Moondog - Bird's Lament and Symphonique No. 3 'Ode To Venus'

Moondog, alias of Louis Thomas Hardin (1916-1999)  was an American composer, musician , poet and street performer.  He was blinded in a farming accident when he was sixteen. He lived as a street musician and poet in New York City from the late 1940's to 1974. He was also known as the "Viking of 6th Avenue" because he performed a lot on the corner of 6th Avenue and 53rd Street, and he dressed in clothes in imitation of the Norse God Thor and wore a horn helmet he designed himself.  He took the name Moondog sometime in the 1940's.

That Moondog was an eccentric is an understatement. But he was also a serious musician. He was basically self-taught and composed in a wide-open style that showed influences of street sounds, jazz, classical and the blues.  Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker all knew of him.

In his search for new sounds, he also invented musical instruments, the most famous being the Trimba, a percussion instrument.  Distraught over the death of his friend Charlie 'Bird' Parker, the famous saxophonist, Moondog wrote Bird's Lament. The piece is usually played by saxophones and percussion, but it has also been played by many other instrument combinations.

Moondog's  Bird's Lament:

Symphonique #3 (Ode To Venus) is written for chamber ensemble of strings and winds. It begins quite simply, and layer upon layer of instrumental timbers and textures until it reaches a climax and the piece ends.  Moondog's music can be simple, but the simplicity can be deceiving.  I personally find his music hard to pigeon hole, but very enjoyable.

Symhonique #3 (Ode To Venus) by Moondog:

Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.2 in C Minor, ' Little Russian '

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) was a Russian composer most widely known for his orchestral music. He wrote Ballets, Operas and Symphonies and also music for piano solo and with orchestra, and  chamber music. Tchaikovsky was educated for a civil service career, but went against his family wishes and studied music at the St. Petersburg  Conservatory.  He later became a professor of Music Theory at the school.

Tchaikovsky's musical education at St. Petersburg was influenced heavily by Western and especially German music. He did not become a member of The Five,  although he did use Russian folk song material on occasion. The 2nd Symphony gets its nickname from 3 Ukranian (Little Russia) folk songs Tchaikovsky used in the Symphony.

The Symphony is in 4 movements:

• Andante sostenuto - Allegro vivo  (Slow and sustained - Lively with vigor) A solo horn plays the song, Down By Mother Volga to begin the movement. 
• Andantino marziale, quasi moderato  ( Medium fast march, kind of at a walking pace) He quotes the song, Spin, Oh My Spinner in the central section of this movement.
• Scherzo, Allegro molto vivace ( Very fast and lively) No actual folk song quoted, but has the quality of a folk song.
• Finale, Moderato assai - Allegro Vivo (Very moderately - Lively with vigor)  The folk song The Crane is the basis for a set of variations. 

Boris Shtokolov - Letter To Mother

Boris Shtokolov  ( 1930 - 2005 ) was one of the leading Bass singers in the 20th Century. He was not well-known in the west, but in his native Russia he was a star of Russian opera for over 30 years.  He also sang many Russian Folk Songs and Romances.  In a country that seems to produce more than its share of Bass singers, Shtokolov's  vocal dynamics and tone color made him unique.  His voice was what is called a Basso-Profundo, a voice dark in color and powerful.

The song 'Letter To Mother', written to words of a poem by Esenin,  is the perfect vehicle to show Shtokov's artistry and sensitive musicianship.

Boris Shtokolov sings 'Letter To Mother' to a poem by Esenin, a translation of which is below the video:

Letter To Mother

Still around, old dear? How are you keeping?
I too am around. Hello to you!
May that magic twilight ever be streaming
Over your cottage as it used to do.

People write how sad you are, and anxious
For my sake, though you won't tell them so,
And that you in your old-fashioned jacket
Out onto the highroad often go.

That you often see in the blue shadows
Ever one dream, giving you no rest:
Someone in a drunken tavern scuffle
Sticks a bandit knife into my chest.

Don't go eating your heart out with worry,
It's just crazy nonsense and a lie.
I may drink hard, but I promise, mother,
I shall see you first before I die.

I love you as always and I'm yearning
In my thoughts for just one thing alone,
Soon to ease my heartache by returning
To our humble low-roofed country home.

I'll return when decked in white the branches
In our orchard are with spring aglow.
But no longer wake me up at sunrise,
As you used to do eight years ago.

Do not waken dreams no longer precious,
Hope never fulfilled do not excite.
It was my misfortune to experience
Loss and weariness too early in my life.

Don't teach me to pray. Please, mother!
There's no going back, try as you might.
You alone give me support and comfort,
You alone glow with a magic light.

So forget your cares, please. Don't be anxious
And for my sake, dear, don't worry so.
Out onto the road in your old-fashioned
Jacket, please do not so often go.

Prokofiev - Tocatta For Piano

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) was a Russian composer and a major composer of the 20th century.  Fearing there was  no place for his experimental music in his homeland, he left Russia in 1918 during the Revolution and lived various places abroad. After missing his homeland for so many years he returned to Russia in 1935 and spent the rest of his life there.

The fate of Prokofiev and his music vacillated with the Communist Party leaders from acceptance and recognition to condemnation. During the Second World War official restrictions on the type of music allowed by the government were lifted, only to see them reinstated after the war.

He wrote for orchestra and chamber ensembles, and he was also a virtuoso pianist as well as a composer, writing many pieces for the piano. The Tocatta Opus 11, was written in Russia in 1912 and premiered by the composer in 1916. The tocatta is an old form of music originating in the Renaissance in Italy.  The word is taken from the Italian word for 'touch'. It is usually written for a keyboard or other solo instrument and it emphasizes fast, nimble finger work.  Prokofiev casts his Tocatta in a modern virtuosic idiom and it is a challenge for any pianist to play.

Schoenberg - A Survivor From Warsaw

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an Austrian composer that emigrated to America to escape Nazi Germany in 1934 and became a U.S. citizen. He was a great teacher and taught many composers and musicians in Europe before he emigrated and in America afterwards.  Schoenberg composed in many different forms from piano miniatures to complex pieces for orchestra. He is most famous (some would say notorious) for developing an entirely new way of composition based on the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, twelve tone technique

Twelve tone music has no tonal center like more conventional music.  Each tone of the chromatic scale is equal in importance harmonically and melodically with the other eleven. Schoenberg developed this 'new' system almost 100 years ago, and it is still so dramatically different from music based on tonality and keys that many cannot grasp it.  The subject matter for A Survivor From Warsaw is well suited for the music Schoenberg wrote for it.  The music is as difficult to listen to as the story itself.  The piece is for narrator, orchestra and chorus. The story depicted by the narrator:

The narrator tells the story of a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto during WW II, from the time in a concentration camp. He doesn't remember how he ended up living in the sewers of Warsaw. One day in the camp the Nazis held a roll call for a group of Jews.  As the group tried to gather the guards beat the old and sick who couldn't like up fast enough. Those left on the ground were assumed to be dead and the guards asked for another count to see how many would go to the gas chamber. The guard asks for a faster and faster head count and the work ends with the Jews singing the prayer Shema Yisroel.

Schoenberg's tribute to the victims of the holocaust - A Survivor From Warsaw

J.S. Bach - Passacaglia And Fugue In C Minor BWV 582

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a German composer and a contemporary of Domenico Scarlatti and George Handel. He was a virtuoso organist and harpsichordist and also played the viol and violin. He was the culmination of the Baroque era of music and was a master of counterpoint. He composed secular and sacred music for orchestra,  chorus and solo instruments. He came from a very musical family, for over 200 years there were more than 50 members of the Bach family that held various musical posts throughout the state of Thuringia.   J.S. Bach had over 20 children, with those surviving infancy taught music by Bach himself.  Four of his own sons became influential composers in their own right.

The amount of music Bach wrote in his lifetime is enormous, with over 1,000 items listed in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis  (Bach Works Catalog). Bach was a master organist and improvisor on the instrument so it's only natural that his organ works are considerable in number.

The Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor is believed to be an early work written between 1706-1713.  The passacaglia is a type of music usually written in triple time with one part, usually in the bass, being repeated throughout the piece (called an ostinato) with a set of continuous variations played over it. Bach's ostinato is heard all by itself at the beginning of the piece in the pedals of the organ. This ostinato 'tune' is then woven through the rest of the passacaglia like a golden thread while a set of variations are played.  The Fugue follows without a pause, and takes as one of its subjects the ostinato tune of the passacaglia. It is a tribute to the creativity and intellect of Bach's mind that even after all that has happened to the ostinato in the passacaglia that Bach is not through with it. The fugue is actually a double fugue and the two themes are developed as only a master of counterpoint could do.

Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582:

Cesar Franck - Symphony In D Minor

César Franck (1822-1890) was a Belgian composer who was also an organist, pianist and a teacher in Paris for many years.  He took French citizenship in 1872 upon his professorial appointment at the Paris Conservatoire.

Franck was a child prodigy and gave his first public recitals in 1834 when he was twelve. He also began composing early, but due to harsh criticism of his works he ceased composing and concentrated on the organ and his teaching duties. He became a virtuoso on the organ and a master at improvisation, and was hired by an organ manufacturer to demonstrate their instruments.

With his tenure as Professor Of Organ at the Conservatoire, Frank renewed his efforts at composition and during the last eighteen years of his life he composed the works which he is known for.  The Symphony In D Minor was composed in 1886-1888 and combines  cyclic form of composition (a technique much used by Liszt and Wagner and some French composers) with a decidedly German style of orchestration. The first theme heard when the piece begins is the kernel upon which the entire symphony is built.

The politics of the time lead to very harsh criticism of the Symphony when it was premiered. A Symphony by a Frenchman written in a German style of orchestration was not conducive to good reviews so soon after the Franco-Prussian war, especially from any professor or composer that was associated with the conservative Paris Conservatoire.  But the quality of the music was more than enough to outlast the negative political attacks.