Small Ensembles

Let's start from 19th Century, and work backward. 

The most common sort of small ensemble is probably the string quartet.  It consists of two violins, [lowest note: G below Middle C], a viola,  [lowest note: one octave below Middle C], and a Cello, [lowest note: two octaves below Middle C].

The string quartet has the interesting property that the four instruments sound almost just like each other; in fact, they're essentially four sizes of violins, with the larger ones sounding lower.  We call this character homogeneity; they blend together perfectly. 

Another group for which a lot of music is written is a wind quintet.  Music for a wind quintet sounds beautiful and balanced, but the balance doesn't come from the nature of the instruments.  A wind quintet consists of (typically a flute, an oboe, [lowest note Middle C in both cases], a clarinet, [lowest note B Flat, an octave and one more whole note below Middle C], a bassoon [lowest note: E Flat, a little less than two octaves below M. C.], and a French Horn, [wait, I have to look this up ... Lowest Note: Two octaves below M.C.].

The presence of the horn in the wind quintet is often a surprise for anyone learning about them for the first time.  I don't know the history of the situation, but I imagine that someone must have tried it, and it must have sounded satisfactory. 

Obviously, the Wind Quintet does not sound homogeneous by design, but they do sound wonderful.  There are certainly other combinations, for instance lots of combinations with pianos: the piano quintet, consisting of a piano and a string quartet; the piano trio, consisting of a piano, and violin, and a cello.

There are also many different Quintets, consisting of a String quartet, and one instrument not from the quartet, e.g. a Clarinet Quintet (string quartet + clarinet).

In earlier times—say before the 17th Century—small ensemble were assumed to consist instruments of the same family; for instance a recorder consort: which would consist of several recorders all of the same style.  There are bass recorders, tenor recorders, alto recorders, soprano recorders, and sopranino recorders.  Often they were sold in a matched set, in a special case with a place for each recorder. 

There were also what was known as a school of viols, consisting of viols of grades sizes, from a treble viol, down to a bass viol.

Recorder ensembles and Viol ensembles had extremely homogeneous sounds.  In early music, I suppose pieces written for them were monophonic; that moving from chord to chord, without the complexity of Baroque Music. 

Contorts with different sorts of instruments were called 'broken consorts'.  If a consort consisted all ofthe same type of instrument, they were called 'whole', or 'closed' consorts—at least, according to Wikipedia.

I'm sure that in earlier posts I have linked to examples of many kinds of small ensemble, but I could be wrong.  Someday, I hope to link to pieces for small ensembles on YouTube, and that would complete this post. 

Archie

Nutcracker Suite Item #2: March of the Toy Soldiers

As some of you might recall, I took up the Euphonium (actually just a Baritone, but Euphonium sounds so much more euphonious), and joined a special band for seniors.  It's an organization called New Horizons, which establishes these little bands in many towns, and teach an instrument for anyone who wants to join, and they play at nursing homes, and similar places, as a treat for the residents, and a treat for the players too. 

One of the pieces we're playing this season (Fall/Winter 2024) is the March from Tchaikowsky's Nutcracker.  The Ephonium is a tenor instrument.  Sometimes it plays an inner part—often an interesting one, a so-called counter-melody, which are so common in Souza marches.  Other times, we double the bass line (played by the Tubas).  I love it when we do that, because I love playing bass anyway. 

In the Nutcracker March, there are interesting passages, which you will recognize at once if you hear the March, e.g. via YouTube.  I really ought to insert here the music of a sample passage, but it isn't as easy to do using my phone as it used to be when I posted these things using my computer!

March of the Toy Soldiers [Tchaikowsky]

J.S.Bach, Benjamin Franklin, Near Contemporaries

JS Bach was born in 1685; Ben Franklin in 1706.  Franklin was younger by 21 years,  maybe more or less depending on the actual dates. 

Bach died in 1750, while Franklin died in 1790, 40 years later.  Franklin lived a lot longer, and a few years moor recently than Bach, but to me it's useful to think of them together, as I imagine their costumes, which were very similar, except that Franklin never wore a wig. 

Franklin is often described as a 'polymath', which is an old word that means 'a person with very diverse interests, skills and talents, what is also described as a Renaissance man.  About Bach, we don't really know; we do know he was interested in music, and theology, but apart from those subjects, we don't know much about him. 

We are told that he was interested in the design of organs; he was an excellent organist, and was hired as a consultant for at least one church that was having a new organ built. 

Music, at that time, was a broad area of interest; there was composition, in several different forms; Bach was a master of many of these, and the Oratorio form extended into the area of drama.  Bach could play almost any keyboard instrument, but also strings instruments: violin, viola, and very probably cello and double bass.  He knew the theory of oboes and bassoons, and probably trumpets and horns, and recorders.  Because of this wide range of expertise expected from a court musicians, there was very little time for one to explore other interests.  We know Bach had s limited interest in local politics, because it impinged on his management of a small court orchestra that was expected of him. 

Franklin was interested in writing, publishing, politics and political philosophy, he was an ambassador, he was involved in the independence movement, he was interested in science, and a host of other things.  I can't even imagine the two men meeting, or even whether they would have had a common language of discourse.  I can imagine that Franklin spoke French, having been the Ambassador to France.  We are not told whether Bach spoke any language other than Deutch, and read a little Latin.  And also perhaps a bit of Italian, because by Mozart's time many musicians could understand a little Italian.

Mozart, who was born two years after Bach died, could speak several languages fluently, certainly Italian.  Mozart's entire life was within Franklin's lifetime. 

Archie

Schubert

You might not know that (as far as I know, which is not a lot) both 'Schubert' and 'Schumann' mean 'Cobbler,' in German. It makes very little sense for me to bring that up, because very few of you younger people have had any experience with cobblers at all!

A few years ago, there was a hole in the sole of my shoe.  It was a pair of Clarks—or another make, equally good—and just on Market Street, a block and a half from my apartment, was a shoe repairman, or to call him by the traditional name of his profession, a cobbler.  To make a long story short, he said—from his point of view—the shoe was good enough to repair.  (A cheap pair would be thrown out and replaced, you see.)  It cost about $40, which I cheerfully paid.  A new pair would have been outside my budget.

By the time Schubert was born, the literal meaning of his family name would have had nothing to do with the occupation of the family, so the little anecdote is quite irrelevant.

Schubert composed lots of fabulous music, but the best known work is probably the famous  Unfinished Symphony, or Symphony no. 8 in B minor. 

The first item on my agenda is to get you listening to this symphony!  Schubert wrote lovely, melodic sonatas and songs, and piano pieces.  I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar at all with them!  But my parents—mostly my Dad—would put on the Unfinished, when I was in elementary school, and the tunes stuck with me. In fact, one time he participated in producing a play, about Elijah and the priests of Baal, and they used the Unfinished as incidental music.  Furthermore, our family music box was an old HMV phonograph, and the records were what are called '78s' these days; and only held about 10 minutes of music!  So Dad did a lot of changing discs.  (These were platters made of Bakelite, a very early kind of plastic.  Very soon, once LPs were invented, they (the LPs) were made out of Vinyl.)

Now, I don't know a lot about what was going on with Schubert while he was writing this Symphony; those sorts of details help many people to relate to a piece.  I'm just going to describe my own reactions to the first movement. 

It begins with the main theme played quietly—and ominously—deep in the bass.  Then some woodwinds (flutes, oboes, clarinets) enter, and things seem to be going swimmingly, until it's all Interrupted by some loud, full orchestra chords.

Don't get me wrong; the alternation of quiet passages and the loud chords is very musical; I can't describe it better than that.  In some works, it almost seems as if the loud interruptions are there solely for their shock value.  I don't think this is true ĥere.  It's almost as if Schubert had to have these loud punctuations exactly where he put them.  There's a lot of drama in the movement.  Maybe someone was teasing him about not being able to compose a dramatic Symphony!  Well, he certainly showed them.  The music sounds almost angry at times, and really serene at other times.  The serene parts are just fabulously lovely; perhaps they would not be as lovely if not for the contrast with the loud and noisy parts.  Stormy is the one word that describes this movement.  It ends with three huge crashing, angry, almost despairing chords. 

The second movement opens as though it was the sun rising after a huge thunderstorm.  (You can easily see why my dad and his friends chose this Symphony for their play!  For those not in the know, there was a weather competition, where stormy weather was involved.)  I'm going to stop there; you don't need Cliff Notes for this second movement.  This might not be good news, but: there are only two movements.  Most symphonies have four movements, this is why this work was nicknamed The Unfinished.  Lots of people agree, though, that it's perfectly fine the way it is.  So listen to it on your own, and take ownership of this wonderful, tuneful Symphony.

Maurice Ravel: Couperin Suite for Piano

Marice Ravel is one of my favorite composers.  I'm not so crazy about his works as to love every one of them.  (Bach is a favorite, too, but I don't love every piece by him, either; the same with Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Debussy, Wagner, and so on.  But with Ravel, I've liked everything from him I've heard so far.)

One of the earliest pieces of Ŕavel's that I learned to like was Pour le tombeau de Couperin, a collection of orchestral pieces, in celebration of the French composer Francois Couperin.  I have heard hardly any music by this older composer, but evidently Ravel admired him. 

The Tombeau that Ravel wrote, though, was fabulous.  In contrast to the music of Bach and Wagner that I liked as a teenager, that was filled with the exalted German harmony that was easy to love, Ravel's music was light, and full of fairy filigree!  You could imagine tiny fairy people dancing, skipping to this music. 

I then learned that the few orchestral pieces in the orchestral  Tombeau were an arrangement of an earlier piano work by Ravel, and that early version had more movements. 

That did make sense, because Couperin was a composer of keyboard works, harpsichord, and maybe piano.  I recently heard this piano (original) version, and I fell in love all over again. 

I urge my readers to listen to this work for themselves; skip over the movements that aren't to your liking.  There's nothing that says you have to like every movement of a multi-movement work.  Here's a link to the piece I was listening to:

Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin

Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings

I featured the Scherzo from this work in the radio show Archie's Archives.  This afternoon, though I got a desire to hear the whole thing—four movements—in its entirety.  Somehow I had a CD of it in our car, so we could listen to it on long journeys.  I must have listened to this CD, because I was familiar with both the first movement and the third movement (the Scherzo, which is especially famous).

Mendelssohn is a composer whom I especially like; very possibly because of he having written this very Octet.  Musicologists note that octet that had been written by other composers, before this one, were actually two quartets, seated across from one another, playing antiphonally.  (I'll explain that another time.)  Most importantly, Mendelssohn is said to have instructed that this octet was to be played not antiphonally, but as if all the players constituted a tiny orchestra.

Mendelssohn wrote a lot of chamber music,  that is, Trios, Quartets, Quintets, Duets, etc.  Every weekend, they had a concert night in the Mendelssohn household, which is a huge incentive for the young folk to compose their own music to be performed at these musical evenings.  (The Octet was composed when Mendelssohn was 18.)  Felix and his sister, Fanny, were both accomplished instrumentalists.  In fact, Fanny was also a composer.  Felix's string quartets are among the best known string quartets we have, together with this of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.  (Shortly after Haydn's time, lots of composers began writing String quartets.  The reason being that any group of friends, two of whom could play violin, and one play the viola, and one play the cello, could form a string quartet, and frequently did.  All these amateur String quartets were on the lookout for music to play, and anyone who composed a string quartet was reasonably sure of getting it performed fairly promptly.  It's no fun writing a String quartet if nobody plays it, I can tell you.)

One of the important aspects of a String quartet is: counterpoint.  This is a hard property of a piece to describe, but it makes a piece so much more interesting to listen to!  And Mendelssohn was a master of introducing just enough counterpoint to make his music interesting. 

[Bach, writing music some decades before, was a master of counterpoint.  Audiences of the late 1700s found so much counterpoint difficult to tolerate, and Mendelssohn found just the right degree of counterpoint that was pleasing to audiences of his time, and even our time.]

In the recording I own, the First Movement was the longest, about 15 minutes long; each of the others were about 6 minutes long.

Magic Moments

There was a tune that had been stuck in my head, for close to 50 years!!!  I can almost remember the year, roughly, when I heard the tune; it was around the time the Disney movie The Lady and the Tramp arrived in theatre's in our town (the City of Colombo, in the land of the Brave, and the home of the Coconuts).  This is going to be s confusing story-- not least because of the coconuts, I suppose-- but try to follow.  While waiting for The Lady and the Tramp, I think I heard an instrumental version of Mac The Knife.  I somehow learned the name of that tune, but the two tunes were somehow connected in my memory, and I learned a lot about Mack the Knife, but absolutely nothing about the other tune!

I had got to the point where I was considering writing down this unknown tune from memory, making an mp3 out of it, and putting it up on fB, and asking if anyone knew the name of the tune!  That brings us to today, when, our of the clear blue sky, a video of the song comes over my fB feed!!!

How did fB know that I was interested in this tune?  Maybe I was humming the tune to myself, and some AI program heard it!

Anyway, the song is called "Magic Moments," and is sung by Perry Como.  Perhaps it's just as well I didn't go through with putting the tune up on fB; I had gotten some little details wrong in how I remembered it. 

Well, that's my post for today!

Archie