Music Monday #18 – Recycling

I had an outing to Boston yesterday for another Handel & Haydn concert, the last of this season.  The program featured a number of pieces with ‘regal’  connections.  Thoroughly enjoyable.  A soprano soloist booked for the concert had to withdraw which allowed a member of the chorus to take the soprano solo slot.  In the first half of the program Teresa Wkim sang the popular Mozart  Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165 and then it the second half she again soloed in the Mozart Coronation Mass in C, K. 317.  Now somewhere in that Mass, I am going to venture to say in the Gloria,  despite the distance between the Köchel  catalog numbers I found myself thinking ‘sounds an awful lot like something I already heard today’.  Now a quick and simple Google search doesn’t turn up anything about a melodic/harmonic/rhythmic relation but I still believe I heard it.  However my search did lead to a note stating that Mozart reused materials from his Mass in C minor (1783)  in a 1785 oratorio “Davidde penitente”.  So perhaps my ears did indeed catch a bit of “recycling”.

  This clip is in no way similar to the concert performance I heard yesterday.  I selected it because I have had the pleasure of hearing services & performances in Salisbury Cathedral where this rendition took place.  And there is just something endearing about English choristers carrying on their long tradition.

 

Travel Tuesday # 17 – Robert Burns

Today I am once again sharing scrap-book pages from my September 2009 trip to Scotland.  These pages reflect a day at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum and nearby area.  I remember it was real Scottish weather, rainy and cool.  One of the unplanned highlights was listening to a piper outside a church and watching the people, dressed up in their finest — many a man in a kilt, walking in for a country wedding. 

Music Monday # 17 – The Birth Date of Two Sergeis

April 23, 1873 is the birth date of Sergei Rachmaninoff and April 23, 1891 is the birth date of Sergei Prokofiev .  Both men would be important in 20th century music.

Rachmaninoff was the son of two amateur pianists and came from a noble family that had been in the service of Czars since the 16th century.  He is regarded as one of the finest pianists of the 20th century, while his reputation as a composer is more controversial.

Prokofiev has the only child of a pianist and a relatively wealthy agricultural engineer.  At a very young age he was inspired by his mother practicing the piano and would start composing.  Prokofiev would study along side older students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and  be viewed as arrogant and eccentric. Musically he would develop the reputation of a rebel.

Both men would spend time living as exiles in California.  Rachmaninoff would die in California and be buried in Valhalla, New York.  Prokofiev would live in Paris and in the Bavarian Alps for several years. But in 1936, Prokofiev returned permanently to the Soviet Union.  He is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

You Tube links:  Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev plays Prokofiev

Music Monday # 16 – Queen

On this date in 1974 the band Queen held its first U.S. concert at Regis College in Denver, CO.   I remember that my best friend throughout H.S. was an early fan of Queen.  I did not come to liking their music until much later but I have to admit I have a fair number of their “Greatest Hits” on my iPod.  Click on the blue ‘Queen’  for a YouTube of one of my favorites   –    Queen.   (Yes,  I am giving you a chance to try to guess what song it might be.)

Music Monday # 15 – Marian Anderson

On April 9, 1939 (which happen to be Easter Sunday that year) the contralto Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000.  She began her performance with “America,”  then proceeded to sing an Italian aria, Schubert’s Ave Maria, & several Negro spirituals.  She also sang “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”

This concert occurred because the DAR (Daughter’s of the American Revolution) would not let her perform in their Constitution Hall, which was the premiere concert venue in Washington D.C. at that time.  Why?  Because she was not white.  It was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes that arranged for the world- renowned singer to appear at the Lincoln Memorial for the open air  concert.  

Marian Anderson would make her debut performance in Constitution Hall, by invitation of the Daughters of the American Revolution, in 1943 with a concert benefiting United China Relief.

Music Monday # 13 – Beethoven dies

On this date, March 26, in 1827 the composer Ludwig van Beethoven died.  So it seems fitting to post a performance of the 3rd movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major, Op. 26, ‘Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un Eroe’ —

Music Monday # 11 – The Dave Brubeck Quartet

On this date, March 12th, in 1951 The Dave Brubeck Quartet made its Carnegie Hall debut.    Brubeck studied composition with Darius Milhaud before he began working as a jazz pianist & formed his quartet with saxophonist Paul Desmond.   In 1959 (the year I was born) The Dave Brubeck Quartet released the album Time Out, which included what would become the ensemble’s signature piece “Take Five.”   Desmond’s “Take Five” became the first jazz instrumental recording to sell over a million copies.  The quartet would perform & re-record “Take Five” many times.  And of course there are multiple cover versions.

I am including two YouTube versions, one quite early, and the other from this century.     

I feel very fortunate that,  because of my involvement with MTNA while operating my piano studio,  I was able to hear Dave Brubeck perform and give lectures/workshops on two different occasions.

Music Monday # 10 – ‘Come and Get It’

On March 5, 1971 the band Badfinger begin their 1st tour as headliners with an appearance in Toledo, OH.  The YouTube bio for the band says:

Pegged as one of the most promising British groups of the late ’60s and the one world-class talent ever signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records label that remained with the label, Badfinger enjoyed the kind of success in England and America that most other bands could only envy. Yet a string of memorable hit singles — “Come and Get It,” “No Matter What,” “Day After Day,” and “Baby Blue” — saw almost no reward from that success. Instead, four years of hit singles and international tours precipitated the suicides of its two creative members and legal proceedings that left lawyers as the only ones enriched by the group’s work.

I remember listening to Badfinger as a ‘tween’ and of the songs mentioned above “Come and Get It” is the one I remember clearly.  The lyrics “fool and his money” pop into my brain.  I was unaware, until researching this post, that the song was written by Paul McCartney.  “Come and Get It”  reached number 4 as a British hit single and number 7 in America.  

Thoughtful Thursday # 9 – Silence

Does silence make you uncomfortable?

Not very often.   In most cases silence, is something I am comfortable with. I like silence.  Sometimes I can not think or cope without it.  There are many times when I ask my spouse to stop talking (lecturing) so I can focus on what I need to be doing rather than having his information crowd my head.  Poor man,  I do try to make a point of coming back to him later and saying I can listen to what you wanted to say now if you like.

There is one kind of silence that does make me uncomfortable.  It is when people you are trying to get to know will not talk and are silent.  I had a few students during my years of teaching who when questioned would just clam up.  That would frustrate me as much as  (or more than) a  wise cracking, disrespectful child.

There are times when background noise or something to listen to is critical to me. Although there really is never complete silence:  there is the background noise inside of a heating or cooling system, a fan, or a light fixture; while outside there is the sound of a breeze, insects, birds, traffic, or people.

I love to make noise, to be loud & happy.  But I know the importance of listening.  Music is organized sound, performers get to make it, but music teachers actually spend the better part of their time listening.  They evaluate what they hear and ask the student to adjust the sounds they are creating.  Many people forget that while music is organized sound it also contains silences (rests) and  stretches.  Failing to observe rests is common among young students but I have also heard many advanced performers criticized in masterclasses for not being accurate regarding rests in the score or giving an affective pause between movements in multi-movement works.

When I am uncomfortable with silence I am glad that I can decide to fill my environment with the sounds of recordings, radio, TV, or my own creation of music or noise, and most importantly conservations with others.

Music Monday # 9 – Oscar Winning Best Original Songs

I thought I would use this Music Monday post to talk about  the Oscar Award winning songs of the 21^st century, but when I looked up the winners of the past 10 years there was only one where I could hear the tune in my head as I read the title, “Jai Ho” from  Slumdog Millionaire – 2008.  But I would not say that “Jai Ho” is really hum-able.   Whether this means the other winners weren’t memorable, or just that I am old & musically out of touch I will let you decide.  (If you are fond of any songs that have won the Oscar Award for Best Song since 2000 I would love it if you posted a comment.)

So I am going back to the 20^th century Best Song winners and list the year & title of the ones where the tune jumps into my brain immediately.  I found so many in the 1930s, 40s, & 50s that I have decided to stop with the year of my birth – 1959.

1935 “Lullaby of Broadway”

1936 “The Way You Look Tonight”

1938 “Thanks for the Memory”

1939 “Over the Rainbow”

                1940 When You Wish upon a Star”

                1941 “The Last Time I Saw Paris”

                1942 “White Christmas”

1943 “You’ll Never Know”

                1944 “Swinging on a Star”

1946 “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe”

                1947 “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”

1948 “Buttons and Bows”

                1949 “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

1950 “Mona Lisa”

                1951  ”In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”

1954 “Three Coins in the Fountain”

                1955 “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing”

1956 “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Qué Será, Será)”

                1957 “All the Way”

                1959 “High Hopes”

There were only 6 award winning songs between 1934 – 1959 where I read the title and did not have the tune pop into my head.   I made the title-tune association with 6 songs from the 1960s,  7 from the 1970s,  7 from the 1980s, and 7 from the 1990s.

If you want to see the titles of all the Academy Award winning Best Original Songs click here.