"On the Beautiful Blue Danube"

The piece in question today can be found at around 4:10, though the entire cartoon is wonderful (and a particularly good parody of Fantasia, if I do say so myself).  The melody of "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" is perfectly suited to the cartoon world, and - if I may be so bold - I don't think that Johann Strauss II would mind that.  Strauss did not seem to have dreams of bold artistic statements, but instead was content writing popular music that got people up and dancing.  A 19th-century Katy Perry (or Dr. Luke, for consistency's sake) to Richard Wagner's Radiohead, to complete the too-far-gone metaphor.

Distressingly, not the largest his mustache ever was.

Johann Strauss II was born on October 25, 1825 in St. Ulrich, Austria.  His father, Johann Strauss I (go figure) was a composer, but Strauss Sr. was decidedly not keen on his son becoming a musician - either due to worries of rivalry or a wish to keep his progeny away from the grueling lifestyle.  Either way, Jr. was kept far away from music: at any rate, until Sr. ran off with his mistress, leaving the rest of the Strauss family to fend for themselves (and Johann Jr. to finally learn his craft).  Because Papa Strauss was the big man around Vienna, Johann had a hard time convincing venues to let him perform - apparently, word had gotten round that music, for Jr., was entirely verboten.  He did finally manage to book the Dommayer's Casino, and debuted there in 1844.

Things were looking up for a while, until the Revolution of 1848, in which Johann (being a Twenty-Something Who Wants to Change the World) took the side of the revolutionaries.  Papa Strauss was staunchly pro-monarchy, and the monarchs took a long time to fall in love with Strauss Jr. (an honorary title created for Johann Sr. was denied from his son for over twenty years after Sr.'s death, to name just one indignity).  Johann Sr. died in 1849, at which point Jr. was finally able to assert his place in Viennese musical culture; and assert himself he did.

Some composers, like Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Wagner, look for new ways to express large artistic ideas, and the works they created stand testament to their forward-thinking artistic vision.  Not so with Strauss.  He wrote - for the most part - dance music.  And he did it very well.  Upon making a name for himself, he enjoyed a near-constant level of success that lasted the rest of his life.  He toured in Russia and the United States, and was also well-liked by composers of his day.  Richard Wagner himself mentioned that he enjoyed his waltzes, and Richard Strauss (no relation, of course) paid homage to him in several waltzes composed for his opera Rosenkavalier.  Of course, Strauss did not simply write waltzes and other dance-hall music; he also composed several operettas (in a nutshell: shorter, decidedly less serious operas).  Though these are not well-known today, I hold that Rodgers and Hammerstein got a lot of inspiration from them (seriously: there are pieces in Der Zigeunerbaron that sound like Carousel or The Sound of Music, just in German).  Strauss died in 1899 at 73, after a very successful - if not ground-breaking - career, a well-loved composer.

If done correctly, your waltz should be clearly outlined.

Before plunging into The Blue Danube (sorry, not sorry), I feel it only appropriate to spend some time with the waltz itself.  As a dance, it is not a particularly old form - a folk dance called the "Walzer" was first mentioned around 1750, which explains why Bach never wrote waltzes (being quite dead by then).  The waltz was introduced to Viennese courts thirty years later or so, and was popular enough to be considered quite dangerous by the older courtiers.  Almost every 'great' composer from the time of the waltz's birth on wrote them (for instance, Beethoven has twelve of them) - if nothing else, dance-hall music was a quick way to make money.  By the middle of the 19th century, however, composers like Chopin were writing waltzes meant to be performed and listened to.  Johannes Brahms was another 'art-waltz' composer (and close friend of Johann): Strauss dedicated his "Seid umschlungen, Millionen!" waltz to him (the title of which comes from the poem set by Beethoven as Ode to Joy.  And it all comes 'round again).  Strauss, however, was the most famous of Waltz Kings (a title given by courts to particularly well-loved waltz composers).

The "Blue Danube" waltz (or, as it is wordily-known in German, An der schönen blauen Donau) was composed in 1866 and premiered the next February.  It was not a runaway hit at first, and during the revision process, words were added (and then subtracted).  Finally, at the 1867 World's Fair, it was premiered in its finalized form to great acclaim.  To call it a single waltz is a bit of a misnomer; it is really a collection of ten small, thematically similar waltzes strung together.  However, as a whole, it proved to be extraordinarily successful.  It has become somewhat of an unofficial national anthem for Austria, and was used quite notably in the docking scene in - of course - 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also featured Mr. Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra.  For someone who never purported to be making art music, Johann Strauss sure rubbed shoulders with the greats.  If there's a moral here, it's that not every artist has to be preoccupied with High Art - there's quite a lot of dignity in the enjoyable.  There's room for the Katy Perrys of the world right up with the Radioheads, and I think that's a most excellent thing.

Further Listening:

Don't believe me that Strauss operetta could be Rodgers and Hammerstein in German?  Try "Wer uns getraut..." from Der Zigeunerbaron, performed by Carmen Monarcha and Morschi Franz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-_F2D486k8&feature=related

Want to see what the 'high-art' form of the waltz became?  Try "Valse Brilliant #1" by Chopin, performed by Lang Lang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viHg_kIWUeI

Interested in hearing how Beethoven paid the bills?  Try Contredanses 3-7 (and check out the original theme from the Eroica symphony at 1:35!) performed by the Russian National Orchestra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfWyXW6ETlI

The Four Seasons

Another day, another vindication.  I had been asked to do this post, because it's true that these pieces are everywhere.  The first of these is featured in almost every lazy film where people are meant to look snooty while sipping tea out in their formal gardens while being served by extravagantly mustachioed butlers.  The second has been hardly spared, either, though I will say that it was the first one that was most recently featured in a commercial touting colon health.  What "Spring" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons has to do with the lower intestine is beyond me, but I suppose any publicity is good 250 years post mortem.

Vivaldi in a nutshell.  Though the red robe is cheating.

Antonio Vivaldi was born during an earthquake in Venice in the year 1678.  Well, perhaps not during the earthquake itself, but there was certainly one in the city that day.  He was the contemporary of both Handel and Bach, and I suppose one could say he represents Italy in terms of great Baroque composers.  His father was a violinist and perhaps a composer, and though not much is known for certain about Antonio's chilhood, one can safely assume that he was taught much of what he knew by his father.  Antonio was a student of violin as well as composition - childhood respiratory illnesses kept him away from woodwinds, as well as other childhood activities, I'm sure.  He began studying for the priesthood at 15, and was ordained at 25.  His nickname, "The Red Priest," is the fusing of his original vocation as well as a nod to his red hair.  That's right.  Antonio Vivaldi was a ginger.

At 25, he also began a long working relationship with the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, an orphanage that was oddly forward-thinking.  There were five of these orphanages in Venice at the time, and while the boys were eventually trained for a trade, the girls were educated in music - and this was a HUGE deal, as women were generally not allowed to see music as anything more than a hobby.  The Pietà featured a choir and orchestra entirely comprised of women and girls, and they were, from all accounts, incredible.  Vivaldi began there as a violin teacher, and spent many years working up the ranks at the orphanage until in 1716, he was named the music director of the entire organization.

In 1705, when Vivaldi was 27, his first collection of compositions was published.  These were mostly sonatas and other smaller forms of music, though he was about to embark on a long and decidedly fruitful career as an opera composer.  Italy (both at the time, and, arguably, for about two hundred years afterward) was the center of opera - still a somewhat new art form at the time - and in 1713, Vivaldi jumped on the bandwagon with Ottone in villa.  In his lifetime, he composed at least 50 and as many as 95 operas, and the fact that attention hasn't been paid to them is really quite surprising.  Between the late 1710s and 1725, he moved around Italy, living in Mantua, Rome, and Milan, but by 1725 - the year The Four Seasons was premiered - he was back in Venice.  He was wildly successful for a time, but by his middle age, he was considered out of style and moved to Vienna to try and make a fresh start.  It didn't work out, unfortunately, and he died there at the age of 63, all but penniless.  To rub salt in that indignity, Vivaldi was never given the 19th-century renaissance that Handel and Bach both (posthumously, of course) enjoyed.  It wasn't until the 1920s that interest in Vivaldi was rekindled - and even now, he is really only known for one work, though his catalogue is gigantic.  But yes - enough lamenting his lack of acknowledgement.  On to The Four Seasons.

Ha.  Ha ha.  So clever it hurts sometimes.

The Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos composed in 1723, and published in 1725 as the first third of a set of twelve.  The concerto itself is an interesting genre of music.  Older than the symphony, it first appeared in the 17th century.  The word "concerto" is thought to come from Italian words meaning "together" and "competition," which makes sense - in the concerto (and its slightly earlier counterpart, the concerto grosso, which simply translates to "big concerto"), musical material is passed between a large ensemble and a small ensemble (in the grosso) or a soloist.  It is usually in three movements (opposed to the generally four-movement symphony), and by Vivaldi's time and afterward, it was used to highlight a solo instrument.  Vivaldi was one of the early masters of the concerto, and it was his work that dictated the form of the style for many years after his time.

Beyond being a set of four elegant concertos, The Four Seasons may be one of the earliest examples of program music.  Composers have tried for hundreds of years to evoke specific emotions or even concrete images with music.  In vocal pieces, this is called word painting - an example being a rising melody line on words that imply height, such as 'mountain' or 'sky.'  Program music takes this idea further by giving an entire narrative to instrumental music.  The Four Seasons were written to accompany four sonnets that may have been written by Vivaldi himself, and if they were, then they are some of the earliest examples of programs being prescribed to instrumental pieces.  Vivaldi liked the music he composed for the set so much that he transplanted the opening of the "Spring" concerto to the beginning of his pastoral opera Dorilla in Tempe.  And today, well... it's been transplanted to people trying to make colon health fancy.  Not exactly the highest of praise, I suppose, but at least it's something.

Further listening:

Didn't think Baroque composers could ever do anything that wasn't elegant and a bit snooty (to our ears, at least)?  Try "Le chaos" from Les élémens by Jean-Féry Rebel (composed in 1737): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnlaCenlNHk

Want to hear Spring in a whole new light (while being inexplicably stared at by a disrobing man - hey, it's Youtube)?  Try "Dell'aura al sussurar" from Dorilla in Tempe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcgpYWpguRs

Want living proof that you don't have to be aloof, and that you can even just about rip the notes out of the air with your teeth, while singing Baroque arias?  Try "Agitata da due venti" from Griselda, performed by Cecilia Bartoli: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rISjBGOtHhs

BONUS:  My favorite example of word painting ever (by a man who'd had just about enough of it, thank you very much).  "Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti" by Claudio Monteverdi, sung by Philippe Jaroussky and Nuria Rial.  (Find lyrics and a translation for this one - Claudio was really being a jerk about it, and it's kind of hilarious.)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq49rymjvNg&feature=related

Canon in D

Before we get to today's post, a slight vindication for me, and the purpose of this blog: I was watching television last night, and there was a new commercial for that toilet cleaner with Scrubbing Bubbles. Y'know what the music behind it was? That's right. Also Sprach Zarathustra. So now poor old Strauss has to deal with toilet bowls, too.

But yes. Back to today's piece. This composer had the distinct bad luck of following Bach's trajectory from relative anonymity to surprise success, except he predated Bach by 30 years (and is, in fact, the earliest composer featured on Where'd I Hear That thus far! It's the little things, really) and no one cares about any of his other works. However, the one piece he is remembered for has the somewhat dubious honor of, in some ways, representing Baroque music as a whole. That's right, folks - Pachelbel's Canon in D.

If you look quickly, he looks eerily like Helena Bonham Carter.

Johann Pachelbel was born in 1653 in Nuremberg, Germany, to a man named Johann and a woman named Anna. I am starting to think that until the first half of the eighteenth century, there was some sort of law forbidding Germans to have any other names. He spent his life learning, as most children do, but it seems as though his continued musical (and scholarly) training was based on having a reputation as an extraordinary musician and student - there is at least one story of him being admitted to a school on scholarship that was already over-capacity due to this reputation. He finished his studies at the Gymnasium Poeticum (a quaint aspect of the German language is that 'gymnasium' is their word for 'high school' - somewhat odd due to its Greek root of gymnos, meaning 'naked,' which is of course where the word gymnasium came from, being the place in which the Ancient Greeks practiced feats of athleticism entirely in the buff. But I digress), and by 1673 he was living and working entirely in Vienna.

In 1677, Pachelbel moved to Eisenach. And who would he befriend in Eisenach than one Johann Ambrosius Bach, the father of our man Sebastian. He stayed in the town for only a year, but when he moved to Erfurt he stayed quite close to the Bachs - among other things, he was the godfather to one of Ambrosius' daughters, taught his oldest children music, and rented a house owned by one of Ambrosius' brothers. He stayed in Erfurt for a dozen years, and had a contract involving composition of church service organ preludes and large-scale early works. He married in 1681, but his wife and only child died from plague in 1683. His second marriage, in 1684, produced seven children, and one of them - Charles Theodore (moving away from Johann at last!) - moved to the American colonies in the 1730s. Charles lived in Boston, Newport, Rhode Island, and Charleston, South Carolina, and gave several concerts in New York City and was a rather well-known composer of church music in America. While he was raising his children, Johann Pachelbel turned down posts in Stuttgart and Oxford University to accept a position in Nuremberg, where he lived until his death in 1706. In life, he was never hugely well-known, though his influence can be seen through Charles' American church music as well as J.S. Bach's early organ music (due to one of his first teachers being one of his brothers - and Pachelbel's students).

Ha. Ha.

Before getting into the Canon itself, I feel rather obligated to spell out what a lowercase-c canon is. Partially because, well, what else are we here for, and partially because the canon was one of the biggest musical party tricks (as it were) for hundreds of years. It is a type of music in which a melody is played, followed shortly after by one or more 'imitations.' These imitations can be either total (as in rounds like Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Frere Jacques, or the old chestnut Sumer Is Icumen In) or at an interval above or below the melody. Going back to Bach, his Goldberg Variations contain - in a somewhat uncharacteristic bout of showing off - nine canons, each one having a different interval of imitation. Pachelbel's Canon exhibits this (I mean, how could it not?), but it also features a ground bass. A ground bass is simply a pattern of notes in a bass part meant to be repeated forever (think "Heart and Soul"). The Canon itself is a bit of an anomaly in Pachelbel's works - though he was somewhat well-known for his chamber music (which is exactly what it sounds like; music written for small spaces) during his lifetime, most of his surviving music is of the keyboard variety. Furthermore, his surviving chamber music is gathered into larger suites. The Canon was paired with a gigue (essentially a jig with a French accent), but that was all. On top of that, no one has any idea why the Canon was written, or for what occasion.

As tends to happen, Pachelbel's Canon was entirely ignored, then forgotten, for over two hundred years. It was analyzed in a musciological paper in the 1910s, but stayed in the circles of the truly nerdy (said as a compliment, of course) until 1970, when Jean-François Paillard recorded it in 1970, and more so in 1980, when it was featured in the film Ordinary People. Since then, it has been a staple in the public concept of what Classical Music is - but perhaps its more insidious legacy was that of providing the chord progression to thousands of popular songs since the 1970s. Just ask this angry man with an acoustic guitar (the actual examples start roughly 2 minutes in).

Further listening:

Interested in the bizarre and awesome stuff one can do with the canon form? Try Bach's "Musical Offering," in which he writes a canon that modulates up a step every time there is a repetition (and can go on as long as the player wishes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsgdZFIdmeo&feature=related

Because I feel bad for the guy, here's the other half of his Canon and Gigue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv_s4Q6wRKo&feature=related

Wanna hear what a German composer with enough melodrama to kill lesser men (again, said out of love) can do to a well-known and beloved children's round? Try the third movement of Gustav Mahler's "Titan" Symphony no. 1, performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVsLCzSK7Rs

Another new way to follow the blog!

So apparently, Blogger finally listened to the moaning of hundreds of bloggers who were irritated that there was no in-house way of doing the follow-by-email thing. Because now you can!

On the top right-hand side of the page, there is now a nifty little "Follow by e-mail!" heading with a box in which an e-mail address can be submitted. By putting your address in there, the only things that should be sent to you are the new blog posts. If there are any other surprises, let me know and I'll smite Blogger. Or something.

"Pomp and Circumstance" March #1

(Note: for what we're talking about today, skip ahead to 4:55.)

In honor of the thousands of college seniors that put on their caps and gowns in the past week or so (decidedly prematurely to them, of course), today's post is on a piece that has grown to be synonymous with the American graduation.  In fact, the composer of said graduation theme is pretty much the perfect embodiment of the "Plug Away At What You Love And Eventually It'll Pay Off" school of the American dream.  Shame he was British, that.

It's so co-o-o-old.

Edward Elgar (eventually to be Sir Edward William Edgar, 1st Baronet, but these things take time) was born in 1857 in Lower Broadheath, outside of Worcester, England.  Lower Broadheath is just about the most English of English places, all hedgerows, picturesque gardens, and Emily Brontë characters singing about the wiley, windy moors.  Edward's father was a piano tuner, violinist and organist (and so it can be said that music just might have been in his blood).  His mother was a Roman Catholic, which immediately put young Edward at a bit of a different footing in the Anglican country England was by the mid-19th century.  She did, however, also support the arts, and so Edward begun taking violin and piano lessons as a young boy and had composed his first works by the age of ten or so.  In the first of what was to become a series of minor setbacks continuing for the first forty-odd years of his life, Edward's dreams of going to the Leipzig Conservatory were smashed by simply not being able to afford to go.

Instead, young-man Edward took up several jobs in Worcester including (but not limited to) the conductor of the residents' band at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum and the Professor of Violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen.  Both positions were instrumental (if you'll excuse my language) in cultivating Elgar's compositional sensibilities, but it must be said that there must have been something in the water in Worcester.  Either that, or English gentlemen had an overwhelming propensity for siring blind male children, because that is a very specific school.  In 1889, he married his wife, Alice - eight years his senior, and from a family who most decidedly did not approve of her marrying a musician/composer with no apparent future.  Theirs was a rather disappointingly normal marriage (particularly for artistic types)- they loved each other very much, and she managed his business affairs until her death.  However, though Elgar worked continuously, he could not help but prove Alice's family correct - he never seemed to catch a break.

If this isn't your idea of turn-of-the-century England, you're doing it wrong.

Until 1899.  That was the year in which his Enigma Variations were premiered.  Each variation was based on the personalities and nicknames of Elgar's close friends, and the most famous of these is the "Nimrod" variation.  Unfortunately for us, "Nimrod" as a nickname was much more positive back in The Day, being the name of an ancient Hebrew king known for being a mighty hunter (and the friend in question's last name was Jaeger, meaning 'Hunter' in German).  In any event, the variations were instantly loved.  His next large work was The Dream of Gerontius, an oratorio on the scale not seen for many years (an oratorio being, for our purposes, a large concert piece for solo singers, choir, an orchestra).  His "Pomp and Circumstance" March #1 was premiered in 1901, by which point he was firmly ensconced in the realm of English musical greats.  Elgar was knighted in 1904, which was the first of many honors bestowed upon him by the British government.  However, after the death of his wife in 1920, he did not focus solely on composition for the rest of his life (though he did make symphonic arrangements of works by Bach and Handel as well as write several smaller-scale pieces).  He died in 1934 at the age of 76 of cancer, one of the most beloved of English composers as well as a perfect example of dogged determination.  After all, it is not every day that a foreign composer creates an American musical icon.

I mean, how much more hopeful and glorious can you get?

The five "Pomp and Circumstance" marches were composed between 1901 and 1930.  The title was taken from Act III, Scene III of Shakespeare's Othello - "The pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!" - and since the first of these was written before World War I was even a thought, the relative naiveté of the idea can be forgiven.  The marches themselves are an example of ternary form (I promise this is important!), which can also be called A-B-A form.  We've seen ternary form in da capo arias before, in which the first and third sections are identical (or at least close to it) and the second section, sometimes called the trio, is somehow in contrast to 1 and 3.  It is the trio of the first "Pomp and Circumstance" march that is the basis for the graduation march in just about every high school and college in America.  The melody of this trio is called "Land of Hope and Glory," and in the original, features a female soloist (in the Disney version, it is sung by Kathleen Battle, for those of you who are interested in such things).  It was first played at an American graduation in 1905, during a graduation-cum-Elgar Festival at Yale, though it was played as the recessional there, while it is played as the processional just about everywhere else.  And just to rub it in everyone's faces that they were first, Yale to this day uses the march as its recessional.  But then again, I'd be a little proud too if I had started such a huge trend.

In this age of, y'know, economic uncertainty, a job market that's gone down the drain, and general anxiety about the future, it's nice to know that Edward Elgar managed to make it in the world due to sheer perserverance.  But then again, in that case, perhaps I should just move to England.  Seems to have worked out for him.

Further listening:

Like pomp, perhaps even a little circumstance, and the English?  Try "Jupiter," from Holst's The Planets (performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Levine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo

Like Elgar, but perhaps a little less of the aforementioned adjectives?  Try the "Nimrod" variation, also performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (but conducted by David Barenboim this time): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgoBb8m1eE

Like Elgar, and also the fact that love songs have existed for as long as there have been music?  Try "Salut d'Amour", written for Elgar's wife Alice:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSv3iApK3DQ

"Clair de Lune"

Gettin' back to basics.  Either that or I finally was able to actually find an iconic scene from a movie that features a piece of classical music.  The ending scene of Ocean's Eleven is one that is quite well-known indeed, and Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" (or, at least, one of the orchestrations of "Clair de Lune" - but we'll get there soon enough) is a piece that is instantly recognizable - not just from this movie, of course, but in just about anything where a feeling of languid reverie is desired.  Not too shabby for a man who was never really seen as more than a bizarre little composer by Those That Know More About Music Than You in his time.

Debussy, looking rather smug and Gallic.

Claude-Achille Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, in 1862 to a family who was non-musical but supportive of their son's burgeoning talents.  He began taking piano lessons at the age of 7, and enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at 10.  As a student, he was that kid - instead of just sitting back, learning the fundamentals of harmony The Way They Were Always Taught and then futzing with them later, he insisted on adding odd harmonies and dissonances into his exercises.  Even so, he did manage to win the Prix de Rome (for those who have forgotten, a competition for young composers in which the first prize was a musical education in Rome) in 1884, and studied there for three years.

In 1888, Debussy traveled to Bayreuth in what appeared to be a rite of passage for young composers by this time, and was floored by what he saw there.  Though his music never featured the extreme emotional highs and lows of Wagner, he was still influenced by his unusual harmonic progressions (though in a particularly sassy moment, he did turn the beginning of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde into a big ol' joke - to great effect, no less, even including a bout of the giggles played by the piano accompaniment immediately after the quote).  Around this time, he met and became friends with Erik Satie, another French composer who shared Debussy's somewhat iconoclastic musical tastes.  He had several tumultuous love affairs, but as a personality, was never particularly well-known during his own lifetime (though he was able to afford a rather comfortable lifestyle).  In what he saw as a rather grave insult, he was given the adjective "impressionist" as a way to describe his music; however, the similarities between his music and impressionist art can't be denied (for one, his lack of orthodox harmony leads to a sort of blurred-around-the-edges quality to his music).  His music ended up being incredibly important in the grand scheme of music history exactly because of that lack of orthodox harmony - he ran with what Wagner did in terms of breaking away from classical harmonic theory and introducing things like the whole-tone and pentatonic scales, as well as bringing back the medieval modes.

Useful Image #2!!

Very quickly: the major and minor scales (the ones used in most music heard on a daily basis) are comprised of a pattern of whole and semitones.  For instance, in C major, because there is a note in between C and D (C sharp or D flat, depending on whether your glass is half full or empty), the interval between C and D is a whole tone.  There is nothing in between E and F, so that is considered a semitone.  For the record, the difference between a minor scale (a natural minor scale, anyway) and a major scale is simply the placement of the semitones - in major scales, the first semitone is between the third and fourth notes and the second is between the seventh and first notes, and in minor scales, the first semitone is between the second and third notes and the second is between the fifth and sixth notes.  It's this combination of whole and semitones that makes those lovely major and minor chords that almost every pop song ever uses (with the notable and distinct exception of "Single Ladies" by Beyonce, but that's an entirely different story...).  The whole-tone scale, true to its name, has no semitones, and if it started on C, the rest of the scale would follow as D-E-F#-G#-A# (or Bb)-C.  It has no tonal center, so to speak, and so is often used in dream sequences in movies as well as underwater scenes.

And #3!!  Man, this is getting downright educational...

The set of medieval modes is yet another way of creating harmony.  Instead of 'major' and 'minor,' there are seven modes (each named after an ethnic group that lived around ancient Greece).  The names of the modes are the same now as they were then, but they have been shuffled around a bit so that the Dorian of today was not the Dorian of 300 B.C.  The easiest way of visualizing the modes is to - once again - take our trusty C major scale.  Conveniently enough, the C major scale is also the first mode, called Ionian.  To get the other modes, all you need to do is take the C major scale - C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C - and start it on a different note in that scale.  The next mode, Dorian, starts on D (unfortunately, that is the only one whose name matches its starting note), and is then D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D, and it goes on for every note in the scale.  For the record, the names of the modes are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian (a favorite of folk singers and the 1960s in general), Aeolian, and Locrian - in that order.

Hah.  "Very quickly," indeed.  Hey - it's not my fault that Debussy was into all this weird musical stuff.

This is perhaps not what Debussy had in mind.

"Clair de Lune" itself is, like most pieces featured on this blog, part of a larger work - in this case, the Suite Bergamasque, a piano suite written in 1890 but revised and not published until 1905.  A suite of music, for our purposes, is simply a collection of pieces that can each be performed alone but has some sort of unifying theme.  In the case of the Suite Bergamasque, each piece is a musical illustration of a poem by Paul Verlaine - sort of like a symphonic poem minus the orchestra.  "Clair de Lune" means "moon shine" (without the alcoholic connotation, of course), and the piece does really sound like a moonlit night.  Much like our man Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody, the piece is most well-known in its orchestrated form - having that dripping harmony played by strings oozing with pathos is much more conducive to big cinematic scenes at the Bellagio, of course - one orchestrator being Leopold Stokowski (among other things, he was the conductor in Fantasia).

So there you have it - a piece that represents quite a lot in the theory world.  I hope I didn't get too pedantic with the theory; I know that's really not the most interesting thing in the world to read.  But hey, the school year's starting again, and perhaps someone will Google "just how the hell do modes make sense?" and this entry will help them out.  Debussy might even be a little proud of that, but then again, he was always a little bizarre.

Further listening:

Didn't know the French had a sense of humor?  They sure do, when they make fun of Germans!  Try his "Golliwog's Cakewalk" (the joke being at around 1:15): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnkBhv5WsRw&feature=related

Interested in hearing why Debussy hating the term 'impressionist music' is a little silly?  Try "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_7loz-HWUM

Want to hear the most brazen example of the whole-tone scale in Debussy's work?  Try "Voiles" from Preludes, book 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVV0jkZC4jI

A new way of getting Where'd I Hear That posts!

Hopefully, of course.

I've just set up a Google Group - if any of you so choose, you can opt to get any new posts made e-mailed to you instead of having to look at the blog itself. To become a member of the group, e-mail wheredihearthat@googlegroups.com, and if all goes well, you'll get your twice-weekly dose of classical music knowledge in no time!

"Largo al factotum" from "Il barbiere di Siviglia"

That's right, going with this week's apparent theme of "Posts I Should've Written Ages Ago," as well as in honor of the Metropolitan Opera's Summer HD Festival, today's piece is the reason this blog exists.  A decidedly silly piece of music written by a very impressive young man, "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (or, for the less pretentious among us, The Barber of Seville) has been relegated to Looney Tunes and the Jersey Shore, but what it represents in music history is so large it's almost ridiculous.  Not only is Il barbiere di Siviglia considered the archetypal opera buffa (a genre of opera that spawned its own voice type, no less), but Rossini is one third of what is known as the bel canto era.  All of these italicized, Italianate terms will be expounded upon, of course, but suffice it to say, "Largo al factotum" is much bigger than the sum of its parts.

Every picture of Rossini has this "I know something awful about you" look to it.

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born in 1792 in Pesaro, Italy to a family of musicians; his father was a horn player and his mother was a professional singer.  His childhood was somewhat turbulent - his father was jailed for his political leanings, and his mother would often have to travel to perform and keep her son fed and clothed.  He learned the fundamentals of music from Angelo Tesei, and his first compositions were six string quartets, written at the age of twelve.  Gioachino really, really liked Mozart, to the point that his classmates would call him "The German" in jest.  His first opera was written when he was fourteen, but was not premiered until he was twenty.  His first premiered opera was La cambiale di matrimonio (or "The Marriage Contract"), produced when he was just eighteen.  He found international acclaim with the premiere of Tancredi at twenty, and from that moment on, he never lacked in fame or finance.

Even in his early career, he was transforming the operatic world - in Tancredi, he began the practice of writing out ornaments for singers instead of letting them come up with them for themselves.  This doesn't sound like a huge deal, and it wouldn't be if not for the fact that no one did that before.  In Baroque opera, a defining feature was the da capo aria, in which was contained a melody to be sung through relatively straight the first time, a contrasting second section, and then a repeat of the first in which the aim was to sing the hell out of that melody, adding as many displays of virtuosity as possible.  Writing out the ornamentation made the arias less showpieces (though, clearly, they were still showpieces that could stand alone in recital) and tied them closer to the dramatic aspects of the opera.  Il barbiere di Siviglia premiered in 1816, when Rossini was twenty-four, and that is where our biography of the man will end for now (though he did live to the age of 76).  For one, I've got to keep enough to write about when we get to the overture of Guillaume Tell...

Apparently this is from a Haydn opera buffa.  Very silly indeed.

Il barbiere di Siviglia is what some have called the most perfect example of opera buffa ever.  In the literal sense, "opera buffa" simply means "funny opera," and it is true that opera buffa does tend to be quite a bit funnier (and shorter!) than its counterpart, opera seria (meaning exactly what you think it does).  More than that, though, opera buffa is opera designed at least in part to be enjoyed by the masses, with lower-class people dealing with lower-class problems, instead of the mythological or royal origins of opera seria's plot lines.  Opera buffa created its own voice type as well, the basso buffo.  These parts are often given very silly parts, and quite a lot of patter, or fast-paced wordy vocal lines, thrown in for good measure.  Furthermore, Il barbiere di Siviglia is one of the first examples mentioned when one is disucssing bel canto.  Meaning "beautiful singing," bel canto is both a style of singing (with a focus on lightness of tone and agility) and also a categorization of operas by Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini.  The term bel canto to describe a genre of opera did not spring up until later in the 1800s in contrast to - surprise, surprise - Richard Wagner, whose weightier subject matters and style of singing stood in direct opposition to that of the light, comparatively 'shallow' bel canto composers.

If you forget the second 'f' when typing buffo, this is what you find. 

The play itself was written by Pierre Beaumarchais, the first part of a trilogy of "Figaro" plays.  The Marriage of Figaro, one of Mozart's most well-known operas, is based on the second play.  "Largo al factotum" is the first entrance of Figaro, a, well, barber who lives in Seville.  Nothing like a good case of truth in advertising, right?  The aria itself is a boast on Figaro's part i which he talks about how he is the most-desired barber in all of Seville.  He calls himself an expert with beards, hair, wigs and leeches (since barbers in the 18th century, when the play was written, were also small-time doctors, and a favorite remedy was bloodletting via leech), and the iconic "Figaro!  Figaro!" is Figaro's imagined throng of people clamoring for his attention and razors.  Perhaps, since it is a puffed-up five minutes of a barber's boast, "Largo al factotum" is perfect for the Looney Tunes world, but it really is what it represents in the larger picture of music history that makes it so much more interesting than Jersey Shore may give credit.

Further listening:

Want to hear one of the best (and earliest) examples of basso buffo?  Try "Madamina, il catalogo è questa" from Mozart's Don Giovanni (performed by Richard Cassell): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYUlCropCGY

Equally interested in da capo arias with some truly delightful choreography?  Try "Non disperar" from Handel's Giulio Cesare (performed by Danielle de Niese): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhLluWn3UKY