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I have left hanging two ambitions projects, one a series of posts on composer Sofia Gubaidulina that reached seventeen separate posts before going into hiatus. I have a lot more to do as I find her perhaps the most interesting living composer. So at some point soon I will get back to that project. The other one is the more recent series on composer Luigi Nono that I started because I realized that he was a lot more interesting than I had previously thought. So look for some more posts on him before too long.
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The long nightmare that is Venezuela somehow keeps on keeping on. At Slipped Disc we find the story of a clarinetist who had a job offer with the national orchestra withdrawn. When she tweeted a complaint about this, she was arrested and has been in jail for a month. The thing that I find most remarkable about this is that Venezuela still has a national orchestra despite the collapse of the economy, food and water shortages and mass emigration. Does anyone still have time or energy to go to the symphony in Venezuela?
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I think this is one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Surely we are in the End Times if Sony is signing Chloe Flower as a, cough, cough, classical artist. Let's cue the fulsome praise:
Sarah Thwaites, Label Head UK, Sony Music Masterworks said: “Chloe Flower is one of the most exciting artists on the planet and I’m unbelievably stoked to share her talent with the world. Whether it’s original compositions, classical masterpieces, unexpected collaborations or virtuosic covers of today’s hottest hits, Chloe’s incredible talent, passion and style shine through.”Over at Slipped Disc, some of the commentators are unbelievably stoked as well:
My anaconda don’t, my anaconda don’t…
Nicky Minaj meets Fifty Shades of Gray
Who packages these things at Sony? A committee of pop culture professors watching videos from 5 years ago?
And who’s the target market? Middle aged men with an Asian fetish, I guess…
The label of Horowitz, Rubinstein, Gould, etc. Oh Lordy!On the other hand, she does tend to make Yuja Wang and Khatia Buniatishvili seem far more sober, serious artists in comparison.
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This is a very sweet story: Jennie Litvak resigned from the World Bank to play the shofar at synagogue:
If you follow the link and watch the clip, she is not playing a single note, of course, but two notes a fifth apart.She resigned from the World Bank and joined the Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, dc, where in 1876 Ulysses S. Grant became the first American president to attend a service in a synagogue. There was meditation every Tuesday night, yoga every Wednesday night, lessons in Jewish mindfulness all through the week. But it was when she held aloft the shofar that she really found her voice.After every morning service through the month of Elul, then through Rosh Hashanah—Jewish new year—on to Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, her friend, would call out: Tekiyah. She would respond with a single note…
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There is an historic instrument in Western music very similar to the shofar, the gemshorn, traditionally made from a goat horn. Here is a sample:
Which sounds remarkably like a recorder. The cornett or zink is made of wood covered with leather, but sounds more like the shofar:
What the heck, since we've got the cornett handy, let's listen to some of that wonderful Gabrieli music written for the San Marco in Venice:
One of the comments at SD to the 'Yuja and her parents' post: "Having read some of her interviews, I get the feeling that she likes publicity, but probably thinks music journalists are all really dumb and not worth her time to have serious discussions with. On the other hand these journalists only care about clicks, so they are more than satisfied with the way the interviews went. Everyone is happy." I expect that there is a certain truth in that. I'd like to see the transcript of her hour-long conversation with Guy Dammann or Alex Ross.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any extended interview with Yuja Wang that was interesting, but I have seen several with Khatia Buniatishvili.
ReplyDeleteI didn't read the woman of the shofar piece when I saw it in the wild (outside of this garden, I mean) because I presumed it was full of tiresomeness about women clergy but now I will. Wonder why-- with the great glues we moderns have-- the cornett continues to be leather-covered? I would have guessed that it, the leather, somehow affects the sound but evidently not.
ReplyDeleteWe here at The Music Salon read everything (and pick out the good bits) so you don't have to!
ReplyDeleteI'll bet that they cover the wood with leather when making copies of historic instruments for the same reasons they do lovely paintings on the inside of harpsichord lids: it looks good and it's historic.
No doubt you're right. Am enthused at the moment (and bought a lottery ticket to cover the costs) by the existence of a cornett making workshop in Cambridge at the end of next month. None of the several cornett sites I've looked at in the past hour mention anything about the purpose of the leather covering except for its capacity to be decorated.
ReplyDeleteOne of the cornett workshop fellows responded on Facebook, "(i)t has a slight effect on the sound, though not very much". Not quite harpsichord decoration perhaps but close enough. Ought to have phrased my question differently: would a reasonably seasoned listener perceive a difference between the uncovered instrument's sound and that of a covered one.
ReplyDeleteFive minutes inro Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Cello Concerto op 72 this morning and I said to myself 'oh, the movies' and as it turns out (thanks, Wikipedia) he lived in Hollywood after exile from Italy and wrote lots and lots and lots of film scores.
'Probably not!', the workshop fellow (Sam Goble) responded to the question I ought to have asked first. Any perception of a difference in sound would be more likely attributed to the player than to the covered or uncovered status of the instrument.
ReplyDeleteGood for you for looking into the cornett question.
ReplyDeleteCastelnuovo-Tedesco was one of quite a few of the tonally-oriented composers who gravitated to writing film music.