 | This Friday Blog and Podcast is an "Encore" of nos. 1 and 2 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages. Mobile followers can listen to the montage on our Pod-O-Matic Channel, and desktop users can simply use the embedded player found on this page. |
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On April 1st 2011, I began a personal journey
into the Blogosphere, sharing my thoughts on and passion for Classical Music.
This endeavor gave rise to I
Think You Will Love This Music Too, my personal platform and The Tuesday Blog,
a platform I have been sharing on the Classical Music Forum TalkClassical.
Part of this initiative has had me gather music to
illustrate some of my musings, and to date we have well over 200 music montages
and dozens of playlists containing individual MP3 files, all of them posted on
the Internet Archive for music lovers
to stream and download.
If you care to join me, let's begin our journey of musical discovery.
To begin our music exploration, I wanted
to propose a way to cut a swath through the Classical (and not-so-classical)
repertoire in order to sample as much of it as we can, and do so in a fairly
condensed amount of time. Think of it as thumbing through travel brochures at
the Travel Agent, and figuring out what kind of places you’d like to visit.
I have selected 26 works that last
about 5 minutes each. The time investment is going to be about two and a half
hours, but at the end, you will have sampled almost every genre and almost
every musical era. From that point, we can steer you to the right category of
like works which we’ve organized into anthological posts we will feature on a regular basis.
.
At least, that’s the plan.
Before we talk about our two playlists,
I think we need to take some time to look at the “basics”, and I mean here
primarily two specific contexts we should consider when it comes to Classical
Music.
Musical Eras
One way of classifying works of music
is to consider the time period when
they were composed, as many of the trends and fashions we associate with the
Western Classical Music “code” evolve through the years, and composers of a
specific period compose using those trends and fashions.
The historic periods we typically
associate with all art forms (literary, visual arts and music) share these
common period names. All we are doing here is provide a rough “time box” and
some reference information you might find useful.
The following chart proposes
very broad definitions of the eras and the composers associated with them. Many
composers are transitional, meaning
that they were trained and produced music in one era but were instrumental in
moving those traditions into the next. Examples of transitional composers
include Beethoven and Mahler, only to name those.
Sometimes, it is even appropriate to
further subdivide eras, as trends morphed significantly during the period to
create a bona fide movement. For
example, it is not uncommon to divide the Romantic era into the Early and Late Romantic, and to consider impressionism
or nationalism as specific trends.
Further, musical traditions – German, Italian, French, British, Russian and
Eastern – also have their own twists and wrinkles throughout these eras,
Musical Settings and Genres
Another way of organizing music is to
look at how they are used and performed.
Again, here is another chart that provides some markers you may find useful.
Of course, a work may “fit” into more
than one category (for example, ballet music qualifies as a stage work and can
also be orchestral) and some categories may naturally subdivide into more
specialized groups. This chart is highly subjective, but is really intended to
provide you with some context in order to find “like” works.
About the Playlists
I have listed here the works “in order of appearance”, with their titles and
composers. A later chart assigns them to the periods and categories we just
discussed. Most of the works proposed fall either in the Romantic or
Contemporary periods (you will notice that, though I was a bit sneaky in my
presentation, there aren’t any works from
the Classical period – something I will remedy with our first follow-on
installment later this month). I don’t think this was done on purpose, though it may tip my hand a
bit when it comes to my personal tastes.
As for the genre, most of the works
(almost 2-to-1) are orchestral in nature vs intimate, and many of them are
either vocal or stage works.
Some insight on the Music
Our “A” selection is commonly known as
“Albinoni’s Adagio” as it was long-attributed to the Italian Baroque master
Tomaso Albinoni.
It was actually composed by the 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni
biographer Remo Giazotto,
purportedly based on the discovery of a manuscript fragment by Albinoni. It
isn’t uncommon for composers of a later era to compose in an older style. For
instance, modern composers like Igor
Stravinsky, Béla Bartók and even
Heitor Villa-Lobos are known to have
written works in the baroque style – you might call it neo-baroque.
Letters “B” and “P” come from the Jazz
repertoire. Dave Brubeck was a
mostly self-taught, “play it by ear” jazz pianist who, later in life, decided
to study music “seriously”, even taking lessons from the French composer Darius Milhaud (who spent some time in
California after WWII). Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo” is half-jazz, half-tribute to Mozart, though his use of very peculiar
rhythms would have perplexed Amadeus. Juan
Tizol was a Puerto Rican trombonist and composer who also happens to have been
a member of Duke Ellington's band.
He’s credited with many jazz standards performed by Ellington (like Billy Strayhorn)
- "Caravan", "Pyramid" and my choice, "Perdido".
Ballet music makes the list under “C”
and “F”. Léo Delibes is one of the
more prolific French composers of the mid- to late Romantic – along with Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet). Among the works he’s most remembered for is the
famous “Flower Duet” from the opera Lakmé,
and his two ballets Sylvia and Coppélia. “C” is an excerpt from the
latter. Leonard Bernstein is a
triple (if not a quadruple) threat - conductor, music educator, and also a
great composer, both for the concert hall and the stage. His 1944 ballet Fancy Free (which is – I believe – the
inspiration for the movie musical “On the Town” which he also composed the
music for) has an interesting “dance competition” sequence which is sometimes
performed as “Three Dance Episodes”.
Because we brought up Massenet just
now, he’s implicated under “M” and “O”. Massenet is mostly remembered for his
many operas (including Manon), and
the two tracks I chose are excerpts from two of his other operas. Le Cid (after Corneille’s depiction of
the Spanish hero) has a beautiful tenor aria that is the perfect “O” for this
musical alphabet. The second track is a “transcription” by Japanese composer Akio Yashiro of the haunting
“Méditation” from the opera Thaïs,
usually set for solo violin but played here by the legendary Jean-Pierre Rampal
at the flute.
We have a few more transcriptions on
our list: Sir Malcolm Sargent
orchestrated the Nocturne-Andante
movement from Alexander Borodin’s
String Quartet no. 2 (“N”) and American bandmaster Victor Grabel transcribed the overture to Richard Wagner’s Rienzi
for wind band (“R”). Another American bandmaster, Donald Hunsberger of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, adapted Aaron Copland’s soothing Quiet City, featuring Wynton Marsalis as
solo trumpet (“Q”).
Speaking of opera overtures, we have
“D” and “G: Emil von Reznicek’s Donna Diana and Adolphe Adam’s Giralda.
As for opera arias, the stirring “Vissi d’arte” from Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca
(“V”), and “I Wants to Stay Here (a.k.a. I Loves You, Porgy)” from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (in a jazz adaptation
featuring Ella Fitzgerald, “I”).
On the solo instrument front, we have
one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s
Schuller Chorals for organ (Sleeper’s
Awake, or in German Wachet auf! ruft uns
die Stimme, thus “W”), one of the many Etudes-Tableaux
for piano by Sergey Rachmaninov
(“E”), and an organ adaptation of the Largo from George Frederic Handel’s Xerxes
(often played at weddings…, “X”). Our lone chamber work is Fritz Kreisler’s violin showpiece, “Love’s Sorrow” (Liebesleid, “L”).
Next, we have a pair of Canadian
compositions. Pierre Mercure’s Kaleidoscope (“K”) is one of the
mainstays of the Canadian orchestral repertoire, an avant-garde piece that has a very brisk and catchy tune. Equally
catchy is Hésitation, a short
orchestral bonbon by French-Canadian
violinist and arranger Maurice Durieux
(“H”). If you like bonbons, then you will certainly like Leroy Anderson’s delightful use of a now obsolete office appliance,
The Typewriter (“T”).
Closing off the “pure” orchestral
selections on our list, we have Gustav
Holst’s “Jupiter” (“J”) from his famous suite The Planets, and the short Scandinavian tone poem Saga Dream by Denmark’s Carl Nielsen (“S”).
And finally, some songs of different
kinds: Gustav Mahler’s ethereal
“Primal Light” (in German, Urlicht,
“U”), is featured both in his Second
symphony and as part of his song cycle Des
Knaben Wunderhorn, a collection of at times naïve and child-like songs
about youth and its wonders. Hector
Berlioz hits the right exotic-romantic mix in his Zaïde, and finally Lennon-McCratney’s
classic Yesterday (“Z” and “Y” respectively).
Listener's Guides
Listener Guide #1 - "Musical Alphabet" (Part I, A-M): As an ice-breaker, I thought I would start off by offering
you a taste of my collection under the theme of a "musical alphabet". This
first podcast is brought to you by the letters A through M. English commentary (ITYWLTMT Podcast #1- April 1, 2011).
Listener Guide #2 - "Musical Alphabet" (Part II, N-Z): Continuing our musical alphabet, we will explore the letters N to Z.. Read the English (ITYWLTMT Podcast @2 - April 7, 2011)
I think you will love this music too!
