Classical Listening

[kasie]

Anyone watching the programmes about the Symphony on BBC4? I'm finding them enjoyable and informative and friend who claims to be non-musical says she is finding them a revelation, not least because she didn't realise how many symphonies she knew!

[LitNetIsGreat]

No, I did see a clip about them but I never got around to watching.

[Emil Miller]

I haven't seen it, I think that the subject requires more than the four programmes allotted to it but I was listening to Simon Russell Beale presenting a programme about Russian music on radio 3 yesterday and he certainly has a good grasp of the subject and a very unobtrusive but informative style of presentation.

[stlukesguild]

To help restore a little sanity and peace, I have once again found myself returning to those heavenly monks...

Few things have such a restful effect on me than Gregorian Chant.

I know what you mean, Neely... but for me this always comes about from a return to Bach. I recently picked up this disc:



I hadn't listened to the Musikalisches Opfer in years. Indeed, I only had a single copy of the work which fleshed out a 2-disc set of the Art of Fugue. For whatever reason the piece never grabbed me, and so I rarely ever listened to it. But this recording by Jordi Savall... much like the majority of his recordings... really opens up your ears to an oeuvre that is much better than I used to think. I had the same experience with his performance of Handel's Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music... and his Brandenburgs are top-notch. I'll take them over Suzuki.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQWsOG7IJA0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPqdBWWiHyE

Of course, far from relaxing would be an actual analysis of the amazing structure of Bach's music... including the awe-inspiring "crab canon" which is constructed of the same music played forward, backward, and interwoven in a manner virtually beyond comprehension:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IN_FyhmY8U

[lawpark]

The B-A-C-H theme that was made famous in the classic science popular work Escher, Godel and Bach (I might have the order wrong), did that refer to the Musical Offering of the Art of Fugue?

[stlukesguild]

In the German system of key spellings, the lettering runs from A through H, rather than A through G. Our B-flat is the German B, and B is denoted H. This allows one to spell the name B-A-C-H on the keys, thus:



Bach himself was well aware of this, and used it in the final, unfinished contrapunctus of The Art of the Fugue.

The theme of the Musical Offering came about as follows:

The Musical Offering (German title Musikalisches Opfer or Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079, is a collection of canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical theme given to him by Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great), to whom they are dedicated. The Ricercar, a six-voice fugue which is the highpoint of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history. This Ricercar is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself.

The collection has its roots in a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on May 7, 1747. The meeting, taking place at the King's residence in Potsdam, came about because Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty, the piano, which had been invented some years earlier. The King owned several of the experimental instruments being developed by Gottfried Silbermann. During his anticipated visit to Frederick's palace in Potsdam, Bach, who was well known for his skill at improvising, received from Frederick a long and complex musical theme on which to improvise a three-voice fugue. He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a six-voice fugue on the same theme. The public present thought that just a malicious caprice by the King, intent upon humiliating philosophers and artists. Bach answered that he would need to work the score and send it to the King afterwards. He then returned to Leipzig to write out the Thema Regium ("theme of the king").

Two months after the meeting, Bach published a set of pieces based on this theme which we now know as The Musical Offering. Bach inscribed the piece "Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta" (the theme given by the king, with additions, resolved in the canonic style), the first letters of which spell out the word ricercar, a well-known genre of the time.
The "thema regium" appears as the theme for the first and last movements of the 7th Sonata in D Minor by Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, written in about 1788, and also as the theme for elaborate variations by Giovanni Paisiello in his "Les Adieux de la Grande Duchesse ds Russies," written in about 1784, upon his departure from the court of Catherine the Great.

Humphrey F. Sassoon has compared the theme issued by Frederick II to the theme of an A minor fugue (HWV 609) by George Frideric Handel, published in Six fugues or voluntarys for organ or harpsichord. Sassoon notes that "Handel's theme is much shorter than the King's, but its musical 'architecture' is uncannily similar: jumps followed by a descending chromatic scale." He also elaborates on their additional similarities, which lead Sassoon to suggest that Bach used Handel's A minor fugue as a structural model or guide for the Musical Offering's Ricercar a 6, and that its musical concepts may also have influenced Bach's development of the Ricercar. Nevertheless, the Ricercar is longer and incomparably more complex than Handel's fugue.

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

[LitNetIsGreat]

I agree with Stlukes. It is either the monk fellows or Bach for me as the bottom line. At this moment the monks are winning, but Bach is never far behind.

I have a couple of Benedictine recordings on CD and saved to my PC, but there is so much beautiful stuff out there on the likes of You Tube, that you can come across so many restful pieces all the time. Take this one almost at random:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ela-Z7HqqS8

I can all but see myself hoeing the veg patch and changing the candles for my more devoted brethren. It I wasn't directed to be an atheist by my own mind then this sort of stuff would instantly have me converted to the Catholic faith...

I think if I did believe in past lives, which I don't, then I think I would have been a monk in one of them at least.

Green beans anyone?

Edit: also this stuff has directly made me much happier and saner over the last couple of weeks. I think it has helped to rescue me somewhat actually, so thanks!

[stlukesguild]

Ironically, one of my girlfriends from college used to tell me that she could easily imagine me as a medieval monk. In part this was due to my love of the "classics" in art, music and literature. In part this was due to the nature of my own artwork which built, in many ways, upon Baroque, Renaissance, and pre-Renaissance elements. I many ways this was due to my nature as a bibliophile... nay bibliomaniac... who was never to be seen without a stack of books... including several journals and sketchbooks in which I was forever scrawling obsessively. "Not to worry," she would assure me, "I don't think of you as the lonely, celebate, monk cloistered away in some dank, dark monastery." Rather, she declared, I reminded her of the sort of Friar Tuck type: brawling, wenching, and drinking (only the best Trappist Ale I should hope) while holding a book in one hand or reciting poetry ala José Ferrer's Cyrano de Bergerac. That's an image I could live with.

As for Gregorian (and other forms of chant) as well as Bach. I currently had 3 more volumes of Bach's cantatas performed by John Eliot Gardiner, the English Baroque Soloists, the Monteverdi Choir and soloists arrive in the mail. I'm slowly working toward the complete set. I also put in an order for this:

http://www.amazon.com/Sequentia-Hild...2372322&sr=8-1

8 discs of the music of Hildegard of Bingen (plainchant and other musical forms) by Sequentia, an excellent group of "early music" specialists. The set includes two discs I already have... but for the price of a single new pop album, I get 8 wonderfully atmospheric and calming discs of the divine Hildegard. I also (madly) sent away for 3 more discs of Bach's Art of Fugue. I have 4 or 5 versions already, but I was absolutely blown away hearing Jordi Savall's on Spotify:



At the same time I had to pick up Helmut Walcha's classic version on organ...



...which was the first recording of Art of Fugue I knew. I used to sit in the basement with the lights all off and listen to this hypnotic music over and over until I could almost grasp the mathematical structure like a Gothic Cathedral, and understand the medieval concept of the "music of the spheres".



The last version I purchased on a whim. Not only were the reviews good... but I was fascinated with the unique instrumentation: Oboe, clarinet, alto clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon.

[Emil Miller]

Here's another piece from the period that sought to break free from the straight laced constraints of classicism and reach beyond to the heroic.

http://youtu.be/p_TFvoSnx88

[stlukesguild]

"The World is a book
and those who do not travel
read only one page."
-St. Augustine of Hippo 5th c.

The conductor whose efforts I have been listening to the most recently is surely Jordi Savall. Savall is known for his performances of "early music": the Baroque and earlier... much of it "forgotten" to the mainstream "classical" repertoire. He is also a leading figure in exploring music which crosses the boundaries of East and West.

Jordi Savall's The Road to the Orient, released in 2006, presented a musical portrait of Francisco Javier and his remarkable trip from Spain to Japan. During his own travels for research and preparation for this new set, Savall met a group of talented Japanese musicians who soon became friends and with whom he performed in many concerts around the world. Repackaged following the catastrophes in Japan, Savall's Hispania & Japan: Dialogues is a specially priced album that features the most significant pieces from the musical dialogue between Spain and Japan. Alia Vox's deluxe packaging includes the usual comprehensive, richly illustrated and highly informative hardcover book plus a special bonus a miniature fold-out Japanese screen replica depicting the arrival of the first Europeans in Japan. Alia Vox is donating all profits from the sale of this set to the Japanese Red Cross.



Francisco Javier (Xavier) was born in 1506 in the Kingdom of Navarre. He was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary and a co-founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). He studied under St. Ignatius of Loyola and led an extensive mission into Asia, mainly in the Portuguese Empire of the time. He was influential in the spreading and upkeep of Catholicism most notably in India, Japan, and Borneo. Javier was known for singing psalms, much to the fascination of the native people, as he strode about through the islands of Japan. People traveled far to see the distinguished Jesuit. In 1605, some 50 years after Javier's death, a publisher in Nagasaki brought out an edition of Javier's psalms and other religious songs in a text entitled, Manuale ad Sacramenta. These 19 songs, including the Gloriosa Domina represent the first influx of Western music in Japan. While Christianity was officially banned in Japan in 1613, its practice (and the music) continued clandestinely in certain island communities near Nagasaki.

The music here presents the interweaving's of Eastern and Western traditions. The disc as a whole is held together by a series of improvisations upon the Shakuhachi flute of the well-known Gregorian Chant, Gloriosa Domina. The disc as a whole conveys a marriage of the spiritual musical traditions of the east and the West.

[chrisvia]

I'm listening to the final songs of Schubert, his Schwanengesang cycle. It was brought to my attention by this NPR article:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptiveca...t?ft=1&f=10003

And this recording (cited in the article) is available on Spotify! Need to listen to it when I'm not at work, but so far it sounds as beautiful as Winterreise.

[Emil Miller]

A luminous performance from a Russian orchestra of a very German work.

http://youtu.be/LHmb5CT11EY

[chrisvia]

A luminous performance from a Russian orchestra of a very German work.

http://youtu.be/LHmb5CT11EY

Thanks for sharing! That was a pleasure to listen to in the midst of my hectic morning here at the office.

[Charles Darnay]

I'm listening to the final songs of Schubert, his Schwanengesang cycle. It was brought to my attention by this NPR article:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptiveca...t?ft=1&f=10003

And this recording (cited in the article) is available on Spotify! Need to listen to it when I'm not at work, but so far it sounds as beautiful as Winterreise.

I love Schubert's song cycles. I've been listening to Winterreise on repeat for a while now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7-jtRKl94

[chrisvia]

I love Schubert's song cycles. I've been listening to Winterreise on repeat for a while now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7-jtRKl94

Schubert's songs are so beautifully done! I recently bought his Goethe-Lieder: