Presto! Bach's Italian Concerto

It was impossible, when I was in grad school, not to be aware of Switched-On Bach.  Now, thinking back, I remember that Walter Carlos (aka Wendy Carlos) released albums called The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, and then Switched-On Bach II, all of which had tracks that were really great.

Then, when a friend played for me the Bachbusters album, which, unlike the Carlos albums, had drum tracks in them, I just freaked out with delight.  I had been interested in the first work on that album, in its original form: the "Italian" Concerto, and I learned to play bits and pieces of it on the piano.  When I heard Don Dorsey's version on Bachbusters, I was blown away.

Then, along came a fellow called Brian Slawson, who played Bach on Marimbas, and other percussion instruments, on the album called Bach On Wood.  I went on a Bach on Percussion jag for many years, and completely forgot about Bachbusters.  But now, because of Archie's Archives, I've gotten hooked on the Italian Concerto once again.  So, in between classes, I built an mp3 of the last movement of the Concerto, the Presto.  (This is the cut on Bachbusters with the drum track.)  After the mp3 was ready, I made a video, of the software playing the piece, and uploaded the combination to YouTube.  And here it is:


The bass line is not faithful to the original notes; it has been simplified to sound more like a rock bass line.

By the way, if you're interested in Don Dorsey, he worked for Disney in Florida, as their music director for several exhibits, and apparently helped with various Disney musical projects.

P.S.  And here is a performance of the Italian Concerto --originally written for solo harpsichord-- as a recorder and orchestra concerto!  It is gorgeous; who knew this could be done?  Note the pretty lute (or archlute; archlutes have extra resonating strings) that plays with the continuo:



The Presto, the movement I uploaded, corresponds to the last part of the video above; starting about 9:13.

Archie

Dare I say it? Mathematics and Music!

This week, at our school, it is Math Awareness Day.  Our Math Club hosts a couple of score middle-schoolers for a morning of mathematics and fun.

Mathematics and music go together like, er, macaroni and cheese.  So I guess it's time I tried to put together a program that combines math and music.

I have some ideas.  Tom Lehrer has a song called The New Math (a reference to a project in the Sixties, borrowed from Britain, which sort of derailed mathematics education for a couple of decades) which we can feature.  Then, I have a disc by a musician called Tom Jackson, called 88, for the 88 keys of a standard piano keyboard.

Tom Jackson takes the point of view that various phenomena in music illuminate phenomena in mathematics, and vice versa.

Archie

Show 121: Switched-On Bach

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 21.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show121.  For instance, the July 4^th 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.]
 
Back in the Sixties, a gentleman called Walter Carlos decided to use the Moog synthesizer (which had been invented some months earlier) to play a number of pieces by Bach.  The resulting album was Switched-On Bach, which was a fairly iconic album at the time.

The Moog synthesizer, created by Robert Moog, was an electronic instrument that constructed musical tones directly, by generating oscillations in tuned circuits, which were given various characteristics (tone colors), which were connected to a simple keyboard for ease of use.  The keyboard was much smaller than those in a present-day kid's synthesizer, but instead of generating tones using mathematical formulas, as today, they generated sounds using analog circuits.  In all other respects, they were true synthesizers in that the sounds were generated, and not recorded, as in today's sampled synthesizers, which used sounds recorded from actual instruments, such as violins and flutes.

My plan is to base this program on Walter Carlos's album.  Some decades later, Walter underwent gender transition surgery, and took the name Wendy Carlos, who continued her career as a synthesizer performer, and according to Wikipedia helped provide scores for the movies A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.

In 1999, Ms Carlos released an album to commemorate an anniversary of the original Switched-On Bach, called Switched-On Bach 2000, which featured some new takes on the pieces on the original album, as well as some new pieces.

Part A Switched-On Bach, Glenn Gould, Archie

Sinfonia to Cantata 29
Once Bach had written about 20 Cantatas, he always opened a cantata with a big chorus.  But in early cantatas, there was a sort of overture, and this is the best-known one.  Wendy Carlos chose to open the S-O B album with this.

Air on the G String
[6:15]  The second movement of Orchestral Suite no 3 in D, entitled simply Air (or Aria, in Italian) became well-known as The Air on the G String in Britain.  It was, at one time, the best known piece by Bach by people who didn't know a lot of Bach music.

Two-Part Inventions
[8:50]  These very lightly-constructed keyboard pieces are not as easy to play as they sound.  In fact, they sometimes sound as if there are more than two parts going on.  Carlos plays the Inventions in F major, B Flat major, and D minor.  (The other 2-part inventions are just as beautiful, and easy to appreciate.)

Invention No 4 in D minor Glenn Gould
[11:58] This is Glenn Gould playing the previous piece, on the piano.

Brandenburg Concerto No 3 in G Major
[12:56]  Bach wrote six concertos for various combinations, and if you get to know just those six, you would be enriched immensely.  The concerto in G major was made popular by Wendy Carlos, just about the time that the concerto in D major was made popular in the novel Love Story.  [Here it is, on YouTube, played by the Freiburg Barockorchester]

Part B Switched-On Bach 2000

Prelude and Fugue  in E-Flat Major
[0:00] You may have heard of Bach’s collection of 48 preludes and fugues called the Well Tempered Clavier.  He was one of the first composers to write in every possible key.  The piano scale has seven white notes, and the five black notes.  This is twelve distinct tones.  Bach wrote twelve preludes, and twelve fugues, one for each major key.  Then he wrote another set, all in minor keys.  Then he wrote a whole other set of another twenty-four.
Here Wendy plays the E Flat prelude and fugue.  The prelude is a bit boring and takes forever, but the fugue, [6:11] which is much shorter, is nice.

Wachet auf
[7:54]  The next cut on the album is named Wachet auf, which literally means "Wake up", the title of a cantata, no. 140.  I was not very impressed with Carlos's interpretation of the movement widely known by this name, a chorale-prelude based on a chorus from the cantata.  We're playing an mp3 constructed by myself, using Finale.  The voice part is given to trombones.  My wife thought that the organ part made it sound too churchy, so the keyboard part is given to a harpsichord.  (The keyboard part, or continuo, may be played by any combination of organ, harpsichord, cello, double bass, lute, theorbo, etc.)

Happy 25th, S-OB
[13:20]  This is the opening cut on Switched-On Bach 2000, released on the 25th anniversary of the original Switched-On Bach (1968).  I'm not sure whether it is an original composition by Wendy Carlos, or whether it is based on some birthday composition by Bach himself. (On reading the liner notes, yes: it is an original composition by Wendy Carlos.)

Sinfonia in D Major
[14:10]  The overture to Cantata 29 once again.  I think this one is a big improvement.  Lots of people seem not to care for SOB 2000; I think it is very much better, with more complex, richer sounds, and with Baroque tunings (in contrast to the equal-tempered tuning of SOB).  In Bach's time, the interval (distance) between each note and the next was not the same; the tuning was chosen to make C major sound as good as possible, which made other keys close by sound different from C major, and very distinctive.  (Keys such as C Sharp were hardly used at all.)  A website that explains some of this is to be found here.

Air on a G String
[18:14]  This is the SOB 2000 version

Two Part Inventions- In F Major, B-Flat Major, D Minor
[21:26] These, too, sound much more convincing and pleasing to the ear (than the 1968 versions).  But, of course, for those familiar with the 1968 versions, those have amazing nostalgia value.

The Well-Tempered Clavier- Prelude No 2 in C Minor
[24: 36]  This performance emphasizes the potential for this piece to sound angry, and presages "industrial" music of the mid 20th century.

The Well-Tempered Clavier- Fugue No. 2 in C Minor
[26:30]  The fugue, in contrast to the prelude, is a sweetly plaintive piece.

Part C More Switched-On Bach 2000

The Well-Tempered Clavier- Prelude No 7 in E-Flat Major
As boring as before, but brutally speeded up by Archie from 5-plus minutes to 4.

The Well-Tempered Clavier- Fugue No. 7 in E-Flat Major
Even nicer than the 1968 version.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major- I. Allegro
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major- III. Allegro

This concerto, in contrast to most Baroque concertos, has only two movements.  Carlos, along with many other scholars, surmised that Bach improvised a short bridge between the two movements, in place of a slow movement.  She improvised a movement, and put it on the album, but it is whimsical to the point of silliness, so I have left it out.  It was played on the broadcast on Saturday, but I decided to leave it out of the podcast.  I apologize.

Tocata & Gugue in D Minor
I'm not sure what a Gugue is; I imagine it is something between a fugue and a gigue.  In this case, it is just the fugue that goes with the toccata.

Part D Bachbusters

Italian Concerto
In the eighties, an album called Bachbusters made its appearance.  Its most memorable cut is the third, the Presto from the Italian Concerto.  Here are all three movements of Bach's Italian Concerto in F Major, realized by Don Dorsey, in Bachbusters.

Two-Part Invention, for keyboard No. 1 in C major, BWV 772
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 1 in C major, BWV 787
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 8 in F major, BWV 794
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 10 in G major, BWV 794
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 12 in A major, BWV 794
Three-Part Invention (Sinfonia), for keyboard No. 15 in B minor

Contrapunctus 1
To end this show, this is the first fugue from The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst de Fuge) by Bach, made by me, using sampled sounds from the Garritan Personal Orchestra, and Finale PrintMusic 2014.  Because the sounds are sampled, the piece sounds like actual instruments, but because it is played by software, the performance sounds a little artificial.  But this is one of the most perfect pieces Bach wrote, and I can't imagine why people like Wendy Carlos have left these pieces alone.

Archie

Show 119: Odds and Ends

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 19.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show119.  For instance, the July 4^th 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.]

There isn't any theme for tonight's show; I'm simply going to play some of my favorite classics and pops.  I couldn't squeeze them all in, so there will have to be yet another Odds And Ends show one of these days.  For instance, I wanted to play Little Children by Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, but didn't get around to it.

Part A

Chopin: Etude  No 3 In E Major, "Tristesse"
The tune from this Chopin etude was stolen to make a popular song: How deep is the night.

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major
This violinist, Sayaka Shoji is truly wonderful, and it certainly helps that she is utterly cute, too.  Unfortunately I can't show you a photo of her on the radio.  This is the Finale.

Renaissance: Black Flame
The band called Renaissance was introduced to me by Katie.  This is one of their best.

Lerner & Lowe: The Ascot Gavotte
This tune is sung just before the horse race in My Fair Lady.  Eliza yells at the horse: Come on, Dover, move yer bloomin' arse!  The Higgins clan is not quite ready for that.

Brahms: Haydn Variations No. 7-- Grazioso
One of the more melodious of the St Anthony Chorale Variations, and my favorite.

When he's alone, he even counts himself.

Jerry Nelson: The Song of the Count
This delightful, but rather suggestive song was sung on Sesame Street.  On the face of it, there's nothing naughty about either the tune or the words.

Part B

Mozart: Clarinet Concerto -- Movement 2
This is the slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto once again.  Listen, I like this piece, and you're going to like it too.

Procol Harum: A Whiter Shade Of Pale
One of the most memorable tunes to come out of the seventies.

Frederick Delius: Florida Suite -- II: By The River
My Uncle drew my attention to this one.  I think the theme wasn't strong enough to carry such a long movement.

Borodin: On The Steppes Of Central Asia
Unlike the previous piece, this one is an absolute winner.  The tune depicts a caravan crossing the steppes, encountering a wandering tribe of Arabs, and then a contingent of soldiers.

Part C

Johann Strauss, Jr: Fruhlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring)
My friend Gene said that he recognized this tune because it was featured in, of all things, an episode of The Three Stooges.  The vocalist here is Dilber, a great new talent.

Mendelssohn: Octet, Op 20, in E-Flat -- i Allegro moderato ma con fuoco
This is an important piece, both for its structure, and for the extreme youth of its composer.  Felix Mendelssohn wrote this wonderful Octet for eight strings (four violins, two violas and two Cellos) when he was sixteen years old.  It is remarkable because most octets of this kind have been written for two string quartets.  This one is actually conceived orchestrally, so that there is no specific antiphonal intention.  This is the first movement.  The Scherzo is also independently well known.  The first violin is Jascha Heifetz, the brilliant violinist of the first half of the last century.  Heifetz was so technically gifted that he dominated string technique to the point where everyone almost hated his perfection.  All the performers on this recording are soloists in their own right.

Bach: French Suite No 5 in G major, BWV 816 -- Gigue
I've played this Gigue before, but this is played on a piano, rather than on a harpsichord.  (This tune is also the ringtone on my phone.)

Debussy: Reverie, L 68
This lovely early Debussy piece is played by Kathryn Stott.  Debussy is said not to have liked it, because it was too popular-sounding.  Today it is one of his best-known piano pieces.

Part D

Mozart: Sonata in C minor, K 457-- I  Molto allegro
This is Colin Tilney playing one of Mozart's better-known piano sonatas.  It has rather a meditative mood.  Notice that Mr. Tilney is playing on a reproduction of an early Fortepiano, a kind of instrument that was a precursor of modern pianos, but had a more delicate sound, surprisingly close to that of a harpsichord.  But the strings are struck, like a piano, and not plucked, like a harpsichord.

Dowland: Mistress Winter's Jump
This is the melancholy John Dowland trying to be jolly.  He succeeds fairly well.  The group is the Extempore String Ensemble, led by George Weiland.

Bach: Ach Herr mein Gott
This lovely duet is from a Bach Cantata.  The soprano and the alto seem to be in perfect agreement.

Go ahead, hug me

Spellingbee: Tally it Up
This is a group in which my daughter Uma sang backup.  It was a short-lived group; the young fellow who led the group has this tendency to create a group wherever he happens to be staying for a while, make some brilliant recordings, and then go somewhere else and start another group.

Mozart: Violin Concerto No 4 in D major, K 218 -- Allegro
Mozart wrote five violin concertos that I'm aware of.  This one is played by Pinchas Zukerman, when he was the music director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Happy shoveling!

Archie

Show 118: Death, Suffering, Mourning and Grief

[Added on 2015/7/18:  This used to be called Show 18.  I've renumbered the shows, so that this one is Show118.  For instance, the July 4^th 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.]

There have recently been several deaths in our family, most recently a daughter, Pam, who was just about 23.  So this week's program is about representing death, sorrow and grief in music.  Pam was all about music, and it seems appropriate that we do this program in remembrance of her.

Part A

Introduction
Composers have often written music on the occasion of the death of various people, and some of this music is very beautiful, even if it is somber.
The background music is J. S. Bach: Organ fugue in A minor BWV 543 b.  It has been arranged for percussion instruments and plucked strings (marimbas, guitars, etc) and a rhythm track added.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Komm', Suesser Tod, Bwv 478
Bach harmonized a chorale called Come sweet death, which is just one of many pieces he wrote which are meditations on death, intended to be sung at the beside of a dying person.  This is a recording of an arrangement of it by Leopold Stokowsky.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Mache dich mein Herze rein
In Bach’s famous Passion according to St Matthew, there is a lovely Bass aria which suits the mood of this program: Mache dich mein Herze rein:  O Make thou my heart pure.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Wir setzen uns
The last chorus of the Matthäuspassion is a very unusual piece for Bach: it is a completely homophonic chorus, where the choir says: We’re sitting down here, in tears, calling to you in your tomb; rest softly!  Rest your weary limbs...
It is very uncharacteristic, because of the almost complete absence of counterpoint.  It is as though the choir is too weary to sing anything complicated, and simply wails its misery.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Lacrimosa
In Mozart’s Requiem, there is a simple piece called the Lachrymosa, which is a verse from the Latin requiem mass, which has a beautiful rising scale.  It is about weeping.

John Winston Lennon: Imagine
This may seem to be inappropriate to include in this list of music that has religious or spiritual overtones.  But no one can say that Lennon had no spiritual feelings; the words are full of meaning that is spiritual to those who are agnostics or atheists.

Part B

Samuel Barber: Adagio For Strings
When John Kennedy was assassinated, the world was shocked and grief-stricken.  It was this next piece: Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings that was played at his funeral.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Nun komm' der Heiden Heiland
This organ chorale-prelude by Bach has a plaintive melody that seems to cry for comfort.  It is based on a hymn-tune, in which the words say, basically, O come thou savior of the gentiles.

Richard Strauss: Im Abendrot
Richard Strauss, the composer whose opening fanfare from Also sprach Zarathustra was used as the Monolith Theme in the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey, wrote a set of four beautiful arias, called Four Last Songs.  This is one from that set, called Im Abentrot: At Sunset. 

Maurice Ravel: Menuet from Le Tombeau de Couperin
Maurice Ravel evidently admired the French composer Francois Couperin, whose music is not widely performed today.  Ravel wrote an homage to Couperin consisting of a Suite, written first for piano, and later orchestrated.  This is the Minuet from that Suite, performed by Paul McCandless for Wyndham Hill records.

Part C

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem, Introit and Kyrie
This is Mozart's Requiem, the first two movements, intended to be performed one after the other.  As you might know, only part of the work was composed by Mozart; the rest was completed by a student called Francis Süssmayer.
The opening movement of the Requiem is an amazing work in itself.  The strings seem to actually sob.  The lower wind instrument is a sort of alto clarinet that was popular in Mozart’s time, called a Basset Horn.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Wie starb die Heldin, from Cantata 198

There was a noble lady Christiane Eberhardine, the wife of a certain prince of an area in Saxony (and later King Augustus of Poland), who was held in high regard for how well she treated her subjects.  When she died, Bach wrote a funeral ode in her honor, one his cantatas, number 198, and it was performed, we suppose, at her interment.  In those times, there was a characteristic funeral march that was played in honor of a deceased person, and several movements in this Cantata are written in this stately rhythm.  (To this day, I'm told that funeral marches in Louisiana are played this way.)  It is a somber piece, but not necessarily sad.  Grave, and dignified.

John Lennon: Mother

Julia Lennon

John Lennon was brought up apart from his mother; evidently the older generation that brought him up considered her unsuitable company for her own son.  Lennon's father was often away from home, and John missed both parents very much. 
When she died, John Lennon was devastated, and some years later, when he was receiving what was called at that time Primal Scream Therapy, or gestalt therapy, he decided to write this song, to express his grief and frustration at never having known his mother well enough.  (He had been told all along that she was his aunt, and only learned that she was his mother long afterwards.)

John Dowland: Sir Henry Umpton's Funerall
John Dowland wrote many really sad pieces.  This one was intended specifically to be played at the funeral of a young diplomat, Sir Henry Umpton, and is actually called Sir Henry Umpton’s Funerall. 
I first got to know and like these pieces by John Dowland by taking home some of the John V. Brown library’s vinyl collection in the eighties.  I don’t know where the LPs are now, but they have an excellent collection of classical music.  The more you borrow from the Brown Library, the better the case they can make for funding, so bear that in mind, and use the Brown Library as much as you can.

Part D

Maurice Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte
This is a well-known short piece by Ravel, called Pavane pour un enfant defuncte, which means: a Pavane for a little dead princess.  You may have heard the piece in its original instrumentation; this is played by a mandolin consort, again for Wyndham Hill records, but the harmonies are very faithful to the original Ravel.
[Added later: I just read that the Pavane was not to commemorate a princess who had just died, but intended to evoke a pavane that a little princess of the distant past may have danced.  Major misunderstanding.  In both cases, of course, the princess is not any longer alive.  But it was evidently not intended to be an expression of grief.]

James Leith Macbeth Bain: The Lord's my shepherd (Brother James's Air)
A Scottish preacher James Leith Macbeth Bain is credited with this lovely melody.  We sang Psalm 23 to this tune at our mother's memorial celebration.  I first heard it when I was about ten, when she was putting together another memorial service for the lady who had given her her first appointment as a teacher.  There are two versions here; the first is from Amazon, the second is the version we put together the week of the memorial, because we could not lay our hands on the sheet music.  (The sheet music we created is found here; feel free to use it.)

Johann Sebastian Bach: Aria Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen
This aria is taken from the Cantata entitled Ich have genug (BWV 82), which means It is enough.  The context is the Song of Simeon, who is said to have seen Jesus at the Feast of the Circumcision, and declared that he had lived long enough to see the Messiah, and was ready to die.  This aria, taken from the middle of the Cantata, has words which say: slumber on, you weary eyelids.
The aria (abbreviated for this broadcast) is sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberman, who died a few years ago of Muscular Dystrophy.

Johannes Brahms: Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, from Ein Deutsches Requiem
This movement has words of comfort from the Bible, in which God says that he will comfort you as a mother comforts her children.  But the words are given to a soprano soloist, in contrast to a bass or tenor, which is kind of eerie.  Still it is beautiful.

Archie: Tune
This is the tune with which we usually end the program.  It is possibly by Haydn, but more likely by someone else, attributed to Haydn.

Archie