On various occasions on this site, I’ve listened to secondary pieces by composers thought to be “one hit wonders” (like Pachelbel). However, in this case, I can’t even say that I think of César Cui as a “one hit wonder,” because I can’t even name a single piece by him. As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure how one pronounces his name. Is that a hard or soft “C” in “Cui”? And does the name rhyme with the French word “Oui”? Oh, I’ve always heard of César Cui. I learned a bit about him by reading the backs of album covers in my youth, certainly albums with classic hits by Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and/or Mussorgsky. The articles would always reference “the Five” (or "the Mighty Five"), a group of prominent 19th-century Russian composers who worked together to create a distinct national style of classical music – and Cui was one of them. Info on Wikipedia about “the Five” is HERE. That’s why I selected a piece by Cui this week. I figured it was about time. LOL. I typed his name into the YouTube search bar and picked at random the Suite No. 3 for orchestra “In modo populari,” Op. 43. The suite includes six movements: I. Allegro moderato II. Moderato III. Vivace IV. Moderato V. Allegretto VI. Vivace, ma non troppo Since this is the only piece by Cui that I’ve ever heard (excluding any piece I might have heard on the radio not realizing it was something by Cui), I have no idea how typical it is (or isn’t) compared to the rest of his work. I will say that if “the Five” set out “to create a distinct national style,” I suspect that this piece is not a typical Cui as it did not sound to me to have a “distinct national style” of Russian music from the late 19th century. On the other hand, one commenter under the YouTube video I linked above said this, “I suppose one of the main differences between Cui and the other four members of the Mighty Five was his own non-Russian background: his father was French while his mother was Lithuanian. I assume he was suitably encouraging towards the efforts of the others while, at the same time, seeming to exempt himself from the task of composing specifically nationalist works. I can only base this assumption on the handful of his compositions I’ve heard. ‘In Modo Populari’ is, I think, a delightfully appealing suite filled with memorable folk-like melodies and deft orchestration. Whether or not it sounds particularly Russian is neither here nor there to me. I really enjoyed its gentle, lyrical quality.” Based on those comments, perhaps this suite is, in fact, more typical of Cui’s work? While nothing stood out to me to make this piece particularly memorable, the YouTube commenter I quoted was accurate in his description of the piece – it is lyrical, folksy, and gentle. UPDATE:
Are you familiar with the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon? It's often referred to as the frequency illusion or recency bias (information is HERE), and it refers to any situation where something you recently learned about suddenly seems to appear everywhere -- and the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon just occurred to me this morning, exactly one week after publishing the post above. I was listening to WQXR out of New York this morning, and for the very first time I heard an announcer introduce a work by César Cui -- at least, it's the first time I was aware of hearing something by Cui -- and he pronounced the name as César "KWEE." So there it is. ;-) The work, by the way, was "Three Scherzos, Op. 82: No. 2 in F Major," and it was certainly very pleasant though nothing memorable or ear-catching (the sensory cousin to "eye-catching").
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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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