Franz Liszt - Prometheus

Prometheus is an ancient Greek myth that had its first telling as early as the 8th century BC.  In short, the myth of Prometheus tells of him being a Titan that had not only created man from clay, but stole fire from Zeus and gave it to man. As punishment, Prometheus is chained to a rock where every day an eagle comes and eats his liver. His liver grows back every day, and the eagle returns every day to consume it once again.

Liszt's original work was written for the celebration of the 100th birthday of the poet/philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder. It consisted of an overture and  eight choruses with orchestral accompaniment and used Herder's Prometheus Unbound, a work in 13 scenes.  This work was written in 1850, a time when Liszt was yet able to orchestrate his works himself. With instructions on instrumentation from Liszt, it was left to Joachim Raff to complete the work, but the score was incomprehensible to many due to Liszt's use of dissonance, plus the choruses were not well integrated in the work. Liszt later orchestrated the work himself in 1855 and turned the overture into a tone poem and the choruses into a work for the concert stage.

Prometheus begins with harsh, dissonant chords from the orchestra that represent the harsh sentence given to Prometheus for his crimes. Sadness is contained within the ensuing music, a lament for the fallen Titan.
This almost key less introduction leads to the passionate first theme which represents Prometheus' struggle and suffering.  The second theme arrives via the cellos and represents hope,  in spite of Prometheus' suffering.  Then a fugue begins that is strictly worked out and possibly represents a struggle against adversity. At the end of the fugue, the lament begins again and the two opening themes are heard again.  After the recapitulation of the two opening themes there is a coda consisting of the fugue tune and the theme of hope that combine into an ending of triumph.

It is well to remember that Liszt's music was heralded as the 'new music' of its time and thus garnered its share of negativity, such as the review of Prometheus from a music periodical of 1860:

Liszt's artistic intentions seem to be disembodied and only infrequently do they condense melodic, rhythmic, and self-contained creations. Their main strength predominantly lies in orchestral color,  while the melodic line is barely indicated, indeed, must often be guessed at.  The manifold, rhapsodic nature of the form, the rhythmic freedom the composer has brought forth in many parts of this work,  and the hasty modulatory change make understanding all the more difficult. 

Many of Liszt's tone poems still meet with rather limited popularity. Some of them are quite experimental in nature considering the time they were written in, and Liszt can on occasion be rightfully accused with over-writing a composition.  But he also stretched the limits of sonata form as with tone poems like Prometheus and wrote other compositions that may have seemed rhapsodic to detractors years ago, but are actually well-thought out and well structured compositions.  

Cab Calloway - Minnie The Moocher

Cab Calloway was an American original,  a versatile musician, singer and entertainer that saw his greatest popularity in the 1930's and 1940's.  He was born in Rochester, New York in 1907  and lived to be 86 years old. He continued to perform  up to the time of his death.  He was one of the main attractions at The Cotton Club, the premiere jazz club of the 1930's, and went on to perform in movies as well as having his voice used in cartoons done by Max Fleisher, an animator that had developed a way to capture the dance moves of Calloway and animate them on the screen.

Minnie The Moocher is a jazz song first recorded by Calloway in 1931. It was adapted from other jazz songs of the time, and sold over a million copies. The song is a call and response type common in jazz at the time. After each verse, Calloway would skat sing a 'call', and the audience (or band members) would respond by repeating it. Skat singing is s style of vocalization where the voice becomes more like a solo musical instrument as emphasis is put on the sound and tone of the voice rather than the words being sung. The 'words' of skat singing are usually nonsense words, and Calloway would make the call more complicated as the song progressed until the audience couldn't repeat it.

Minnie The Moocher's lyrics are the jive talk of the times, with references to cocaine and opium use as well as Minnie's profession of prostitution:

 Folks, now here's the story 'bout Minnie the Moocher,
 She was a red-hot hootchie-cootcher,
 She was the roughest, toughest frail,
 But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.

  (call and response)
  Hi-de-hi-de-hi-di-hi!
  Ho-de-ho-de-ho-de-ho!
  He-de-he-de-he-de-he!
  Ho-de-ho-de-ho!

 Now, she messed around with a bloke named Smoky,
 She loved him though he was cokie,
 He took her down to Chinatown,
 He showed her how to kick the gong around.

  (call and response)

 Now, she had a dream about the king of Sweden,
 He gave her things that she was needin',
 He gave her a home built of gold and steel,
A diamond car with a platinum wheel

  (call and response)

 Now, he gave her his townhouse and his racing horses,
 Each meal she ate was a dozen courses;
 She had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes,
 And she sat around and counted them all a billion times.
 Poor Min, poor Min, poor Min. 

A great example of the moves as well as the voice of Calloway in this video from the 1950's:


An example of Calloway's ability to skat sing:



And finally, a version of Minnie The Moocher done in the 1980's. He's still the got the voice and the moves, even at 81 years of age.:

Bruckner - Ave Maria in F Major (WAB 6)

Bruckner was a composer that formally studied his craft of music until he was forty years old. He had already composed a considerable number of choral pieces by the time he began his studies with Simon Sechter, a noted teacher and composer in 1855. Sechter was a taskmaster as a teacher, and commanded Bruckner to do no composing while he was studying with him. Bruckner took lessons by correspondence and in person in Vienna. Bruckner took his lessons very seriously, so much that Sechter had to warn Bruckner against overwork.

Sechter was a very skilled contrapuntalist and is reported to have written over 5,000 fugues in his life. Sechter gave Bruckner the final polish he needed and began to compose immediately after he graduated from Sechter's class.  The Ave Maria in F Major WAB 6 ( WAB numbers stand for Werkverzeichnis Anton Bruckner -Works Of Anton Bruckner,compiled by Renata Grasberger)  was composed shortly after his studies and was the second setting of the Ave Maria from the Catholic Mass. Bruckner was a very devout Catholic and wrote many works for accompanied and unaccompanied choir.  This Ave Maria is acapella, in seven parts, with a single soprano part while the alto, tenor and bass all have two parts.

In the first part of the work Bruckner contrasts the three-part women's choir with the four-part men's choir. In the second part of the work all seven parts join together in a proclamation of faith and the asking for mercy.

Bruckner was an Austrian that was a life-long bachelor that fell in love with young women even into his old age.  He liked drinking beer and playing the organ. He became a teacher in his own right at the Vienna Conservatory as he took up his old teacher's position as music professor upon Sechter's death in 1868.  He was a complex, intelligent, socially awkward man who never gave up his peasant ways.  He worked very hard all of his life and created some of the most inspired moments in western music, and all the while kept his child-like devotion and faith to his beloved Catholic church.

Sibelius - Finlandia

The history of Finland has seen the country dominated by Sweden early on and Russia in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries.  With the coming of the nationalist movement in the early 20th century,  Russia used every means to halt the progress of freedom for the Finnish people. Censorship of the theater and concerts was heavy, and it was in this atmosphere that Sibelius wrote his tone poem Finlandia.

It was originally written as part of a set of pieces that accompanied a visual presentation of Finnish history.  The original version was written in 1899 and Sibelius revised it into its final form in 1900. The piece served as a rallying cry for the Finnish people, much as La Marseillaise was for the French. To prevent the Russian censors from prohibiting the performance of Finlandia, the piece would be renamed before the programs for the concert were printed.

The music opens with heavy brass chords, and music that depicts the human struggle for freedom of the Finns.  The great hymn tune that follows the bombast has all the makings of a folk tune, but in fact there are no folk tunes in Finlandia. All of the music is original with Sibelius. The hymn tune was arranged by Sibelius as a separate piece to be sung as a hymn, and is in many Christian churches hymnals as the hymn titled 'Be Still My Soul'.

Evidently Sibelius came to detest Finlandia as it became his most popular composition at the expense of other more substantial works. But it has everything in it to appeal to a broad audience; brilliant and colorful orchestration, a grand tune that can be sung, and a message of hope and freedom that is universal.

Chausson - Concerto For Piano, Violin and String Quartet

What identifies the genre of a classical music piece is not always dependent on the number of performers. For example, concertos for solo piano exist that were written by Bach and Alkan, compositions that were called 'concertos' on account of their style of composition, a style that attempts to portray an accompaniment and a more florid solo part all with the same instrument, sometimes at the same time.

So while the number of instruments for the Concerto For Piano, Violin and String Quartet is six, Chausson didn't call it a sextet, but a concerto. And rightly so, for the piano and solo violin parts are written in a different style than the string quartet.  Their parts are more solo in nature while the quartet is more accompaniment in nature. A small thing perhaps, and perhaps splitting hairs, but Chausson was nothing if not a meticulous composer. He felt the distinction was important enough to name his piece the way he did, and it does give the listener a heads up to the originality and quality of the music about to be heard.

Ernest Chausson was born into a comfortable middle class family in France and studied music with the French  opera composer Jules Massenet. He was influenced by Massenet in his early compositions and by Cesar Franck in his later ones. He was not a prolific composer, leaving only 39 opus numbered compositions. Writing was long and painful for him, but the quality  of his compositions was always high.  He  was killed instantly at the age of 44 in 1899 after he struck a brick wall while riding his bicycle.

The concerto is in 4 movements:
I. Décidé  - The tempo designation of the first movement can be translated from the French as decide, make a choice.  The movement begins with a three note motive stated by the piano alone,  D,A,E. This small germ of an idea is the core of the entire composition.  Motives are built from these three tones in differing textures in the first movement. The movement grows like an exotic plant around the roots of the three tones.
II. Sicilienne - Based on the first movement's theme, this is Chausson's variation on an Italian dance form.
III. Grave -  A solemn and serious movement.
IV.Très animé  - A very lively and animated movement that is in stark contrast to the preceding one.

Chausson was an original. He managed to live long enough to give the world a handful of masterpieces. He is a composer that will probably never be mainstream or performed as much as other composers that lived longer and composed more pieces, but what we do have are gems to be treasured and enjoyed.

 

Franck - Symphonic Variations For Piano and Orchestra

Like most of the compositions Cesar Franck wrote in the last decade of his life, the Symphonic Variations were coldly received.  It wasn't until after his death in 1890 that his compositions became more well known and popular, mainly due to the efforts of his devoted students.

But the audience at the premiere of the Symphonic Variations were probably confused by what they actually heard. Far from a classic set of variations on a theme, Franck wrote a different and subtle type of work. The actual variations are small in number and there is much that goes on before and after.

The work is in three distinct sections played without break. The first section is in the key of F-sharp minor and begins with severe and dramatic octaves in the strings, to which the piano answers in a gentle manner. This beginning is similar to the beginning of Beethoven's slow movement of his Piano Concerto No. 4, and whether Franck intended it as a homage to Beethoven or it is a mere coincidence, the piano soon becomes an equal with the orchestra and after some dialog between them the piano introduces the theme that is the object of the variations.

There are six (some say more) variations that are seamlessly woven together with piano and orchestra. Everything moves so smoothly, that the variations are almost over before the listener knows it, and the piano enters into a trance of gentle music with the orchestra quietly commenting. The piano and orchestra end up in a sleep-walking dialog, until the piano throws off some sparkling trills that lead the music to the key of F-sharp major. With the change in key comes a change in mood as the piano scampers in a graceful dance with the orchestra. As the orchestra and piano remind each other of the beginning with snippets of the opening theme in major mode, the music ends.

The Symphonic Variations is a piece that is one of the most perfect ever written for piano and orchestra. It is short, but there is so much happening that it should take longer than the average time of 15 minutes to play it.  It is not possible to think about it being for any other combination of instruments (although there is a version for two pianos, it was probably made for rehearsal use or to allow performance when no orchestra is available).  The piano writing is for a virtuoso, but never at the expense of the musical content. Franck has written a piece where virtuosity is for the good of the whole, not an end in itself.

 

Bach - Concerto For Oboe d'amore In A Major

The musical world of J.S. Bach was one of transition.  The emphasis had been slowly changing from counterpoint and polyphony to harmonically accompanied melody, or monody.  Bach's own sons were leaders in the changes in music, while Bach was seen as somewhat old-fashioned.  It's not that the elder Bach was against the newer music as it was that his interest still lay in the possibilities of counterpoint and polyphony.

Of course not all of Bach's music was strictly contrapuntal.  The Concerto For Oboe d'Amore  has the solo instrument play a melody with as much as against the string parts.  Like all of Bach's concertos, there exists different versions of the work for different instruments. This concerto also exists in the form of a harpsichord concerto, but unlike most of Bach's other concertos it was not originally written for violin. There has been research done by Sir Donald Tovey proving that the concerto was originally written for the oboe d'amore.  The harpsichord version is the only one extant, but with the evidence supplied by Tovey the solo part was reconstructed from the harpsichord part.

Bach's time was also one of transition pertaining to musical instruments. The viola family existed alongside the violin family, the recorder alongside the transverse flute, the lute was still being played by some musicians, and even the early form of the piano existed alongside the harpsichord and clavichord. The oboe d'amore is a member of the double reed oboe family, midway in range between the oboe and the cor anglais. It was invented in the early 17th century.  Its tone is not as assertive as the oboe. Bach was fond of the instrument as he used it in his cantatas besides this concerto. The instrument fell out of use shortly after Bach's time but was revived by Romantic era composers such as Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel.

The concerto for oboe d'amore has the traditional three movements:

I. Allegro - Bach has the full string orchestra play the opening of the concerto. The oboe d'amore adds its melodic statements in between the returning motive played by the strings. The movement has the grace and balance of a dance between the two.
II. Allegretto -  The difference between the opening movement and this one is like day and night. Where the mood was carefree and light, it has now turned sad and melancholic. The oboe d'amore plays one of Bach's most emotional, heart-felt tunes while being accompanied by a chromatic descent in the bass.
III. Allegro ma non tanto - The finale returns to the feelings of a dance and happier times.