Friday Miscellanea

 A very good article on Luciano Berlo's Sinfonia this week in the New York Times: His Music Saw Our Age of Information Overload Coming

“Sinfonia” remains one of Berio’s most popular and indelible pieces. It appeals to lay listeners yet continues to fascinate experts. Throughout its five movements, the piece shows an inventive, clearly audible approach to form, an unsentimental melodiousness and extraordinarily skill in orchestration. Its most radical section is the third movement, which feels presciently overstimulating.

The piece “reflects a world marked by crises and conflicts — themes that remain profoundly relevant today,” De Benedictis said. “Wars, the destructive effects of capitalism (even more evident now than in 1968), the disintegration of the fundamental principles of coexistence, the frenzy of a fragmented and disjointed existence.”

At the opening of the third movement, a loud chord is followed by at least three distinct musical quotations in the space of seven measures: a climbing brass motive from the fourth movement of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra; the coldly biting flutes, sleigh bells and inviting violin phrase from the opening of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony; and cresting music from the second movement of Debussy’s “La Mer.”

What makes the article particularly useful is that it offers a host of music clips as examples.

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This kind of reminds me of the Hofstadter book of years ago Gödel, Escher, Bach: Bach is a Strange Loop

Prelude

Every night, ten-year-old J.S. Bach reached his little fingers through a locked bookshelf with a latticed front, rolled up a book of sheet music inside, drew it out, and copied it by moonlight, for he was not allowed a candle. It took six months for him to finish this difficult endeavor, only for the copied manuscript to be found by his older brother and taken away.

This was a child who had music pouring into and out of his ears since before he could talk. As little as we know about his life story, this fact is undeniable. Something was going on inside his head, strongly, forever. So does it make sense to look at his life in terms of events, or something more, something equally internal?

Allemande

Even if you hate classical music, you’ve heard Bach’s six cello suites. At least, the prelude of the first suite, in movies and on television. Like in Master and Commander and Family Guy and The Hangover Part II. And in this American Express commercial showcasing household objects making frowny faces and smiley faces. In fact, it’s often heard in commercials advertising financial services. “In the case of recent television commercials, Bach has more or less taken on a single function: reassurance,” said musicologist Peter Kupfer. “It is no coincidence that most companies that use Bach in their commercials offer financial or insurance services (including American Express, MetLife, and Allstate), thus requiring a message of trust.”

There is a paragraph or two for each of the six movements of the Cello Suite No. 1, so you should read the whole thing.

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Frankly, looking in the usual places, I don't see anything else over the last week worth comment. Your mileage may vary, of course. But let's just move on to the envois. First up, of course, the Berio Sinfonia:

And the Bach Cello Suite No. 1:

Here is the Charpentier Te Deum, the drum-friendly interpretation:

And finally, in my travels in Oaxaca the last couple of weeks I stumbled across the 1969 film of The Battle of Britain. An all-star cast for a film that I have never known before. The main casting problem was that the average age of the pilots that flew in the Royal Air Force in 1940 was twenty! They simply couldn't find many actors that young. The best lines were from Laurence Olivier as Air Chief Marshal. When they finally turned the tide and were shooting down a lot more German planes than the Germans were shooting down British planes, he was asked to comment on a statement from the German ambassador in a press conference that the British numbers were simply wrong. Olivier said "I have no interest in propaganda. If we are right, they will give up. If they are right, they will be here in a week."