"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
When I was a music student, *mumble-mumble* decades ago, I couldn’t afford a copy of the Rimsky-Korsakov text (and it wasn’t required for any courses, anyway), so though I had a yen to peek under its covers from time to time, I never owned a copy. I still don’t, but the Garritan resource gives me the whole thing PLUS an interactive text (recordings of musical examples in the text can be played) and a discussion board where folks who’re studying and using it can hash things out together, share samples of work applying the principles, etc.. Absolutely wonderful! Thanks, Garritan!
Listening to Franz Schubert’s Symphony #3 recently–for the first time in many years–it struck me just how amazing he was as a composer. Oh, the symphony itself is almost a template of the “perfect” Classical Period symphony, after the more mature works of Haydn and Mozart, and is absolutely wonderful in and of itself, but that’s not what slapped me upside the head with awe. No, it’s that he was so bang on the money with the Classical Period form and ethos in the symphony, and yet his lieder–written before there was a Romantic Period–are such perfect examples of Romantic Period music in technique and ethos. While it can be said of Beethoven that he spanned both the Classical and Romantic periods (and in some ways that he spawned the Romantic period), Schubert simply lived and composed music fit for each simultaneously.
Still, while his instrumental music is (mostly) Classical–and very good examples of that genre–it is his lieder that demonstrate his rightful place among the greatest of luminaries of classical music. Sad that he–like Mozart–lived such a short life. Had he lived to the age Brahms lived, what wonders might we have as a legacy from his creative hand and ear, given the wonders he left at the young age of 31? Ah, for a peek at an alternate universe where the mind that composed the insightful Die Winterreise, which dealt with the memories of an old man, had actually lived to the ripe old age he depicted with such songs as Der Lindenbaum, begun at the “ripe old” age of 26(?) and “corrected” by him shortly before his death. Still, as a certifiable Olde Pharte, now, I can attest that Schubert captured Müller’s lyrics, which themselves capture the sense of the retrospective of old(er) age well (and Müller himself died at age 33!).
Ah, well, I ramble.
Still, it’s a wonder to re-realize that my favorite composer of song had depths far beyond the listening area I generally grant his work. Delightful! I should never have let so loong a time elapse between hearings of his instrumental works.
Oh, links? Nah. Go find your own fav Schubertian works. 🙂 I’ve posted several of his lieder (sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, of course) here in the past, but you deserve the joy of discovering his beautiful music in your own way.
LomaAlta has proposed the “Top Ten Songs of the 1950s” with his numbers 7-10 listed here. While I don’t disagree with his list (“Top Ten” may well reflect popularity as much as musical worth) and I do agree that his list of songs contain pop songs of some worth, I’d have a different list. Yeh, even in my home with three sisters and a brother, I was the really odd one out. Their 50s (and later 60s) pop music didn’t appeal to me much. Frankly, during those early years, I was much more enamored of instrumental music, particularly classical (which did include some Classical,Romantic and Baroque)–very little contemporary music penetrated my hearing until my college years… when, strangely, my studies were focused on classical music training.
So, my list of songs–50s or othewrwise–is very different to LomaAlta’s–or most folks’ for that matter.
I’ll just my top five:
Number 5:
Of this performance… *sigh* I dislike some of Alastair Miles’ vowel choices, but the Baroque trumpet is just as nearly perfect as one could hope for, and my quibbles about Miles’ vowels are just that: quibbles. Definitely belongs in my top five best songs.
Number 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pQ8cIi1Gpk
What list could be complete without Rogers Covey-Crump’s performance of Purcell’s “first” setting of, “If Music Be the Food of Love”? Most counter-tenors sound awfully artificial, but Covey-Crump captures this wonderful lil song almost to perfection (His “the’s” thud on the ear, but that’s a small price to pay for the rest of the performance). BTW, Purcell’s other settings of this text are also worth listening to, IMO.
Number 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJCnqJJ9uRs
Bryn Terfel’s performance here is my favorite YouTube performance of this stunningly beautiful aria from Xerxes. Yes, another song by Handel. He really knew how to write a melodic line.
Number 2:
Regular readers here have already seen and heard this video multiple times. While the entire Die Winterreise song cycle stands as the single greatest collection of great songs for solo voice, in my opinion, and makes choosing just one an exercise in frustration, this song just grabs me more than any of the rest. Stunning. And, of course, Der Lindenbaum sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau–INarguably, the greatest baritone of the 20th Century, accompanied by Alfred Brendel, well, breathtaking is the least praise I can extend.
But what could edge that out? How about The Last Great Song ever written? *heh* Yep. From the 1926 hit opera, Turandot: Nessun Dorma , sung by the only guy who could squeak by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau for the number one spot as “greatest voice of the 20th Century”–Jussi Björling.
Number 1:
While none of these performances are “perfect” (Fischer-Dieskau, for example, was in his 60s and well past his prime in the performance above), all are great songs, performed by some of the best (and in the last two examples, THE best) voices of the 20th Century, well worth being included in anyone’s “ear conditioning” collection.
I probably have a few hundred other “best” or great songs floating around in my mind’s ear, but these might help put some of the “music” being pushed out to deaden folks’ ears today into some sort of perspective. BTW, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte is pretty much devoid of great songs, but of you can get your hands on a recording with Fischer-Dieskau in the role of Papageno, you’ve found a treasure. Oh, it’s not rare; the treasure’s in Mozart’s music and the wonderful voice of Fischer-Dieskau.
My first wind instrument, not counting of course the recorder I played as an even younger child, was a trombone. In fact, it remained my primary musical instrument–apart from voice–for many years. Hence my chuckle when I read the following in a contemporary Holmesian short story, The Adventure of the Lost World by Dominic Green
“…I consider it normal to see a man’s life taken from him by another for the pursuit of criminal gain, Watson; but it is rare indeed for him to be eaten afterwards.”
Even I, who have been in Afghanistan, was appalled. “Surely not.”
“Just so, Watson. In the past seven days, on Hampstead Heath, there have been seven attacks upon street musicians, each the player of a trombone of some description, and each attacked, if those who heard the attacks are to be believed, whilst executing the closing bars of Gustav Holst’s Thaxted [see below the fold–ed.]. In each case, the victim appears to have been attacked from above, the flesh crushed and cut, the bones splintered, the capital extremity entirely missing in many cases. Each victim’s body was also notable for the stench of corruption which hung about it, like gas gangrene.”
“Accidental death has been ruled out, then? A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order—”
“—has already been checked for… [emphasis added-ed.]
*heh* “A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order… ” There were times… (Ah, the memories!)
“No, no, Watson! Blowing one’s head off from excessive back pressure developed while playing ones instrument is much more common among oboe players!”
*ROFLKASTMAFO*
Later, when I’d given up trombone for other instruments, other musical pursuits, when I taught budding musicians, I noted that the flute players were always the most cooperative, compliant and studious of instrumentalists, while the trombone players (and drummers–not to be confused with percussionists*) were generally the clowns and “martini lifters” (and the trumpet players the “weight lifters”–the “jocks” of the band). Again, there were times… *heh*
While I was reading, Thoughts on Worship Music, from the resources at Christ Church, Moscow Idaho, I thought about the time a pastor objected to a particular song on the basis that it was “melancholy”. Now, this was either an idiosyncratic reaction to the song itself, which was an upbeat, joyous expression of personal religious experience or a highly unusual use of the word, “melancholy”. Since he went on to elaborate that it was a “downer” I believe it was the former, since the common usage of “melancholy” indicates
“–a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged; depression.”
or when used as an adjective, as he used it,
“-causing melancholy or sadness; saddening: a melancholy occasion.”
NO ONE (and I mean a BIG zero with the rim kicked off) else I have asked about this song has EVER agreed that it, is “saddening”, gloomy or depressing.
That leaves a much, much less common usage of the word to mean,
“-soberly thoughtful; pensive.”
Ah, perhaps he did mean it in this manner and objected because it led people to be thoughtful, contemplative. Knowing both his sermonizing and his temperament, it’d not surprise me that he’d not want people actually THINKING about what was going on…
*heh*
Back to more of the thoughtful (and thought-povoking) articles at Christ Church.
