Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Year 1812, festival overture in E♭ major, Op. 49

"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."

~Frank Zappa  

"Every now and then we have to let the general public know that we can still blow shit up."

~Captain Diel from Rush Hour 

In the late 1700's France was experiencing some pretty significant growing pains which historians have termed, the "French Revolution".  There's a lot of loose ends and rabbit holes to be uncovered when discussing this, but the gist is the regular schmucks got pretty tired of the nobility being famous just because their daddy's had money and went berserk on most of Europe for the better part of ten to fifteen years because why not?  Fortunately, Americans have no frame of reference here.

"Liberté, égalité, fraternité!"

So in the process of this overthrow of Feudalism and creation of a republic comes a guy named Napoléon Bonaparte who it turns out is like the Michael Jordan of warfare and creates an empire the likes of Europe hadn't seen since Rome fell.   Russia had eventually become pretty cool on most of this as they had generated a peace accord with the French from 1807 when Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon signed the Treaty of Tilsit which concluded with France absorbing most of Prussia and Russia agreeing to help France dominate Europe if they would help Russia defeat the Ottomans.  

"I will never let go, Boney."

Previously, Russia had been allied with Britain and Sweden in telling France the calm the hell down, but with the power of Napoleon's Grande Armée (which we can only assume was made up of pirate jedis) the Russians felt the greater hope for remaining undisturbed lay with such an alliance.  

As this woodcut shows Johnny Depp fighting Prussians at the Battle of Auerstadt

So with the treaty in place, peace was achieved between Russia and France for a whopping four years because in 1811, Russian nobility were getting pretty uncomfortable with the whole French thing about "equality" and "being pissed off at the rich people who are rich just because they were the inbred spawn of other rich people" and encouraged Tsar Alex to put the brakes on the Franco lovefest.  As a precautionary measure, the Tsar began to explore the possibility of an invasion of France through Poland.  This was accidentally leaked and as a result Napoleon beefed up his army to about 450,000 men and tore, thunder and blazes, across Europe straight towards Moscow beginning in June of 1812.  

Now, Napoleon's army was really good at entering a theatre of war and gobbling up resources in short order on a scale of magnitude that was massive enough to satisfy the needs of the ever-enlarging army.  Well-fed troops fight harder and longer and depriving the enemy of rations would frequently tip the scale in the French favor.  The Russians knew from the outset that they were no match for the French army, which at this point was as hench as the Incredible Hulk, so the Ruskies began to retreat towards Moscow, dodging fights and destroying their own resources which was using a page out of the military tactics book known as:  

The Russians finally held a line in Borodino (after Russian nobility understandly completely freaked out) where a vastly overpowered Russian force valiantly got their butts kicked, but landed a definitive "you shoulda seen the other guy,"-esque blow on the French.  Following the defeat, the Russians retreated beyond Moscow and left Napoleon to only assume that he could waltz in and force Alexander to capitulate, but the Russians would be having none of that and proceeded to burn their capital to the ground.  

So at this point, a confused and exhausted Napoleon noticed that it had started snowing, the prize he sought was smoldering away and he had a few hundred thousand hungry soldiers who had about 1,700 miles to walk back to France.  Meanwhile, the Russians were all like-

One of the most bitter Siberian winters had begun to set in and literally began freezing Napoleon's army to the ground.  Thousands after thousands of men began dying from exposure and starvation as they began their retreat back to the homeland, leaving Russia to celebrate victory on account of their polar bear ancestry.  

"Is elixir of the bourgeois." 

So at this point you might be given to wonder when (if ever) we might be listening to something. Well, here's the tie-in.  In 1880 the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was almost finished being built, which was good timing as it had been 25 years since Alexander II was coronated and about 40 years since Alexander I asked them to build it in the first place.  The church was actually built to commemorate the Russian victory, and patriotism was maxed as everything seemed to push towards a blow-out spectacular where they had planned to have Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) compose a fitting piece of music to honor such an auspicious occasion.  Someone (probably in Russian marketing) thought it would be a grand idea to have live artillery and bells and people shouting while the music played to simulate the absolute joy the Russian people experienced when nature liberated them from French occupation. Tchaikovsky thought it sounded like a bunch of crap and quickly and dispassionately composed the piece that would make his family wealthy beyond belief for generations to come.

The original festival ended up being canceled on account of the insane amount of money necessary to do all that cool stuff and that Alexander II was assassinated by members of a Russian liberation movement, thus making a such a celebration a bit superfluous. Despite all this, the piece was premiered on August 20th, 1882 in a tent in front of the unfinished cathedral.

The piece is sort of a mixtape of the entire conflict.  Tchaikovsky employs a Russian Orthadox hymn, O Lord Save Thy People to symbolize his fleeing countrymen as the advancing French army is symbolized by the (eventual) French anthem,  La Marseillaise, and as the conflict escalates toward Moscow you hear cannon fire (presumably the Russians firing the French guns that were left frozen in the tundra) punctuating the anthem as numerous bells ring out over the top of the orchestra.  The bells symbolize the churches ringing their "zvons" loudly as many of the Russian citizenry had resorted to praying to God that they be delivered from the invading army.  "Zvons" were Russian-style cathedral bells that unlike the Hunchback of Notre Dame, used fixed ropes attached to their clappers so that to play them one only had to press down on each rope to sound the corresponding bell.  

Cool hat is sold separately

Now the art of performing the zvons had been mostly lost in the years following the Russian revolution as many of the bell towers were destroyed, so it has proven difficult to authentically replicate the sound Tchaikovsky may have been hoping to achieve.  Not to mention the difficulty of firing off explosives in close proximity to musicians.  Too close everyone dies, too far away and the sound delay causes a miscue as the cannon fire is in fact in the score.  

Drop the bass, Pachelbel

The version I've found for today is, from what I can determine, a performance by the Leningrad Philharmonic on the occasion of Tchaikovsky's 150th birthday, which would put this recording somewhere in the year 1990.  Cannons are used and the bells performed look very similar to what our Orthodox friend up there seems to be playing on.  The other neat part about this work is that in the finale portion a brass band (who had up until this point been hanging out) is used to make it as loud as humanly possible as the Russians finally have a reason to be thankful they lived in the Earth's ice box.  

The overture, a bit paradoxically, is now a frequent staple of the celebration of American independence following Arthur Fiedler programming it during the Boston Pop's annual "Pops goes the Fourth" in 1974.  One could look at the present-day circumstances surrounding the Russian-US relationship and scoff at such use of what is traditionally a Russian anthem of freedom and independence.  One could even make a swift (and truthful) judgement that the Russian people are in many ways still fighting for that freedom.  

But I say look past the differences in our cultures.  Put aside the injustices that still plague our modern societies.  And just pause for a moment and appreciate what Mr. Tchaikovsky has done for young music listeners the world over:

See you next Friday.

-ED

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/July-August-08/On-this-Day--Tchaikovsky-s--1812-Overture--Debuts-in-Moscow.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia
Calvin and Hobbes belongs to the unparalleled Bill Watterson

Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond

"It all started at the Temple of Apollo In Delphi.  One of his friends approached the oracle with the question: "Is anyone wiser than Socrates?" The answer was "No." Socrates was profoundly puzzled by this episode. He claimed to know nothing of any importance, so Socrates set off in search of someone wiser than himself. He interrogated the politicians, the poets, and the craftsmen. The first group turned out to know nothing of any account but believed themselves the wisest of men; the second could move men with powerful words but were unable to explain their meaning; the third group displayed expertise in their specialities but erred in claiming a more general wisdom. These conversations led Socrates to conclude that the oracle may have been correct in its riddling way: Socrates was wise in that he knew that he knew nothing, whereas others were unaware of their own ignorance."

Dr. Morris B. Kaplan
Foreword to the Socratic Dialogues by Plato



A favorite time of mine in music history is during the turn of the 20th century when there was a massive interest in the preservation of European folk songs.  This is of course well before the advent of any sort of reasonably portable or even remotely useful recording technology such as we have today.  Today, most of us have a relatively reliable recording device in our pockets at all times.  Just 100 years ago, recording technology was limited to mechanical means with equipment such as the phonograph.  100 years prior to that, musical notation was it.  Humans have been perfecting the system for the transcription of music since prehistory, but the ability to record in reasonable fidelity and reproduce a close facsimile has only been available to the average person for less than a century.

So as we've talked about before, you've got a few composers in the late Romantic/early Modern era who began capturing these folksongs and using them as centerpieces for their arranging work.  Now this is music that has been transferred down through the lineage of particularly families and communities though the aural tradition- one generation singing it to the next, over and over again.  So here comes Grainger, and Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

With a jawline that made men weep and women pregnant.

An interesting side-note on Vaughan Williams is that he hated being called "Ralph" as you probably just read that.  He insisted on the pronunciation "Rayf" which I can only determine was a preferred means of pronunciation among the upper crust of English society.

Despite this propensity for the finer things, Vaughan Williams was not a stranger to hard work and grave danger.  He enlisted in the Royal Army during World War I as a private in the Medical Corps, ending up becoming a stretcher carrier and eventually working his way up to higher levels of command.  He would eventually come to be reassigned as director of music and would transition back into civilian life as a conductor and composer.

He has been described frequently as quintessentially British in his composing, capturing the spirit, nostalgia and essence of the British people in musical form, and Loch Lomond, despite having origins set in Scotland, espouses much of this "Britishness".  

So Loch Lomond, like so many other folk tunes of it's type, has a muddy history that has long since been eroded and intertwined with various, believable possibilities.  A lot of them have to do with a group known as the Jacobites and an uprising they held in 1745.  The Jacobite Uprisings span a portion of history 1688 to 1746 and involves England, Ireland, and Scotland and Protestants, Anglicans, and Catholics. Essentially, you have a King named James (the Latin of which is Jacobus, hence the Jacobite bit) who is Catholic and trying to keep the Anglicans and other Protestants from going nuts.  

He ends up getting deposed from the throne of the UK by his daughter, Mary, who was pissed that she had been bumped out of succession to the throne by her new baby brother who James had fathered with his second wife, Mary's stepmother.  So she gets hitched with a guy named William of Orange who then is coerced by some of the Anglicans to use her birthright and new husband to stake claim to the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland. As you might imagine, this did not sit well.

So the Jacobites sought to restore James to the throne to secure their interests in the Catholic church overseeing the rule of the thrones and it pretty much didn't work out, again and again.  Now, here comes the part where I explain our reference to Socrates up there- I've spent about 3 weeks on this entry.  I vacillated on which angle to really take.  "Should I go full bore on Vaughan Williams?" "Should I try and tackle the history of Loch Lomond the tune?"  Both were daunting.  

As I began researching both angles I discovered a rabbit hole of side stories and parallels that consumed my thoughts and flooded any rational train of thought I could summon for this entry. Imagine- a simple folk tune could have such depth!  It was frustrating to the point where I almost scrapped the entry altogether and as a result this entry went unwritten, blowing well past St. Patrick's Day (where I had originally intended it to be the start of a three-part series on Irish/Scottish/Celtic music).  

So two things come to mind today.  First and foremost, I failed. I had a goal, I set out to do it, and fell short of what my intentions were.  The other being that there is no possible way to be sure anything we say is the absolute truth.  It's proven that our brains  soften our memories over time, massaging away the little bits that suck and salving on some sweet, sweet lies of nostalgic bliss.  History has often be attributed to the winners.  And here we don't even know who wrote this song we're talking about today.  So, for Socrates to go around and determine that everyone is pretty much shooting from the hip and the only sensible thing to do is say hang it all gave me the impetus necessary to plug forward and polish this turd up shiny.

The truth of the matter, kids, is this- everyone fails.  Our world needs failure as contrast for the stars in the sky to shine a little bit brighter.  Without the constant and perpetual motion of failure, success wouldn't hold nearly as much meaning.  

Today marks two full years of that Listening Friday has been in existence online.  I just paid my $10 to secure the domain name for another full year, putting me $28.97 in the hole on this little venture (minus the few months I tried out Google Ads- which sucked). I started writing this blog at a point in time where I was coming to grips with the fact that I would be leaving something behind that I had dedicated a great deal of my life to and that meant I had to acknowledge defeat.  

I had to come to terms with being a failure on a relatively massive scale.  

It is, surprisingly, not something I come by easily.  To quote John McClane, "I don't like to lose."  It's just not in my nature, but walking away from teaching was necessary for me to survive and to get to that understanding took a lot of time and a lot of grief. 

So all of that is a roundabout way of getting back to the core message of this blog. This is not a space to find well-researched, exhaustive studies of history and musicology. I don't have that kind of time on my hands. This is a place where I take music that has had an impact on my life and means something to me and I find something that I can write about it.  As well as put up stupid pictures.

So, the text of Loch Lomond is thought to have been inspired by a Jacobite rebel having come to the realization that he will never return to see Loch Lomond (which incidentally is a lake in case you were wondering) where he said farewell to his love.  He then tells his friend who is not dying that he'll take the low road back to Scotland, implying that his soul will be returned to his homeland following his death.  There are a handful of interpretations as to which road (high or low) might actually be the path most preferred by the recently deceased, but the nevertheless the impression is given.  

By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

Chorus: O ye'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road And I'll be in Scotland before ye but me and my true love will never meet again On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

'Twas there that we perted in yon shady glen On the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond Where in purple hue, the highland hills we view And the moon coming out in the gloaming.

"Chorus"

The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring And in sunshine waters lie sleeping But the broken heart it kens, nae second spring again, Though the waeful may cease frae their greeting.

"Chorus"

So, in the acknowledgement of knowing nothing and embrace of failure, today we celebrate the 2nd birthday of this project.  

Here's to many happy returns of the day.

See you next Friday.

-ED




Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonnie_Banks_o%27_Loch_Lomond
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Vaughan_Williams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_risings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_III_of_England
http://books.google.com/books?id=SSous9E-3CwC&pg=PR9

Bedřich Smetana: Vltava

We humans, are creatures of habit.

As much as we cast our vision into our environment, we are very much forged by it- given to search subconsciously for the path of least resistance as a puddle of water gently finds its way down to nestle as close to the Earth's core as the soil will allow.

It is not as lazy as it sounds though.

I am given to reflect on Karl Husa and his Music for Prague 1968 as an example of this.  His work (which you can read about through the link) describes the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in the winter of 1968.  It paints a picture of a people given a glimmer of hope, but crushed in spirit at the hands of an overwhelming majority of force.

A people forced into the path of least resistance.

Sadly for the city of Prague and the land of Bohemia, this sort of thing isn't alien.  Over the past 200 years or so alone they've experienced similar fates, wars and struggles for the freedom to express and live free and faced overwhelming odds pushing them back.  This particular environment has given birth to a great number of revolutionaries, artists, and composers and one such composer we'll explore today is Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884).  In 1848 eastern Europe was in a state of social and political upheaval, occasionally referred to as "Spring" or sometimes "Summer".

Smetana was born to a relatively wealthy family, his father was a brewer and also a decent amatuer musician. Bedřich himself took to the piano at an early age and grew in popularity as a gifted performer.  Despite a promising childhood, he struggled to gain notoriety as an adult in the highly cultured city of Prague.  After the loss of of three of his daughters, the lack of any progress as a professional composer, and the suffocating political climate, Smetana left Prague to try and establish his career elsewhere.

He eventually settled in Gothenburg, a "musically unsophisticated" city where he was able to quickly rise to the top of his local contemporaries.  He began a school, gained notoriety and respect in a matter of a few months.  After about five years, the political climate had again shifted in Prague and the need for a Czech national identity was created.  Smetana returned, emboldened by his success in Sweden, and took the creation of a new national opera company as a sign to help generate that identity by inventing the Czech opera.  

He would meet challenges as many in musical power in the city of Prague felt his work bordered too close to the side of radicalism.  He embraced Liszt and Wagner which was considered eccentric for the time.  Many in the city felt a more conservative approach was warranted and Smetana would struggle through the remainder of his life to etch out his place in history.

And etch he would.  Now internationally, Dvořák is considered the senior Czech national composer, however within the Czech Republic and Prague itself Smetana holds a special place.

From 1874 to 1879, Smetana composed six symphonic poems (we talked about this style before with Camille Saint-Saëns and his Danse Macabre) under the caption of Má vlast, translated: My Homeland.  In this work he quotes historical tales and physical places of the Czech countryside and Prague itself.  The most famous of these poems is Vltava also known by its German title, Die Moldau.

The Vltava (or Moldau) is a large river that travels through the heart of the Czech countryside, beginning from two small springs and eventually growing massive and weaving through the city. Through music, Smetana describes a journey along the river, passing a farm where a wedding is taking place, past ruins and castles, echoes of Bohemian history, and finishes by passing through the great city into the distance beyond.

It's clear in studying Smetana that the man had a great and deep love of his country.  He had an early desire to create a national identity, a unifying ideal through his music.  Whether those desires rose out of a call to fame or fortune or simply because he wanted to fight oppression of thought is debatable. One thing I kept returning to was the fact that despite his contemporaries in Prague criticizing and reviling his work, he maintained a perpetual optimism that his diligence would in fact stand the test of time.  That perseverance could override the resistance he faced in achieving his goal.  Smetana might not have lived to see the scope of his work fulfilled, but with his love of his people and his homeland, he changed his environment.

For the better.

See you next Friday.

-ED



Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed%C5%99ich_Smetana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1_vlast
http://www.bhso.org.uk/repert-131-Smetana-Vltava---Symphonic-Poem.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Austrian_Empire

Robert Schumann: Violin Concerto in D Minor

My kid likes Frozen.  I suspect if you also live with a 3 year old human, you might be subjected to bouts of the soundtrack from time to time.  In the dark recesses of my mind, I fantasize that Disney executives have crafted an irresistible formula for attracting and enslaving the minds of small children in order to ensure an eternity of Disney fandom.  That between "Love is an Open Door" and "Let it Go" some sort of subconscious Morse code escapes from my stereo and convinces my preschooler that Daddy hates him unless we buy a lot of shit we don't need at prices we can't afford made by children who aren't fortunate enough to live in a country with child-labor laws.  Case-in-point, I put on "Frozen" radio on my phone yesterday and out comes the familiar tones of you-know-what.  I look at the boy and ask, "Is this what you want to listen to?"

Incidentally, children can grow mustaches at will.

I've preached about my moral-centric hatred and categorical rejection of the radio and its inherently bad taste in placing profitability over musicality (a model which LF.com unfortunately does not employ - believe me we tried...). Despite this, I sometimes find a gem in the wavelengths.  In this case it was NPR and they were talking about one of my favorites, Robert Schumann (1810-1856).

They were going on about all the usual stuff- Schumann married Clara Wieck against her father's, Friedrich Weick, will.  The elder Wieck also happened to be Schumann's piano teacher who was selling him on the fact that Robert would be able to make a killing in the virtuosic piano game.

"Babies.. before we're done here.. y'all be wearing gold-plated diapers."

Unfortunately for Schumann, he injured his hand.  While it's not directly known how this injury occurred, scholars think it had to do with his anti-syphilis medication, a surgery to make his hands work better (not a great idea in the 1800's b-t-dubs), or some sort of mechanical finger strengthener device.  In any event, with a bum hand he wasn't going to wow any audiences and switched to composition.  In the ultimate act of father-figure retribution, he marries the daughter of his teacher, which royally cheeses off Freidrich who then pursues legal action against the post-nuptials.

The other big issue with Schumann is that he pretty much went nuts towards the end.  He suffered from what essentially sounds like bipolar disorder for most of his life.  He'd have these spats of manic composition and produce amazing amounts of work, followed by periods of deep "melancholia" to use the parlance of his time.  It eventually became more troubling as he began to hear voices of dead composers in his head whom sang him melodies and told him to do stuff.  He'd hear angelic choirs which would turn demonic and eventually the whole ordeal drove him to throw himself into the Rhine river to prevent his loss of control from causing any harm to his beloved Clara.  He was rescued by boaters and sent home.

Ultimately, the combination of already prevalent mental-illness and what was quickly (and presumably) becoming late-stage syphilis led him to become deeply troubled, to the point that he checked himself into a mental asylum and left his affairs in the hands of Clara and Brahms.  I say "presumably" above because we really don't know what happened to Schumann.  Typical treatment for syphilis at the time was doses of mercury, which is pretty much the worst thing you could do and during his autopsy, a large tumor was found at the base of his brain, lending credence to the whole auditory hallucination deal.  

In his later years, Schumann began to compose from this place of mental breakdown and took liberties ill-afforded to his contemporaries who were less involved in the whole syphilis, mercury-poisoning, brain-tumor ordeal.  One such piece is our target of focus today, his Violin Concerto in D minor, written in 1853 about a year before Schumann attempted suicide.  He wrote the work for violinist Joseph Joachim whom he had composed a number of other works for, however upon playing through the piece Joachim felt it represented too much of Schumann's terminal decline and basically hid the work from the public for the rest of his life.  He placed the piece in the custody of the Prussian State Library and wrote instructions in his will that the work not be performed until 100 years after the death of Schumann (which would of course be 1956).  This is where it gets weird.

In 1933, Joachim's grand-nieces are hanging out in a weird part of town and decide to attend a séance in London.  Schumann and Joachim (now dead for 77 and 26 years respectively) both drop in unannounced and tell the girls that one of them (Jelly d'Arányi) has to perform this work and they've got to go to Berlin to find the manuscript in the library.  Neither girl had ever heard of the work before.  

Nothing happened until 1937 when Schott Music (a German publisher) discovered it and asked the opinion of American-born violinist,Yehudi Menuhin who loved it and was totally down with premiering it in San Fransicso, right up until d'Arányi drops the whole "did your dead great-uncle speak forth from beyond the grave and tell you to premier his 80-year-old concerto that all his bros thought sucked - I DON'T THINK SO!"

Unfortunately, neither of the two violinists would get the chance to premier the work as Germany still held the copyright and they were hellbent on having a German premier the work since they were into that whole "Deutschland ist das beste" deal in the early-mid 20th century for an unrelated reason. The honor went to Georg Kulenkampff, who apparently was a much better Nazi than violinist. 

Interestingly enough, Paul Hindemith was commissioned to create a violin-piano reduction of the score, still in manuscript form.  Hindemith of course by this point was essentially barred from performing his own works in Germany, but the Reich let it slide just this once since it was convenient for them.  Menuhin would perform the work next in Carnegie Hall and d'Arányi would garner the privilege of fulfilling her dead uncle's supposed vision by premiering the work in London at the Queen's Hall.

It's really a pretty beautiful work, and upon hearing it I'm given to wonder if it was nothing more than Joachim's opinion that created a sort of pall of doom and gloom over the work and convinced Brahms and Clara to hide it from the public, lest Robert's reputation be ridiculed and subjected to harsh criticism.  It speaks loudly to the public perception of mental illness of the day, that just the association of a piece of music with a state of mind and being could reflect so poorly on one's character.  It then becomes a sad commentary on our state of affairs today that mental illness still is awarded with such stigma when in all reality it is no different an affliction than cancer, diabetes or any number of debilitating diseases to which a cure is somewhat complicated and to which the best medication can be support and love, not fear and derision.  

So, think not then of what ailed Schumann in his composition, but instead focus on what he was able to accomplish and listen with clear ears and heart.

See you next Friday.

-ED

(I present the 2nd and 3rd movements as I was unable to locate a recording that had all three.  Joshua Bell has a few, but the way the 2nd and 3rd movements are structured, it's really enjoyable to listen to the contrast between both).




Sources:
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/30/359873812/a-violin-concerto-back-from-beyond-the-grave
youtube.com
wikipedia.com

Camille Saint-Saëns: Danse Macabre

So for this Listening Friday on a Listening Sunday, we're celebrating Halloween.  But fear not, this isn't Halloween 2014.  No, we're getting a jump on the box stores this year by skipping Thanksgiving and Christmas and setting up for next Halloween.

They'll never see that coming.

So, our listening today comes from an existentialist French guy with perfect pitch and a wonderful beard.  His name? Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921).

C'est magnifique!

He possessed an uncanny memory for piano literature and an early aptitude to composition and the piano.  Additionally, he grew to be a sort of Romantic-era Renaissance man, possessing and amassing a wide array of scholar-level knowledge about astronomy, mathematics, botany, archaeology, lepidoptery, and geology.

Saint-Saëns was also considered somewhat controversial in his earlier days as he trumpeted support for the likes of Wagner, Berlioz, and Liszt, but pretty much hated Debussy and Stravinsky.  Like many humans often do, he grew up embracing much more liberal forms of music than what was contemporary of his time (Mozart and Beethoven), but eventually as he grew old began to loathe and publicly revile the younger, up and coming composers for misusing the artform.  He claimed once that he stayed in Paris just to trash Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande.  Debussy reportedly responded thusly:

LOL You mad bro?

Despite this, Saint-Saëns is widely known for popularizing a musical concept that is still frequently employed today, albeit in much different varieties.  Being friends with Liszt allowed Saint-Saëns to become familiar with the idea of the tone poem, which is basically a symphonic work that is crafted to evoke imagery from a work of literature or art or something that's not music without visual aids.  Usually these works are single, relatively short pieces and creates a mental image for the listener.  

The piece we are exploring today is none other than Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre.  It draws its roots from the poem, "Égalité, Fraternité..." by Henri Cazalis.  Click here for the text.  Basically, every Halloween at the stroke of midnight, Death comes out and raises hell with all his buddies until the rooster crows and sends everyone to their graves.

Lots of musical trickery is employed to evoke the imagery of goblins and ghouls rampaging across the European countryside, including a notable use of the xylophone to simulate the sounds the bones in skeletons might make.

Which Disney would later find useful.

Reception of the work was timid at best.  Many people were actually a bit unnerved at the use of the instruments to evoke such harsh imagery.  One of the more notable examples of treachery within the work is the usage of the "tri-tone" or augmented fourth/diminished fifth interval in the beginning with the solo violin.  To our Western inspired ears it sounds quite dissonant.  So harsh, in fact that it was prohibited from composition during the Middle Ages in religious music.  It is disputed, but many attribute the term, the "Devil's Interval" to the leap starting from this time period.

Without any further stalling for time, I give you Danse Macabre.  

Happy belated Halloween!

See you next Friday.

-ED

Sources:
Wikipedia
YouTube
Disney
Buena Vista Pictures/Touchstone Pictures

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 "Choral", Mvt. IV

It's not often I hit a stumbling block with regard to picking music to write about.  It's not exactly like there's a shortage of music.  Humans have been creating organized sounds in rhythm for essentially the past 8,000+ years.  Written music and the like came later, but the concept has existed almost as long as we have.  In the cosmic sense of things, it's really not even on the scale of the blink of an eye.  It's like half a blink.  But on the human scale, from the standpoint of interpreting it from the scope of a single lifetime.  It's enormous.  However, this week I feel compelled to choose just one, out of potentially billions.

Thankfully, not this one.

The composer we're examining today should not be unfamiliar to you.  I only hesitate in presenting the maestro to you in light of last week's piece exploring the life of Johannes Brahms, who spent at least a portion of his life wishing that he was Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). It seems a little abrasive to Brahms to jump right back to Beethoven, but in any event he would probably want to devote a blog to writing about Beethoven were he alive today, but I digress.

Let's examine what most of us know and understand about Beethoven, having been drilled from day one of public education that he was the greatest composer to ever walk the earth.

1.  He was deaf.
2.  He wrote Ode to Joy.
3.  He wrote "bum-bum-bum-baaaaaaaaa"

Here are some facts you might know about Beethoven.

1. He became deaf later in life, losing his hearing gradually as he aged.
2. He wrote a piece called Symphony No. 9 in which the 4th movement takes its text from a poem, "Ode to Joy"
3.  He wrote a piece called Symphony No. 5 in c minor, the first 4 notes of which are now infamous.

We all know history's Beethoven.  We know that he wrote important music and we also equate all things "Classical" with him on a societal level. The irony in this of course is that Beethoven wasn't really a Classical era composer.  He was a pivotal figure in ushering in a new era of musical composition and is almost universally regarded as the father of Romanticism.  He was born and raised into the Classical form, but took liberties with it as a young man and adult, shaping it and molding it to suit his needs, rebelling against the classic instruction he received from greats such as Haydn.

There is much about the man that is conjecture and mythological in nature.  For example: that his father, himself a musician, made him practice at the piano as a small child until the young Beethoven would break down in tears, or that when on his deathbed his final gesture was to reach toward the ceiling in agony as a tremendous clap of thunder shook the building to its foundation.  While it is plausible that Beethoven's father was overzealous in his pursuit to sire the next Mozart, it is equally plausible that such a tale was invented to bolster the already mighty composers identity.  There are also some reports that the day Beethoven died was sunny, not a cloud in the sky.

So wind.  Much tree.

Who are we to know?

What we do know about Beethoven is more interesting to me in any event.  We know that when he was 32 he was already experiencing significant difficulty in hearing.  It was 1824 when he finally completed the 9th symphony, essentially deaf as a stump.  In 1802, he wrote a letter (known as the Heiligenstadt Testament) addressed to his brothers, Johann and Carl in which he pours out his heart and expresses the gloomy darkness that occupied his soul.  Beethoven never married, though not for a lack of trying. He had little respect for the authority of his time, mostly tied up in Austrian aristocracy and unfortunately most of the women he fell for happened to be of this higher slice of society and couldn't be seen cavorting with a commoner musician, despite Beethoven's admirations being often reciprocated.

I'm sure Beethoven felt very alone.  In his nephew, Karl, it seems he placed a great burden as his only heir. Tragically, Karl's father died in 1815.  Complicating this, Beethoven pretty much hated his sister-in-law, viewing her as an unfit wife to his brother and publicly declared her an unfit mother for his nephew.  He spent a great deal of his resources in battling to procure custody rights of Karl to avoid him being raised with his mother's influence.  This had a not altogether desired effect with Beethoven being the 19th century equivalent of a helicopter parent and forcing Karl to study music (even though he wasn't interested and also pretty much sucked at it).  

Karl attempted to kill himself in 1826, went to live with his mother to recover and last saw the elder Beethoven in 1827, shortly before Karl left to join the army and Beethoven left to join the dead.

In his Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven expressed a desire to end his life 25 years before he did eventually die.  Before he even had a chance to compose the bulk of his symphonic works.  One bit he wrote sticks out to me:

...with joy I hasten towards death - if it comes before I shall have had an opportunity to show all my artistic capacities it will still come too early for me despite my hard fate and I shall probably wish it had come later - but even then I am satisfied, will it not free me from my state of endless suffering? Come when thou will I shall meet thee bravely.

For Beethoven, this letter was a last will and testament from a tormented composer who did not fully know if he'd be around much longer.  In this letter he touches on his hearing loss as being a contributing factor to his unhappiness, contrasting it with the fact that as a composer hearing ought to be his best attribute.  This was to be an inevitability however, and something that we remember Beethoven for, maybe even more than his symphonies.

In the end, I'm not sure if it's strength of character, stubbornness, or sheer determination that forced Beethoven to sally forth, back to the wind, into the heart of the gale.  Perhaps a deep love for his nephew and eventual heir to his small fortune? Or maybe he knew that he would be remembered for his contributions to our musical identity as a species?

I don't know.

What I do know is this. Each and every one of you reading this must listen to Beethoven's 9th in its entirety at some point in your life.  And I don't mean now.  And I don't mean on a computer.

I want you to seek out and find an orchestra performing it. Now, if it's the Vienna Phil, then all the better, but keep in mind the premier of this work wasn't its best rendition either. Under-rehearsed and dealing with a totally deaf Beethoven trying to give musical critique gave a certain "flavor" to be sure. But, quality and skill-set aside, you need to find an orchestra performing it live.

And you need to sit through it.  If for no other reason than to say you've done it, because I guarantee that you will not regret it.

Because when you listen to it, if you listen closely, you will hear the Romantic Era being born.



See you next Friday.

-ED

Watch 1st.  

Watch 2nd.

Sources:
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.wikipedia.com


Epilogue: 

One last bit before we go for this week.  When I was 7 or 8 I was riding the bus from school to my house. I was staring out the window as one often does on buses and observing the blur of the scenery roaring by my young face.  I got the idea that it may look interesting if I were to turn my head 90 degrees so that instead of moving left to right, it would appear to be moving top to bottom, like I was flying or rushing up really quickly.  So, get that image in your head of a small child tilting his head at a strange angle staring blankly out the window.  The bus attendant became concerned.

"What are you doing?!"

I panicked.  I had done strange things like this before, but had never been noticed and I didn't know how to respond any way other than being honest.

"I'm looking at the world from a different viewpoint."

"What?!"

I was mortified.  I had been discovered.  I was different and it would be impossible to explain to someone who was probably just concerned that a good solid bump in the road might be enough to pop a vertebrae out of my neck, bent at such an angle.  I mumbled something incoherent and turned forward, head down.

Beethoven looked out his bus window at weird angles too.  And so does this guy, Leif Inge.  He took Beethoven's 9th and stretched it out digitally to a length of 24 hours (it's normally 90 minutes or so) and calls it "9 Beet Stretch".  Purists will probably turn their noses up at it, citing Beethoven's tempo markings while thumping their chests proudly.  And that's fine.  But to listen to it so slowly, so exposed really seems to me like taking a microscope to the master.  It has a certain trance-like, ethereal quality to it.  After listening to it, for any length of time, your ears and brain begin to invent these sort of artifacts inside the lengthened chords that just come in and out of nowhere.

It's quite surreal.

You can find a live stream of it here: http://www.expandedfield.net/  (Since it's so long, presumably the size of the audio file precludes it from being uploaded to YouTube or the like).  You might like it, I don't know.

Lastly, I want to leave you with a link to a hilariously funny webcomic that puts Beethoven into a unique light, particularly with regards to his relationships with Haydn, his brother and his nephew.