A Musical Gift for the Children on Your List

Last Saturday I was in the kitchen, making a huge batch of homemade French toast (I wrap and freeze it and the kids have it for breakfast before school) and had the radio on, tuned to our local commercial classical music station, WQXR. They were playing a children's piece by the French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns called The Carnival of the Animals. It's a wonderful, somewhat whimsical piece of 14 short movements, each of which depicts a different animal, such as a donkey, an elephant, fish, Kangaroos,  etc. It's great fun, and a terrific way to introduce children to classical music. The composer wouldn't allow it to be played publicly until after his death, worried that it's lowbrow nature would hurt his reputation as a serious composer.

So imagine my surprise, nay shock, when my six year old son walked into the kitchen and cried out "Dad, that's the carnival of the animals!". As we listened, he was able to identify what animal was the subject of each movement too. It turns out that his first grade music teacher showed a video about the piece and he loved it. As you might guess, I have classical music playing at home frequently, mostly for my benefit but also because I want our children exposed to it as they grow up. My father did the same thing for me, and I'm quite grateful that he did.

So I went to amazon.com and ordered this video. We'll see if it gets here in time for Christmas, and if not I'll just give it to the kids when it arrives. My experience with amazon has been that when they say 4-6 weeks for delivery it means that they have to obtain it from a distributor and that I often get it within a week or two. There's also this CD and book combination that looks very nice and is in stock.

So consider the gift of classical music for the kids on your holiday gift list. It's a wonderful thing to do that the kids will also really enjoy.

And listen to it with them, and enjoy.

Commercial Free, No Charge, High Def Streaming Classical Music

I'm doing a quicky post just to share something that I recently got working and am really enjoying. My local public radio station, which does news and talk during the day and classical music at night, recently started a 24 hour classical music streaming service called WNYC2. Go to that webpage and click on the "Listen to WNYC2 24/7" link to try it. I tried it a couple of weeks ago and couldn't get it to work one of my computers. It turns out that the link downloads a .PLS file that Windows Media Player (WMP) doesn't recognize.

Being an IT person, this bugged me, so I did some research and found out that .PLS files are Shoutcast Playlist files, and lots of other audio programs do play them. If you have iTunes installed, you're in business. But I don't use iTunes and it seemed silly to install it just to listen to streaming audio, so I found an open license utility that will parse the PLS file into something else that WMP does handle. You can read about and use the download link here.

The download includes an installer and the utility works like a charm. There's nothing to run either. After it's installed, anytime you download a PLS file it will just start playing in WMP.

If you're listening and want to find out the name of the piece, go to the webpage linked above and click on the "Now Playing" link on the left side of the page and a little window will open and show you the title, composer, start time and end time of the piece, and the principle musicians. Note that the window does not refresh itself automatically - you have to click the link again to get the current information if the piece playing has changed.

As for the music, what I've heard so far is a very nice mix of standard repertoire and some newer, more avant guard stuff that has been very interesting. And it's free, and commercial free too.

So listen, enjoy, and expand your musical horizons a bit.

Something Festive, for a Change

I thought I'd try to find some music that would offset the downbeat tone of the music discussed in my last two posts, something that would also help people get in the mood for the holidays. And I thought it would be nice if I could find something on magnatune so that everyone could stream it for free and listen to it at their computers while they do other things.

I found Handel - Six Organ Concertos. Magnatune seems to have eliminated the voice overs at the end of each piece when you stream their music, a nice improvement.

German by birth, Handel lived in England for most of his life. He worked in the late Baroque period, was a virtuoso organist, and is of course, still widely performed today. Born in 1685, his father made him go to law school (how mean was that?), which he dropped out of to pursue his musical studies as soon as his father died. He studied in Italy for a time, then moved to England in 1712, became a naturalised British subject and remained there for the rest of his life. He never married, was very private about his personal life and did quite well financially, leaving a large estate mostly to charity.

There's something about Handel's music that I always associate with the holidays and festive occasions. His Messiah is the quintessential choral Christmas music, and his Water Music, written to be performed on a barge on the River Thames for a party given by King George the first is wonderful background music for any happy social gathering.

These organ concertos, while not written specifically as sacred music, retain a strong liturgical feel to them, and bring to mind for me the wonder and joy of the holiday that is approaching. They are by turns exuberant and soulful, just like Christmas.

So Listen, enjoy and be uplifted.

Another Mournful Musical Moment

I really didn't mean to post on two mournful works in a row, but this one is really worth blogging about. I recently heard a broadcast of a live performance from Carnegie Hall of a classical work by popular music icon Paul McCartney. The piece is called Ecce Cor Meum which is Latin for Behold My Heart. You can download an interview with Sir Paul about the piece here. Most of it was written after he lost his wife Linda to cancer in 1998. A recording of an earlier performance is available on CD at Amazon. The Amazon page will let you play the opening clips of each of the five movements. I liked it enough to order the CD, which hopefully will come today.

It's not his first classical music composition, but it is by far his most ambitious. Primarily a choral work (for children's choir and soprano), it was composed over a period of eight years, and was also a learning experience for Sir Paul. In early versions of the work, for example, he expected the vocalists to be able to sing full out for the entire duration of the piece, and later cut it back when he learned that what he had composed wasn't possible to perform.

While it's not what you'd call a sophisticated piece of music, it has many moments that are quite touching and beautiful. It recalls a requiem and has a strong liturgical character as well. It's also quite effective in conveying the message that love can endure when life does not, and that McCartney has poured out his grief via the music, and in some way resolved it.

McCartney is following the same career pattern that I mentioned in last weeks post about Samuel Barber, in that he had an established career in popular music and then later started composing classical music. All in all, it's a fine piece of music, and an interesting milestone in a remarkable musical career.

So listen, reflect and enjoy.

The World's Saddest Music

At least that's what responders to a poll by the BBC called it. I'm refering to the 20th century American composer Samuel Barber's piece Adagio for Strings.  I've always loved his work, and this is really his signature piece.  He also wrote a major piano sonata, three operas and numerous songs, and was a very talented singer.  He was typical of 20th century American composers in that he had one foot in the real world of popular and quasi classical music and one foot in the avant guard world of neoclassical composition.

Written in 1936, it was originally part of the larger String Quartet No.1 Op. 11 and was composed in the arch form that uses the repetition in reverse order of musical elements to create a symmetrical whole.

It's pretty mournful stuff, and was played at the funerals of both FDR and JFK.  But there is also a pensive, prayerful and reflective quality that give it great beauty.  Here's a place to download the first third or so (about 7 minutes) of the piece.

So listen, reflect and enjoy.

regards,

Richard

Sacred Music for the Latin Mass

This is one of those good news, bad news classical music posts.

The good news is that one of the most beautiful and profound pieces of sacred music ever written is now available on magnatune. And given the number of Catholic friends I have who read this blog, it's a wonderful way to acquaint yourself with a priceless piece of your liturgical heritage. It's Bach's Mass in B Minor for the traditional Latin Mass on two CD's, or two downloads. It's on two CD's because it's very long - about two hours. It's so long that when it's performed in Church, usually only one or two movements are played.

It may be long, but there are few pieces of sacred music that rival it in beauty, power and scope. It also took Bach 25 years to write. He composed the first section, the Gloria, in 1724 and didn't finish the whole thing until 1749, a year before his death. Perhaps the good Lord was waiting for him to finish.

So, what's the bad news here, you no doubt are wondering? It's not really bad news, but more of a historical conundrum. Bach was a Lutheran, not a Catholic, and there's been considerable speculation as to why he wrote it without a specific commission from the Catholic church. It turns out though that the 18th century Lutherans often used parts of the latin mass (the Kyrie and the Gloria) as forms of choral music that the whole congregation would sing. This no doubt also made Catholic converts to Lutheranism feel more at home with the liturgy, just as the modern Episcopal liturgy is almost identical to the modern english Catholic mass.

So listen, enjoy and be uplifted.

Richard