The Music of Johannes Brahms

The music of Brahms is easy to like.  As with most great composers, knowing a little about the person is very important for clues as to what is going on in the music; but knowing almost nothing about him, there's still a lot to love.

Like many others, the first few compositions by Brahms that I got to know were the famous Brahms's Lullaby (Weigenlied), the Waltz in A Flat, and the Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn, also called the St Anthony Chorale Variations.

Brahms was very fond of the great German composer, Robert Schumann, and his beautiful and accomplished wife, Clara (Wieck) Schumann.  Their lives were intensely intertwined, not least because of Schumann's tragic insanity, which left his wife Clara to have to fend for herself and her children without much support, except from Brahms, for a while.  This lullaby could easily have its origins in the time Brahms spent with the Schumann children.



The Waltz in A Flat is an elegant stylized waltz, not really long enough to be danced to; in other words, it is a concert waltz for the piano, or the studio, like those of Chopin.


Both these pieces, simple though they appear to be, have little harmonic surprises that are just enough to delight, and after we hear the pieces a couple of times, we can't imagine them being harmonized any differently.  The Lullaby, in particular, has the same bass note throughout, repeated gently deep in the bass.  The Bryn Terfel performance was a lush orchestral arrangement that obscures the repeated solitary bass note, but once you're aware of it, it can't be ignored.

We're told that the Variations on the St. Anthony Chorale was initially a piano piece, and Brahm's first venture into orchestral composition, and a brilliantly successful one, too.  This performance is conducted by Riccardo Muti, with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Anyone interested in the life of Johannes Brahms can easily find out more.  He was brought up in poverty by a single mother, but is considered a good and wonderful man, though his last years were spent in a cloud of bitterness.

Brahms wrote several concertos, all of them among the most popular in their various genres: the amazing Violin Concerto in D, the two Piano Concertos, and a Double Concerto for Violin and Cello.  All of these are worth hearing; I'll put in links one of these days.

Finally, for those who want something light and fluffy, Brahms enjoyed gypsy music, and his Hungarian Dances are simply gorgeous: rhythmic and tuneful, intended to be played piano four hands (two pianists playing the same piano), and now orchestrated for full orchestra.

Archie

The Music of Star Wars!

Boys and girls, I want to alert you to a post from 2012 about the Themes from the Star Wars movie cycle.

Before this Blog was established, I wrote copiously about musical subjects in another blog, and I will post links to them here as I dig them up.

Archie

The two most often-played tunes on Archie's Archives

This is the introduction and the opening theme music.  It is an organ fugue--Fugue BWV 543 in A minor--by J. S. Bach, performed on percussion instruments and plucked strings.




The next is played even more often; it is the march that I play (when I can) after each quarter of the show, and at the end.  It is a tune called Starlight Serenade by Jonny Heikens of the Netherlands, recorded by Richard Tauber.  The instrumentation is highly varied, because I sometimes play a version by woodwinds, and other times a guitar version, a brass version, a piano version, and occasionally even a version in Waltz time.  This is the main Woodwind version.  (Actually there's a horn in the mix; horns are considered honorary woodwinds.)

The graphics are a clever way of representing the strings of the voices visually, devised by Stephen Malinowski.



Well, I'll come back and stick in the other versions of this tune when I have a little more time!!

Arch

News From WXPI

Our radio station, WXPI FM 88.5 in Williamsport, PA, has successfully dragged itself along without any steady source of funding for close to 4 years.  But to our horror, we learned that we owed the owner of the radio tower that we use, arrears of around $7000, for which they are holding our transmitting equipment as guarantee.  So it looks very likely that we will have to sell off our broadcasting license, and become an Internet-Only radio station.

The steering committee of WXPI and its governing Board has long preferred being an actual on-air station to a mere Internet station, even if our on-air signal has been laughably weak.  Some of the people we succeeded in reaching via radio did not have Internet access, and we were determined to continue to reach these people.  But now, finances are raising their ugly head.

There are steady expenses: licenses, electricity for the transmitter (our Studio power is contributed through the generosity of the Pajama Factory, as is the rent for the Studio), and Internet costs.  Because the service we provide does not fall into the top three categories of Food, Clothing or Shelter, nor into the next level of Security, Health or Childcare, but (rather uncomfortably) somewhere between Education and Entertainment, sponsors rank us very low on their scale of importance of charities.  During Election Years, we can reach an audience that is often left out of mainline radio, but that audience is principally blacks and minorities, a sector of the population that Sponsors, who tend to be mostly businesses, are not interested in.  Liberal organizations, be they businesses or other, do not have the discretionary funds to support a radio station.  30 years of Conservative-dominated Washington has systematically eroded the ability of Liberal radio to reach its audience (due in large part to Deregulation during Bill Clinton's presidency).  Archie's Archives is arguably non-political, though my own views might have leaked through on the air.

A new Program Manager was appointed recently, and he called for a roster of show hosts at WXPI who were willing to continue, to retire, or to change their format, and I volunteered to retire.  After less than two years on the air I am running out of ideas and time, and as you can hear, I'm recycling material rather heavily.  Not knowing whether I have very much of an audience, it is tempting to believe that hardly anyone has heard more than three consecutive weekly shows, and so that repeating shows does no harm.  But every time some listener hears a show repeated for the third time, we probably lose a listener!

This might explain some of the strange shows that have been coming out on Archie's Archives.  Though I have offered to retire, there's really nothing to prevent the Station from recycling my old shows indefinitely, and if people enjoy these shows recycled, please feel free to do so!

Archie

Show 126: Good Friday Music

Unfortunately, it seems that my channel to the server of WXPI is not working, so I cannot put up the music I would like to.

It will be a blend of Good Friday / Easter music, as well as some generic Baroque Brass - related music, and some of my favorite pops.

Stay Tuned.

Show 121: Switched-On Bach

This is a repeat of a show from about a year ago, on Switched-On Bach, and other electronic performances, and performances on electronic instruments, of the music of Bach.  The material below is almost identical with the post that accompanied that earlier broadcast.

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.  So Wendy Carlos is one of the early transsexuals, and, as far as we know, a very successful one.

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 (GPO4), 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

Shows 216 and 217: Sorrow and Joy

Show 216: In memory of Robert J. B. Maples

Part A    Part B    Part C    Part D

Bob Maples was one of the earliest friends I made outside the Mathematics Department at Lycoming.  He was a professor of French with a degree from Yale University, but his avocation was computer programming!  He started coding in BASIC, which was built-in into the operating system of the tiny little "mainframe" we used back then (a PDP-11 running RSTS-E, or something like that).  He first wrote a program that would keep track of his grades, using as a model something that was written by one of my colleagues, Rick Troxel (or it might have been the other way round: Rick may have developed the simple program that Bob had written first; I'm not sure).  When we got a new mainframe that did not have BASIC, Bob had to learn Pascal, a more modern language, and then FORTRAN, and so on and so forth.  He went as far as writing a word-processor that would fill and justify a page of text, which is pretty sophisticated.

I learned quite by accident that Bob liked music, but he preferred the German Romantic composers: Wagner, Mahler, and so on, to the French composers I expected him to like.  But when I went to his funeral on Friday, Feb 12th, his son, who had led the appreciations, said that he and his father had settled on, of all things, music from Bach, and Samuel Barber.

Show 217: Waltzes!

Part A     Part B      Part C     Part D

I had played the occasional waltz, either in connection with dances, in the program all about dance, or in connection with Spring, in a program about the Spring Equinox, which coincided with the day on which I celebrate J. S. Bach's birthday.  But I had never made an entire program with Waltzes, and this was it.  We had four sorts of waltzes: Strauss Waltzes, which started out being music for dancing, but has evolved into light concert music; Tchaikovski Waltzes, which are ballet waltzes, which is a genre that is a little different from simple concert waltzes, though of course they're played as concert waltzes.  Then there are Chopin Waltzes, and waltzes by other composers, e.g. Brahms, Scriabin, and so on, which are effectively a new genre: the Piano Waltz.  We rotate through all these types, for the sake of variety.  We also feature a waltz by Leroy Anderson: the Waltzing Cat.

Show 105: The Warhorses

The fifth show, back in 2014, was about the so-called Warhorses.  I had got it into my head that unless I featured some pieces that everybody recognized as classics, I might lose a lot of potential listeners.  (My taste in music is pretty mainstream, but not as mainstream as some; for instance, most folks don't like Bach as much as I do, etc.)

I had started putting up these "podcasts" already, using Google as the server, and just about this fifth show rolled round, I was having trouble with uploading to the server.  Some weeks later, I sprang for space on the present server, and used Google only to host this text blog.  The links go to another server, for which I have to pay <cry-cry>.

Show 105--Warhorses was lost in the shuffle, so I'm remedying it now.  Here is the podcast of last night's show (2016/2/6), as it should have been.  I should remember to go back to the original post and insert a forward address to here.  But I probably won't.

Here's the original apologetic message about the server not working:

Sorry, fans of Archie's Archives; we’re having trouble uploading the files to the server (Google Sites).  After a couple more attempts, we will give up on it.  It looked very promising for a while ...

Anyhow, here is the more or less [accurate] transcript of the show.

Anyway, we now do have a reliable server, just in case you missed that memo.

Part A (minutes 0-28)

Part B (minutes 30-58)

Part C (minutes 60-88)

Part D (minutes 90-118)

1 -Introduction	Okay; I think it’s time to bring out the warhorses; that is, the famous classical tunes that everybody knows, or has at least heard on Bugs Bunny.   Now I’m planning to do an entire Bugs Bunny Introduces the Classics show —which is not a new idea, I know— so I’m going to keep away from Bugs Bunny classics, for the most part. Let’s try two things in this show: Firstly, let’s try to get you to know the names of these pieces, and the composers. Next, let’s try to introduce you to something else, which is equally good, or equally catchy, by the same composer.   A sort of ‘What’s on the B side?’ approach. Just a couple more things. Firstly, we have set up a website, called ArchiesWXPIArchives.Blogspot.Com, where we’re going to post these shows after they air, as podcasts. Second, I have an e-mail address now; it’s archieWXPI@gmail.com.   There’s a link to it at the website. Send me mail, and I’ll read it and reply, or read out a response right here.
2 Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring	This next piece is what my folks played at bedtime when I was just about four years old.   It should put me right to sleep, except that we sang it in school for a prize day one time, and I was totally hooked.   Here it is, sung by the Wiener Singerknaben, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.   It has a trumpet playing the soprano part.   (People don’t realize that the original scoring had the sopranos doubled with a trumpet.)   Listen to the inner parts.   The oboe is front and center, but there is a violin playing a really lovely counterpoint to it.   Also, the tenor voice has a really sweet line of music.   The bass line, of course, as in all of Bach music is interesting and important.
3, 4 Bach: Rondeau, Badinerie	Now I want to play something else by Bach. You’ve heard tons of Bach already, so I’m not going to try too hard.   But here is a pair of tunes that were actually on the B side of the record my Dad used to play.  Both of these are movements from the B minor (Orchestral) Suite.   These are the Rondeau, and the Badinerie.
5 Tchaikovsky: Waltz of the Flowers	Waltz of the Flowers, from the Nutcracker Ballet Suite by P. I. Tchaikovsky.   This is the whole thing, except for the Harp introduction, which I took out.
6 Tchaikovsky: Pathetic Symphony, movt ii	A lovely movement from Tchaikovsky is from his Pathetic Symphony (Symphony No 6).   This movement is in quintuple time, and the stress is on beats 1 and 3.   You’ve all heard Dave Brubeck’s Take Five.   That one is in compound quintuple; this one is in plain old quintuple.   It is in ABA form, or rather A1 B A2 form, where A1 and A2 are almost the same, but obviously, A2 is slightly modified, as an ending.
7 Beethoven: fragments from Symphonies 9, 5, and 3	There is a lot of Beethoven that people might have heard, including the famous Ode to Joy from the 9th Symphony: Then the famous 5th Symphony: A little less well known, but as brilliant, or even more brilliant, the Eroica, or the 3rd Symphony: I’ll play all of these movements in completeness sometime.
8, 9 Beethoven: Sonata No. 14, fragment from Movt 1, complete Movt 2.	Here is the recapitulation from the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, by Wilhelm Kempff. Here is the middle movement, which is a lot less well-known, played by Emil Gilels.   Listen to his control of the piano!
10 Haydn: ‘Emperor’ Quartet, excerpt	Haydn was a major composer.   He practically invented the String Quartet, though really, it was a sort of team job. I’ve played a couple of Haydn pieces, notably an aria from the Creation.   Here is an excerpt from his Emperor Quartet, from which is taken the Austrian National Anthem, and the German National Anthem.
11 Haydn: Great Whales, from Die Schöpfung (Creation)	The aria ‘And God created Great Whales,’ from Haydn’s Creation.)   Note: the text of the entire oratorio was taken from Milton’s Paradise Lost.
12 The Seekers: Georgy Girl	It’s been some time since we heard a song from the Seekers being played.   The Seekers were an Australian group who sang lovely open harmony.   Here’s one that used to be really well known, because of being featured in a movie: Georgy Girl, starring Vanessa Redgrave (Sorry: it was Lynn Redgrave.)
13 Seekers: Walk with me	Another song by the same group is Walk With Me, which has a really lovely interlude, played on the 12-string guitar
14 Schubert:   Unfinished Symphony (excerpt)	Schubert is famous for his Unfinished Symphony.   It was not a symphony that he died before completing, in the sense that he ran out of time.   It was just one that was either complete in two movements, or one that he set aside.   Here’s the beginning of the first movement.   (I feel bad to play enormously long movements for obvious reasons, so this is just an excerpt.)   You could easily find it on YouTube, for instance, if you like it.
15 Schubert: Who is Silvia	Schubert also wrote a song based on a Shakespeare sonnet called To Silvia.   Here are the King’s Singers, singing it a capella.   You can hear them depicting the piano part.   Schubert was Austrian, but they loved Shakespeare over there (back then).
16 John Lennon: Imagine	John Lennon’s Imagine is really well known.   He did not write Yesterday, that was Paul McCartney.   So, here’s Imagine.   Does Religion create a world without strife, or does Religion add to the strife?   I think opinion is pretty well equally divided on the issue.
17 John Lennon:  Aisumasen	Another song he sang was Aisumasen, which is Japanese for I’m Sorry.   Listen to the awesome guitar interlude.
18 Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto	Felix Mendelssohn is credited with writing the tune to Hark the Herald Angels Sing.   One of the best known Wedding Marches is also his.   It’s taken from the music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.   Like I said, the German people of the nineteenth century thought Shakespeare was utterly romantic.   Here is a bit of it: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto is one of the great entries in classical music.   Here are the first few minutes of the Violin Concerto in E-minor:
19 Wagner: Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin	I’ve played for you a couple of pieces by Wagner.   Many of you know the Ride of the Valkyries, from Apocalypse Now, and you know the Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin, which is often used as a wedding march.
20 Die Engel	Wagner wrote several beautiful Lieder, that is songs, that were nothing to do with opera at all.   Here’s one, called The Angel, one of the Wesendonck Lieder
21 Hollies: Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress	If you’ve heard of Crosby Stills and Nash, then you know about Graham Nash.   He was earlier a member of an awesome group called The Hollies.   Here are two songs by them; it’s hard to tell which of the two you might have heard.   This one is called The Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.
22 Hollies:   Bus Stop	The second song is one of my all-time favorites: Bus Stop.
23 Elgar: Pomp & Circumstances	At graduation time, this tune is heard all over the US: Actually it is part of a much longer march: Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 by Edward Elgar.
24 Edward Elgar: Nimrod, from Enigma Variations	Almost better known than the Pomp and Circumstances marches is the set of variations called the Enigma Variations written by Elgar.   Out of these, the variation called Nimrod is the best known. It is a piece of great dignity (or rather gravity), and often used at funerals.   Here it is played by the London Philharmonic with Daniel Barenboim conducting.
25 George Gershwin: Summertime	Who comes next?   Let’s see whether you can identify the composer of this one.
26 Gershwin: Prelude 2	This is the famous Prelude No. 2
27 Brahms: Lullaby	The best-known piece by Brahms is his famous Lullaby (Weigenlied), one of a set of several songs he wrote for voice and piano.   Here’s the original.   All the versions we usually hear have been —improved— by various people.   I slightly improved this one by instrumenting it for strings and woodwind, and changing two notes.  Actually, 4 notes, since it is repeated.  I just couldn’t resist.   I might change them back before I put the show on the air.  (I didn’t.)
28 Brahms: Hungarian Dances	The obvious choice for the second piece by Brahms is his famous St. Anthony Chorale Variations, but I only have that on LP, and it’s too late in the week for me to make an mp3 out of that.   So it’s going to be one of the Hungarian Dances. The Hungarian Dances are not a dance suite, like the Bach Suites.   They’re collections of dances for people to play at home, so it’s music for amateurs to play.   Just about the time of Beethoven, which is about the time of the American Revolution, composers could no longer make a living from being court composers, so they had to start publishing printed collections for ordinary people.   Everything becomes more interesting if you connect it up.   Certainly history becomes more interesting. Well, guess what.   I found it hard to pick one of the dances to play for you; the first seven of the collection of 21 were all familiar.   Robin Fountain and the Williamsport Symphony played several in orchestral versions back in 1993.   These were all originally written to be played by two people at the same piano, called piano four hands.   A lot of fun.   This one is no. 5 in G minor.
29, 30, 31 Mozart: Sonata K545 in C, Movts 1, 2, 3	For Mozart, let’s play this well-known Sonata in C major, sometimes called the Easy Sonata (or the same thing in French, you can look it up), K 545.   This is played by Glenn Gould, who was supposed not to care for Mozart very much, so he races through this first movement.   He also plays without much pedal, which was something a lot of people didn’t like.   But he plays it so fast that I can play all three movements for you.   Here’s the first movement.   The first part introduces two themes.   The middle part develops them.   Then there’s a recap of the two themes, with a slight variation. For the middle movement, I’m going to play a recording by Walter Klien, who is a much more reasonable pianist —now don’t go quoting me on these things— anyway, it’s a little slower and quieter.   It is a Rondo, which is in an ABACA, or ABACADA form.   Many pop songs have this structure. Okay, back to Glenn Gould for the last movement.   I think that the theme is supposed to represent “ha ha ha, hee hee hee”   Listen, and tell me what you think.   You also see how on the money Peter Schaffer’s play Amadeus was.   All the little musical bits are actually taken from Mozart music.   It is not a parody of Mozart at all; it is a real depiction of the man, slightly exaggerated, and presented as a parody, for the sake of people who might be a little aghast at the sort of person Mozart really was.   The representation of Salieri in the play, however, is almost certainly a parody.
32 Mozart: Gran Partita, Movt 3	Talking about Amadeus, For the last piece, I’m going to play this movement from one of the Mozart Serenades.   This is the most famous one.   In Vienna, there were groups of guys who got instruments from somewhere, usually from wealthy families who sponsored them, and formed private music clubs, and walked around the streets at night, and played outside famous the town houses of these families.   Mozart wrote some of his best stuff for these roving minstrel bands, including this one.   It is a multi-movement work, and this is the third movement, the Adagio, which means slow.   (All the speed indications were in Italian.   If I said it had something to do with the Catholic Church, people would totally get on my case, but that’s what I think.)   This is from the Serenade no. K 361, or the Gran Partita.

That was the whole thing, except for three station breaks, during some of which I played that crazy march, about which I will explain sometime.  (The crazy march is Starlight Serenade, by Jonny Heykens.)  Thanks for listening!

Archie

Tonight -- Show 116: Magic!

This is a repeat of a show from December 2014, which has understandably some references to the Holidays.

There are a number of pieces describing various magical artifacts from The Magic Flute, Mozart's immortal Singspiel (musical play).

There are a few tracks describing elements from Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungs, the enormous opera cycle, which lasts a total of nearly 15 hours.  This is Wagner's Ring, not to be confused with Tolkien's Ring, even if they are distantly related.

There is an excerpt from Hansel and Gretel, which is a fairy story about the evil magic of a witch.  The opera was written by the original Engelbert Humperdinck.  (There is even a song by the more recent crooner, Engelbert Humperdinck.)

I should have included some songs from the Disney magical fairy tales, but I did not.  Full playlist will be added sometime this weekend!!  Here is a link to the blog about the original broadcast, though the podcast files were never uploaded.  The order was changed slightly.

Archie

Show 101A: Trios

The musical genre of the Trio is very special.  As many of us know, traditional harmony is written in four parts, so when someone writes a trio, the harmony is usually not full in the usual sense.  However, melodically, a trio works harder to get our interest.  There are other tricks that composers use; Bach gets a lot of mileage with implied harmonies, musical lines that fill in more harmony than a single voice can be expected to.

The original show numbered 101, our very first show, had the following playlist:

Bach: our usual introductory piece, the Fugue in A minor, BWV 543.  This is not, of course, a trio.
The Beatles: "You're going to lose that girl", from the Help album, and the movie.
Bach: Trio Sonata in E Flat, BWV 525, i, performed by guitars.
Bach: Terzett from the Christmas Oratorio, "Wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen?"
Episodes: Train Wreck
Bach: Trio Sonata from the Musical Offering, Movt i.
Gordon Lightfoot: Early morning rain (Peter, Paul and Mary)
Haydn: Divertissement No. 2, i - Allegro
Wagner: The Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg (excerpts)
Bach: Tenor aria from Cantata 85, "Seht was die Liebe tut", adapted by William Walton.
Tom Lehrer: Alma
Signoff: Fantasia on Heykens's Starlight Serenade.

For tonight, we add some more trios by Bach, a triple concerto, a few movements from a trio from Beethoven, and one from Mozart, a trio from the so-called Coffee Cantata, and a transcription of a movement from Bach's famous Cantata No. 40, Wachet auf.

Show 215: More Better Concertos!!!

Well, more, anyway!

This is my last original hurrah before classes begin, and I have to rely on recycling older shows.

Part A (Beethoven, Glazunov)

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor - iii (Alfred Brendel)

Glazunov: Violin Concerto in A Minor (Maxim Vengerov)

Part B (Elgar, Siblius, Heykens)

Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor (Dong-Suk Kang)

Sibelius: Violin Concerto (Kyung-Wha Chung)

Heykens: Starlight Serenade (Richard Tauber)

Part C (Grieg)

Grieg: Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra (Philippe Entremont)

Part D (Schumann)

Schumann: Concerto in A minor for Piano (Rudolf Serkin)

Enjoy!

Archie

P.S. For next week-a, I am planning to put up a repeat of my very first show, from July 4th, 2014.  That was a one-hour show, all about Trios.  It was also the only one-hour show, I might add, which explains why I never put it up again.  So I had to supplement it with another hour of music related to the number 3.  I have.  That's for next week.

Arχ²ie.