* * *
The Guardian has an article on a really interesting project: commission eight young composers to write movements for string quartet based on the same planets that Gustav Holst used for inspiration in his wonderful suite for orchestra The Planets, written between 1914 and 1916. Six scientists were asked to aid the composers in their work.
Sounds fascinating and I hope they issue a recording.The idea to reimagine The Planets using modern science came from the young British composer Samuel Bordoli who, along with producers Sound UK, paired up each musician with a planet and a mentor and asked them each to write a five-minute piece for string quartet. Titled The Planets 2018, the results are to be performed by the Ligeti Quartet in planetariums across the country from Saturday.
* * *
This item is just weird: VIOLINIST, 81, IS NORWAY’S HIGHEST TAX PAYER.
In many countries homeowners get a exemption on capital gains taxes on their principal residence. Shouldn't musicians get one on their principal instrument?The Norwegians have a habit of publishing every citizen’s annual income and tax bill.In the latest list it turns out that the distinguished violinist Arve Tellefsen had the highest tax bill in the whole of the entertainment sector.Arve, 81, has been obliged to pay 21,211,550 Norwegian krone ($2.55 million) on taxable net worth of 90,774,551 NOK, which is $10.9 million.Where did Arve make all his money?He sold his violin, bought in 1970 for a million krone, to a very shy German investor.
* * *
Also at The Guardian is an article about composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor:
One interesting thing about Coleridge-Taylor is the considerable renown he enjoyed in the early 20th century:Young Samuel was brought up by his mother and her extended family in Croydon. He never met his doctor father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, who was originally from Sierra Leone and had come here to study medicine in London. You may be wondering about his name. Samuel’s mother, Alice Hare Martin, named her son after Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet. Oh, those Victorians!The family clubbed together to pay Samuel’s fees at the Royal College of Music, which he entered at 15 as a violin scholar. But the violin was set to one side and composition took centre stage and he was taken under the wing of the composer and conductor Charles Villiers Stanford, who also mentored a generation of big-name composers, including Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Frank Bridge. For two years running, Coleridge-Taylor won the RCM’s Lesley Alexander composition prize and was championed by Edward Elgar, who recommended the talented young composer for a major commission – an orchestral work for the Three Choirs festival, his Ballade in A Minor, opus 33.
In the US, he was a household name in his lifetime, and travelled there by invitation of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society of Washington DC in 1904, and again in 1906 and 1910. The US marines band were engaged for his first performance and 2,700 people were in the audience, two-thirds of whom were black.This would seem to argue against claims that he was neglected and discriminated against. Here is his Hiawatha Overture:
* * *
Alex Ross' latest for The New Yorker is a piece on Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan’s Masterpiece Is Still Hard to Find. The masterpiece in question, coming out of 1974 sessions and later released in modified form as Blood on the Tracks, is a Dylan album I have never heard. My excuse is that from the early 1970s until into the 1980s I was so focussed on my own career as a classical guitarist that I had no time to spare. So, while I have heard of this album, I have never listened to it. Ross says:
In September, 1974, Bob Dylan spent four days in the old Studio A, his favorite recording haunt in Manhattan, and emerged with the greatest, darkest album of his career. It is a ten-song study in romantic devastation, as beautiful as it is bleak, worthy of comparison with Schubert’s “Winterreise.” Yet the record in question—“Blood on the Tracks”—has never officially seen the light of day. The Columbia label released an album with that title in January, 1975, but Dylan had reworked five of the songs in last-minute sessions in Minnesota, resulting in a substantial change of tone. Mournfulness and wistfulness gave way to a feisty, festive air.Here is his discussion of the music to "Idiot Wind":
The music that Dylan wrote for these lyrics has a chilly, clammy air. His guitar is in open-E tuning, meaning that all six strings of the guitar are tuned to notes of the E-major triad: E, B, E, G#, B, E. As a result, the tonic chord rings rich and bright. But each verse begins with a jarring A-minor chord, which tends to land awkwardly. The middle note easily strays off center, souring the sound. Occasionally, a stray F-sharp bleeds through, adding a Romantic tinge. The unwieldiness of the progression is at one with the fraught atmosphere of the text.He links to a clip of the Tristan chord to explain the phrase "Romantic tinge" though I'm not sure what he is claiming exactly. Here is the song:
* * *
Just ran across another track on YouTube from Hilary Hahn's latest album of the Bach solo suites. The Partita No. 1 in B minor is an extraordinary work. Instead of a typical suite of dance movements, usually allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, Bach gives us the first three, but replacing the gigue with a bourrée. Then he pairs each movement with its "double" --a variation in running quick notes using the same harmonic scheme. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, a kind of homage to pieces like the Gavotte et six doubles by Rameau, the seventh movement from his Quatrième suite de pièces de clavecin.
Here is Hilary Hahn with the Double to the Courante from the Partita No. 1:
And just for fun, here is Trevor Pinnock playing the Rameau. Be sure to stick with it as it just gets better and better:
* * *
I guess we still need an envoi and what better choice than Holst's The Planets. Here is Edward Gardner conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the CBSO Youth Chorus at the 2016 Proms. The performance concludes with Colin Matthews' supplementary piece "Pluto, The Renewer."
Never heard Blood on the Tracks?! Well, I guess the 70s were a good time to check out of popular music, but, if exceptions can be made, this is a good record for which to make one. Ross' claim that it is his "greatest" album is a minority view -- though I have defended it, and on some days believe it. However you think it stacks up against his other records, it's a wonderful record by just about any measure. Comparisons to "Winterreise" are, again, exaggerated, but not entirely senseless.
ReplyDeleteI've been listening to the 6 CD set of outtakes and alternate versions which came out a week ago, and which probably was the occasion for Ross' column. It's terrific.
Fantastic Hilary Hahn video!
You betcha!
ReplyDeleteAre you tempted to shell out for the mega CD set of the White Album?
Listened to a couple of the 'Planets' (Boldoni's and Feshareki's), and while (as almost always) a concert performance would doubtless be a decent way to spend part of an afternoon or evening, was not particularly impressed. Squeak, scratch, drone. Still, 'science' is always good for a gimmick-- the composers might just as easily have paid attention to their doing of the dishes for a week or the neighborhood dog-walkers. "I started to think about things like pitch, rhythm and notation and how those concepts are just a conditioning we have as musicians." Sure, sure.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even know there were clips on YouTube of the new Planets commissions! Or where did you hear them?
ReplyDeleteYou know I have gotten a lot more adapted to the idea of musical material sometimes consisting of non-musical "noises" from listening to Gubaidulina. One of her string quartets (was it the third?) starts with ten minutes of nothing but pizzicato. And it works!
Yes, I'm afraid that to my mind a lot of the so-called "content" of new music these days is really nothing more than a promotional gimmick. Science! The Environment! Climate Change! Gender Equity!
At the end of that Guardian article there's a link, here. One needs to scroll down just a bit. Unfortunately, there is a period of narration before each music begins.
ReplyDeleteAh, now I find it. That was a well-hidden link!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to everyone on this feast of St Cecilia, traditional patroness of music and musicians, often depicted with an organ or other musical instruments. Derived from the mid-5th century account of her martyrdom, the first lesson at Matins is followed by its responsorium:
ReplyDeleteR. Cantántibus organis, Cæcília virgo in corde suo soli Dómino decantábat, dicens:
* Fiat, Dómine, cor meum et corpus meum immaculátum, ut non confúndar.
V. Biduánis et triduánis jejúniis orans, commendábat Dómino quod timébat.
R. Fiat, Dómine, cor meum et corpus meum immaculátum, ut non confúndar.
This is the source of Cecilia's organ, perhaps: which of course just goes to show how the progress of history enriches us, ahem, because the Latin refers to the musicians at her wedding (cantatibus organis, 'the musicians playing their instruments') but the theory is that that was misunderstood and somehow got confused into 'Cecilia was mistress of the organ'. But who knows. Was looking at the Codex Sangallensis 391 online (there's a version of Cantatibus organis in there somewhere but I couldn't find it after twenty minutes and gave up) and don't have any difficulty believing someone misunderstood something!
Have been listening off and on today, working backward through pieces of 'Cecilian music': from the contemporary and modern (MacMillan, Pärt, Britten, Gounod) proceeding through a bit of Mendelssohn to Handel, Purcell, Charpentier, and am now at Palestrina and Guerrero. That's been the idea, anyway: doubtless the chronology of my regression leaves something to be desired. Alessandro Scarlatti's Vespers of St Cecilia is for later on, after Vespers here.
And happy Thanksgiving Day to the Americans reading here!
Thanks, Marc! For some reason I was thinking that St. Cecilia's feast day was the 23rd, but no, it is today. Must remember to mark that in my calendar and do a special post. Reading about St. Cecilia on Wikipedia I find yet one more reason to visit Rome...
ReplyDeleteMy best wishes to all my readers for St. Cecilia's day and for Thanksgiving.