This Week's Music

Hello all,

Our music for this week is the Christmas Concerto by Archangelo Corelli. You may have expected me to send out the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, but the Messiah is not actually Christmas music. That famous chorus is actually an Easter composition. This concerto by Corelli, however, was written for the Christmas season and should be a Christmas-time staple for all of us.

It is interesting to note that this concerto broke from the tradition of Corelli’s era, which was predominantly based on small ensembles with four movements in a concerto. Corelli expanded the number of instruments involved, added two movements, and even threw in a very unusual 12/8 meter for the last movement. The movements rotate back and forth between relaxed adagios and active allegros, and Corelli never fails (in true violinist fashion) to feature plenty of solo lines for the first violinist. The movement to pay special attention to is the last movement, the Pastorale. Many critics consider this movement to be the most famous and beautiful of all Corelli’s compositions, and I am inclined to agree. It is one of the most serene and welcoming pieces I’ve played; it emanates gratitude and peace.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

Our music for today comes from Mozart’s opera Idomeneo.

(This link is just the Overture, but feel free to explore the rest of the opera through the adjoining links)

Despite it’s grand proportions, the opera is written in the surprisingly simple “sonata form.” If you’ve been receiving these emails for a while now, you may remember that we’ve come across this format several times before. The format is very straightforward: “Exposition – Development – Recapitulation.” Mozart utilizes sonata form not only with the melodies in the opera but also the tonal centers. For instance, you will recognize melodies from the opening scenes of the opera when you listen to the finale few scenes of the opera, but what you may not immediately realize is that Mozart also brings back the exact same tonal framework as well. The opening is in D Major; the development goes through A Major (the dominant key) and several other modulations and then returns to D Major. Listen for recurring themes, but be ready for Mozart to surprise you with an unexpected transition and make you wait a bit longer for the final recapitulation.

The story of Idomeneo comes from a Greek myth by the same name. It takes place on the Island of Crete, where Ilia, the daughter of Troy’s defeated King Priam, now lives. She is in love with Idamante, the son of the Cretan king Idomeneo, and is fiercely jealous of another of his lovers named Electra. Idomeneo goes to war and is heard to have been lost at sea; unbeknownst to the Cretans, he has been rescued by Neptune, the god of the sea, and has been washed up on a Cretan beach on the other side of the island. In a moment of overwhelmed thankfulness to Neptune, Idomeneo promises to sacrifice the first living creature he sees. Tragically, his son Idamante approaches him first. However, before Idomeneo can fulfill his vow and sacrifice his son, Ilia offers herself in Idamante’s place. The god Neptune is touched by this act of sacrificial love and bestows the kingdom of Crete upon Idamante and Ilia as king and queen.

Enjoy!

Our music for this week is the Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano by Beethoven, performed by the German violinist Augustin Hadelich and American pianist Charles Owen.

This fourth violin and piano sonata of Beethoven’s was actually the only one that did not receive scathing negative reviews from the public. I find that hard to believe, given the timeless melody that we all know from the famous “Spring” sonata. However, the sonata is unique in that it does not follow a conventional sonata layout. While most sonatas start with a moderate-tempo movement, move to a slow movement, and finish with some sort of Allegro or Presto, this sonata starts with a Presto, moves to a moderate-tempo movement that also includes some faster passages, and ends with yet another fast Allegro. Even more interesting is the inscription that Beethoven put inside the first page of the manuscript: “For the pianoforte with the accompaniment of the violin.” We have come to view these sonatas as violin compositions with the piano as an accompaniment, but Beethoven envisioned them as piano sonatas with the violin as the accompaniment. I think Hadelich does a masterful job of staying true to Beethoven’s wishes on this point. You may notice that the sound he uses is a softer, more mature sound that nicely complements the active piano part. He is not afraid to blend into the background (as much as that is possible in a duet) and has a remarkable ability to make even a melody line sound like a partnership rather than a solo. This is one of the marks of a truly top-notch musician – that they do not need to be the soloist for you to recognize their mastery.

Enjoy!

Our music this week is Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides” Overture.

My first memory of this piece comes from Kinhaven Institute of Music in rural Vermont, where I spent four weeks during the summer of 2005. I was a homesick ten-year-old, and I didn’t enjoy very much of the summer except for the few hours a week we spent in orchestra rehearsal playing the “Hebridies” overture.

The Hebrides Overture was written by a 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn in 1830 while he was touring Europe with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. After performing in London’s Wigmore Hall, he took a short trip to Scotland with his friend Karl. This small excursion turned out to be one of the most impactful events of his life. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the Scottish landscape and the richness of the Scottish cultural heritage. After lodging for a few nights on a peninsula in the Inner Hebrides islands off the western coast of Scotland, he conceived the melody of the overture you will hear. (Mendelssohn’s famous Scottish Symphony was also a result of this trip). Despite ample inspiration for the composition, Mendelssohn belabored over the work for over two years before he published it. He wrote to his sister that he was not happy with it at first because it did not give one enough of an impression of “oil and seagulls and dead fish.” Dead fish aside, the opening theme of the Hebrides overture remains a timeless and unforgettable fixture of classical music.

Listen for the sounds of the ocean at the beginning of the overture. They’re hard to miss. The rolling waves are reflected in the deep, undulating swells of the cellos and basses and the lonely seagulls are portrayed by the thinly textured violins. The woodwinds give us the haunting main melody and the brass join later on when Mendelssohn is depicting a storm on the ocean. For those of you who may have played this piece or others like it, it may be interesting to note that the structure of the work is simply sonata form. Listen for a development section that utilizes a secondary melody played by the cellos and bassoons, as well as a recapitulation of the original theme at the end in the strings.

Enjoy!

Hello all,

Our music for this week is Bohuslav Martinu’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, performed by the German virtuoso Julia Fischer. We still have one more week of Ravel before we move onto a new series, but I wanted to share this with you after hearing it for the first time this week.

This music is meant to stretch your conception of classical music into the more flexible dimensions that 20th century composers utilized. You will hear modern melodic elements in this work, as well as French Impressionist flavors, which happened to be a stylistic preference of Martinu. It is also interesting to note that Martinu incorporated a polyphonic style akin to that of the great Baroque composer J.S. Bach into this work. In addition, you will hear elements that mimic the war-like madness that is often found in compositions by Shostakovich and other composers of this era. This is largely due to the very personal experiences with war that Martinu and other Eastern European composers had; only two years before this work was written, he and his wife fled their Czech homeland and left Europe through France with one day to spare before German tanks overran their hometown.

The work was written in 1943 and premiered that year by the great Jewish violinist Mischa Elman with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Elman had apparently heard Martinu’s 1st Symphony performed a few years earlier and had been so impressed with it that he requested that Martinu write him a violin concerto to perform. Martinu, who was apparently a constantly cheerful and happy individual, gleefully agreed and asked Martinu to play a recital at his home so that he could understand the violinist’s stylistic and technical preferences. The strong element of lyricism that can be heard throughout the piece was an intentional addition by Martinu, who felt that Elman’s best asset as a violinist was his ability to display heartfelt lyricism.

At the time of its premier, it was thought to the only violin concerto of Martinu, but after the composer’s death an earlier concerto was found in his older manuscripts. It is strange to think that this violin concerto, composed at the exact same time as the much more well-known concerti of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, is almost completely unknown in today’s violin repertoire.

Enjoy!

T

P.S. A listening tip – you’ll find the main melody of the first movement around the 3-minute mark 🙂

We’ll be listening this week to Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night). The piece has become somewhat of an obsession for me. I listen to it nearly every day and show no signs of stopping. Some might say I need an intervention. But before you become too alarmed at my (admittedly shaky) mental state, you must listen this incredible piece.

I have always been a fan of Schoenberg. My teacher Eva Gruesser, who played as the first violinist of the famed Lark Quartet, released a masterful recording of Schoenberg’s string quartet (which I would highly recommend you listen to). Schoenberg bridges the gap between Romantic and Modern music like no other composer. Whereas Ravel and his explorations in Impressionism are clearly on the Romantic side of things and Shostakovich is undoubtedly a Modern era composer, Schoenberg can’t seem to decide. For instance, the passages around 4 and 7 minutes into the piece are shockingly modern while the melody at minute 17 could have been written by a teenage Felix Mendelssohn in 1860. A critic from the LA Philharmonic described it best: “Lush, dense, highly chromatic yet still just within the bounds of tonality, it can be regarded as a very late example of 19th century German Romanticism, a natural product of the trajectory from Beethoven and Schubert to Brahms, Wagner, and Strauss.”

Schoenberg wrote Verklarte Nacht in 1899 at the ripe old age of 25, perhaps reminiscient of a modern-day Mozart. It became his “jumping-off point” into a complex and fascinating exploration of atonal music and twelve-tone composition (commonly referred to as “serialism”) that would consume the rest of his life. Most of his colleagues and today’s historians are of the opinion that Schoenberg was a true genius; contemporaries wrote about his voracious intellect that was utterly impenetrable with even the most carefully prepared argument.

Verklärte Nacht is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel that was written in 1896. You may notice that the work does not have any movements, reflecting the structure of an actual poem and making Verklart Nacht one of the few legitimate tone poems in existence. In the poem, a man and a woman walk through the forest at night and speak of their unborn child, who, despite being conceived by another man, has their complete devotion. Over the course of the poem, the couple and the unborn child go through a transfiguration – from dark to light, sadness to joy, struggle to freedom. The poem reflects this by beginning with the following line – “Two people walk through a bare, cold grove” – and ending with “Two people walk through the lofty, bright night.” Schoenberg’s music reflects this change with incredible accuracy. He opens the work with brooding, dark tones in the cellos and violas and ends it in a violin solo that carries a sense of gratitude and grace. It can also be seen in the tonal transition from the key of D Minor to the key of D Major that occurs about halfway through the piece. This is powerful music. It is nuanced, invigorating, and impossibly dense; it is refined, forceful, and unflinchingly confident; it is relentlessly honest.

Many of the pieces of music I send out are chosen so that you can listen to them while you’re working or doing something else. This piece is not one of those. This is meant to be intently listened to, multiple times, with focused attention. It is simply too complex and too masterful a work of art to be relegated to the role of background music. (Save that for Handel and Haydn – I mean, come on, who likes them anyway?) 😉

Enjoy!

Hello all,

To finish our series on the music of Maurice Ravel, we’re listening to his most famous composition.

Ravel initially composed Bolero as part of a ballet that was commissioned to him by the Russian ballerina Ida Rubenstein, who had asked him to write an orchestral overture based on a set of piano suites by the baroque composer Isaac Albeniz. However, Ravel discovered that there were copyright restrictions on Albeniz’s work that prohibited him from doing so. Without informing Rubenstein, he went ahead and composed something of his own creation based on the Spanish bolero dance form. Rubenstein was delighted, as was the Paris audience at its world premiere. It immediately become Ravel’s best-loved composition.

You will notice that the piece is very simple. It is in the simplest key (C Major), contains the simplest dynamic structure (one long crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo), and features one simple melody that is based on – of all things – the snare drum. There are two primary melodies, the second of which incorporates some of the jazz elements that we’ve seen Ravel utilize on other occasions. Throughout the entire piece, the tension between the snare drum and the lyrical melody (usually in the woodwinds) increases with the dynamic buildup. Every time the melody comes around, a new element is added to the orchestra that increases the density and maturity of the sound. Ravel passes the melody through the flute, the clarinet, the oboe, the bassoon, the E-flat clarinet, the trumpet, the saxophone, the horns, the English horn, the trombone, the first violins, and numerous combinations of these instruments. I find this piece particularly interesting because it offers a unique perspective on the ways that a single instrument can affect the whole of an ensemble.

You will also notice that despite the steady increase in dynamic, the tempo never changes. Ravel happened to be extraordinarily particular about this aspect of the piece, and more than one conductor endured his wrath when they let the orchestra speed up the tempo near the end of the piece. Ravel’s reasoning was that he wanted the listener to focus on the unique change in texture that each instrument brought to the music. So, in the interest of avoiding Ravel’s anger, I would recommend that you listen carefully for the ways in which each cycle of the melody is different. What instruments are added? What do they bring to the table? How is this cycle different than the last?

Enjoy!

T