Paul Simon

The Beatles provided the sound track for my teen years; I liked lots of other artists and groups, but I loved the Beatles the most of all. 

I loved to sing, and the Beatles' songs were the ones I loved to sing the most.  There were others: Peter, Paul and Mary; Harry Belafonte; Simon and Garfunkel; The Rolling Stones; The Seekers; The Mamas and the Papas; and various uncles and aunts, whose names I can't even remember now. 

But, as an adult, reflecting the full sensibilities of my adult musical tastes, I think I have to single out Paul Simon.  His tunes, his lyrics, his instrumentation, his harmony; it's all perfect.  I don't need anyone to agree with me; I just think he captured almost exactly how I would have wanted to write a song.   How I would have written a song, if I could've written a song. 

I think I'll come back to this post, and add in my favorite Paul Simon tracks—I'll probably leave out the S & G tracks; there's too many of them—but not right now.  He did write some songs that didn't like; can't be helped.  Also some songs that I never knew; in fact, there are a lot of albums released in the last decade or so that I have completely missed.  I think 'Still Crazy After All These Years' is probably my favorite album from him; 'Graceland' comes a close second. 

Archie

Incy Spincy Spider

I'm wondering what would happen if I wrote a little piece based on the nursery rhyme ...

A Tune Used by Bach for a Chorale-Prelude

In the last several years of his life, Johann Sebastian Bach, my musical hero, prepared several packages of music for publication, though he did not expect them to be actually published.  They were intended to serve as a sort of summary of his art, a testament to his compositional skill. 

The Matthäuspassion, in English: the St. Matthew Passion.  This is a brilliant Oratorio, depicting the last days of Jesus, from the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, to his interment in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

The Mass in B Minor.  This version of the Catholic communion service is set to some of the most glorious music by Bach.  Some of the numbers are modifications of existing arias and choruses by Bach himself.  The work also features amazing writing for Baroque brass instruments. 

The Musical Offering (Musicalische Opfer), a set of contrapuntal compositions called canons, of very high ingenuity. 

The Goldberg Variations, a set of variations on a single theme, given by a German aristocrat.

The Brandenburg Concertos, a collection of 6 concerti grossi, an old musical form for groups of diverse instruments

The Well-Tempered Klavier, a set of 48 preludes and fugue in every key, major and minor, to celebrate a way of tuning a keyboard to make it possible to play in any key

The Art of Fugue, a set of 14 fugues, all based on the same subject.  ('Subject' can be interpreted as 'theme'; a fugue uses a subject over and over, the subject not undergoing modification, as it would in a Beethoven symphony, however.)

The Art of Fugue is considered to be incomplete, because the last fugue (a fugue on four subjects—the common subject of the entire set, and three more subjects) is incomplete.  That's not surprising, because writing a fugue on four subjects is not at all easy.  To make it harder, the fourth subject he intended to use was his name: B A C H.  In Germany, the letter B stood for B Flat; the letter H stood for B Natural!  Using this as a subject for a fugue is not impossible, but Bach must have wanted to write a really good one. 

Anyway.

After Bach had died, the music of the several fugues of The Art of Fugue were discovered among his belongings, together with the Unfinished fugue.  And, on that last page, there was a chorale: 'Vor deinen Thrön hiermit' ("Here before Thy throne I stand").  Though it is called a chorale, that's the German word for chorale-prelude, that is, a composition based on a hymn- tune, where one of the voices is (possibly an elaborate version of) the hymn. 

The hymn, based on an hymn tune composed by Frenchman  Louis Bourgeois in the 1400s,  was held in such high regard that it was printed in many hymn books for many years, until its popularity has faded in recent years. 

When I was younger, I heard it sung in a favorite hymn, by an English choir:  "The day thou gavest, Lord, is Ended."  Obviously an evening hymn, the words are poetic, and the tune does suit the words well.  Today, though, other tunes are used for this hymn.

As I wrote in an earlier post, evening hymns are occasionally used as funeral hymns (e.g. "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.")  So this tune, associated with two funeral hymns, could have been taken to mean that Bach felt his end was near, and so placed this chorale at the end of his Unfinished fugue.  There is some reason to believe, however, that it wasn't placed by Bach at all, but by one of his assistants, or a son.  (On the other hand, Bach is known to have died from complications arising from an eye operation, so if not completely blind, he was really in no state to write new music at the time of his death.)

There is also a lot of evidence (which I have not examined personally) to show that Bach was working on the Art of Fugue for at least 15 years; also, this Chorale had been written earlier. 

Even without the drama, actual or invented, of the last minutes of Bach's life, The Art of Fugue is a fascinating collection of pieces.  In particular, the very first fugue in the collection—titled Contrapunctus 1—is probably one of the best introductions to what a fugue is.

Arch

[Added later:]

Here is the Wikipedia-supplied link to an entry in an article for BWV 668:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eighteen_Chorale_Preludes#BWV_668?wprov=sfla1

Tom Hulce, in Amadeus

I learned, just a couple of days ago, that Tom Hulce, who played the role of Mozart in Amadeus, did not initially know to play the piano!  He learned the instrument in order to take the role.  (If you remember, he played the piano while being held upside down, in one scene!)

Now, we know movies these days have amazing tricks they can use, and people who put up these pieces of information often sensationalize the stories to increase their audience statistics.  I'm not accusing the author of the story I read of anything; I'm just warning you not to swallow this story wholesale.  But there's a good chance the story is largely accurate.  (Tom Hulce looked like a very clever fellow.  If the story is true, he must be an incredibly clever man, and we ought to be making a bigger fuss over him.)

I'm sure I wrote a blog post on the movie Amadeus.  I just looked through the list of all the posts, and didn't find anything like a review of the movie. 

Amadeus

It is commonly regarded that the play Amadeus, by Peter Shaefer is a carricature of mozart. In my opinion, it isn't a carricature at all!   When I wasin school,  one year I win a prize book, called Letters of Composers, and it had numerous letters—in translation—written by Mozart.  I can say quite confidently, that Mozart's manner of speaking in the movie is a perfect depiction of what his letters were like.  Shaffer has clearly read this book, and the character of Mozart is true to this source.  (The irritating giggle was Tom Hulce's invention, but, honestly, that's probably how the great man laughed.) 

Lots of Mozart admirers were embarrassed at how their idol was depicted; nothing can be done about that; Mozart was probably just a shade—at most—more sedate than how Tom Hulce portrays him; but this is all of a piece with what we know of the man. 

There's a certain amount of invention in the playwrights depiction of Mozart's wife and mother-in-law, but not much.  That's how they are described by many witnesses!  But the miracle is how Mozart was inspired by them, and they appear in his operas in disguised form!  With a genius, nothing is wasted. 

If you haven't seen this movie, go get it and watch it.  All the characters are brilliant, including the King, Salieri, Mozart's father, the archbishop, and even some courtiers.  (One of them was instrumental in Haydn's composition of The Creation, Die Schopfung.)