Franz Xavier Mozart: Piano concerto no 2

Day 212

Franz Xavier Mozart: Piano concerto no 2 in E flat op 25

Henri Sigfirdsson

Lemberg Symphony Orchestra

Gunhard Mattes

I didn’t realise until quite recently that Mozart’s youngest son was a composer in his own right. He never knew his father as he was born only a few months before his father died. He was reasonably well known in early-romantic musical circles, for example he knew Schumann and Schubert and he was one of the many composer chosen by Diabelli to write a variation on his waltz theme. Whether this fame was due to his own talent as a composer or his parentage is a matter of debate.

This, the second of the composer’s two piano concerti, was an interesting piece. If I had heard it cold I might have through that is was an early world of Beethoven, particularly in the outer movements. The slow movement was more forward looking, with suggestions of the sort of fioratura which is probably derived from Hummel and which ultimately was full developed by Chopin.

There was certainly some attractive music here but also some fairly dull patches where the composer seems to get stuck into passage work that didn’t go anywhere. The melodic inspiration was patchy - some really lovely moments in the slow movement but elsewhere promising starts to tunes rather petered out into trivia.

I’m glad to have heard this and it was a more accomplished piece that I feared it might be. F X Mozart clearly had a real musical ability - but the piece does show up the difference between talent and genius.

Leopold Mozart: Horn Concerto

Day 211

Leopold Mozart: Horn concerto in D

Michael Thompson

Philharmonia Orchestra

Christopher Warren-Green

Leopold Mozart would have his place in musical history even if he were not Mozart’s father. His treatise on violin playing was an important book at the time of its publication but has taken an even greater importance in recent years because of what it tells us about performance practice in the early classical era.

But of course it is as Mozart’s father that he is best known. Perhaps these days his role in promoting his son’s early genius is seen more as exploitation rather than support but there is no doubting that his endeavours were responsible for Mozart’s early fame.  As a composer he soon left his father behind.  

Leopold’s horn concerto is an extraordinary example of very high horn writing which brings to mind some of Haydn’s experiments. But in purely musical terms it seems unremakable. It is typical example of early classical style - assured but with no particular distinction.If it were not a horn concerto but, say, a violin concerto I doubt that it would have even the tenuous place that it has in the repertoire.

Siegfried Wagner: Das Barenhauter

Day 210

Siegfried Wagner: Der Barenhauter

Soloists

Thuringian Symphony Orchestra

Konrad Bach

I start this exploration of musical relatives with Siegfried Wagner, who was of course not only the son of Richard Wagner but also the grandson of Franz Liszt. I imagine that is was inevitable that he was destined for a musical career. He had some success as a conductor at Bayreuth but he also composed a considerable body of work including 16 or so operas - more than his father. These were quite widely performed in the early years of the 20th century but then dropped out of the repertory fairly quickly, although there have been some recent revivals and many of the operas have now been recorded.

Der Barenhauter (The man in a bear's skin) was the first of his operas and - in relative terms - the best known. It is based, like most of his operas, on a fairy tale and shows the influence of his teacher Engelbert Humperdinck whose Hansel und Gretel is one of the very few post-Wagnerian operas to remain in the repertory.

I found Der Barenhauter to be an odd work with no real sense of stylistic unity. Some of the music had a Wagnerian intensity - such as the final duet - but in other places it seems extraordinary naive and harked back almost to the style of mid 19th century Singspiel. It really was a strange mixture. There were a couple of really beautiful passages for orchestra alone in the 3rd act which showed that Siegfried could write music of real quality - but for that very reason they stood out from much of the rest of the piece.

Siegfried Wagner has his devotees - there is an international society dedicated to promoting his work - but I can't help wondering whether anybody would ever want to revive this music were it not for the fact that the composer was his father's son.  I suspect that I might be asking the same question about some of the other music I hear in this part of the project. 

Weelkes: Four anthems

Day 209

Thomas Weelkes: Four anthems

When David Heard

How Amiable Are Thy Dwellings

Gloria in excelsis Deo

O Jonathan

Winchester Cathedral Choir

David Hill

In many ways this was saving the best till last! This is the final posting in this series on Tudor church music. Weelkes was a composer whose name I knew well but as far as I know I had never heard any of his music. If these four pieces are anything like typical then the loss is mine because they were all superb. They unfold beautifully at a very controlled pace and explore a great variety of textures with some really impressive high notes. There are some very interesting moments of harmonic invention, especially the cadence to the last of these anthems, which really took me by surprise.

So a good end to this week of Tudor music. The next few days will be looking at something quite different - music by the fathers and sons (and sometimes grandfathers and grandsons) of major composers.  I've already covered the Bach family in this project but they are in a category all of their own, with several of them being major figures in their own right. I'll explore this week if any of the relatives whose music I listened to are substantial figures themselves or are only known because of the family ties with a great composer.

Tye: Four pieces

Day 208

Christopher Tye: Four pieces

Omnes gentes plaudits manibus

In pace in idipsum

I lift my hear to thee, my God

Save me, O God

Choir of Magdalen College Oxford

Bill Ives

The fact that two of these pieces are in English and two in Latin rather makes the point that Tudor composers had to work in an environment where allegiances between the Protestant and Catholic faiths were constantly changing. Christopher Tye was based in Ely and seems to have had a fairly consistent career as a church musician. I couldn’t really see that there was much of a difference between the English and Latin settings - perhaps the English was a little more syllabic, but essentially these feel part of the same tradition - but then I am no expert in this music so there may be subtle differences that I am simply not aware of.  I enjoyed this music but again didn’t really have many points of reference to appreciate the subtleties, Perhaps I need total iimersion in Tudor music for several months to really start to understand how all of these composers relate to each other.

Carver: O bone Jesu

Day 207

Robert Carver: O bone Jesu

The Sixteen

Harry Christophers

This is an astonishing piece.  Robert Carver was the pre-eminent Scottish composer of the Renaissance era. - indeed some commentators regard his as the most important Scottish composer of all time.

The motet is in 19 parts. So in many ways it is of the same tradition as Spem in Alium but to me it was, despite the complexity of the part writing,  more introverted and contemplative. The sound was simply gorgeous. Not much is known about the life and career of Carver, or indeed how much music he actually wrote in his long life.  But this one piece alone puts him in the company of some much more famous composers.   

Tallis: Three Anthems

Day 206

Thomas Tallis: Three Anthems

O Lord, give they holy spirit

Remember me not, O Lord God

Hear the voice and prayer

Tallis Scholars

Peter Phillips

I've said before that I have not done any choral singing. That is not quite true - at University I did take part in a performance of Tallis's 40 part motet Spem in Allium.  It was an amazing experience to be in the middle of that wonderful texture - and very scary in case I was in the wrong place when everything suddenly comes to a temporary halt and there is absolute silence.

There three anthems are much more modest but give plenty of opportunities to understand why Tallis is such a highly regarded composer. They are largely chordal but but have plenty of polyphonic textures. There are some typical soaring moments but I would say that generally these are rather subdued, inward looking pieces.  Mostly the harmony was straightforward and consonant but there were certainly a few moments where Tallis enjoyed experimenting with dissonance. I feel that I have now seen the two extremes of Tallis - the 40 part motet and these tiny anthems. There must be a lot in between to explore.

Sheppard:Beata Nobis Gaudia

 Day 205

John Sheppard: Beata Nobis Gaudia

The Tallis Scholars 

Peter Phillips

Today was a busy day so didn't have much time for listening. I vaguely knew the name John Sheppard but I don't think that I have ever heard any of his music. This piece was made up of alternating passages of chant and choral responses. I have to say it was more of what I expected Tudor church music to be that the Orlando Gibbons pieces yesterday. It had the elaborate polyphony and soaring high notes which to me are, perhaps wrongly, what I associate with music of this era. The performance was phenomenally well controlled with beautiful voices throughout - as I have said before I do wonder whether it sounded anything at all like this when it was first performed. 

Had I had time I would have listened to some more of Sheppard's music, but this short piece had to be enough for today. 

Gibbons: Anthems

Day 204

Orlando Gibbons: Three anthems

O Lord in thy wrath

Hosannah to the son of David

Choir of Clare College

Timothy Brown

This is the record of John

Choir of Kings College Cambridge

Michael Chance

Phillip Ledger

So this next phase of the project is to listen to some Tudor church music. As I have said before I have no experience of singing in choirs and so this repertoire is unfamiliar to me. As a consequence I find it very difficult to evaluate what I am hearing - I don't have the reference points which I have in, for example, 19th century opera.

So what I can say here is that the first two anthems struck me as quite attractive - they were more homophonic than I was expecting, though there were some contrapuntal passages. The third is a verse anthem in which sections for solo voice alternate with choral material. I found this less attractive - I didn't feel that Gibbons' word setting really added much to the text - though perhaps I was expecting too much. After all this music is a lot earlier than Purcell, who was a master of setting English texts and perhaps I was judging Gibbons unfairly.  So overall a limited amount of pleasure from these three settings.  They were chosen completely at random and perhaps a different selection might have produced a more positive reaction.

Herbert: Natoma

Day 203

Victor Herbert Natoma (extracts)

Various performers

I wanted to end this look at nationalist operas by listening to a late 19th/early 20th century American opera. Somewhat to my surprise I was unable to find a complete recording of any opera of the pre First World War generation anywhere on any of the music libraries. So I had to make do with a selection of extracts from Victor Herbert's opera Natoma which somebody put together on line from a variety of sources - including private recordings, off-air videos, historical vocal recordings, a medley of brief excepts and even piano roll recordings. It was of course impossible to make a balanced judgement of the work from these scraps but there was enough to make an impression. Victor Herbert is know today, if he is still remembered at all, for some light operas and musical comedies but he did write two serious operas - this was was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1911 and was a resounding flop.  It is set in California in the 1820 and takes what is now a questionable view of American history, with praise for Columbus as the 'discoverer' of American and a very patronising view of Native Americans.

The 'Indian' music now seems Kitch and reminded me of the sort of thing one might have heard on the soundtrack of a Walt Disney film set in the Wild West, but some of the other music, particularly the prelude to Act 3, was very powerful. It was very much in the mainstream European tradition with clearly influences of French Opera and Puccini. It is a very long way from Babes in Toyland, which was made into a film by Laurel and Hardy.

The subject matter of the opera would make it unperformable nowadays, but I would like to have the opportunity to hear the whole thing - and indeed some of the other early American operas - given that so many long-forgotten operas have now been recorded is really is odd that this American repertory has simply vanished completely.

This is the end of this exploration of nationalist opera. In a short time I have managed to cover

• Denmark
• Poland
• Georgia
• Czechoslovakia
• Greece
• Russia
• Hungary
• The USA

There are plenty of other traditions to cover and I will return to this theme of Nationalist opera later in this project. But now for a complete change. For the next few days I will be exploring some composers of Tudor church music.

Erkel: Bánk Bán

Day 202

Erkel: Bánk Bán

Soloists

Hungarian National Chorus

Orchestra for Hungarian Millennium

Tamás Pál

Bánk Bán is one of the foundations of Hungarian Opera. Its composer, Ferenc Erkel (1810-1893) was a prominent figure in Hungarian music in the mid 19th century and among other achievements composed what is now the Hungarian national anthem. This opera is based on historical events in the 13th century which led to the murder of the queen. 

There are some clearly Hungarian elements to the score, particularly the use of the Cimbalon and some of the dance music is from the same roots as the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt but there is also a distinctly Viennese tinge to some of the music - a reminder that at this time Austria and Hungary were both parts of the same empire. But in many ways it is the mainstream elements of the score which are most impressive. Meyerbeer and French grand opera is clearly a major influence - I am sure that Erkel’s use of a viola d’amore obligato in the big scena for the soprano in Act 2 was inspired by the solo in the tenor aria in Les Huguenots. There is some fine music in this score - particularly the very menacing opening music and the big duet at the end of Act two which ends with the murder scene - that really did cause a shiver down the back of the spine. Some of the score tended a little towards generalised 19th century blood and thunder operatic cliches, but on the whole is was an impressive piece which has prompted me to explore more of Erkel’s output. 

There were many differences between the published score and the text on this recording, which was prepared as a soundtrack for a film of the opera. The opera has a complex textual history and it seems that there have been quite severe editorial intervention by many hands since the opera was first performed. This didn’t however get in the way of being able to follow most of the score - but there were cuts, and some passages were reordered or adapted. But the overall experience must have reflected the composer’s broad expectations if not the precise detail of what he originally wrote. 

Dargomïzhsky: The Stone Guest

Day 201

Dargomïzhsky The Stone Guest

Soloists

Bolshoi Theatre Chorus and Orchestra

Andrey Chistiakov

This is a version of the Don Giovanni legend dating from 1869. Like so many of the Russian Operas of the time more than one person had a hand in the finished version. The composer died before he completed the piece: it was completed by Cui and then orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov. I do remember The Stone Guest being discussed in the University history of music class - one of our lecturers was an expert in mid 19th century Russian music. The piece has its place in history as an experiment in setting the whole of the text of a play in what amounts to a continuous arioso, with hardly anything which can be considered pure recitative and no real set piece numbers other than one song, where the character on stage is, within the drama, actually singing a song. It provoked mixed reactions at the time: the composers of the five were very keen to see it performed. Tchaikovsky on the other hand was dismissive, calling it the lamentable fruit of a dry, purely rational process of invention.

I have to say that I am rather with Tchaikovsky here. It did seem very turgid in places and had very little sense of light and shade or the contrast between moments of action and moment of reflection that are so important in opera. Music of the music seemed laboured without much to attract the ear. It was only in the final confrontation between Don Giovanni and the Commander that the opera sprung to life. But then if a composer couldn't make something of that then all would be lost. But by then it was too late. I had made my mind up.   For me it was an experiment that did not come off and I think represents a dead end in operatic thinking.

Carrer: Despo

Day 200

Pavlos Carrer: Despo

Soloists

Sofia Festival Choir

Pasardjik Symphony Orchestra

Byron Fidentzis

I've reached day 200 in this project and also today represents another landmark. Although for the past 199 days I have  (apart from day 161) always listened to music I had not heard before the name of the composer was always famliar to me and I knew a little bit about him or her. But Pavlos Career was a complete unknown. I was looking for another nationalist opera, preferable from a country I had not featured in this survey to day, and also it needed to be short as today was a busy day. So I was delighted to land on this opera by the Greek Composer Pavlos Carrer which is in one act and which lasts just over half an hour.

Carrer (1829-1896) was one of the first, if not the first, Greek composers to write an opera. But to my ears there was very little Greek about it. It had all of the characteristics of early to middle period Verdi - strong rhythms, lot of energy, bit set piece solos, concerted passages and extrovert choruses. The only Greek element I noticed was a brief passage near the beginning which had a folk-like element to it, in the way that Italian or French composers of the time often introduced a touch of local colour.

The Greek element comes from the story - an episode in the war between the Greeks and the Turks in which the local women hide inside a castle and then when the castle is captured blow it and themselves up.  

I really enjoyed the opera, at least up to the last five minutes or so. It had that vigour and swagger of early Verdi and heard cold would I think have been assumed to be a previously unknown work of Verdi. But the last 5 minutes were a let down. I was expecting a dramatic finish but the composer's inspiration let him down and we had a few minutes of very conventional noisy battle music and then a rather brief and perfunctory ending. A pity really because the rest of the score was of high quality and would certainly hold the stage in a double bill with another short opera. Carrer wrote several operas, most of which have been recorded. It might be worth listening to one of the full length works at some point in the future.

Foerster: Eva

Day 199

Foerster: Eva

Soloists

Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra

Wexford Festival Chorus

Jaroslav Kyzlink

Foerster (sometime spelt Förster) is of the generation between Smetana and Janáček. He lived almost to the age of 100 (1859-1951) and must have seemed like a figure from another age by the time that he died.This opera, his first, dates from 1899. From the start we are clearly in the Czech world, with music which could have some from the Slavonic Dances or the Bartered Bride. But I found as he moved away from this world that the music became rather anonymous - Foerster had absorbed the mannerisms  of late 19th century opera without putting his own distinctive stamp on the music. It became rather stogy and four-square and lacked any real sense of rhythmic energy.

The second Act started in the same way but about half way through something happened: the music caught fire and there was half an hour or so of raw and intense drama  - at times it was approaching the level of dramatic inspiration that Janáček was to make his own. The third Act started back in folk idiom with a series of dances and choruses which to my mind went on far too long, even though this recording cut several passages found in the printed score. Eva’s final monologue brought us back to the dramatic intensity of the second Act, though though that it didn’t quite build to the shattering climax I was hoping for, and then the operas ended rather perfunctorily.

So this was certainly a curate’s egg of an opera - some highly dramatic music which showed real operatic flair but also some rather routine sections which were quite hard going. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened had Janâċek not produced his series of extraordinary late operas - would Foerster have taken his place on the world operatic stage? An intriguing thought.

Dolidze: Keto da Kote

Day 198

Dolidze: Keto da Kote

Soloists

Georgian Radio Committee orchestra and choir

Shalva Azmaiparashvili.

This 1919 opera is the foundation of the operatic tradition in Georgia. It is very much based in the folk tradition though it does have some more conventional operatic moments harking back to the style of the 1830s and 1840s. It is colourful throughout with lots of dances and lively choruses. It reminded me of the sort of operatic scene one might imagine in a film from the 1940s or 1950s playing in the background of a drama - colourful, melodic and not too demanding. I imagine that a suite of dances from the score would go down well at an open air concert of light music.

This is a hardly a contender for the list of forgotten operatic masterpieces but on its own terms it works well and I enjoyed listening to it - I must confess at times I was listening with half an ear - this is not a piece which demands full concentration. The opera holds an important place in the hearts of the Georgian people and seems still to be performed there frequently. I can’t imagine any other opera company taking it on - it is so much a product of its time and place.

Moniuszko: Straszny Dwór

Day 197

Moniuszko: Straszny Dwór

Soloists

Chorus and Orchestra of Polish National Opéra

Jacek Kaspszyk

This was a major discovery. I was aware of the opera - indeed the CDs have been sitting on my shelves for a while - but I had never heard it, or indeed any of the composer’s other music. The opera’s title translates as the Haunted Manor and I had expected it to be a very serious piece with Wagnerian/Marschnerian overtones. In fact however it was a much lighter piece - essentially a comedy about two soldiers who brag about their bravery and spend a night in the haunted castle. There - in shades of Ruddigore - their girlfriends hide behind portraits and start singing - scaring the life out of them. 

The style is quite eclectic. The general ethos is of French Opèra Comique and I suspect that La Dame Blanche was somewhere in the background of the composer’s imagination. But there are also passages that could come from Donizetti and some which almost seem to be from Viennese operetta. But Moniuszko makes a really satisfying whole of these disparate elements. He had a real melodic gift and a sense of operatic timing. The various manifestations of ghostly music are not too serious and add to the general enjoyment. 

I really enjoyed getting to know this opera and look forward to hearing more of the composer’s music in due course.

Heise: Drot og Marsk

Day 196

Peter Heise: Drot og Marsk

Soloists

Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Choir

Michael Schønwandt

This is perhaps the first important Danish opera. It dates from 1878 at a time when Denmark has recently been defeated in a war with Germany. It is thus less overtly nationalistic that some other operas of the time from countries not closely associated with a musical tradition. Ironically it was the German influence that struck me most in the music. It is not overtly Wagnerian but it certainly has some Wagnerian tinges. My initial impression was that the opera it was closest to in sound was Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel, though there were also some characteristics shares with Cornelius' Barber of Bagdad.

My sense was that Heise was more at home in the lighter moments in the opera - there were some lovely folk-like passages, particularly near the beginning. Some of the more dramatic music did seem a little cliched at time though these parts were balanced with some passages which showed genuine operatic flair. Altogether a mixed experience. There is unlikely to be a call for an international revival of the music of Heise, but this was certainly not a negligible piece by any means and I am glad to have listened to it.

Riegger: Study in Sonority

Day 195

Wallingford Riegger: Study in Sonority for 10 violins op 7

Louisville Symphony Orchestra

Jorge Mester

I knew nothing about Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) before starting this project. I knew the name - who  could forget such a distinctive appellation - but otherwise I was only vaguely aware he was an American modernist but I couldn't have placed him historically. So I was quite surprised to see that he was born as early as 1885. He was well trained and spend much of his life teaching music in New York State. 

This work dates from 1927. It was quite hard to place stylistically - there were some elements of Schoenberg type atonalism but also some interesting experiments in sonority. With 10 instrumental lines to play with there were a lot of opportunities for quite complex textures and antiphonal effects. The problem with writing for 10 violins of course is that there is no bass register to balance the high notes - the 8th violin is asked to tune the G string down to E but that doesn't really make up for a lack of bass notes. Indeed at times the ever higher texture got really hard to listen to and indeed quite painful though the actually harmonic language was not that difficult to follow. 

The composer called this a study and I suppose on those terms it was an interesting experiment in what could be done. But as a purely music experience I found it unrewarding and indeed hard going. I've no idea of how typical this music is within Riegger's overall output but I can't say I am very keen to explore further.

This marks the end of this week or so of experimental American composers. I'm very glad that I spend the time listening to this music but my overall sense is that a lot of it was was leading to rather a dead end rather than the creation of a really new and vibrant musical tradition. I don't think that it is an accident that these composers, with the possible exception of Ives, have not entered the musical mainstream.

Tomorrow I will start a new series looking at some nationalist operas.

Crawford Seeger: String quartet

Day 194

Ruth Crawford Seeger: String quartet

Amati String Quartet

Ruth Crawford, who married Charles Seeger and was the mother of Peggy Seeger the folk music specialist, was one of the most important modernist female composers in the USA in the early part of the 20th century (1901-1953). She underwent a rigorous training and was in contact with many of the leading musical figures of her time. I've never heard any of her music before so this quartet, which dates from 1931 and is acknowledged as one of her most important pieces, seemed a good place to start.

My initial impression was not that positive. I thought that the first movement was fairly anonymous in a broadly Schoenberg/Berg idiom which seemed rather to meander along. It to me had no rhythmic impetus - a feature which I certainly feel was a problem of a lot of the 2nd Viennese School's music. But the second movement had much more of interest. It sprung to life rhythmically and had an energy about it - indeed at times it almost seemed to be looking forward to the sort of rhythmic vitality that Tippett was to explore a few years later. The slow third movement was fascinating. Essentially it was a study in resonance, almost entirely consisting of long notes but with lots of small crescendos and diminuendos but at time times in different instruments - it created a really haunting effect. Seeger suggested that it could be performed by a string orchestra as an alternative to a quartet and I can imagine it making a real impression done that way.  The last movement was also distinctive. This involved quite harsh recitative-like passages in the first violin contacted with arpeggio figures in unison quavers played by the three other players with mutes on. The very end was a little abrupt.

So this was a work which grew in interest as it went on - only tailing off a little towards the end. There was nothing particularly American in the piece as far as I could hear but Crawford clearly had a distinctive voice. From the mid 1930s she seems to have devoted most of her energies to folk song collecting, editing and dissemination. One wonders what she might have written had she written further string quartets into the 1940s and 1950s.

Nancarrow: Three Studies for Player Piano

Day 193

Nancarrow: Three studies for player piano - no 8, 11 and 12

I'd heard some of the player piano studies of Conlon Nancarrow before but I had never listed to any of them properly. I chose these three purely at random. They are written for player piano because Nacarrow wanted to create music that was impossible for any human pianist to play because of the sheet speed, the rhythmic complexity or just the number of notes to be played at the same time.

I listened to these three performances (which I think were computer generated rather than performed on a player piano) with a score and that certainly helped understanding what was happening. To my surprise the basic material was not that unconventional -the music is broadly tonal and some of the basic musical shapes were fairly straightforward. Indeed study no 12 had some Spanish touches which would not have been out of place in Grenados or Ravel! What is far from straightforward, of course, it the way that this is all put together.. Nancarrow was very interested in contrapuntal textures and with the freedom that the player piano brought he was able to use all sort of techniques, including rhythmic displacement , multiple voices and simultaneous voices in different registers. The effect is quite mesmerising in short doses - these pieces each last 4-5 minutes - though I can imagine than playing several of them one after the other could leave your head buzzing. But I'd take this music every day over than of Sorabji (day 96).

Partch: Castor and Pollux

Day 192

Harry Partch: Castor and Pollux

Harry Partch was one of the most innovative of the American modernists. He rejected almost all of the standard apparatus of western music - he was interested in microtone and designed and built his own instruments on which to performed his music. He made primitive recordings of some of his pieces uses multi-track tape recordings, but others have gone on to recreate his sound world. This piece is for an ensemble including marimba like instruments, glass bowls of various sizes and large plucked string instruments broadly related to the dulcimer.

I enjoyed the sonorities in this 15 minute piece. Some of it was very reminiscent of the Gamelan music from Bali and reminded me at times of the effects that Britten contoured up with conventional instruments in The Prince of the Pagodas. At other times use of short repeated melodic patterns reminded me of the minimalist music of Steve Reich and others from much later in the 20th century.  Structural the piece is a set of duets which are played separately and then combined in large ensembles. There was a real musical imagination underpinning the piece and it certainly has whetted my appetite to hear more of Partch’s music.

Ruggles: Sun Treader

Day 191

Ruggles: Sun Treader

Cleveland Orchestra

Christopher con Dohnányi

Ruggles was one of the most self-critical composers. In a very long life (1876-1971) he wrote only a dozen or so pieces - most of them lasting less than 15 mins. I came across a couple of his pieces years ago and rather enjoyed Angels for six muted trumpets. Sun Treader , completed after 5 years work in 1931, is Ruggles’ longest piece. It uses a large but not enormous orchestra. What struck me how ‘normal’ the piece was. There was none of the experimental textures or allusions to popular music that you find in Ives, the mad rhythms of Antheil or the tone clusters of Cowell. Instead this is a serious piece of music firmly in the European tradition. At times is could be mistaken for pre-Serial Schoenberg or even Hindemith. It had an impressive seriousness with some clear building blocks - particularly the opening drum motive which returns at key points in the score. 

I was impressed by the whole ethos of the score and can well imagine it making a good impression in performance. It is far more than simply an experiment or a creation of sensation for the sake of it. 

Ruggles by all accounts was an unpleasant individual who held some very unsavoury views. But he clearly was a composer who knew exactly what he was doing.

Cowell: Dynamic Motion

Day 190

Henry Cowell: Dynamic Motion

Chris Brown

Henry Cowell is one of the most well known of the American experimental composers but this is more by repute than by actual experience of his music.  I have heard his piece The Banshee which a piano piece in which the strings are plucked directly by the pianist rather than by the depressing the keys. 

This short piano pieces features Cowell’s characteristic use of clusters - the placing of the arms on the keys to depress a group of notes at a time. I had assumed, because of descriptions of his music, that this would all be at maximum volume but in fact much of it is at a gentle volume.  The music was not unpleasant but once the novelty had worn off  there was not much to recommend it. It sounds like the sort of thing that somebody would sit down at the piano and let his/her fingers (OK arms ) wander idly over the noisy keys.  There’s really nowhere for the composer to go once the novelty has worn off.

Antheil: Ballet Mechanique

Day 189

Antheil: Ballet Mechanique

Boston Modern Orchestra Project

Gil Rose

George Antheil (1900-1959) is certainly one of the more extraordinary composers that I have covered in this project. He was an inveterate self publicist and courted controversy, His autobiography was titled Bad boy of music and if the story that he pulled a revolver from his jacket and laid it on the piano before giving a recital in order to intimidate the critics is true one can see why he was worthy of the label. He was also an inventor and, astonishingly, was granted a patent for joint work with the film star Hedy Lamarr for work on wireless telegraphy which in part led to the modern technology found in Bluetooth and WiFi.

He was a properly trained musician and studied with important figures such as Bloch. But he quickly rebelled against that formal training and started to write extremely modern and challenging works. He was particularly interested in percussive effects and the possibilities of mechanical music. The Ballet Mechanique is by far his most famous work: it is in all of the text books as an example of the extreme avant guarde. His original conception was for an ensemble of 16 synchronised player pianos, 2 grand pianos and a vast array of percussion including electric bells, propellers and a siren.  It was impossible to co-ordinate the player pianos (Stravinsky had the same problem in a proto-version of Les Noces) and all later performances of the work were done in an arrangement for much smaller forces without the mechanical instruments.

it is only with the advent of computer technology that it has been possible to go back to the original concept and this performance attempts to do that. It all makes a fantastic noise.  The whole effect is like a combination of The Rite of Spring and Les Noces on steroids with two pianists playing the same piece of Bartok out of synch with each other in the next room. It is great fund for a while - the siren makes some very telling contributions - but at 30+ mins it is far too long. I did feel tempted to shout ‘please stop’ several times, but I did make it though to the end. You can tell that Antheil underneath all of the chaos, was actually a composer who knew what he was doing - but the gulf between this and the music of Stravinsky is almost too great to comprehend. I’d love to hear the piece live once, just to get the full force of the noise when everybody is going at things hammer and tongs, but after that it will certainly not go into any of my playlists.

Ives: String quartet no 2

Day 188

Ives: String quartet no 2

Emerson Quartet

I’ve now reached the halfway point in this project and so far haven’t missed a day. When I started I didn’t have much idea of how I was going to organise things. The first few weeks’ pieces were chosen largely at random but then I started to think in terms of topics. I’ve tried to fit round my working schedule so that some days of the week have the space for longer works whereas on others I only have time for short pieces. I didn’t plan that each piece would be by a different composer but having got this far with a different composer every day I will try to continue to chose a new composer every day - I don’t think that there is any chance to running out of names.

My new topic is experimental music by American composers in the early part of the 20th century - something of which I have only a limited experience.  I start with Charles Ives. I know quite a few of his orchestral pieces but the only one I have played is the 3rd symphony, which is probably one of the most straightforward of his works.

I’d never heard either of the Ives string quartets. This second one is an intriguing piece. It starts out in a broadly Schoenberg-like idiom not sounding much like Ives but gradually some of Ives’ typical characteristics - polyrhythms and popular melodies - start to emerge out the texture. The three movements all have titles Discussions; Arguments; the Call of the Mountains. The middle movement is probably the most experimental. The instruments are pitched against each other in a loud aggressive argument with some very complex cross rhythms where the bar lines don’t coincide. This is extraordinary music for the early years of the 20th century. The movement ends with what is now one of my favourite musical expressions :"Andante con scratchy (as tuning up)", followed by a final fff eruption marked "Allegro con fistiswatto (as a K.O.)".

The last movement is more lyrical though still highly rhythmically and harmonically complex. It ends with a really beautiful expressive passage - if there was ever any doubt that Ives could write ‘proper’ music this coda removes any such doubts. I can’t imagine that the work will be performed very often - it must be incredibly difficult to play. Ives is such an interesting composer - he seemed to anticipate so many later musical developments (though there are some theories that he added modernist touches to pieces many years after they were written). He was in many ways the spiritual godfather of a whole group of American experimental composers - some of whom I will be exploring in the next few days.

Howells: Requiem

Day 187

Herbert Howells: Requiem 

Choir of St John’s College Cambridge

Christopher Robinson

I’ve mentioned before here that I never sang in a church/cathedral choir so there is a whole genre of music that I know very little about. Howells was predominantly a composer of church music so I don’t recall ever having heard any of this music. This piece has an interesting history. It was written in 1932 for unaccompanied choir but much of the music was re-used in Howell’s Hymnus Paradisi and the original was not performed or published in the 1980s.

Unlike all of the Requiems this week this one is in English and not Latin. It includes some psalm settings as well as parts of the traditional text of the Requiem mass. The music is tonal but highly chromatic. At times I found the harmony a bit overheated but generally I found the work mellifluous and indeed at times rather moving. I can’t imagine how choirs can sing such complex music and still keep up to pitch. Being an orchestral musician is much easier.

This is the last of this series of Requiems - it has been an interesting exploration across many centuries and musical styles. The next topic will be  quite different - American experimental music from the first half of the 20th century.

Gossec: Requiem

Day 186

Gossec: Requiem

Soloists

Louis Devos

This was a fascinating piece. Gossec (1734-1829) lived though all of the turbulent developments in French history from the excesses of the Ancient Regime, the French Revolution, Napoleon and then the restoration of the monarchy. This impressive full-length setting of the Requiem dates from 1760 yet seems to foreshadow much that was to develop in French music. The basic musical language is Haydnesque but tinged with the spirit of French opera, particularly Rameau but sometimes looking forward to Mehul and Spontini. But the antiphonal effects in the Tuba Mirum and the general scale and ambition of the work are reminiscent of Berlioz’s own Requiem of two generations later. None of this would matter if the music itself was mundane but in fact there is some astonishing invention here both in the choral and orchestral writing. Some of it was quite thrilling.  

This was a significant discovery. I’ve long been interested in the development of French music from Rameau to Berlioz and beyond but hitherto Gossec has escaped my attention. I must put him higher up my list of composers to explore - there is plenty to go at. There are a dozen or so operas, at least 50 symphonies and a setting of the Te Deum which is said to require 1200 singers and 300 wind instruments.

Ockeghem: Requiem

Day 185

Ockeghem: Requiem

The Clerk’s Group

Edward Wickham

This is the earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the Requiem. Ockeghem's  dates are c1410-1497, Not much is known about the work's origins - various dates from the 1460s to 1480s have been proposed. There is also some controversy about whether the work has come down to us in an incomplete state as some of the key sections of the Requiem text are missing. Nonetheless what we have is an imposing piece lasting half an hour or so. 

I found it a fascinating piece. It seems to occupy a position between medieval music such as that of Machaut and the music of the Renaissance. So it has the angular shapes of medieval music with lots of open 4th and 5ths and some really odd rhythmic distortions. At the same time it does have elements of Renaissance polyphony with much smoother lines and worked-out counterpoint.

As with all of the music of this period much of the way a piece like this is performed must be guided by educated guesswork. The surviving sources give no performance indications all - the notes and the rhythms are there but nothing else. So decisions about speed, dynamics, number of voices, etc have to be made by the editor and performers. This performance was beautifully voices with enormous care and subtlety. It made a real impression but I did wonder, as I have done before with early music, whether the original performance would have sounded like this - wouldn't it be wonderful to have a time machine to be able to go back to the 1400s and hear a contemporary performance - though I suspect that it might some as something of a shock after hearing such a professional and mellifluous performance as this one.

Victoria: Requiem

Day 184

Victoria: Requiem

Tenebrae

Nigel Short

Victoria (Thomás Luis de Victoria) got a mention in the history of music section of my degree. I think that it is possible that I heard some of his music as part of that but I don't have any memories of it. But I do recall him being considered one of the great figures in late Renaissance polyphony - perhaps the only person to rival Palestrina.

This Requiem dates from 1603 and was written to commemorate the death of the Empress Maria, sister of Phillip II of Spain. It has quite a complex structure, including a motet which doesn't form part of the liturgy of the Requiem Mass. It is an impressive piece in 6 parts lasting in total something like 40 minutes in total. I assume that when originally performed it would not have been sung as a single piece but the movements would have been broken up with readings and prayers, but I am no expert in the music of this area.

It is a very meditative work with a sense of calm resignation. The music is certainly polyphonic but the individual lines are quite often brought together into more harmonic passages. The harmonic is generally very consonant, which makes the occasional dissonant moments stand out quite markedly. Overall it was a calming piece and is the sort of music that can easily wash over you if you let it. I can see why Victoria is such a highly-regarded composer Looking back it would have been good to have taken up opportunities as a student to sing this sort of music in a small choir but I never did and it it is rather too late now. But certainly I am glad to have heard this piece.

Salieri: Requiem

Day 183

Salieri: Requiem

Soloists

Gulbenkian chorus and orchestra

Lawrence Foster

it is very difficult to consider Salieri without thinking about the film and play Amadeus. The narrative of the older composer with talent and prestige and the young upstart possessed by genius is compelling and whatever the historical inaccuracies in the film the central premise is hard to deny. I've not heard much Salieri - only the recital disc of blockbuster arias recorded by Cecilia Bartoli some years ago comes to mind  - and this requiem was new to me.

I have to say that it did nothing to convince me that Amadeus got it wrong. It is damming with faint praise to say that the music was competent, but that was honestly what I felt. There were some striking phrases but also a lot of fairly routine material which could have been written by any number of late 18th century composers. The fugue subjects seems curiously angular for no real reason and some of the melodic material was rather trivial for such a solemn piece.  The orchestration was interesting, with an important part for Cor Anglais and much use of the trombones, but in itself that was not sufficient reason to want to hear the piece again.  Sometimes the verdict of history is right.

Pizzetti: Requiem

Day 182

Pizzetti: Requiem

Westminster Cathedral Choir

James O'Donnell

The only things I knew about Pizzetti is that he had a splendid first name - Ildebrando - and that he wrote an operatic setting of Murder in the Cathedral. So I came to this Requiem with a completely clear mind. I have to say that it was a real eye opener. Unlike any of the other Requiems I have listened to this week this one is for unaccompanied choir. Pizzetti uses a variety of combinations of voices from a single choir through to multiple parts divided into three choirs. The effect is breathtaking when the choir is divided up in this way and brings to mind some of the effects in Venetian Poly-Choral music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The harmonic style is basically tonal and the harmony is rich and constantly inventive. A lot of the choral writing has its basis in plainchant - this is particularly true of the Dies Irae, which uses the traditional chant as the building blocks to an impressively managed build up of tension over a five minute passage - very difficult for a composer to achieve such concentration.

I was expecting something more modernist that this (the work dates from 1922) but reading up on the composer makes it clear that he wanted to move away from the almost exclusively operatic work in Italy back to the world of previous generations of church-based composers. I think he succeeded brilliantly in this. This music is never pastiche - it belongs of its time - but it has its roots in music of several centuries ago.