This show is scheduled to air today, October 31st, on
Halloween. It is a re-broadcast of the show from one year ago, because I don't really have enough scary music to make an entirely new Halloween show. The backgrounds to the pieces are interesting, and next year I will probably remove my spoken introductions, and put in a few more pieces from somewhere.
Also, in contrast to more recent blog posts and podcasts, this post has lots of awesome images.
Part A
1 Introduction
It is Halloween, and tons of little people are out on
the street trying to scare everyone with their costumes. It seems like a
good time to play some scary music!
Unfortunately, I
know very little scary music. Scary classical music really came into its own in
the early nineteenth century, and even then, only in program music, and
musical theater and opera. Anyway, that’s going to be our theme.
2 Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
For some reason, Bach’s perfectly innocent Toccata in D minor has
become a favorite scary tune. There’s nothing scary about it, except
that it is a big, showy piece that mad geniuses have often played in the
movies. Here it is, and I hope you don’t get too scared! This is
James Kibbie, and it is a very non-scary performance.
3 Barnes & Barnes: Fish Heads
Halloween is also a time when we celebrate the macabre, and the weird
and the disgusting. For instance, here is Fish Heads, by Barnes and
Barnes, from a Dr. Demento anniversary album!
4 Ligeti: Music from 2001: A Space Odyssey
Some of the scariest music I know was written for the movie 2001: A
Space Odyssey. Here is a selection of it. The composer is Gyorgy
Ligeti.
5 Brahms: Deutches Requiem
Brahms’s German Requiem is a choral work to remember the dead. One
number in it is about "all flesh is as grass," and is really the only
somewhat ominous-sounding piece in it, except for The Last Trump, or
rather, the Last Trombone, which I shall play for you sometime. Here is Alle Fleisches ist wie Gras, which means exactly what it sounds like: All flesh is as grass. (In German, you capitalize all Nouns.) [Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra]
6, 7 Mussorgsky: The Gnome, and The Old Castle
From Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, here is The Gnome. It is
only scary to little kids, and maybe not even to them!
Next is The Old Castle, which seems haunted to me. [Jahni Mardjani, Georgian Festival Orchestra.]
Part B
8 Mussorgsky: The Catacombs, and With the Dead.
The next two pieces in Pictures at an Exhibition are The Catacombs, and
With the Dead. Mussorgsky is supposed to have written these pieces to
describe an actual exhibition, but it must have been a strange one, if
there was a picture called With the Dead in it. Actually, what I’m
hearing is this. Mussorgsky depicted the people walking from one
picture to the next, sort of a group march, and between pictures he had
this promenade. But after the Catacombs, which, incidentally were an
extensive system of tunnels under the City of Rome in the first century,
in which the Christians and slaves hid from the Roman security, because
of course, they were hunted. Today, we know, there are many tombs down
there, some from before the Christians, and some of them were the
Christians themselves. So we hear a minor key version of the promenade,
presumably the museum group walking with great fear and trembling among
the scary pictures.
9 Mussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain
This piece by Mussorgsky was used by Walt Disney in Fantasia where it
was shown to represent a fantastic dance in a horror setting.
10 David Seville: The Witch Doctor The famous song from the Sixties, sung by the creator of the Chipmunks.
11 Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms is a choral work, with lots of amazing
orchestral techniques. It sounds haunting, but is not at all intended
to be scary. But this movement, starting with the phrase Exaudi, sounds weird and obsessive. Exaudi means Hear us, in Latin.
12 Holst: Mars the Bringer of War
This piece is by Gustav Holst, a British composer, and this is one of
the movements from The Planets, a very influential musical suite. Just
listening to this one movement, you can see how Holst influenced movie
music, especially Space music. The piece is in quintuple time, that is 5
beats to a bar. To make it clear, I have inserted a little clip with
the opening notes simplified to just three instruments. [John Eliot
Gardiner]
Part C
13 Dead Puppies Dead puppies, by Ogden Edsl.
14 The Monster Mash Monster Mash, by Bobby “Boris” Pickett.
15 The Time Warp
The Time Warp, from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The movie The Rocky
Horror Picture Show was released in the late Seventies, and quickly
became a weekly event in lots of College Town cinemas across the
country. People would show up in costume, and sing along with the
numbers. There were a number of famous names in the cast: Susan
Sarandon, Meatloaf, and Tim Curry, to name just three. The Time Warp is
probably the best known song in the movie.
16 Simon and Garfunkel: Richard Cory A song by Simon and Garfunkel, about a man who shot himself.
17 Beatles: A Day in The Life John Lennon’s strange song from Sgt Pepper.
18 Bach: Prelude This Bach prelude is performed by Brian Slawson, who calls it The Hammer.
19 Michael Jackson: Thriller The well-known hit by Michael Jackson, featuring a rap by Vincent Price.
Part D
20 John Lennon: Revolution 9 This is a whimsical piece by John Lennon featured in The Beatles, also called the White Album.
21 Kandosii: Sludge A recording by a band that does not exist any longer: Kandosii, based in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.
22 Mozart: (Don Giovanni) A cenar teco m'invitasti
This song from Don Giovanni is entitled “You invited me to dinner.”
Don Giovanni is a nobleman who makes a habit of seducing young women and
then throwing them out. One time he invites the father of one of these
girls to dinner, but when the old man discovers that the Don has
pretended to be his daughter’s fiancée and spent the night with her, he
challenges the Don to a duel, and gets killed by Don Giovanni. Then his
ghost, animating a stone Statue, turns up at the Don’s castle, saying
that the Don had invited him to dinner. The Don is scared stiff, and
eventually is hounded into hell by the stone Statue. In the song you
can hear the Statue announcing its arrival, and Don Giovanni stammering a
reply, and the Don’s faithful servant Leporello muttering fearfully to
himself. [Colin Davis, Covent Garden]
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Saturday, October 31, 2015
Friday, October 23, 2015
Show 211: Rachmaninov
by Boris Chaliapin |
Anyway, that's what this Saturday's show will be.
Remember, the next week it will be Halloween, and I will present something essentially similar to the show from last Halloween, with some updates.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Show 210: Mostly Music for Piano
My apologies, but the broadcast somehow was shorter than it should have been. Anyway, here is the "podcast". By the way, I have learned that there is a very specific file type called a podcast, which can be downloaded by a portable music player, but here we only have a bunch of mp3 files.
Part A
Introduction [Hélène Grimaud playing a transcriptions of the Bach organ fugue in A minor BWV 543]
Scarlatti: Piano Sonata, in D Minor, K 9 [Claudio Colombo]
Albinoni: Concerto a 5 in D minor [I Musici, Heinz Holliger]
Mozart: Piano Sonata No 8 in A minor, K 310 [Walter Klien]
Part B
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, for piano, i - Prélude, ii - Fugue [Kathryn Stott]
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, for orchestra, iii - Forlane [Academy of St. Martin In-the-Fields]
Beethoven: Sonata No 23 in F minor, Appassionata- Op 57, i - Allegro; ii - Andante; iii - Allegro [Vladimir Horowitz. The Allegro is on Part C, below.]
Part C
Scriabin: Twenty Four Preludes Op 11 No 8 In F Sharp Minor [Mikhail Pletnev]Beethoven: Romance for Violin in F Major No 2 Op 50 [Igor Oistrakh]
Debussy: Images for piano, Set I, L 110- No 1- Reflets dans Leau [Kathryn Stott]
Station Break - Tune
Part D
Waltz No 6 in D Flat [Denes Varjon]
Polonaise No 3 in A [Halina Czerny-Stefanska]
Fantaisie Impromptu Op 66 [Halina Czerny-Stefanska]
Mazurka in D minor No 2 [Denes Varjon]
Grande Valse Brillante [Halina Czerny-Stefanska]
Waltz No 7 in C Sharp minor [Dinu Lipatti]
Nocturne in E Flat No 2 [Denes Varjon]
Archie
Just a test: The whole show
Part A
Introduction [Hélène Grimaud playing a transcriptions of the Bach organ fugue in A minor BWV 543]
Scarlatti: Piano Sonata, in D Minor, K 9 [Claudio Colombo]
Albinoni: Concerto a 5 in D minor [I Musici, Heinz Holliger]
Mozart: Piano Sonata No 8 in A minor, K 310 [Walter Klien]
Part B
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, for piano, i - Prélude, ii - Fugue [Kathryn Stott]
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, for orchestra, iii - Forlane [Academy of St. Martin In-the-Fields]
Beethoven: Sonata No 23 in F minor, Appassionata- Op 57, i - Allegro; ii - Andante; iii - Allegro [Vladimir Horowitz. The Allegro is on Part C, below.]
Part C
Scriabin: Twenty Four Preludes Op 11 No 8 In F Sharp Minor [Mikhail Pletnev]Beethoven: Romance for Violin in F Major No 2 Op 50 [Igor Oistrakh]
Debussy: Images for piano, Set I, L 110- No 1- Reflets dans Leau [Kathryn Stott]
Station Break - Tune
Part D
Waltz No 6 in D Flat [Denes Varjon]
Polonaise No 3 in A [Halina Czerny-Stefanska]
Fantaisie Impromptu Op 66 [Halina Czerny-Stefanska]
Mazurka in D minor No 2 [Denes Varjon]
Grande Valse Brillante [Halina Czerny-Stefanska]
Waltz No 7 in C Sharp minor [Dinu Lipatti]
Nocturne in E Flat No 2 [Denes Varjon]
Archie
Just a test: The whole show