On Thanksgiving day, my wife and I drove up to (and back from) Reston, VA, and when we were in the northern Virginia area, we listened to a "Top 100" listener countdown on WETA. The countdown is HERE -- and spoiler alert: Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" scored quite an upset by knocking Beethoven's Choral Symphony out of its perennial top position. Of course, I didn't hear every work included on the list, so when I got home, I pulled up the inventory on my trusty Google machine and perused it. I was surprised to find three pieces I have never heard, and the highest ranking of them is #41, "The Bells of St. Geneviève" by Marin Marais. Not only have I not heard this piece before, but I've also never heard of Marin Marais. Therefore, I thought I'd give the piece a listen this week, and then I'll listen to the other two works in the coming weeks: #94, Symphony #1 by Vasily Kalinnikov, and #100, Symphony #3 in C Minor by Florence Price. So I've listened to Marais' work a few times now, and I have one word: Seriously?
Seriously -- "The Bells of St. Genevieve" nabbed the number 41 spot on the WETA's Classical Countdown of the "Top 100" listener favorites? Imma be honest -- there are several comments under the video I linked above where listeners said something like, "I've never heard this before." How did such an unfamiliar piece take the #41 spot? It beat out Mahler's Symphony Number 5, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 3, and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, "Eroica" -- just to name of the few 59 pieces it bested. As an aside, I'll add that I'm not a big Mahler fan myself, but the Adagietto from his Symphony Number 5 is both transcendentally sublime and sublimely transcendent. And Marais' work topped that? "The Bells of St. Genevieve" was written in 1723 for viol, violin and harpsichord with basso continuo. It can be considered a passacaglia (info HERE) or a chaconne (info HERE), with a repeating D, F, E bass line -- which repeats and repeats and repeats. As a matter of fact, if there were such a genre as Baroque Minimalism, then this piece would be a model if not the pinnacle of the style. Now don't get me wrong -- I didn't hate the piece -- it was okay. It had a haunting melody line and did offer some first-rate background music (LOL -- am I being too harsh) -- but #41 on a "Top 100" of celebrated classical music hits? In a word -- no.
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Imma be honest: I suffer from a severe case of PTSD: Post Trump Stress Disorder (I still can't understand why the man hasn't been arrested yet). As a result, I've cut back considerably on my viewing of news programs, and I have increased greatly my listening to classical music.
I listen on my computer (WQXR out of New York City), on my cellphone (with Spotify), on my radio (my local NPR station WVTF), and on my television (Music Choice channels). Sometimes these various media air some of my favorites and/or many of the conventional/popular pieces in the classical music canon, and I can hum along. Other times, they play pieces which simply serve as background music as I complete whatever it is I'm doing throughout the day. In cases like that, when an unfamiliar work is playing -- and something about the piece connects with me in some fundamental way -- I'll look up (if watching TV) or wait for info from the announcer (if listening to the radio or internet) to find out "What is that piece? Who wrote that?" It happened just yesterday when I was listening to a Music Choice channel on my TV. I heard a perfectly delightful piece that I was totally unfamiliar with, and I wondered, "What is that?" It turned out to be Joseph Haydn's Piano Concerto in F Major. I loved it. So why the info on Haydn's work here on my post about Boccherini's piano concerto? Because I've now listened to the Boccherini piece several times, and I have to say that nothing about it caused me to look up and wonder about the piece. Don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly pleasant piece, but nothing about it really called to me or connected with me. The concerto consists of three movements: I. Presto II. Adagio ma non troppo III. Moderator con variazione The first movement in particular sounds like it is best suited as the soundtrack for a Hallmark Christmas movie -- you know the plot, where a career woman is too busy for love, so she has to move to a small town where a handsome local bachelor teaches her about the true spirit of the holiday. It starts snowing and they kiss. There's also a dog. Also -- with apologies to Muzio Clementi -- much of the concerto sounds like what classical musicians might describe as a Clementi-esque quality (though Clementi's reputation for simple, repetitive and easy "white key" works is a bit unfair as he wrote some pieces that are much more exceptional than his sonatinas, the works for which he is most famous). So yeah, that's it on Boccherini's piano concerto. It's not up there with his famous minuet (HERE) which is, in a word, delightful. I think I'll go now and listen to the concerto by Haydn. See ya next week. ;-)
Two works by Richard Wagner -- the overtures to Rienzi and Tannhäuser -- are on my list of "Top 100" classical music favorites. Of course, there are many other pieces by Wagner that I enjoy as well, so for this week I thought I would find an orchestral work by him that I was not familiar with, and then listen to that; however, that task didn't turn out to be all that easy.
I found this list, HERE, of compositions by Wagner, and there wasn't a lot to pick from under the heading "Other Orchestral Works," so I opted to select one of his piano works instead, the "Grand Sonata in A Major." Two piano sonatas are on my "Top 100" list -- Beethoven's #8 and Mozart's #16 -- and others could have easily made the inventory -- for example, Beethoven's #14 and #23 -- so I thought why not give a sonata by Wagner a try? I mean, he wrote such grand pieces -- like Rienzi and Tannhäuser -- and just the title alone for the Grand Sonata in A Major sounded, well, grand. The sonata was composed in 1832, when Wagner was just 19 years old, and it is comprised of three movements:
And was the “Grand Sonata” grand? Well, yes, in just the way I imagine a “grand” sonata would be written by a nineteen-year-old student in an advanced composition class if challenged to compose a "grand" sonata. Of course, I’m not saying that Wagner was a student in an advanced composition class at the time he composed the piece nor that he was directed to complete such an assignment. I’m just saying the piece has all the hallmarks of a composition by such a student striving to make a work sound grandiose. There’s a great deal of pounding throughout the work, and there are plenty of plodding chords in the base. There seems to be an attempt to emulate revered composers’ works of the time – in this case, Beethoven (the first movement certainly calls to mind Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, though with a three note motif versus four) and Carl Maria von Weber (in the final movement). There are trills and flourishes galore (particularly in the finale) – and there are plenty of runs and broken chords a la Clementi. So again, was Wagner's Grand Sonata grand? As a piece composed by a 19-year-old, yes. Compared to the mature, resplendent and transcendent later works by Wagner? No.
Here was the plan for this week: I would run a search for a list of the greatest classical music composers, scroll down the list until I came to an unfamiliar name, and then pick a piece by that composer to listen to. Sure enough, I found a list of "The Top 100 Greatest Classical Composers" at RateYourMusic.com -- HERE. I clicked on the link and began to scroll down. I wasn't surprised at all to see J. S. Bach listed as number one followed by Beethoven as number two -- but then...
From an article in Wikipedia, I found this information: "Arvo Pärt (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrʋo ˈpært]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams." Okay, I'll look up "tintinnabuli" later, but for now, " From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams." I suppose that is plausible, but I have to be honest -- I listen to classical music on the radio all the time, and I've been to many concerts, and I've never even heard nor come across his name. And he's listed as the third "greatest classical composer" of all time as ranked by RateYourMusic.com? I'll listen to "Tabula Rasa" later this week and see what I think. Stay tuned. Pärt.So here's what I did"
When I listen to classical music throughout the day -- on TV (a Music Choice channel), on my cell phone (usually through Spotify), over the internet (most often WQXR out of New York City) or on the radio (generally WVTF) -- if a piece "speaks to me" or piques my interest in some way, I'll stop what I'm doing, listen a bit more intently, and think to myself, "What is that piece? Who composed that?" So after I listened to "Tabula Rasa' one time, I thought I'd run a little experiment: as I sat on the couch working a crossword puzzle, and my wife sat across the room scrolling through messages on her phone, I played Pärt's piece loud enough so that she could hear it. I wanted to see if -- in any way -- this piece would "speak" to her. I mean after all, Pärt was listed as the third greatest composer ever -- would this work pique her interest in such a way that she would stop what she was doing and look up to listen? Very scientific, huh? I hit the play button, continued my crossword puzzle, and waited to see what would happen. Nothing. Things continued status quo. Toward the end of the work, I said something like, "What do you think of this piece?" She kind of grunted out the equivalent of a "meh." "It's good background music," she said. True, that it is. I did enjoy the work, and it has an interesting structure, though I don't think it's a piece I'd go back to very often. "Tabula Rasa" was written in 1977, and it contains two movements, "Ludus" (Latin for "game") and "Silentium" ("silence"). It was composed as a double concerto for two solo violins, prepared piano (a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings), and chamber orchestra. The first movement begins with the two solo violins playing a double-f octave "A," and then after an eight beat pause, the string section of the orchestra plays a simple pulsating rhythm The two solo violins then offer a few bars of a simple melody before the work fades into a pause. The pattern is then repeated: the strings begin the pulsating rhythm, the solo violins develop their melodies are bit more, and then it all fades into a pause before the patten begins anew. Each time the added sequence plays for a few beats more than the previous statement. Things get interesting just after seven minutes into the piece when the piano strikes an ominous and very deep bass chord, and the ever-developing melodies of the violins get more frantic if not panicky. The mood calms at the start of the second movement, described in an article on Wikipedia as a "mensuration canon." Here's the description: "Pärt divides the instruments into three sections; solo violins, violin I and violin II, and viola and cello. Each pair, divided into melodic and tintinnabuli voices, begin on a central pitch, and move at a different rhythmic speeds. Pärt expands the music by adding one pitch above and below the central pitch of each pair in each successive section. Every time the solo violins reach their central pitch, “D,” the piano again plays a D minor chord and the contrabass plays an octave “D.” Once each of the sections reach their expanded octave range, they fade out of the texture. The solo violins, moving at the slowest rhythmic speed, reach their octave span in measure 130, and then begin a downward descent of a D minor four-octave scale. As the violins move down the scale, the lower voices return to the texture and assist in the downward motion, until the violins finish their scale, leaving solo viola, solo cello, and solo bass to continue the scale in their low register. The viola and the cello finish the scale, leaving only the contrabass, which continues to play until reaching “E,” or the second scale degree of the D minor scale. Pärt omits the final “D” of the scale, leaving the listener with four written bars of silence in which to resolve the piece." The complete article is HERE. In a section of the article labeled "Notable Performance," Wikipedia notes, "The first performance of Tabula Rasa in Tallinn 1977 was considered to be a major success. The composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, said about the performance: 'I was carried beyond. I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music...nobody wanted to start clapping.'" Well, I did enjoy the work, and I found the information about Pärt, his minimalist style of tintinnabuli (info HERE), and the structure of this piece to be fascinating. However, I can't say that I was "carried beyond" by this piece or that "I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music" -- not, say, like I feel when I listen to Mahler's Adagietto from his Symphony Number 5 -- but, like my wife said, it makes for decent background music.
Last week I was so hopeful that I had stumbled upon a new work to enjoy, to laud, but that was not to be. Nope, Rossini’s Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra, was certainly enjoyable, but it was also unremarkable. Interestingly enough, I even found information that suggested that Rossini didn’t even compose the piece. My post and that info is HERE.
**sigh** I truly thought that “Rossini” plus “bassoon concerto” would equal a fun and lively gem of a piece. I did enjoy the work, but it did not add up to what I was expecting. As a result, I thought, “Well, let me find some other possibility of a fun and quirky piece,” and at some point I ran a Google-serach for a clarinet concerto by Béla Bartók, but there is no such piece. I ran a couple of other searches, and at one point I saw “Finzi Clarinet Concerto.” Finzi? Who the hell is “Finzi”? I’d never heard of him. It turns out that “Finzi” referred to Gerald Finzi, a British composer best known for his choral works. However, he also wrote other large-scale compositions for orchestra and a couple of concertos – one of them for the clarinet. “Well,” I thought, “let’s give it a try.” I did some research on the piece, and I found this description of Finzi’s work: “The concerto breathes an air of fresh spontaneity, moving through baroque-inflected pastoralism, aching Elgarian echoes and lively folk-inspired melody.” (HERE) Whoa. That’s some pretty heavy stuff. LOL. When I listened I certainly did not immediately think, “baroque-inflected pastoralism,” though I did hear some “Elgarian echoes” and I definitely heard folk-inspired melodies – particularly in the third movement. However, what I first heard when I listened to the piece was a close parallel to the movie soundtracks of Bernard Herrmann, particularly those he scored for Alfred Hitchcock. I suppose that Finzi could have been influenced by the works of Bernard Herrmann. Finzi’s clarinet concerto premiered in 1949, and this article, HERE, states that Herrmann’s music could be “broken down into three time periods”: Early (1941-1954) Middle (1955-1965) Late (1966-1976) Obviously, Finzi was not influenced by Herrmann’s work with Alfred HItchcock (which began in 1955 with “The Trouble with Harry”), but I suppose it’s possible that Finzi was influenced by Herrman’s early works. Of course, Herrman could have just as easily been influenced by Finzi. To be honest, it’s probably more likely that both Finzi and Herrmann were influenced by the prevailing systems and standards of the day in classical music. Anyway, that’s what I heard when I listened to Finzi’s concerto, a work akin to works by Bernard Herrmann – though not as memorable as Herrmann’s works. I did enjoy Finzi’s concerto, it was enjoyable. It just wasn’t particularly memorable. |
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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