I will be traveling during the month of October 2021, so I will not be publishing new posts throughout the month. Check back in November when I will resume my weekly comments on pieces of classical music that are new to me.
Happy fall, y'all! : )
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For the past several weeks, I have been listening to pieces by composers mentioned in this article, “Ten Young Composers Who Are Redefining Classical Music," HERE. I am up to the sixth name on the list, Nico Muly. However, for this week I found a cello concerto by Muhly, but only the first movement was written by him. The concerto, "Three Continents," has three movements, and each was written by a different composer. The second and third movements were composed by Sven Helbig and Zhou Long.
With a startling and cacophonous clash -- plus a piercing pitch on the piccolo -- "Cello Cycles," the opening movement to the concerto, bolts to a start as the cellist pleads a desperate lament above fluttering woodwinds, plucked strings, moaning brass, and clanging percussion. At times it’s as if one were zooming a camera in on the determined melody line of the cello, but the lens isn't quite sure what to focus on with so much clamor going on in the background. Fortunately, at about three and a half minutes into the piece, the orchestral parts seem to intertwine more meaningfully with the cello’s focus, and there is greater cohesiveness to the auricular “picture.” At that point the fluttering, the plucking, the moaning and the clanging support the cello, and it all creates a full but dolorous vision. The transition from the woeful close of the first movement (including some formidable blasts from the low brass) to the funereal opening of "Aria," the second movement, is remarkable considering it was written by an entirely different composer. The two movements work so well together in advancing the piece’s unfolding story of agony, and the second movement is as beautiful as it is mournful. “I like a look of agony,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “because I know it’s true,” and Helbig’s piece is true and tragic passion. The start of the third movement, "Typsy Poet," calls to mind the opening of the concerto with a blast of cacophony and a shrill, high pitched piccolo. There are sliding tones here and there with whirls of woodwinds, flurries of strings, muted brass, and booms, bangs and blasts of percussion -- all above sustained low chords in the bass instruments. The mood is frenetic, but not frenzied. About two minutes and ten seconds into the piece (at about 23:17 in the video HERE), the mood was reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s suspense-filled soundtrack to “North by Northwest.” As a matter of fact, much of the final movement was Hitchcockian to be sure -- but with hints of Asian influence here and there. Believe me, there is more going on here than the undertakings of a “typsy poet.” Sure, there are hints of inebriation (check out 29:26 until about 30:37 in the video), but from 30:38 on, the piece races to a striking climax. Is this poet being pursued atop Mount Rushmore by agents of espionage? I’ll have to admit, when I first started listening to “Three Continents,” I was a bit tentative and uncertain about the piece -- the incongruous opening and lack of focus (to revisit my camera analogy) bothered me -- but overall, the piece is marvelous. Once you get into it, it is a gripping piece -- and certainly impressive that it was written by three different composers.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to pieces by the ten contemporary composers named in this article, “Ten Young Composers Who Are Redefining Classical Music," HERE. Last week I listened to Ann Cleare’s “Dorchadas” (the Irish word for ‘darkness’), described by Mic as a multi-instrumentalist exploration of “the primal fear of the dark.” This week, I listened to “The Flying Trapeze” by Angelica Negron, the fifth name on the list.
Okay, I’ll admit -- I’m being petty. I did enjoy the work; however, the title of the piece just didn’t work for me. I kept waiting for a musical impression of a flying trapeze, and I never got it. This issue with the title of a work has, in the past, prejudiced my mind -- it happened with Missy Mazzoli’s “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), HERE -- and it happened here too. I kept waiting for aural impressions of soaring and dizzying heights and aerial acrobatics. Instead, I heard impaired balance and stumbling, dizzy coordination and restlessness, staggered beats and confusion. I thought of Emily Dickinson’s lines, “A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork / Without a Revery.” “That’s it,” I thought, “this piece should be called ‘A Drunkard Cannot Meet a Cork.” It’s a fun piece, so take a listen when you get a chance -- but let me know if you hear “the daring young man on the flying trapeze” (as the old song title goes) ~ OR ~ if you hear Otis Campbell, the fictional “town drunk” stumbling around the town of Mayberry on the old Andy Griffith show. On a side note: At the start of the YouTube video of the Contemporary Chamber Players, HERE, the young woman who introduces the piece mentioned that the composer, Angelica Negron, was working on a lip-sync opera to be performed by drag queens and chamber ensemble. When I heard that, I knew immediately that I’d have to pass the information on to my daughter who creates artwork and jewelry in the world of drag (check it out HERE). She was excited to hear that drag star Sasha Velour was to headline the opera (info HERE), and she sent me this text: “Sasha is a great lip sync artist. Here’s what made her ~*iconic*~ … Shea Couleé (a Chicago queen) had won four challenges this season (on RuPaul’s “Drag Race”), Sasha had one, and this was the first year they did the lip sync for the crown. Everyone thought Shea would win, and then Sasha did THIS.” Listen to the audience’s reaction at about 1:30. My daughter’s follow-up text: “It was truly a jaw-dropping moment, and she won the whole season because of this lip sync-off.” Just a little more: “We all went wild at home. Omg we were all so fully gagged 😂😂😂” By the way, “fully gagged” is a good thing. Hmm. Maybe Ms. Negron should have named her piece “Fully Gagged”?
For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to pieces by the ten contemporary composers named in this article, “Ten Young Composers Who Are Redefining Classical Music," HERE. Last week I listened to "Walk, Relay, Marathon, Sprint." the fifth movement of "Five Rackets for Trio Relay" by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, HERE (I couldn’t find the entire piece to listen to). This week, I’m up to the fourth name on the list, Ann Cleare, and I listened to her work “Dorchadas” (the Irish word for ‘darkness’), described by Mic as a multi-instrumentalist exploration of “the primal fear of the dark.” A few weeks ago I listened to “Mosaic” by Elliott Carter. I landed on that piece shortly after watching “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” supposedly “the worst film ever made.” That accolade prompted me to run a Google-search on “the worst piece of classical music ever written.” Of course, many articles popped up, but the one that caught my eye was a piece by blogger Jeffrey Shallit who wrote “one piece that I would nominate for the worst piece of classical music ever written (I added the underline): Elliott Carter’s ‘Mosaic’ for harp and chamber ensemble. It was absolutely unlistenable.” My review of “Mosaic” is HERE, and I ended up rating it a 2 out of 4 (a blue light saber, “okay it was”). To be honest, based on Mr. Shallit’s blog post (HERE), when I listened to “Mosaic,” I expected to hear something more like the cacophonous din of Cleare’s “Dorchadas.” At this point, I have listened to “Dorchadas” once, and I tried to follow along with the score as I listened (HERE). Before the piece begins, there are thirty-two pages of instructions -- including directions to play flat, to play sharp, to blow air, to be "very unstable," to "use breathing points as part of the colour," to remove reeds," to "change from one way of playing to another way of playing," and more. Here are some examples (click on the images to enlarge): I suppose I must give credit where credit is due, as the players were flat and sharp and unstable, and somehow they all made it through the piece together. I plan to listen to the piece once or twice more, so I'll see what comes of that. Stay tuned (LOL -- maybe I should say, "Stay a little flat" or "Stay a little sharp"). Okay, so I've listened to the piece again.
I don’t know where one might draw the line between music and sound effects, but this piece surely fits more into the latter category. If it’s meant to be a piece about one’s fear of the dark, then yes, it has creepy tones, clashes and clatter, though I suspect I could find movie soundtracks that are better at expressing a fear of the dark and the unknown than this piece. Some soundtracks might do so more with sound effects and others might do so more with music (or at least something closer to music); this piece, though, just didn’t do it for me. Hmm. A few years back I went to Busch Gardens’ “Howl-O-Scream” (in Williamsburg, Virginia). I remember going through a haunted attraction that was some sort of futuristic, dystopian work site with sirens, flashing warning lights, bared electrical wires and the like. This piece might work well there. Below on the left: The "long pause" at the end of "Dorchadas " (click the image to enlarge). TBH, that just seems goofy to me. Below on the right: My rating.
If you read my posts regularly about the pieces I listen to each week, then you know that I decided to listen to works by the ten composers from a list I found entitled “Ten Young Composers Who Are Redefining Classical Music," HERE. Last week I listened to “Dawn” by the second-named composer, Dobrinka Tabakova, and as I mentioned above, this week I listened to "Five Rackets for Trio Relay" by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, the third composer on the list.
One correction though: I have not listened to the complete work -- just the fifth (final?) movement entitled “Walk, Relay, Marathon, Sprint.” I haven’t been able to find the entire work on YouTube or on Spotify -- and that’s too bad because the fifth movement is quite a fun piece. I have to admit, though, I am still a bit confused by the title “Five Rackets for Trio Relay” because in the video I saw and listened to, HERE, there are six people on stage (seven if you count the page turner) -- including two at the piano. The video at the start states that the piece is performed by the Lawson Trio and students from Junior Royal Academy of Music, so at least I know there is a “trio” involved, and I assume they just doubled all the parts (although I’m not sure how that would work with the piano). The work begins with a sforzando chord played by all followed by some furtive triplets on the piano, and then the race is on -- or should I say “chase”? The piece definitely has the vibe of a chase scene from a spy thriller where one person -- perhaps an innocent man in a tale of mistaken identity -- is hoping to evade capture in a pursuit. There’s even a “ta da” at the end, so I imagine the pursuit in this “walk, relay, marathon, sprint” has a happy ending! I did enjoy this movement very much -- so I’ll have to keep looking for the rest of the piece. I hope the rest of it is as fun as this exhilarating jaunt! |
A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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