Something a little creepy...

Okay, I know that this is not up to my usual standards, but I wanted to find a piece of creepy, scary classical music with Halloween coming up, and here it is.

The piece is called "Central Park in the Dark" and was written in 1906 by the fascinating American composer Charles Ives.

I promise to post more about Ives and his influence on 20th century classical music at some point, but for now listen to the audio clip for the piece on the Amazon.com page and read the bio I linked to. He was greatly influenced by (you guessed it) Beethoven, and like him was considered quite radical at the time. He was also a great benefactor or other, younger musicians and composers and mysteriously stopped composing completely later in life, complaining to his wife that "nothing sounds right".

Maybe his piano was haunted.

So enjoy, and be a little spooked.

regards,

A final few thoughts on Beethoven - the Piano Sonatas

I know that I wrote about Beethoven last week, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about, and I'm still being subjected to a massive Beethoven overload on the radio. And, he has his own website too:

http://www.beethoven.com

Not bad for a dead white guy.

Over the course of his career, Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets and 9 symphonies. Why so many piano sonatas? There are a number of reasons, like:

- Most were written early in his career, to help make a name for himself. They were a way of showcasing his talents as a composer and pianist, and had an immediacy that other, multi-instrument forms couldn't offer. He could compose and perform them himself for potential patrons, music publishers, more established musicians, etc. As a virtuoso pianist, with a few sonatas in hand, Beethoven was a one man band.

- They were the ideal vehicle for trying out some of his most daring (some said outlandish) compositional ideas because he didn't need anyones cooperation. Many of those ideas were refined and reintroduced in the quartets and symphonies.

- The sonatas were a way of encouraging piano makers to increase the tonal and sonic range of the instrument and make them sturdier. Like the modern day rockers who frequently destroy guitars during a performance, Beethoven would frequently break strings and even hammers from playing the instrument so hard.

Here is a link to stream or download all of his sonatas:

http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/beethoven_piano_sonatas.html

The Moonlight (number 14) and the Hammerklavier (number 29) are probably the most famous. The Hammerklavier is actually more typical Beethoven, with the bold opening and unexpected changes in harmony.
Two other sonatas performed by Andreas Haefliger are available here:

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/haefliger-perspectives2cd1/

Later in life, he would move away from the sonatas mostly, but they would continue to provide a laboratory or proving ground for his many musical innovations.
So listen, enjoy and be uplifted.

regards,

Richard

Beethoven, Rock Star and Revolutionary

Breaking all the rules

The LSO (London Symphony Orchestra) is in town for the next few weeks, doing an all Beethoven program at Lincoln Center. So the two NYC classical stations have been doing all Beethoven all the time, including Beethoven trivia contests and essay competitions on "Why I'm the biggest Beethoven fan in New York". I kid you not. The city is in the grip of a Ludwig mania. Well, a small part of the city.

So why all the fuss, you ask? Because Beethoven's work radically altered the course of classical music. You can get the biographical stuff here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven

Prior to Beethoven, people listened to work by composers like Mozart and Haydn. The music was pretty, elegant, and cerebral, and was bound by lots of conventions and rules.

Beethoven's music broke all the rules. It was loud. It was long. It changed tempo a lot. He mixed musical metaphors, with a driving, thundering percussive movement instantly transitioning to a mournful, quiet oboe solo. His music was heroic, not intellectual. Sometimes he'd start pieces in a minor key instead of a major key. Musical compositions back then had two themes, or melodies - a primary theme and a counter theme. Beethoven, inventive guy that he was, often threw in four or five themes per work. Or only one, in the last movement. Stuff like this made peoples heads explode back then.

There's story that one of his student's yelled "You came in wrong!" at Beethoven when he was playing a new piece. Beethoven jumped up from the piano, boxed his ears and said "You idiot! Can't you see what I'm trying to do?".

There's more. He had wild hair. He dressed funny. He kept falling in love with women he couldn't have. He was a rock star.

He was also a tragic figure. He started to go deaf when he was just 28. He fell into a deep depression when he realized that his deafness would not only cut him off from the music that was the soul of his being, but that it would probably prevent him from ever marrying. He remained depressed for four years and contemplated suicide. But he eventually decided that rather than giving in, he could go on and use the amazing talent he'd been given. He went on to compose his finest works while completely deaf. He could hear the music in his head, and that's all he needed.

Here's the Beethoven collection on Magnatune:

It's all good, but to really hear what I'm talking about, listen to the Philharmonia Baroque's performance of the Symphony No 3 Eroica, particularly the 2nd and 3rd movements. Listen to the shifting moods, the counter-play between the instruments and feel the power of it as it sweeps you along to the conclusion. This was heavy metal to Haydn's folk tunes.

His work was what brought an end to the baroque period and introduced the romantic period of classical music. Music stopped just thinking and started feeling too.

He was one radical guy.

So listen, enjoy, and be uplifted.

Even back then, celebrity kids crashed and burned.

W.F. Bach was the oldest son and most musically gifted of Johann Sebastian Bach's children. As so often happens with the children of the rich and famous, his great talent was largely squandered by a lack of discipline and purpose in his life. Read all about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Friedemann_Bach

Fortunately, he did composing some stunningly beautiful music, including these flute duos recently recorded by the renowned flutists Laurel Zucker and Sara Andon. This CD contains the complete set of WFB's published flute duos, and as usual with magnatune.com you can stream the whole thing for free or download it for a pittance here:

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/zuckerandon-bach/

It's actually quite rare to hear these pieces performed because they are so technically demanding and difficult to play that it's hard to find two flutists willing to tackle the challenge together. But they are lovely, and his father's love for counterpoint and a festive melodic line shines through in the work of the son. The performance, on two silver Brannen Flutes, is not only flawless in terms of technique, but also a beautiful and poetic interpretation of the music.

So listen, enjoy, and be uplifted.

Shostakovich, a little crazy, but still one of the great ones.

If you listen to classical music radio as much as I have been recently (I'm doing some interior painting projects), you're well aware that this week marked the centennial of Demetri Shostakovitch's birth on September 25, 1906 in what was then St. Petersburg, Russia.

A neoclassical composer of huge emotional power and range, he lived through the Stalinist purges and the siege of Leningrad by the Germans. He was also banned several times by the Soviet censors, and at one point was so convinced that the KGB was going to arrest him that he slept on the stoop of his apartment building so that when they came to get him his family wouldn't be molested. And he wasn't so much crazy as obsessive. He was, according to his daughter, a neat freak who used to compulsively synchronize the clocks in their apartment and send himself cards in the mail to see how long it would take them to get delivered. He was also a little obsessed with death and his own mortality, but having lived thorough the Stalinist "great terror" when many of his friends and relatives were either killed or imprisoned, perhaps it's understandable.

His work was denounced twice by the communist party, and was largely banned from public performance for several years on each occasion. Why, you ask, did they ban his music? For the sin of being "formalist" and "political", which means to say that his work had such a majestic feel to it that the Soviets censors worried that it made them look like the small minded idiots that they were. He also had a habit of taking little melodic lines from other banned composers like Mahler and slipping them into his work just to see if the censors were paying attention.

He was kind of a geeky looking little guy (he's the one on the left in the photo), but his music showed an inner life and passion that is truly striking. And his courage in not renouncing his own music to get off the list of banned composers and to eliminate the risk of his own arrest and imprisonment says a lot about his character and devotion to the integrity of his music.

I've added two CD's to the Amazon links section of the lens that I'd recommend. One has his famous 5th and less well known 9th symphonies, and the other has a selection of his surprisingly good jazz compositions. You can hear audio clips of the pieces at amazon.

Overall, he's an inspiring composer, and and inspiration in his dedication to artistic freedom in an oppressive society.

Put this one on your Liszt.

I've been meaning to comment on the 19th century Hungarian piano virtuoso and composer for some time, so here we go.

Most of you have probably heard of Franz Liszt. He was born in 1811 and died in 1896. His parents were Hungarian and Austrian, and his father played piano and cello at the royal Hungarian court, and started teaching his son music at age six. His immense talent was immediately noticed and he was sent, with his parents to Paris and Vienna for further musical study by the Hungarian court. He studied piano under Carl Czerny, who took lessons from Beethoven, and the Beethoven influence shows up clearly in his work.

He is considered quite likely the finest pianist who ever lived, something that is a bit hard for us to judge today since no recordings of his performances survive. His playing was renowned for its' showmanship and flamboyance.

His personal life was fairly unremarkable, other than the fact that he fell in love with a Princess and they planned to marry in 1860. However, she had a civil divorce from an earlier marriage that the Catholic Church wouldn't annul, and the marriage was called off. They remained friends, and he reportedly remained in love with her for the rest of his life. Perhaps that accounts for the stormy, highly emotional character of his compositions, and the many love songs he wrote. His work was highly influential on other Romantic period composers, many of whom were regular attendees at this piano recitals in the capitals of Europe.

Here is a sampling of three fine Liszt pieces that you can listen to for free, or download at low cost from magnatune.com:

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/groh-Liszt/

Enjoy.

The Red Priest's Most Famous Piece

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in 1678 in Venice, to a poor family, and was one of the most interesting and innovative composers of the baroque period. His father was a barber who later became a professional violinist. He learned to play the violin from his father, and would become famous in his own time as a virtuoso violinist. Because his family could not afford a secular education for him, Vivaldi entered seminary and was ordained in 1703 and nicknamed Il Prete Rosso, the red priest due to his red hair. While he assumed the duties of a priest, his heart was really in his music, and he would frequently interrupt saying mass to jot down a melody running through his head before he forgot it. Needless to say, this did not endear him to parishioners or the Church hierarchy, and he withdrew from the priesthood in 1706.

He went on to find a job teaching music and violin at an orphanage for girls born to members of the upper class who fathered children with their mistresses that they couldn't publicly acknowledge but still wanted to support. Many of the hundreds of compositions that survive of Vivaldi were originally written as "etudes" or student exercise pieces.

His work now is considered highly innovative for the baroque period, giving new brightness and energy to the concerto by his use of harmonic contrasts. In addition to his student pieces, he wrote a great deal of sacred music for the Church, and music for the general public.

All of this is an introduction to a new performance of his most famous piece, Le Quattro Stagioni (the Four Seasons), available for free streaming and low cost download from the folks at magnatune.com:

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/abaroque-seasons/

The performance is by the American Baroque chamber music group, and it is a fine, subtle and nuanced performance. See:

http://magnatune.com/artists/american_baroque

The piece is an example of a "tone poem" in that it uses music to describe something. Vivaldi actually wrote four sonnets to be read with the piece, available in the original Italian and English here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Seasons_(Vivaldi)

Spring is bright and lively, conveying the earth awakening. Summer starts out placid, then ends with a thunderstorm. Fall is bright and elegant, reflecting the harvest. Winter is dark, moody and brooding. It's a remarkable piece, and a great example of music as art.

So stream, listen, and enjoy.

9/11 Commemorated in Music

Today I'd like to comment on a piece by the modern American composer John Adams titled "On the Transmigration of Souls".

The piece was commissioned by the NY Philharmonic to commemorate the 2001 attacks that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The title refers to the belief, common in many cultures and religions, that at death the soul moves into another living form, or is in some sense indestructible and capable of rebirth. See:

http://www.newyorkphilharmonic.org/adams/

for the background and an interview with Adams. His minimalist style is well suited to this piece. Every element plays a critical part in portraying the disaster. There are no excesses or ornamenations here.

In the interests of full disclosure, this is personal for me. I was at work in Manhattan that morning, about a mile north of the WTC. I watched the towers come down, and spent the next month or so smelling the smoke and the odor of burnt flesh as the fires lingered in the rubble. It was worse than what you saw on the news. Much worse.

The piece starts out with street noise, then a reader obsessively repeats the word "Missing" while others read the names of the victims and quotes taken from the hundreds of "missing person" posters that went up all over Manhattan in the days following the attack. A chorus and full orchestration fill out the piece, with some ethereal harp solos standing out. There are also quotes from some of the descriptions of the dead that were given by friends and loved ones. Most of the text is available here:

http://www.npr.org/programs/pt/features/adams_pulitzer.html

The piece, only 25 minutes long, has two climatic passages (one for each tower falling) with a mournful trumpet, bells and percussion focused movement that seems to represent the transition of those souls to their next stage of existence. The choir continues to sing the remembrances of the dead. The piece ultimately fades back to street noise, leaving us to contemplate the enormity of what happened that day.

It is chaotic, powerful and gripping in the way that witnessing a disaster is gripping.

Just listening to this piece is a very emotional experience for me. It brings back the fear and anger that I felt in the days and weeks after the attack. But it's also highly cathartic.

Go to Amazon and buy the CD. It's part of your musical heritage, and certainly the most moving and cathartic piece of music that I've ever heard.

Renaissance music - it's not just for renfair groupies

A couple of mornings ago, I was out running very early and my local NPR station (WNYC) was still doing their overnight classical programing. I like listening then because the hosts have a lot of freedom to play non-mainstream stuff, since the audience is so small.

The theme that morning was renaissance era music, written approximately between 1400 and 1600, and I was struck by the way the simplicity of the music allowed its' beauty to shine through so clearly.

The music and art of the middle ages in the western world was mostly religious or liturgical, and so was limited in many ways. The renaissance generally was a time when people's views of themselves, the earth and the cosmos were changing. The feudal system gave way to modern states. There was renewed interest in classical learning (e.g. the work of Greek scholars and writers). It was a time of great intellectual forment.

The music of the renaissance reflected all of this by it's expansion from a limited number of medieval forms, the introduction of new instruments and above all a willingness to experiment and try new things, like composing songs that captured some aspect of the human experience, rather than being purely spiritual or religious.

Like all aspects of culture, classical music evolves over time, with new musical forms and conventions taking shape, building on what was done before. The next period, the baroque, is characterized by music that tends to be more ornate and sophisticated, but perhaps less heartfelt and grounded than renaissance music.

Composers were limited by the musical conventions of their times. The reason that you'll never hear a symphony by J.S. Bach is that they didn't exist until long after his death. While it's a shame that we'll never have a Bach symphony, his work expanded on what came before and laid part of the foundation for what came later. So to really appreciate any particular piece, you have to think of it as part of a historical continuum.

So go here, and stream a terrific compilation of renaissance music from the folks at magnatune

http://magnatune.com/genres/m3u/renaissance.m3u

And just let it play in background while you do other things. There is some truly lovely, moving music here.

Next week, I'm going to write on something very modern - a work that was composed to commemorate the attack on the World Trade Center, and the aftermath in NYC.