Anyway, Wagner’s Tannhauser, and the Pilgrim’s Chorus, and I hope you love it as much as I do!
Mystery Overture No. 2
Guess this one too.
Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde
The story of Tristram and Isolde in the legend of King Arthur is a tragedy. A young knight is sent out to Ireland to bring a princess to marry King Mark of Cornwall. But on the voyage back, the young knight, Tristan, falls in love with the princess. The story ends with the young lovers drinking poison together. The overture to Tristan and Isolde is just a brilliant piece of music by Wagner. I’m just going to play you the opening few seconds, just to put you in a lousy mood for the end of the show! But this is an important piece of music, and you might just find these bars fascinating.
Bernstein: Overture to Candide
The overture of Bernstein’s highly regarded comic opera, Candide. (A theme from it was Dick Cavett’s theme music for his talk show in the eighties.)
Another Mystery Overture
Guess.
Introduction
This program did not air as scheduled. We are performing a major overhaul of our system, and until that is completed, the station will be off the air.
When the program finally airs, it is going to consist of Overtures.
The modern meaning of the word is, of course, something that precedes something else, for instance the opening movement of an Opera, or Broadway show, or whatever. This is how things started off; in the time of King Louis the 14th of France, it was a ceremonial promenade during which the King would make his entrance, after which there would be an evening of Dance. Of course, if new music had been written for the occasion, the Overture would be the opening movement of the set of dances. According to Wikipedia, the French word Ouverture literally means opening.
Later on, during the time of Beethoven and after, an Overture began to be a single-movement work that had some literary foundation: a piece about a person, or a scene, or a story, or some such inspiration from outside the realm of pure music.
But first, we start with some famous overtures from Bach, Handel and Mozart.
Handel: Overture to The Watermusic
This is the overture to Handel’s famous Watermusic. I’m taking the position that famous pieces of music are famous for a reason, so I’m trying to squeeze in as many well-known classics as I can. Quite sincerely, if you start recognizing tunes from the classical repertoire as a result of listening to this program, I shall think I have succeeded.
Bach: Overture to the Orchestral Suite in C major
Bach wrote four grand suites for orchestra, to be played when he was a court musician at Weimar. Weimar is a famous German town, where Liszt was a composer, as well as Wagner, and from where the Weimeraner breed of dog originates. Anyway, this is the introduction to the first of these Suites, and is one of my favorite movements.
Handel: Overture to Messiah
The Christmas Season is approaching, and Messiah is a favorite at holiday time. This is the Overture to Messiah by Handel.
Mozart: Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro has this mad, racing overture that is instantly recognizable. We’re told that Mozart dashed this off in a few minutes the day before opening night. Can you imagine? Furthermore, the overture has absolutely no relationship to the opera musically. Nothing. Not a single musical motif from the opera is present in it. Still, it’s one of the most famous overtures ever written.
Mozart: Overture to the Magic Flute
You should know that the Magic Flute had a lot of references to the Freemasons, which was gaining strength as an organization that provided a home to those who wanted some relief from the overwhelming influence of the Catholic Church. Mozart was a fringe member —or maybe a plain old member— of the Freemasons, certainly one of the most famous members, and there are lots of masonic themes in the music, which I am ignorant of, not being a Freemason myself.
Listen to those three great, crashing chords that begin the overture. This overture is just amazingly beautifully written, especially the orchestration.
Beethoven: Fidelio Overture
Beethoven wrote an opera, which is regarded very highly by some, called Fidelio, about a woman who goes into prison to rescue her husband. Apparently this opera was featured in the movie Eyes Wide Shut, which I have not seen. Anyway, here is an excerpt from the overture to Fidelio, conducted by George Szell
Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night’s Dream
Felix Mendelssohn was interested in Shakespeare, as were lots of Germans and Austrians in the late 19th century, and he wrote Overtures to various Shakespeare plays. He was also into fairies in a big way, and one of his best known overtures is the one to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here it is, with the London Symphony, conducted by Claudio Abbado. By the way, Claudio Abbado is said to be descended from a Moorish Prince, Abdul Abbad. Obviously that has nothing to do with how good a conductor Mr Abbado was, which was really great. Anyway, Mendelssohn’s fairy music is unsurpassed. Judge for yourself.
Mendelssohn: Fingal’s Cave
Mendelssohn visited a famous tourist spot in Scotland, called Fingal’s Cave. He wanted to celebrate the occasion by writing a short piece of music. It was increasingly becoming common to call these sorts of pieces overtures, and I can’t think of why that particular term would be used, and I don’t have the energy to do an etymological exploration of it. It confuses things a little bit, when a word is used in a new way. This is called generalization, such as when you use the word Xerox to mean any sort of photocopier, and even photocopying, the verb. These days with the Internet, people do this all the time, and they rejoice when they’ve succeeded in introducing a new usage of a word into common parlance. I’m talking softly, because this is early morning, and people in our house are still asleep. So here’s Fingal’s Cave Overture, by Felix Mendelssohn.
Brahms: Academic Festival
So now we know that, by the time Mendelssohn, Schubert and people of that generation were composing, the word Overture had come to mean the musical equivalent of a short story, or even a journal article.
Johannes Brahms had been awarded an honorary degree from (The University of) Breslau. Brahms wrote an overture to be performed during the ceremony, and it was a jolly thing with lots of undergraduate (read: Drinking) songs from Germany and Austria, including a Latin song called gaudeamus igitur, which translates like this:
Let us drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die;I mean, there are a lot of verses, but this is the short version.
let us delight in the pretty girls, and let us praise our Alma Mater, a font of wisdom.
I’m going to fade right into the rowdy ending part. Gaudeamus Igitur is the last big tune in the brass.
Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger
We’ve already heard the Meistersinger Overture twice. Some people call it a Potpourri overture. You probably know what potpourri is: a mixture of dried flowers and sweet spices and herbs that you cook in a pot when your house is full of cooking odors. A Potpourri overture is just a mix of songs from a Broadway musical or movie, and the phrase is intended to be a sort of put-down. The Meistersingers overture certainly contains snippets of tunes from the opera, but it is super highly structured, and we know that the last several bars is an amazing combination of three of the themes played simultaneously, combined with counterpoint. So here is a shortened version of the whole thing, just because I love this piece.
Mystery Overture
This one you have to guess.
Wagner: Tannhauser Overture
One of the first pieces of classical music I learned about is the Overture to Wagner’s opera Tannhauser. This overture actually represents, in miniature, the plot of the opera.
First, we hear a softly approaching hymn, which is the song of the Pilgrims, the Pilgrim’s chorus; they’re on their way to Rome, or somewhere. Then the scene shifts to the garden of Venus, which represents the temptations of our hero. The hero enters, and begins a rhapsodic song to Venus, but then the pilgrims are heard in the distance, returning, and their chorus drowns out Venus, and our hero is saved. Wagner was a rather simple fellow, who wrote complex music. He was vilified, about the time of World War 2, because the Nazis loved Wagner’s music. Today, we take the view that if we start a witch-hunt to posthumously persecute anybody who was an inspiration to the Nazis, it would never end. There were lots of people who were associated with the Nazis: Wilhelm Furtwangler, Herbert von Karajan, Konrad Lorenz. They liked the color brown. So, what are we going to do, not wear brown? I hate the Nazis, of that time and of this time, but I wear plenty of brown, so sue me. Anyway, Wagner’s Tannhauser, and the Pilgrim’s Chorus, and I hope you love it as much as I do!
Mystery Overture No. 2
Guess this one too.
Wagner: Prelude to Tristan and Isolde
The story of Tristram and Isolde in the legend of King Arthur is a tragedy. A young knight is sent out to Ireland to bring a princess to marry King Mark of Cornwall. But on the voyage back, the young knight, Tristan, falls in love with the princess. The story ends with the young lovers drinking poison together. The overture to Tristan and Isolde is just a brilliant piece of music by Wagner. I’m just going to play you the opening few seconds, just to put you in a lousy mood for the end of the show! But this is an important piece of music, and you might just find these bars fascinating.
Bernstein: Overture to Candide
The overture of Bernstein’s highly regarded comic opera, Candide. (A theme from it was Dick Cavett’s theme music for his talk show in the eighties.)
Another Mystery Overture
Guess.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Show 112: Variations
Show 12, Part A : Dowland, Byrd, Handel, Bach, Mozart
Show 12, Part B : Mozart, Purcell, Britten
Show 12, Part C : Mozart, Chopin, Bach
Show 12, Part D : Brahms, Dowland
This post is, once again, in advance of the broadcast, which will be (October 11, 2014). The links to the podcast were added on 2014-10-12.
The big challenge in classical music is to write major works, worthy of standing beside a novel. The novel began to appear in the 1700s, after the Renaissance, when artists began to see their creativity as their own, and not something in the service of some nobleman, or some religion.
The early attempts at creating large-scale works focused on multi-movement works. Even today, most major compositions are in multiple movements. Concertos, for instance, are multi-movement works focusing on a soloist, or several soloists. Suites are works consisting of several movements tied by some theme: either a set of dances written for an occasion, or a set of items intended to go with a theater production, or a set of movements for a ballet.
The idea of a set of variations is along the same lines: a number of different movements that elaborate on a single (musical) theme. There are several of these we shall listen to (today), and I'm not going to play all the variations in every set, but you might enjoy being introduced to these sets of variations, some of which are well known, and others which are interesting for various reasons.
William Byrd was a great composer of the 1500s in England, and John Dowland was another composer of about the same time. Dowland wrote a tune called Lachrimae Pavan, which he himself arranged in different ways a dozen or more times, and William Byrd borrowed the tune, and wrote this setting, which is an arrangement of the tune in increasingly elaborate ornamentation, which is a little like an air and variations, but is not quite the same. So this is a way of acquainting you with a tune of John Dowland, and the keyboard music of William Byrd at the same time. The recording we will play was performed by Sophie Yates.
Georg Friderik Handel, the man who composed Messiah, The Watermusic, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks, also wrote a set of variations on a simple tune, which was well known at that time. Here's the whole thing; it is quite short. It is called the Harmonious Blacksmith. This recording was by Igor Kipnis, who won a Grammy Award for it. (In fact, he played the piece live at the Awards, and brought the house down.)
A few years ago, light classical music fans were absolutely crazy about this set of variations. Bach had been invited over to visit a certain noble house in Berlin in which his son was employed as court musician, because they had bought a grand new keyboard instrument. It was either a really awesome harpsichord, or an early experimental piano. The nobleman himself sat down at the keyboard, and gave Bach a theme, on which to base an improvisation. Bach improvised, but was dissatisfied with his own performance, so he sent a fantastic set of variations to the gentleman, and additionally, some really incredible canons, which are together called The Musical Offering. Anyway, here is the theme and some variations from the Goldberg Variations. The harpsichord recording is by Gustav Leonhardt, a well-known Bach specialist from the Netherlands, who died recently.
If you prefer the sound of a piano, here is a recording of Glenn Gould, in MONO, from 1955, playing the Goldberg variations. This is a rare recording; the stereo recording from 1981 is more commonly available,
This is a well-known piece, which is the third movement from a Mozart Sonata. Less well-known is the first movement, which is a theme and variations. Here is the better-know third (last movement), called the Alla Turca. (It was supposed to be inspired by Turkish music, which was all the rage at the time of Mozart.)
This single movement from a Mozart sonata, Sonata No. 11, is a theme and variations all by itself. Mozart wrote better known sets of variations, such as one on the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but this one, I think, is more suitable for our program. The Theme and Variations from Sonata No. 11, in A. Both the above movements were by Walter Klien.
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Benjamin Britten, the brilliant British musician, wrote an introduction to the orchestra, in which the various groups of instruments are spotlighted in turn, in the form of a set of variations on a theme of Henry Purcell, another famous British composer of the 18th century. There's stories to tell about Henry Purcell, but mainly Purcell was crazy about the Theater, and hung out in the theater with actors and the various hangers-on at theaters; in short he was a fan. He wrote incidental music for various plays, and one of them was Abdelazar, about a Moorish man (which means, a man from Morocco, or actually any Arabic-speaking country). This recording is by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, and narrated by a young person chosen by Bernstein. These are Themes A - F.
Next come the variations, one for each instrument, after which there is a fugue (on an original theme by Britten), at the climax of which the theme from Abdelazar is heard, played contrapuntally.
The aria "La ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni, the tragicomic opera by Mozart, was taken as a subject for a set of variations by Frederik Chopin. The set of variations was a very early work, Opus No. 2. Here is the original duet from the Mozart opera (sung by Bryn Terfel and Cecilia Bartoli)
Here is the Introduction, the Theme, and 5 variations, by Chopin, ending with a big finale (alla Polacca). The pianist is Eldar Nabolsin.
An interesting sort of piece of Bach's time and earlier, is the Passacaglia. A theme is repeated in the Bass part, over and over again, and different harmonies are played over it. Here is one of the most famous, by J. S. Bach, the Passacaglia in C minor for organ, BWV 582. E. Power Biggs.
Johannes Brahms wrote a set of variations for piano, based on a tune that appeared in a work by Joseph Haydn. The tune is called the Saint Anthony Chorale, and the Brahms variations are sometimes called Variations on a Theme by Haydn, and at other times the St Anthony Chorale variations. St Anthony is the patron saint of fisherfolk, as well as those who are looking for something they have lost. This recording is by Marek Janowski and Pittsburgh Symphony.
We heard earlier this evening William Byrd's setting of John Dowland's Lachrimae Pavan. Unfortunately—according to the style of the times—the melody was so heavily ornamented that it was hard to hear clearly. Here is the original Dowland tune, as it would have been played by a Consort of Music of the time, which was a small chamber orchestra of violins, viols and Lutes of various sizes (Opharions, Bass vils, Citherns, Mandores, Theorbos, etc). This is played by the Extempore String Ensemble.
Here's the same group playing another piece by John Dowland, a jolly dance in 4-4 time, just to prove that Dowland could write more energetic music if he had to. It is called Sir Henry Guildford's Almaine.
Afterword: I must confess that in each set of variations, only a few of the variations are really interesting. I like almost all of the Bach Goldberg Variations, most of the St. Anthony Chorale variations, most of the Harmonious Blacksmith, which is a showpiece from beginning to end, but unfortunately almost none of the Chopin variations. I love the later Chopin orchestral works, including the two piano concertos, but this set of variations leaves me cold.
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