Where'd I Hear That Before?
Monday, February 6, 2012
New content soon!
Apologies for the lapse in posting: life got in the way, and in a big way too. However, things are starting to get back to some semblance of normalcy, and so there will be another post coming down the pipeline in the next several days. Until then, one of the most satisfying pieces of music I've ever heard:
Monday, October 10, 2011
Galop from Orpheus In the Underworld
Going with this month's operetta theme, this week's piece is also from that interesting (and oft-maligned) genre. It has also become one of the most characteristically French pieces of music ever, as well as the de facto anthem of the Moulin Rouge. It has also been co-opted by Shop Rite for its yearly sale on canned goods ("Now's the time to stock up while the values last," anyone?). Clever leap of logic there, Shop Rite. As is the case with all these pieces, the Galop from Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus In the Underworld is so much more - and so much more bizarre - than it currently represents (though, to be fair, it isn't doing too badly for itself). Even more than that, Jacques Offenbach is definitely a composer who deserves much more recognition than he is given; like Johann Strauss, he was never a particularly "serious" composer, but what he wrote was always delightful (and often wickedly funny) and should be performed far more often than it is these days.
But of course, that may be just me.
Glasses: not Photoshopped in, apparently. |
In 1849, Jacques was back in Paris, and became the musical director of the Comédie Française that year. He founded a group called the "Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens" in the early 1850s, and they often premiered his operettas. Apart from his own works, the Bouffes-Parisiens also staged works by Rossini and Mozart, though always on a small scale - there were government restrictions on licensing performers, so until the laws were repealed in 1858, Offenbach could only put on productions with a handful of actors per piece. In 1858, not coincidentally at all, Offenbach's first large-scale work - Orpheus In the Underworld - was premiered. An incendiary review turned the piece into a controversial work, which then rendered it wildly successful. 1860 saw Offenbach granted full French citizenship, and the 1860s were a comfortable and successful decade for him. The Franco-Prussian war brought about a turn for the worse, however; the French people turned on Napoleon III, and Offenbach's music represented that regime to them. His popularity never waned in Vienna and England during this time, though, and he even embarked on a series of concerts in New York and Philadelphia in 1876. Offenbach was a great musical satirist - he poked fun of Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and Wagner among others, much to the first's amusement (and the second and third's chagrin). And in an example of everyone in the classical music world knowing each other somehow, he was one of the people who convinced a young Johann Strauss to write operettas. Toward the end of his life, he began work on a serious opera, The Tales of Hoffmann, but died in 1880 before its completion. Throughout his career, he wrote over eighty operettas, several ballets, and many other smaller works, all of which show a brilliant wit and a slightly evil sense of humor. The most well-known of these - in a way, of course - is Orpheus In the Underworld, from which our Galop, well, gallops.
The Can-Can: providing awful puns since 1830. |
The Can-Can music known and loved (or hated) is a dance in Hell by the Gods. Things don't get much better than that. Way to go, Offenbach. Your name may confuse people ("What do you need a Bach with a prefix for?" the naysayers naysay), your nationality may be suspect, and your single claim to fame these days may be used to sell cans, but it takes a rare composer indeed to make that scenario work. Maybe one day we'll pay attention to the rest of your music, too.
Further Listening:
Interested in what Offenbach's idea of 'serious opera' sounded like? (Hint: it's gorgeous.) Try the "Barcarolle" from The Tales of Hoffmann (performed by Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdc2zNgJIpY&feature=related
Did you know Offenbach wrote more than one Galop? Yup. And it's right here (from Geneviève de Brabant): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3FOqtdUUUk
Thursday, September 29, 2011
"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. |
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. |
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
Thursday, September 22, 2011
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. |
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. |
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
Thursday, September 15, 2011
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. |
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. |
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
Thursday, September 8, 2011
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.
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. |
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. |
I mean, how much more hopeful and glorious can you get? |
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
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