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.