Part A (Bach, Schutz, Dylan)
Introduction
Hello, Welcome to Archie’s Archives on WXPI 88.5. I’m Archie, and this weekly program introduces listeners to classical music.
As I have said before, there is a lot of different kinds of classical music, and since I’m only a volunteer, and like all WXPI show hosts, do this because I like classical music, you’re going to hear mostly the sort of music that I like, unless I specifically try to play something that I don’t like, or I happen to play something that I didn’t listen to first, and so I haven’t got an opinion about it one way or the other!
You probably know by now that I write music in a small way. I’ve already played a couple of pieces I wrote. The piece that I wrote first is a chorale-prelude, which means that it took as its springboard another piece, in this case a chorale by Johann Cruger. I’ll play that for you sometime. (Actually, it's right here, if you just can't wait to hear it.)
All these pieces I wrote are very short, less than 5 minutes long, most of them. It’s when you begin writing extended pieces, long works —full scale musical pieces like symphonies are called works, if they can be plausibly published all by themselves— you run up against the problem: how to write a long work? That’s a discussion we should get into sometime, and look at various solutions composers have adopted. But the earliest solution is to write a multi-movement work.
These sorts of multi-movement works usually have a nice, upbeat ending, which is usually called the Finale. (I looked up the pronunciation of this word, and the British pronunciation is fi-na'-le, and the American pronunciation is fi-nal'-li. It is an Italian word, so it probably ought to be pronounced fi-NAH-leh. Like Machchi-AH-to, or Prosci-OOT-Toh. Anyway, these last movements are a lot of fun to listen to, so that’s going to be the featured sort of movement I play for you today. And, as always, it’s going to be my favorite finales, so don’t be sore. If you would like to hear your favorite finales, you have two options, at least.
[1] write to me, archiewxpi@gmail.com, and tell me what you would like to hear. If I think it fits in with one of our program themes in the next few weeks, it will be there. If it is really interesting, theme or no theme, I’ll put it in anyway, if I can find it.
[2] You can always sign up as a show host for WXPI — just contact Curt Musheno at station@wxpiradio.org
You can call your show: Pieces Archie Refuses to Play, or something like that!
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| Hélène Grimaud |
The theme music today is being played by Hélène Grimaud, who is a lovely lady, and I must put up a picture of her on our website. Our website could do with a few nice pictures on there, I have to admit. I must not be sexist, but in this post-PC world that we are slowly entering, I should hope that Mlle Grimaud does not take exception to being characterized as a beauty. Let me say, in case you misunderstand, that she is being featured because she is arguably one of the two people who play this piece the best; the other being Mr. Alexis Weissenberg, whose performance I put in our podcast for last week. I took out Mr. Miecszyslaw Horzowski’s performance, because I thought Mr. Weissenberg does a better job. (So, obviously, the pieces on the podcast are often just a little different from the pieces on the radio broadcast.)
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 6: Finale, and excerpts from Concertos 1-5.
OK, before we go on to our first finale, I want to tell you a little about the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, and play you a tiny bit from each one.
These are old-time concertos (Concerti Grossi), where there were usually several solo instruments (unlike modern concertos, which feature a single soloist). Brandenburg No 1 had seven or eight:
two horns,
3 oboes,
1 bassoon,
1 violino piccolo,
1 viola,
Bass and rhythm: which means some cellos and a bass, a harpsichord, and maybe a lute.
Brandenburg No 2 had fewer solo instruments:
1 trumpet,
1 flute,
1 oboe,
1 violin,
And strings, rhythm and bass (two violins, a viola, a double bass, a cello, and a harpsichord)
Brandenburg No 3 had even fewer instruments:
3 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, bass and rhythm (harpsichord). None of the instruments seem designated as soloists.
Brandenburg No 4 had 2 recorders and a violin as soloists, and strings, rhythm and bass.
Brandenburg No 5 had a violin, a flute, and a harpsichord as solo instruments, and strings rhythm and bass. (This was one of the earliest concertos where the harpsichord, which was usually part of the so-called continuo section, which was definitely a sort of background section of the orchestra. There is a note at the end of this post that explains this idea a little more.)
Brandenburg No 6 had
2 (ordinary) violas,
2 violas da gamba, basically a sort of tenor viol, played in what we would say was cello position, but obviously there would be subtle differences that you have to be an expert to know,
1 cello, and
1 double bass, and harpsichord. Everybody was a soloist except for the harpsichord and the bass.
Heinrich Schutz: Finale from Christmas Oratorio Beschluss--Dank sagen wir alle Gott (Paul McCreesh, Gabrielli Consort)
One of my most favorite CDs is a reconstruction of a Christmas Midnight Mass as it must have been performed in the Cathedral of Dresden in the mid 1600s. You might not know that Dresden’s beautiful cathedral was destroyed completely in an infamous bombing raid by the British during World War 2. It was completely unjustified by 21st century standards, but that’s “a whole ’nother thing,” as people say. Anyway, they performed a selection of pieces by various composers, including the Christmas Oratorio by Heinrich Schutz. This was a project undertaken by Paul McCreesh, a British musical director who formed a choir and an orchestra in England around 1995. He somehow found the music list of a typical midnight service from that time, which is 450 years ago, and they got the music ready. Now, McCreesh wanted a typical old-time church, with an old-time organ, and he found it in Rosskilde Cathedral, in Denmark. So this is a British team, performing a midnight service as it was conducted in a German cathedral, in an ancient Danish church, so go figure. But I have to say, there are some congregational numbers, and —take this any way you want— but that congregation sang better than any congregation I have heard, except maybe at the funeral of Winston Churchill, broadcast by the BBC World Service. Anyway, this next piece is the Finale of the Christmas Oratorio by Schutz. Schutz means gunman, or bowman, but as you know these days, people’s last names have nothing to do with what their occupation is.
Bach: Orchestral Suite (Ouverture) No 3 in D major BWV 1968; Finale - Gigue
There is a complicated explanation as to why these orchestral suites that have a lot of brass instruments in them were often in D major in the 1700s. It had to do with the sort of people who were brass players at that time. You see, getting flats and sharps with old trumpets and horns was tricky, so they used to make these instruments already have either a couple of flats built in, like the trumpets of today, or a couple of sharps built in. For instance, when the clarinet was first invented, there were two: on in A, which had three sharps built in, and one in B Flat, which had two flats built in. (When a C major scale was played in the A clarinet, you would hear an A major scale instead, which has 3 sharps. If you actually wanted to hear C major on the A clarinet, you would have to make it play the E Flat scale instead. It makes no sense to anyone, except that for pieces that actually are in A major, the piece would be very simple to play indeed.) So a clarinet player would buy one of each. Now, if he was given some music in B Flat, he would use the B Flat clarinet, and there would be absolutely no sharps, as long as the tune stayed in B Flat. If if made a visit to F major, oops, he would have to play a sharp. If he had a piece in E major, he would use the other clarinet, and would only have to play one sharp as needed, namely "F Sharp," which would actually sound like a D sharp, because the clarinet was made that way. There was a trumpet in D, and a trumpet in B Flat, and a trumpet in C. Some of these are still made today, and Baroque experts buy them at incredibly expensive prices. Nowadays, of course, a good brass player can play any sharp or flat if he or she had to. Unfortunately, because most trumpets, for instance, are in B Flat, trumpet players have to learn to play extra sharps, to compensate. Trombones and Tubas, I understand, are all in C, that is, no built-in flats or sharps in the design.
One day I’m going to tell you about how trumpets and horns of Bach’s time could only play a very few notes, and when the voice needed notes outside those few, the composer would have to assign an oboe or a bassoon to take over the voice.
Bob Dylan: I shall be released (The Band and guests)
This song by Bob Dylan was the finale of the documentary called The Last Waltz, a film by Martin Scorcese.
Part B (More Bach, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven)
Bach: Overture No 4 BWV 1069- 5. Rejouissance
We play a bit of the opening movement, and then the Finale, designated Rejouissance, which I’m guessing means something like "Rejoicing," in French. Yeah, the Royal Families of Europe had this affectation of speaking in French, so they made their court composers label movements in French (Allegro, and so on). But the speeds were indicated in Italian, because the composers of that era were usually Italian, and the names took hold. I used to get really mad at all these foreign words, but now I relax, and say them as well as I can.
Mozart: Symphony no. 41 in C Jupiter.
Let’s advance the clock about 40 years, to the time of Mozart. By this time, the Symphony had been invented, and Mozart wrote his great Symphony in C major, the last one, called the Jupiter Symphony. I’ll play a few bars of the first movement, which is often what most people remember the symphony by, and then the Finale, the fourth and last movement. This is a composer’s symphony; in other words, its good points are deep and subtle, but there’s something for everyone, even if the movement is not particularly catchy.
Handel: WaterMusic Suites in F and D, Alla Hornpipe
In 1922, Sir Hamilton Harty made an arrangement of a selection of movements of Handel's Water Music Suites in F and D. He used the Alla Hornpipe movement from the D major suite as his ending, and we will play a few bars from the opening movement of Harty's arrangement, and then the Alla Hornpipe.
Beethoven: Symphony No 5 in C Minor, Op 67 - 1. Allegro Con Brio, 4. Allegro
We ran out of time, for reasons of station identification, so the great finale of the Fifth Symphony was played in two parts, and without the link from the third movement.
Part C (More Beethoven, still more Bach)
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 5 in E Flat (Emperor); excerpts from movements 1 and 2, and the complete movement 3. (George Szell, Leon Fleischer)
Bach: Concerto in the Italian Style, excerpt from movt 1, and complete movt 3.
Part D (Brahms, Dvorak)
Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major, movt 1 excerpt, and movement 3 (Sayaka Shoji)
Dvorak: Cello Concerto in B minor, 4. Allegro moderato (Jacqueline Du Pre, Daniel Barenboim)
Now, so far the Finales we’ve been listening to have been exciting and fast. They were designated either Allegro, or Presto, or something like that: Allegro means fast, and Presto means very fast. But Finales need not be fast. A wonderful composer from the former Czechoslovakia is Antonin Dvorak, and he affects me the same way Brahms does: melodic and deliberate, and the very opposite of flashy. Even Bach was brilliant at time —all for the Glory of God, of course— and Mozart was quietly brilliant, mostly because he didn’t know how else to be. Though Brahms had incredible musicianship, brilliance was not his thing. Dvorak, too, had a very patient, systematic, fatherly, or avuncular tone to his music. Of course, we don’t know what sort of person he was; there must be any number of reports and interviews of him—he briefly lived in the US in the late 19th Century— and the interested listener can look these things up, I’m sure. But his music is whimsical and melodic and unpretentious. (By the way, I had mistakenly identified Bedrich Smetana as his son-in-law. I was wrong; it was Joseph Suk who married Dvorak’s daughter. Smetana was of an older generation than Dvorak.)
The finale of the Cello concerto is a rondo. Rondo means circular, and it means that there is a tune that keeps coming round. Rondos are easy to like on first hearing, so in the 19th century, finales of concertos are often Rondos, because composers and their soloists alike depended on audiences liking their concertos, so it was always a good thing for the audience to have a catchy finale to encourage their applause at the end of the concerto; everybody was happy. Anyway, here’s a bit of the first movement of the Cello concerto, followed by
the finale, as I said, a Rondo. Its tempo is indicated as Allegro Moderato. You know what Allegro means: it means Fast; and you can guess what moderato means.
The structure of an orchestra of the seventeenth century
The courts of European noble houses of around the seventeenth century usually consisted of a few professional musicians, notably a director, sometimes called a Kappelmeister, (master of the chapel), because he was expected to also supervise the music in the family church. Court musicians were paid for their services, which might have also involved musical instruction for the younger members of the noble family.For certain occasions, the court musicians would be supplemented with violinists and other musicians who were part-time, and whose main occupation was security, or farming, or as tradesmen in the village near the ducal estate. These people, not being true professionals, were only expected to play simple parts. Finally, there were itinerant musicians who traveled from court to court, who would perform with the court musicians by invitation, and to celebrate whose visits special music would be performed, possibly music written for the occasion.
A concerto would usually be the kind of large-scale music that would be played concertato, that is, for people to listen to as a main event. (In contrast, there would be music played during meals as background music, usually called serenades, or sonatas, or something similar.) In a concerto, the more difficult and intricate passages of music would alternate between a repeated, simpler passage of music. The tricky passages would be played by the soloists (the court specialist musicians, and possibly visiting musicians), and they would be designated the concertino. The part-time players, playing the simpler passages, would be called the ripieno, a word that means something like "filler".
A third group would consist of the harpsichordist and a bass instrument or instruments, e.g. a cello, and possibly a double-bass. This group would be called the continuo, and would usually play throughout the work, even playing quietly behind the concertino parts. These three groups: concertino, ripieno, and continuo comprised the orchestra of a typical concerto.
Archie
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