Music About Animals, Day 2 – Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, “Frogs” by Georg Philipp Telemann

This week’s theme is…Music About Animals!  Our animated companions on Earth, animals have been our friends, food, foes, and fascination.  They constantly populate the art of humans, from literature to sculpture, poetry to music.  This week we listen to music inspired in some way by animals.

Music About Animals, Day 2 – Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, “Frogs” by Georg Philipp Telemann

To me, Telemann stands out a bit from the other luminous figures of the high Baroque.  He’s not quite as well known as the the others, although most would acknowledge that he deserves to be uttered in the same breath as Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.  His music just feels a little…different.  Where Bach and Handel are stocky and solid, Telemann’s light, airy music floats on the breeze, all the time.  Where Vivaldi is vigorous and busy, Telemann seems relaxed and carefree.  And he essentially spoke the same language as the others.  He could write Germanic polyphony with utmost facility – Handel once said that Telemann could sit down and write a composition in 8 voices as quickly and easily as others could write letters.  But his counterpoint is creamy, soothing, fragile and delicate in contrast to Bach and Handel’s well-hewn brickwork.  He wrote figuration a la Vivaldi, but whereas that of Vivaldi is propulsive, driven and incessantly goal-oriented, Telemann’s good-natured figuration meanders sunnily and takes its time to smell the flowers.  And don’t take these comparisons as criticism – Telemann’s music is delightfully transparent and uplifting; he was extraordinarily well-respected in his day (see this post).  Handel, upon hearing rumors of Telemann’s death, expressed to him in a letter his delight at his discovery that they were in error, and sent him some fine flowers for his garden on the next available ship.

But Telemann’s music seems to be crafted according to somewhat different principles than his great contemporaries.  Where Bach, Handel and Vivaldi left finely-tuned contraptions, Telemann wrote like perfume in the air (cue Debussy…)

 

As such, Telemann anticipated many trends of the upcoming Rococo and Classical styles which prized orchestral transparency, melodic breadth, slower harmonic rhythm, and an often sweet and dainty character.  Bach had nothing to do with Rococo textures, but his sons ate it up, making a deliberate stylistic break from their stodgy old man.  Handel and Vivaldi, too, did not quite dip their toes into the light, clear, Rococo waters (although some of their later works almost touch the surface), but Telemann was ahead of his time, anticipating these stylistic hallmarks.  Perhaps that is why he was so feted in his day, enjoying success in so many places, and winning priority over Bach in the estimation of the German folk.  As such, Telemann wrote musical statements that would seem strange in the hands of the others, but which work surprisingly well in his.

While Telemann was prolific, his total number owing a great deal to the unbelievable production of German church cantatas (more than 1,000!) and his impressive production of orchestral overtures (600), his solo concerto production ain’t got nothing on Vivaldi (see this post).  Vivaldi, the father of the concerto, wrote more than 500 for all different kinds of soloists and concertino groups – discovering their variety is truly a delight – but Telemann barely wrote 100.  Still, his concertos touch on an impressive array of instruments, ensembles and orchestral colors, and there is something in there for everyone.  His concertos breathe differently than Vivaldi’s, wandering with slow, nuanced footwork where Vivaldi’s enthusiastically run.  But that’s part of the fun.  Like Vivaldi, Telemann sometimes evoked extra musical associations in his pieces, although the overtures provide a much more comprehensive sampling of this tendency.  But there is this quirky concerto:

 

Do the sounds of that concerto remind you of anything?  Telemann is the only one who could have written this, so odd and cheeky are its features.  I get the sense he didn’t take himself quite so seriously as the rest, even Handel who was known so often to have roared with laughter.  The concerto is about frogs, and the solo part with its raspy croak, created by playing the open A string along with a fingered A on the D string for a strong blast of A, is jolly good fun.  The solo part practically twangs like a fiddle, evoking the joys of the country, perhaps the location of the frogs.  Do you hear how long the solo episodes go on, ringing out the same notes?  You would never hear that in Bach, Handel or Vivaldi – everything in their music is so ever-active, propelling from one harmony to the next.  Only Telemann would sit so long on the notes as his frogs croaked away.  The solo parts of concertos by Bach and Vivaldi are so densely packed with complex and florid figuration, designed for the fulfillment of the virtuoso ego (mostly), but Telemann’s solo part in the Frog Concerto sounds almost minimalistic, like Philip Glass centuries before his time (see this post).  What ambitious violinist would seek out a bizarre and static solo part like this to flex his virtuoso muscles?  You would have to be pretty comfortable telling the music’s story and renounce the personal glory of showing off.  Not that Bach’s concertos afford abundant opportunities of this, but the solo parts are certainly more soloistic.

Telemann, something of a prophet, predicted the sound of Europe’s music several decades before it arrived.  He soon fell out of favor as Bach, Handel and Vivaldi overtook his prominent place in the public’s ear.  In fact, they still overshadow him, but for many musicians, Telemann is a reliable source of pleasing, accessible music that is fun to play, easy to put together, and worthy of study for its detailed craftsmanship.  He spoke something of a different language than his prominent contemporaries, and thankfully so, for there is no one else quite like him, possessing all those qualities.  Telemann’s music runs alongside that of the mainstays of the high Baroque, dancing on the air as the others tramp firmly upon the ground out of their solid construction.  He makes us look up, even if our bodies are firmly rooted on the ground, broadening our perspective, and reminding us that there is more to life than where our feet make contact.

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Music About Animals, Day 1 – Theme and Variations from the Trout Quintet by Franz Schubert

This week’s theme is…Music About Animals!  Our animated companions on Earth, animals have been our friends, food, foes, and fascination.  They constantly populate the art of humans, from literature to sculpture, poetry to music.  This week we listen to music inspired in some way by animals.

Music About Animals, Day 1 – Theme and Variations from the Trout Quintet by Franz Schubert

In the years following the death of Mozart and Haydn, roughly the late 1790s and 1810s and 20s, there exists a corridor of largely unsung and forgotten music from largely unsung and forgotten composers.  Musicians like Gelinek, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Spohr – all virtuoso pianists (except Spohr – he was a violinist), respected composers, in some cases entrepreneurs (Kalkbrenner, among other enterprises, was a partner in a piano manufacturer and also owned successful music schools; he attempted to woo Chopin into studying at one of them which the younger composer almost did – he would have committed to a long, expensive contract – before coming to his senses), populated this corridor, filling it with the sparks of their pianism and flashy music.  This music has a delicate transparency derived from the Classical models, but also a rising robustness of spirit which anticipated the upcoming Romanticism, and a flashy virtuoso quality that would feed the flamboyance of Liszt.  Here’s an example of Kalkbrenner’s brilliant piano virtuosity:

 

Europe was still discovering Mozart’s legacy, and Beethoven was stormily thrusting his dramatic and powerful music upon audiences and other musicians who were not quite ready to assimilate his energy and vision.  While these virtuoso pianists/composers took their sweet, pleasant time with the transition between the Classical and Romantic periods, Beethoven was ready to make his home there almost immediately, arriving with his bold Eroica Symphony (see this post) shortly after beginning his professional career, and inhabiting the land of the Romantics decades before its time.  Not until the 1830s, with the likes of Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, Mendelssohn and Schumann would more of European culture catch up to the direct, powerful, and forceful Romanticism which had animated Beethoven from the beginning of the nineteenth century.  The music of the transitional figures, as dramatic as it can be, simply does not achieve the purposeful Romantic style as Beethoven and his later followers did and would.  In the midst of these forgotten names is a much greater one, although it is easily overlooked, as is the music written by its bearer.  But he and his music belong with Kalkbrenner, et al – he is not quite Mozart, and not quite Beethoven.  The greatest transitional figure, coexisting with Beethoven but never quite reaching his level of intensity, is Franz Schubert.

Schubert is beloved by singers, probably more so than other musicians, on account of the kind of music of which he left the most, the art song.  A genre that had begun to sprout during the Classical era, with some notable but immature essays from Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, the German art song, or lied, is a short, secular song written for solo singer (99% of the time) accompanied only by piano.  An exploration of the German poets, the art song, largely thanks to Schubert’s work in the genre, gained prominence as a vehicle of music excellence, both for composers and performers, in which the meaning of the poem is exposed through deceptively simple and expressive vocal writing, and a most nuanced accompaniment part written to exploit the nearly limitless possibilities of the piano, a relatively new invention at the time (see this post).  Schubert was instrumental in elevating the German art song to a true art form; his songs are still frequently programmed on vocal recitals and his examples of the genre served as models for art songs by many notable composers who would grace the Germanic musical pantheon after him, including Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, and Richard Strauss.

Had Schubert not been such a prolific composer of art songs, would we still speak of him as we do?  It’s hard to say, as his reputation would then rest largely on his instrumental music which, after the songs, is his most successful body of work.  In hearing his symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, and other chamber works, we catch a fascinating glimpse of a supremely refined musical mind trying to fill in the stylistic cracks between Mozart and Beethoven, and generally doing so with assured grace and charm.  Schubert’s style is often called “poetic”, which is to say it emanates lyricism, warmth, and a detailed nuance that is easy to miss if you are not paying attention.  I’ve always felt that Schubert is a real musician’s musician.  Never overtly impressive like the music of his virtuoso contemporaries (Hummel, Kalkbrenner, etc.), Schubert’s instrumental music is charming, tuneful, transparent, harmonically imaginative, and unconditionally well-crafted, but you often need to listen closely in order to appreciate it.  One might say that where other composers’ music comes to the listener, the listener must go to the music of Schubert, approaching it with patience and understanding, in order to derive maximum benefit from listening.  In Schubert’s instrumental music we can hear the grace and lyricism of Classical music combined with a subdued emotion and harmonic adventurousness that feels more Romantic.  Later in his life, acutely influenced by the titanic music of Beethoven, he pursued the stronger qualities of his elder’s voice more explicitly, largely modeling his Great Symphony in C major after Beethoven’s mighty Ninth Symphony, but up until that point Schubert is tender and gentle (and maybe even then, actually).

A massive chamber work that illustrates these qualities effectively is the famous Trout Quintet.  Composed when he was just 22 years old (Schubert did not live very long – his almost 1000 surviving works were written over the course of just 32 years!), it can be seen as coming from his middle period – the music of his late period assumed an incredible depth and gravity – characterized by great tunefulness and vivacity.  It is written for a somewhat unconventional ensemble, a string quartet plus piano.  That in and of itself is not unconventional; there are many piano quintets like that, but they usually combine the piano with a quartet consisting of two violins, viola, and cello, common since Haydn’s day.  Schubert’s Trout, however, puts the piano amidst one of each different instrument in the violin consort, violin, viola, cello, and double bass!  The resulting transparency and invention of timbre reveals Schubert’s endless resourcefulness as an orchestrator.  This would not be the last time Schubert made that sort of move: late in his short life he produced another masterpiece of chamber writing, his final chamber work in fact, a glowing String Quintet in C major, scored for the unusual forces of traditional string quartet plus an additional cello.  There is hardly a more sublime work in the chamber repertoire; again, one must listen closely for the detail and nuance, and it is considerably rewarding to do so.

Schubert’s Trout Quintet derives its odd name from its synthesis of two of Schubert’s great abilities, chamber music and art song.  The charming fourth movement of the quintet is a theme and variations, a form that was very popular among composers of instrumental music during the Classical era, on one of his songs, called The Trout.  The two-minute song features an imaginative accompaniment that seems to simulate the gently lapping waves of a stream as the baritone soloists sings about a country trout’s very bad day:

 

Schubert was not finished with this melody, as it serves as the theme for the variations the Trout Quintet, constantly shot through by his gifts for melody and transparent orchestration.  As it is stated by the strings, it breathes and moves with the pure charm and lyricism of the Austrian folk:

 

I often feel that Schubert deserves more recognition than he generally receives.  Of course everyone knows he is a great composer, but it is more common to hear Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, even Schumann so much of the time.  But he has emerged as the clear superior among a group of transitional figures whose music, while brilliant and appealing, is  also acknowledged by most historians and critics to be vapid and superficial.  Schubert is to be commended, I think, for turning inward and discovering the transcendent qualities of enduring art within, even if it was not immediately successful as the work of the flashy virtuosi.  Schubert is a musician’s musician – his music often takes considerable patience and, perhaps a little effort, to engage with, but there is such treasure to be found upon putting it forth.  The Trout Quintet is still one of the most popular ways to access his wonderful musical voice, full of Classical tunefulness, Romantic harmonic adventure, and a lyrical charm, attention to detail, and, sometimes, even a pathos that is all Schubert’s own.

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 5 – Agnus dei from Mass in Time of War by Franz Joseph Haydn

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 5 – Agnus dei from Mass in Time of War by Franz Joseph Haydn

It can be difficult to reconcile all the different linear presentations of history into the holistic web that is reality, harder still to realize our connection to it as members of the current world, separated from the past only by time.  (Every now and then I will have a rare moment, fleeting like deja vu, during which I realize that the flow of time envelops us all, even those who lived long ago – they did so in real time, never sure of the choices that seem so crystalline in our history books – and they come at the strangest times, but in those moments I feel like I realize the true nature of historical reality and authentically recognize my link with the heritage of our past).  The history of politics, war, architecture, music, art – they are often presented as separate strands.  Or, if you consume a biography of any kind, you are looking at a historical narrative through the vantage point of one perspective, more or less, and again a wider view is lost.  Some historical articles come close, like this kind of thing…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1796

…and it takes a great mental feat to keep it all straight in one’s head.  If you look at the sidebar of that article you will notice subtopics regarding different arts – those are fun to read.

One of the neat things about music history is that you get something of a different perspective, almost a nonlinear view of the official historical record that you would discover in a more straightforward class or textbook on the subject.  In learning about much European art music you discover commentaries on political events of the time, which helps both to place the music in history, and also to humanize the often dry political events, allowing us to understand them from a more empathetic perspective.  The Napoleonic wars, for example, were incredibly impactful on practically every element of life in Central and Western Europe during the first decade of the nineteenth century.  In many ways they were an outgrowth of what are known as the Revolutionary Wars, which saw the various coalitions of post-revolutionary France fighting surrounding monarchies who struggled to contain the specter of democracy which threatened to dissolve the old world order like a strong acid.  The entire nineteenth century was racked with conflicts surrounding this clash of political philosophies (see this post) and the old world order did finally dissolve more than a century later in the cataclysm of the First World War.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars filled the air of Europe’s central monarchies with a sense of dread and uncertainty that their subjects and rulers must have sensed on a daily basis, or nearly.  Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, the three composers who have come to be known as the “First Viennese School” were all affected by it in some way (to find out about what is now known as the “Second Viennese School”, see this post).  Beethoven’s ambivalence regarding Napoleon is well-known (see this post).  Both he and Haydn lived to see Napoleon crown himself emperor of France in 1804, confirming what many of the French had feared about his ambitions – Europe’s trouble with Napoleon was just beginning and Beethoven’s music would later reflect the effect of his aggression (see this post).  On a side note, it staggers me to realize that Haydn in fact lived a few years past the premiere of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony – he is reported to have said that it was “Much too long, much too loud, and would never become popular” – he was many things, but apparently not a prophet, at least not in this case.  Mozart, passing in 1791, was just catching wind of the forces that would bring about the French Revolution, as alluded to right at the beginning of this scene from Amadeus (for more about Amadeus, see this post and this one):

 

But Haydn experienced the full scope of the French Revolution, from the early gathering storm, to the destructive wake of his coronation which brought with it the revelation that he was just another in a long line of megalomaniacs who had European conquest in their sights and few scruples about using the full force of imperial armed forces to set about achieving it, of whom there would still be more.

The early inklings of what would become the Napoleonic Wars touched and shaped Haydn’s music in a very explicit way in 1796.  At this point, late in his life, Haydn was able to spend most of his time at his residence in Vienna, visiting his old stamping grounds at Esterhazy annually to present a sumptuous setting of the Catholic mass for orchestra, choir, and vocal soloists in honor of his patron, Nikolaus Esterhazy II’s wife, Princess Maria Hermenegild.  Haydn composed six masses for this series, and they are often called his “Late Masses”.  They are not the only masses he wrote, but they are without question the most splendid.  Known to most musicians as the “Father of the Symphony”, a well-deserved title in light of the 100-odd he composed over the greater part of his working life, his symphonic composition had culminated in the 12 he had written for London audiences in the early 1790s.  These, to this day his most famous symphonies (for more about them, see this post), were the last symphonies from his pen, and in a sense he continued the line of stylistic development which ran through them in his 6 Late Masses.  I personally prefer the Late Masses to the London Symphonies.  The forces with which he worked add the colors and textures of choir and vocal soloist to the already colorful orchestra of the late symphonies for a nearly endless variety of textures and moods, limited only by Haydn’s unquenchable powers of invention – hardly a limit at all.

The second of these Late Masses was composed as Napoleon’s forces, having routed the Austrian Army in Italy, turned its sights to Vienna itself (Napoleon would invade Vienna in 1809 – see this post).  Haydn, like so many others loyal to the Austrian monarchy, sensed the tension with their enemy at the gates, and he worked his nation’s collective anxiety into the most agitated Agnus Dei you could imagine within the stylistic boundaries of the common practice.  

 

After a placid initial statement, the choir builds the Agnus Dei to a tense climax, at which point the timpani becomes the centerpiece, seeming to represent the foreboding advancement of a distant army.  Many historians suspect this to be an explicit evocation of the impending French forces and it is this device that is the source of both of the mass’ nicknames, “Mass in time of war” and “Timpani mass”.  After the Agnus Dei is always found the Dona nobis pacem, “grant us peace”, which here becomes an explicit prayer for the needs of the Austrian empire.  After the imploring supplication of the Agnus dei Haydn opens the floodgates of joy and the Dona nobis pacem swings the pendulum as far in the other direction as possible.  Haydn remained devoutly and happily religious his entire life; his message is clear: even amid times of unbearable strife, God is good.
Haydn’s Mass in time of war is a fascinating and explicit example of Europe’s politics intimately shaping its art.  It is easy to lose the big picture of how all disciplines and streams of human endeavor and function interrelate, but it is stories like this, more abundant than we often realize, which show us the deeper connections and help to keep our understanding of history firmly in touch with those who lived before us, not that different from ourselves, even if they can seem distant and irrelevant.

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 4 – The Battle by Clement Janequin

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 4 – The Battle by Clement Janequin

When you are unfamiliar with a large category of human experience, all of its contents tend to feel the same, with few distinguishing features.  But once you get to know it a little bit you begin to hear the differences between different specimens within that umbrella, and after a little bit more you are surprising people that you can tell the difference between different things that essentially feel homogenous to them.  There is a funny gag in an episode of the Simpsons based on this principle.  

http://www.simpsonsworld.com/video/312297539960/episode/448386115705

As Groundskeeper Willie, Springfield Elementary’s grizzled and beleaguered Scottish janitor, settles down in his shack for a nap he scans the radio for some music to lull him.  Indecisively he switches back and forth between two different stations, both playing bagpipe music, the first of which features a solo pipe at a moderate tempo in an intimate setting, and the second of which features a choir of bagpipes at a much more aggressive tempo, accompanied by crisp snare drums, probably at an outdoor parade.  Even though we can note the differences between Groundskeeper Willie’s stations rather easily, the joke is clear: Groundskeeper Willie is a bagpipe connoisseur, and not just any bagpipes will do.  He must select precisely the proper bagpipe music to fit his mood at any given time.  This seems absurd, and it probably is given how little variety there seems to be in the style and practice of bagpipe music (I may very well be betraying my snobbish ignorance here – absolutely no offense intended to all of you devoted bagpipe connoisseurs out there!).  But we can all understand the point: if you are outside looking in, everything sounds the same, but once you get to know a genre or style, you begin to hear practically infinite variety and possibility within its boundaries.

This is true of every style of music from rap to reggae, from punk to Palestrina – before you begin your exploration it all sounds the same, but get to know it a bit and you quickly begin to hear the nuances.  Get to know it more and you become an expert.  This is definitely true of classical music – three centuries of European art music sounds homogeneous to so many listeners who have not gotten to know it.  But listen a bit and you will soon hear the differences between baroque, classical, romantic.  Listen more and you will hear the difference between Haydn and Mozart.  Listen even more and you will be able to tell Mozart’s youthful early works from his mature late ones.  And so on.  

One collection of styles and practices that remains opaque and homogeneous to even seasoned listeners of classical music is what is commonly summed up as “Music Before 1600”.  When most connoisseurs of classical music listen for pleasure they typically choose from music written between about 1685 and 1900.  We can sum all of that music up as “common practice”, and it is all written in a harmonic language that feels familiar to most of us.  But if you go back before that you will enter territory that feels a little less familiar.  “Music Before 1600” starts with Gregorian Chant, compiled right around the turn of the second millennium, and proceeds over the course of a little more 600 years before reaching the music of Palestrina, right on the cusp of common practice.

A while ago, everything written between those two chronological markers seemed exotic, homogeneous, overwhelming, and just kind of unappealing to me with its grey vocal polyphony and otherworldly harmonic palette.  I expressed this to a mentor of mine and she replied with something to the effect of “I understand what you mean, but I’ve found that the more you explore it the more interesting it becomes, and pretty soon you can’t get enough of it.”  I knew this opinion must be backed by considerable study and reflection, but I didn’t quite buy it at the time.  Sure enough, though, once I began to study it, out of necessity in order to pass certain classes and placement exams, I found that it was true.  You can get hooked on the music of Western culture’s misty past.  To so many listeners, even including seasoned musicians, the music written in Europe before 1600 seems nebulous and overwhelming, but it is waiting to be discovered.  It was written by real people to be performed by real people for audiences full of real people, and anything of which that is all true will have something to offer to listeners for all of time.

When I began learning about music before 1600 its vocabulary seemed to swim with strange terms that meant nothing to me.  Sequence.  Trope.  Conductus.  Gradual.  Codex.  Madrigal.  Motet.  Chanson.  Minnelied.  Trouvere.  Mysterious words that seemed to speak of a long-lost world.  Of course they’re not as exotic as they seem, and can all be learned with a little study, many of them having accessible analogues in our present day.  Some words I sort of thought I knew, but didn’t quite, and gained considerable clarity about.   This group includes madrigal and motet.  I had heard those words before starting formal study of these periods, but didn’t quite know what they meant.  Let’s start with motet.  It’s pretty simple: a motet is a piece of polyphonic vocal music on a sacred text, usually Latin, that’s designed for use in Christian worship, but not the liturgy itself.  So, let’s say you wanted to present a musical setting of one of the psalms during a Mass.  It’s not part of the Mass, but it belongs there, so you could write a motet for that.  Now, say a composer writes something similar but on a secular text.  That’s a madrigal.  And madrigals tend to be in Latin or Italian (or English – “fa la la la la la la la la…”).  If you write a similar piece in German, it’s a lied, and if you write a similar piece in French, it’s a chanson.  That’s a pretty quick and dirty way to sum it up.  Of course, the real story is more complicated than that, with more twists and turns, but that gives you the broad strokes.

And there’s a fair amount of stylistic evolution within each of those broad headings, all of which were written continually by different composers of different generations over the course of multiple centuries.  Early chansons tended to be written in the medieval fixed forms for a few voices (see this post).  The later Burgundian chansons dispensed with the fixed forms and became luxurious in their dense, rich, through-composed polyphony.  And later, just before Palestrina, French composers like Claudin de Sermisy and Clement Janequin developed the chanson even further, often simplifying the texture and incorporating programmatic elements into a popular version of the genre that came to be known as the Parisian chanson.  The most famous example is a very vivid and lively one by Janequin called The Battle, a musical depiction of the Battle of Marignano, which was a French victory over the Swiss during a lengthy and convoluted series of conflicts spread across the sixteenth century called The Italian Wars (only serious history buffs need read any further).  In this madrigal Janequin, a very clever composer, almost singlehandedly popularized a manner of music making that would later come to be known as Stile concitato, “The agitated style” soon becoming a mainstay of the baroque musical palette, featuring onomatopoeic effects evoking the sounds of battle including galloping horses, clashing arms, and the general agitated chaos of battle.  Janequin’s chanson is a breathless and captivating cross section of the bloody battle.  Try to follow along with the approximate translation if you can; I get the sense some of these words aren’t really in circulation anymore…

 

French

English

Part I Escoutez, tous gentilz Galloys, La victoire du noble roy Françoys. Et orrez, si bien escoutez, Des coups ruez de tous costez. Phiffres soufflez, frappez tambours. Tournez, virez, faictes vos tours. Avanturiers, bon compagnons Ensemble croisez vos bastons. Bendez soudain, gentilz Gascons. Nobles, sautez dens les arçons. La lance au poing, hardiz et promptz Comme lyons Haquebutiers, faictes voz sons ! Armes bouclez, frisques mignons. Donnez dedans ! Frappez dedans ! Alarme, alarme ! Soyez hardiz, en joye mis. Chascun s’asaisonne. La fleur de lys, Fleur de hault pris, Y est en personne. Suivez Françoys, Le roy Françoys. Suivez la couronne. Sonnez, trompetttes et clarons, Pour resjouyr les compagnons, Les cons, les cons, les compagnons. Part II Fan fan, fre re le le lan fan feyne. Fa ri ra ri ra. A l’estandart tost avant. Boutez selle, gens d’armes à cheval. Fre re le le lan fan feyne Bruyez, tonnez bombardes et canons. Tonnez, gros courtaux et faulcons, Pour secourir les compaignons, Les cons, les cons, les compagnons. Von, von, pa ti pa toc, von, von. Ta ri ra ri ra ri ra reyne Pon pon pon pon La la la … poin poin … la ri le ron France courage, courage. Donnez des horions. Chipe, chope, torche, lorgne. pa ti pa toc, tricque trac, zin zin Tue! à mort: serre. Courage, prenez, frapez, tuez. Gentilz gallans, soyez vaillans. Frapez dessus, ruez dessus Fers émoluz, chiques dessus. Alarme, alarme! Courage prenez, après suyvez, frapez, ruez. Ils sont confuz, ils sont perduz. Ils monstrent les talons. Escampe toute frelore la tintelore. Ilz son deffaictz. Victoire au noble roy Françoys. Escampe toute frelore bigot.

Part I Listen, all you gallant noblemen, To the victory of the noble King Francois. And you shall hear, if you listen well, Clouts hurled from every side. Fifes, blow; strike, drummers; Turn, spin, make your turns. Soldiers, good comrades, together cross your batons [ready your guns?] Band together quickly, noble Gascons. Noblemen, jump in your saddles, The lance in your fist, daring and swift Like lions! Harquebusiers [heavy-portable-gun-ners], make your sounds. Buckle your arms, elegant minions. Strike them, hit them Alarm! alarm! Be daring, be joyful Let everyone spruce up. (make yourself nice) The fleur de lis, Flower of high prize, Is here in person [King François] Follow François, The King, François. Follow the crown. Let trumpets & clarions resound to delight our comrades, Our com-, our com-, our comrades. Part II Fan fan, fre re le le lan fan. Fa ri ra ri ra. Quickly rally to the colors/flag Into the saddle, men at arms Fre re le le lan fan [etc.] Roar & thunder, bombards and cannons. Thunder, burly courtauds (non-battle horses) and falcons, To help our comrades, Our com-, our com-, our comrades. Von von, pa ti pa toc [clippety-clop] Ta ri ra [etc.] Pon, pon [etc.] la la la … poin poin … la ri le ron France, have courage. Deal your blows Squeeze them, catch them, wipe them out, stare them down. Pa ti pa toc [etc.] Kill them, put them death, Courage, take, strike, kill them. Be valiant, you noble, brave men. Strike them down, hurl yourselves at them. Freshly cast blades, stab them. Alarm, alarm! Take courage, pursue, strike, hurl. They’re muddled, they’re lost. They’re showing their heels. Let all the weaklings flee the field, armor tinkling. They are defeated. Victory to the noble King Francois! Let all the feeble troublemakers flee the field.

So the next time you hear some music with which you are not familiar, and you consider it to be a representative of a style which seems homogeneous and alien to you, remember, understanding comes with repeated exposure.  Today I can often place music composed between 1000 and 1600 with fair accuracy in time and culture, but I couldn’t always.  The world is rich and nuanced, and worthy of being understood, because once you do, artifacts like Janequin’s thrilling reenactment of a medieval battle produced entirely with vocal sounds come into focus.  If you’re not looking closely, you could miss it, and so much more…

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 3 – Offertorium from War Requiem by Benjamin Britten

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 3 – Offertorium from War Requiem by Benjamin Britten

In the late 1860s the always uncompromising and ever inventive Johannes Brahms did something rather unconventional.  He aimed to write a requiem, but didn’t want do it in the typical way and, therefore, set something of a precedent.  Today, we might call someone like Brahms “spiritual but not religious”, which is to say he was strongly aware of some source of spiritual unity and supreme love in the universe (not to dwell on this), but pursued and communed with it in an unconventional way.  Biographers have described his views as agnostic and even what we know today as humanistic.  He was born into a Lutheran family, and the theology and worship practices he must have experienced certainly gave him a treasury of spiritual language and memory, but he followed his own path with that kind of thing.  His mentee, Antonin Dvorak, a devout Catholic, (see this post), once said “Such a fine man, such a fine soul – and he believes in nothing!  He believes in nothing!”  Clearly this approach to the spirit was surprising and new to many, as was the profound artistic fruit that seemed to flow from it.

In spite of Brahms’ spiritual ambiguity, religious influences did find their way into his music.  The most famous example of this is his extraordinary Requiem.  It is called A German Requiem, which speaks to a plainly self-conscious break with the traditional setting of the Requiem Mass.  And it is more his ambiguous spirituality than any sectarian religious agenda that motivated it, I would think.  There are examples of Lutheran composers setting Catholic texts, for example the great Mass in B minor by J.S. Bach (not that he was crazy about Catholicism – his son Johann Christian’s conversion from Lutheranism to Catholicism caused him grief – it was essentially to win favor with a Catholic patron) and the abundant settings of Latin psalmody by Handel from his time in Italy during the first decade of the 1700s.  Brahms could have set the traditional Latin Requiem text had he wanted to, so the choice to compile his own collection of texts from the Bible and set them to music in German speaks to an almost maverick New Age sensibility, a very deliberate break with traditions of all kinds, but a drive to maintain the themes which animate them.  If you have never listened to Brahms’ German Requiem you definitely should.  Its succession of seven noble movements, unified by an exploration of the process of loss and grief, speaks to the heart, and even speaks the transcendent language of religious devotion convincingly, to this day beloved by listeners of many different religious outlooks and philosophies.  It could as easily be labelled A Human Requiem, so universal is its manner of comfort and speculation about the metaphysics of the cosmos.

Brahms’ German Requiem has come to be called a “non-liturgical” Requiem and was the first notable example.  Another famous one came three quarters of a century later from Great Britain’s greatest musical figure of the twentieth century, Benjamin Britten.  Spiritually, parallels can be drawn between Brahms and Britten.  Where Brahms was raised Lutheran, Britten was raised in the dominant sect of his nation, the Church of England.  While he remained somewhat connected to the faith throughout his life, the actual definition of his personal doctrine is difficult to discern.  He was by no means a regular churchgoer, and his homosexuality may have put him at odds with the establishment.  Like Brahms, he wrote a Requiem that takes liberties with the liturgy, but in a different way than that of his predecessor.

In 1962 the cathedral church at Coventry in England was consecrated, finally rebuilt after the original fourteenth century structure had fallen to the German Blitz in the Second World War.  For the occasion, Britten was commissioned to contribute a significant musical work and, like Brahms, he chose to compose a Requiem.  Unlike Brahms, he chose to set the Latin Requiem text.  If you lay Britten’s Requiem side by side with that of Verdi, Berlioz (see this post), or Mozart, you will find all of the same parts.  But Britten gives us a bonus, a twist.  In between the segments of the Requiem text, Britten interspersed poems by Wilfred Owen.

Wilfred Owen, British poet and soldier in World War I

Coventry Cathedral was destroyed in World War II, but Wilfred Owen is a notable figure of the First World War.  A British Soldier who served from 1916 until just before the war’s end in 1918 (he was killed in action a short week before the armistice), Owen channeled his traumatic experiences into eloquent poems filled with graphic images and an ironical tone.  The First World War was really a threshold between world orders, the old monarchies crumbling in its destructive wake, and with them the old-fashioned sense of the glory of war and dying for one’s monarch.  Owen’s poetry reflects this massive societal shift, both in the brutal images he unreservedly described and also for the borderline sarcastic commentary his poetry speaks about the futility and tragedy of war, wielded all too lightly by those insulated by wealth and power.  To get a taste of Owen’s poetic genius and his unflinching descriptions of the hell that is war, watch this documentary, The Great War and Shaping of the Twentieth Century, and scroll to 33:30 to hear Owen’s poem Dulce et decorum est in conjunction with a description of the awful poison gas introduced to warfare by the German army:

 

That documentary includes the last two thirds of the poem.  If you want to read the complete text of Dulce et dcorum est, you can do so here.

In Owen’s commentary, Britten found an ideal voice with which to express his pacifistic sympathies.  There is no glory of war here, no matter what message the mighty and powerful might broadcast, only immense suffering on the part of those who fight on their behalf.  Britten weaves Owen’s poetry together with the Latin Requiem text seamlessly, clothing all of it in his vivid and eclectic musical voice.  Over the course of his Requiem, Britten incorporates nine complete poems of Wilfred Owen, all dealing with the First World War.  You can hear how he does this in the Offertorium segment of the Requiem.  The Offertorium includes Domine Jesu, Sed signifer sanctus, Quam olim Abrahae, and Hostias in its traditional setting.  But amidst that, Britten includes an incredibly strong, almost cynical, poem by Owen, called The Parable of The Old Men and The Young.  In this poem Owen uses the story of the binding of Isaac, in which Abraham prepares to sacrifice his cherished only son as a burnt offering, as a biting parable which touches on themes of generational inequality, class struggle, and the foolish, prideful honor surrounding the waging of the futile Great War:

Parable of the Old Man and the Young   So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, and builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Britten’s placement of Owen’s poem within the flow of the Latin Requiem s impeccable, following as it does Quam olim Abrahae, which reflects upon the promise made by God to Abraham’s descendants.  After the highly active setting of the Latin text for the whole choir, the tenor and baritone soloists continue in the same rhythmic character with the text of the poem.  The climax of the poem is inspired as Britten illustrates the angel imploring Abraham to stay his hand, and then his (or the monarchies’) frightful decision to proceed with the sacrifice anyway.  As this is done, the childrens’ choir interjects with Hostias – “Sacrifices and praise we offer to you, O Lord”.  For both Owen and Britten, the idol of war is honor, and perhaps the old world order.  This minute of music is packed with symbolism and moralizing.

The text of the Requiem Mass is ancient (see this post), and traditional settings of the text by composers like Mozart, Verdi, and Faure are beloved for their imagination and individuality according to their unique creative voices.  In the hands of less orthodox composers (although Verdi was hardly orthodox) the text has served as inspiration for imaginative statements of a different kind, not so bound to tradition.  For Brahms and Britten, the idea of the Requiem was a beginning, a point from which to jump and comment with a strong, compassionate voice, on the human condition, free from the constraints of the pure text.  Stunning, moving, and thought-provoking art is waiting to be found in such places.

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 2 – The combat between Tancredi and Clorinda by Claudio Monteverdi

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 2 – The combat between Tancredi and Clorinda by Claudio Monteverdi

How are you at keeping up with the times?  It’s sometimes challenging isn’t it?  But some professions absolutely demand it, even expecting their practitioners to have something of a sixth sense in anticipating the next hot trends.  Take marketing, for example.  What was it like 150 years ago?  Well, mostly print I would assume.  Newspapers, billboards, fliers.  Maybe there were magazines, probably catalogs.  Within the next century, bold new channels were opening up, including the telephone, radio and television.  Can you imagine what that must have been like for folks in advertising and marketing?  How many saw it coming, and how many persisted in looking the other way as the new delivery systems steamrolled over everything?  How many glanced at the emerging media and dismissed them as inconsequential, critically mispredicting the impending direction of the industry, media, and the world?  What was it like to be able to sell over the phone, as if the person 500 miles away was standing next to you, as opposed to relying on print which must travel over land and sea?  Can you image how powerfully the telephone compressed the process of booking concerts in faraway lands?

Now think about the past fifty years, which saw the birth, growth, and eventual dominance of online media in all of its varied, detailed, and powerful forms.  Who saw it coming?  How many saw it, but dismissed the emerging trends as inconsequential or ephemeral, with no real transformative power on commerce or culture?  In marketing services myself I have seen a rapid progression just within the past decade.  A little more than a decade ago, it was essential to have a presence in the Yellow Pages; now, while people still use it, who does not turn to Google for a quick fix in finding a company to meet his needs?  About 10 years ago, it was finally more or less universally acknowledged that a website is absolutely essential in marketing products or services.  Today it is undisputed, and probably the cheapest and easiest way to start getting one’s name out into the ether, with easy and effective website builders like Weebly and Squarespace helping those of us with minimal coding knowledge to design clear websites in minimal time.  In the last 5 years or so the game has changed again and a website is no longer sufficient; now marketers must know the ins and outs of pay-per-click advertising and Facebook marketing.  It just never stops, and the next big thing is out there somewhere.  But do you know where to look?  Some people seem to have a knack for it, and they are the ones that become successful consultants and marketing coaches, helping others to see the writing on the wall and direct their efforts and resources in the best directions.

Nothing stands still.  While the essence of successful marketing has never changed (“Would you like your life to be easier or more enjoyable?  I can help, and I can do it better/cheaper than they can”) it is the delivery systems that do.  Has the essence of music changed?  That question is a little knottier, but I think most of us can agree that it really hasn’t (“That sounds great!/That makes me want to dance!/That really soothes my soul!/Wow, he can really play!/I can’t believe how much the music is helping me to empathize with the protagonist of that drama!”) and it is merely the genres that change over time.  But the genres become very fashionable and can dull listeners’ sense of the essence present in the old ones.  Like master marketing consultants, musicians who can see the writing on the wall, and not become stuck in the old ways of doing things, stand to become very successful, both in terms of personal prosperity and historical legacy, if they can sell the emerging trends convincingly.

One composer who was very good at this is Claudio Monteverdi.  He lived and worked in Italy, spending almost equal amounts of time in the sixteenth century and the seventeenth.  He was present and engaged during an astounding shift of musical delivery systems, convincingly filling both old forms and new with a wonderful music essence.  While Monteverdi respected the old forms revered by the previous generation and worked with them well, he was progressive and clear-eyed enough to continually stay on top of the revolutionary fashions that were emerging and to create convincingly in those too, effectively selling them to his own generation and those that followed.  It is arguable that without Monteverdi’s masterful cultivation of emerging practices, they may never have caught on as they did.

By way of summary, Monteverdi began his career when Palestrina’s polyphonic perfection was Europe’s thing, all over really, and he mastered that style, as is evident from listening to this passionate early madrigal from 1590:

 

Dawn had not yet risen,

nor had birds stretched their wings

to the new sun,

but the loving star was still alight

when the two fair and graceful lovers,

whom a merry night had joined together

in as many twists and turns as an Acanthus,

were separated by the new light; sweet cries

in the final embraces

mixed with kisses and sighs,

a thousand burning thoughts, a thousand yearnings.

A thousand unfulfilled desires

did find each loving soul

in the other’s beautiful eyes.

 

And one said, sighing with languid words:

«Good-bye, my soul».

And the other answered: «My life, good-bye.»

«Good-bye, no, stay!» And they would not leave

before the new sun.

And before dawn, which rose in the sky,

each saw

the most beautiful roses

pale on loving lips,

and eyes shimmer like small flames.

And their parting was that of souls

which are cut up and uprooted:

«Good-bye, for I leave, and die.»

Sweet languor, and melancholic departure

 

Granted, the comparison to Palestrina is not direct, especially given the strength of feeling present in the secular text (Palestrina was quite pious and did not tend to set texts such as these; a little ironic since is was actually Monteverdi who was the priest!), but the fluid, imitative nature of the polyphony is clearly cut from Palestrina’s cloth.  During Monteverdi’s lifetime three significant stylistic transformations swept through the music of Europe and changed his manner of writing.  They were: the rise of opera, the practice of basso continuo, and concertato.  Let’s listen to a madrigal from about 30 years later which illustrates some of these reforms:

 

 

Golden tresses, oh so precious,

you bind me in a thousand ways

whether coiled or flowing freely.

 

Small, white matching pearls,

when the roses that conceal you

reveal you, you wound me.

 

Bright stars that shine

with such beauty and charm,

when you laugh you torture me.

 

Precious, seductive

coral lips I love,

when you speak I am blessed.

 

Oh dear bonds in which I take delight!

Oh fair mortality!

Oh welcome wound!

 

Again, the secular text is saucy and suggestive.  But the musical manner is completely different than a few decades prior.  We notice immediately that instead of purely vocal writing, Monteverdi brings the text to life through alternating considerably pared down vocal forces (2 female singers as opposed to 5 voices in his earlier madrigals) with lively instrumental episodes.  This alternation is known as concertato, and the variety of colors and textures that became possible were crucial in making Baroque music what it was, so rich and varied are the resources used by composers like Bach and Handel.  We can also hear the solid, foundation of the bassline constantly supporting the harmonic structure, a technique known as basso continuo, another practice that made Baroque music what it was.

Monteverdi’s mastery of opera bled into some of his madrigals, essentially yielding musical dramas in miniature.  The best known of these is the massive madrigal The Combat Between Tancredi and Clorinda, written in the 1620s, based on an episode from a very fantastic epic poem about the First Crusade called Jerusalem Delivered by the sixteenth century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, which served as a source of TONS of operatic plots.  In one episode of Tasso’s poem the Muslim warrioress Clorinda is mistakenly engaged in battle by her lover, Tancredi, and she is killed, but not before converting to Christianity.  Monteverdi expands this episode into a sprawling drama with sung parts for Tancredi, Clorinda, and a narrator, richly accompanied by a small string orchestra.  Can this even be called a madrigal?  Monteverdi labelled it as such, but it seems a stretch considering how far it has departed from the original Renaissance concept.  Still, it is a fascinating work, a great unveiling of a style called concitato, that is the “agitated” style, packed with dramatic repeated notes, tremolos, pizzicato, and galloping horses to illustrate the heat of battle.  The agitated style was another element of the early baroque musical palette refined by Monteverdi which made Baroque music what it was, contributing an unparalleled way to illustrate conflict in music.

 

Monteverdi probably exhibited the knack for seeing future trends better than any other notable composer in the history of Western music.  It is difficult to calculate just how much influence this ability exerted over the music that was to follow, but it is incredibly significant.  Monteverdi was the difference between good ideas that might have died, and good ideas that found their ideal expression and served as models for the next musicians.  Without Monteverdi the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven even, would have been unimaginably different.  This gift is rare and wonderful, in all fields of human production, and it is always richly rewarded, either with prosperity or a historical legacy.  Monteverdi’s output is a fascinating patchwork, reconciling old and new in unexpected and imaginative ways (see this post for another example of this).  The tragic combat between Tancredi and Clorinda is just one example, perhaps the most interesting, and a compelling representative of Monteverdi’s approach to music and culture as a whole.

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 1 – Wellington’s Victory by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 1 – Wellington’s Victory by Ludwig van Beethoven

In Wausau, Wisconsin, the city where I grew up, there is a historical museum called the Yawkey House.  The Yawkeys were lumber magnates (I believe) and had quite an impact on the nature and development of the city and its culture, given their economic influence and philanthropy.  Their family name still graces landmarks and organizations throughout Wausau.  The two most famous are the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, with its annual exhibit featuring birds in art, and the Yawkey House Historical Museum downtown.

The magnificent residence and grounds of the Yawkey House have been preserved to give visitors a taste of life in the nineteenth century, and the museum also features exhibits related to the lumber and logging industry which figured so prominently into the early economy of Wausau and so many similar communities of the northwoods.  It’s been awhile since I’ve been inside the Yawkey House, but I remember visiting as a part of some kind of class trip.  It was a long time ago, and I must have been in kindergarten or daycare, either of which would have been within walking distance.  I have vague memories of some of the things inside – exhibits about logging, eerily staged scenes in various rooms complete with mannequins (these would actually haunt my dreams, literally) roped off from human disturbance, and, most fascinating of all, a real, working nickelodeon.  This is without a doubt the most appealing and enduring memory that I have from this experience.  In some room of the Yawkey House there was, and perhaps still is, a working nickelodeon.

This word is known to most of us, I would wager, for the children’s television station which borrowed its name, at the time of my visit to the Yawkey House full of zany cartoons and even zanier game shows in which adolescent contestants would get filthy with manufactured slime.  But here was an object with the same name.  What?  I thought it was just a television station.  What could this be?  As it turns out, something wonderful.  A nickelodeon is like a player piano mixed with a one-man band.  It typically plays a paper roll punched with holes to control the mechanical motions, usually featuring numerous instruments built into a tight contraption.  The nickelodeon will play songs from the rolls incorporating all of the different instruments in its ensemble into the orchestration.  As was the rage during the heyday of mechanical instruments, they mostly played peppy rags.  Here’s an example:

Here’s another:

 

Delightful, isn’t it?  It features a few more instruments and textures than your typical player piano.  Can you imagine our fascination as the machine came to life and played crisp, up-tempo ragtime music before our very eyes?  That memory has stayed with me.

The nickname “nickelodeon” refers to the tendency for these machines to cost a nickel to operate.  The technical name is actually orchestrion and, as it turns out, they have a bit of a history, even boasting some of the weakest music from one of the world’s greatest composers ever to live in their repertoire.

The first model on record of an automatic mechanical orchestra was created by a cantankerous but brilliant German who settled in Vienna, the musician and inventor Johann Nepomuk Maelzel.  He was friends (mostly) with another cantankerous but brilliant German who had also settled in Vienna, a genius in the estimation of most, Ludwig van Beethoven.  Maelzel and Beethoven shared a relationship that was rocky at times and prosperous at others.  Maelzel seemed to have a knack for inventing gadgets that Beethoven found useful.  One was an ear trumpet that was better than anything on the market at that time, which Beethoven used for the rest of his life as his hearing progressively worsened (see this post).  Another was the metronome, a new and improved musical time keeper based on pendula he observed in Amsterdam, which Beethoven also adopted for his own use.

In the early 1800s, Maelzel invented an orchestrion which he called the panharmonicon, an elaborate gizmo packed with pipes, horns, drums, and in later models, even violins and cellos.  It was capable of simulating an entire symphony orchestra, and could also imitate sound effects like gunfire and cannon shots.  

In addition to his knack for inventing things, Maelzel had a similar knack for promoting his inventions, and his idea for the panharmonicon involved Beethoven’s talent.  He sketched out something of a musical storyboard outlining the Battle of Vitoria of 1813 in which the British Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s older brother, Joseph.  Just two years later he performed a similar feat against Napoleon himself, soundly defeating the French dictator at the Battle of Waterloo and sealing his legacy of exemplary military success.  Beethoven’s ambivalence toward Napoleon is widely known and forms much of the mystique surrounding his seminal Eroica Symphony (see this post) which launched his phenomenal middle period compositions.  Beethoven accepted Maelzel’s commission, crafting a sublimely silly piece of musical cheese, one that many critics identify as Beethoven’s weakest work, a rare example of the transcendent master pandering to make a quick buck.  (Beethoven is known to have responded to this criticism during his lifetime, snarkily remarking something to the effect of “Even my shit is better than anything you could write!”).

The resulting work, Wellington’s Victory Op. 91, is packed with zany dramatics including marches from the French and British sides, a most melodramatic battle scene, and an incredibly over-the-top victory coda.  But it did its job and made both Maelzel and Beethoven money (probably more for Maelzel – there was a reported falling out between them over Beethoven’s suspicion that the inventor gave him the short end of the proceeds).  Maelzel encouraged Beethoven to create a version for full orchestra, and that is the version we most often hear today, sometimes beefed up with actual musket and cannon fire as in this ludicrous classic from Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra:

Maelzel’s early inventions were the first hint of a mechanical musical revolution that would take the western world by storm.  Today, everyone has heard a player piano at least once, but these mechanical orchestras had a great heyday, playing their crisp-edged music to bemused and astounded audiences before recorded music allowed the human touch to be reproduced with ease.  This may be a weak work by Beethoven when compared to those which he wrote for human performers, but can we fault him for taking the opportunity to pander to his audiences with a bit of showmanship in league with Maelzel’s Panharmonicon?  I think not.  Incidentally, this is not the only work Beethoven is recorded to have composed for an automatic mechanical instrument – see this post – just the most famous.

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Get Your Exercise, Day 5 – Etude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3 by Frederic Chopin

This week’s theme is…Get Your Exercise!  If you want to get stronger, you’ll go to a gym and work out.  But musicians can get stronger too, and to get their exercise, they practice might practice an etude, which is a French word for a piece of music written to strengthen a particular skill.  Etudes run the gamut from dry technique builders to stunning, complete musical statements that are worth hearing beyond their use to improve musicians’ aptitude.  This week look at some such examples.

Get Your Exercise, Day 5 – Etude in E Major, Op. 10 No. 3 by Frederic Chopin

DISCLAIMER: This post contains content that some readers may find objectionable.  Be sure to screen it if you intend to share it with your younger music appreciators!

I’m not sure whence it comes, but I sometimes encounter the sense that cartoons are for kids.  I guess it’s understandable, with the cartoon-heavy programming of Saturday morning network television, the Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon.  Kids love cartoons and are often drawn like a magnet to cartoon images, whether they are appropriate for their consumption or not.  I remember that before a certain age I myself was attracted only to cartoons and not to live action film.  I think that started to change around age 7 or so.

But most of us know that it’s not so cut-and-dry.  While cartoons are largely a child-friendly medium, there are plenty of significant cartoons made just for adults.  This is as old as the Sunday funnies, which were cartoon drawings intended largely for adult consumption.  But animated shows like The Flintstones and The Jetsons certainly walked quite close to the middle of the line which divided children’s audiences from adults.  In my lifetime the entertainment industry underwent a renaissance of animated shows designed for mature audiences, from the Cartoon Network’s constantly revolving Adult Swim collection, to MTV’s iconic Beavis and Butthead to the phenomenal success of pop culture titans like The Simpsons and South Park, and everything in between.  It is clear that cartoons are not just for kids anymore, if they ever were, and even if they are attracted to the images, parents must be more careful than ever to screen and approve animation for the young, innocent eyes in their care.

There are many animated shows I have enjoyed as an adult.  The first, and the granddaddy of them all, is The Simpsons, which started during my early elementary school days.  It was a delight to see that show grow up over the course of my childhood.  As many audience members would probably admit, it has overstayed its welcome and probably should have bowed out over a decade ago, but its heyday was absolutely fantastic.  All other adult animated shows owe a great debt of concept to The Simpsons.  I watched a fair amount of South Park as well which, during that time, grew up from a homemade shock-jock potty-mouth show to shock-jock potty-mouth show produced with considerable resources of finance, talent and technology, and capable of commenting on societal issues of all stripes with impressive precision and topicality.  Trey Parker and Matt Stone burned the midnight oil on that show, and the work ethic and impeccable sense of controversial comedy demonstrated through South Park launched them to bigger and better things, like The Book of Mormon.  If you enjoy their work at all, you should watch the documentary 6 Days to Air which chronicles the creative process of a South Park episode and reveals the considerable stress that it puts on its creators.  Be warned, the episode is one of the more explicit ones in concept.  Here’s an excerpt from that:

 

But if I had to watch only one mature animated show for the rest of my life it wouldn’t take me long to choose Futurama over all the rest.  

Futurama has a fascinating history.  In concept it is terrific: smart writing, funny jokes, and slick animation from the creators of The Simpsons, all set in a ridiculously flexible notion of the future of humanity that is packed to the brim with clever gags.  What’s not to like?  For some reason, it just didn’t land all that well in its first iteration, the first four seasons of which aired on Fox in the early 2000s.  The tepid response stopped production with the existing episodes entering syndication on the Cartoon Network and Comedy Central.  I remember catching episodes here and there and always enjoying them.  But once, probably in 2005, I was visiting a friend and he was about to put on an episode of Family Guy, another mature animated show that I had already enjoyed and tired of.  I noticed he also owned boxed sets of complete seasons of Futurama and requested that instead, since I didn’t know it that well.  Stunned by the clever writing and general polish of the show, I was instantly hooked and have been a big fan ever since.  To my delight, I watched as Fox decided to give the show another chance based on its considerable cult following, commissioning three more seasons, and ending the show gracefully at the end of the Seventh Season.  Unlike The Simpsons, Futurama would not overstay its welcome.

Futurama is as close to comedic perfection as an intelligent viewer could want.  Its creators have somehow crafted an environment in which lowbrow jokes can coexist harmoniously with gags that could only have been designed by writers holding advanced degrees in physics, always completely congruent with the zany, anachronism-filled future universe in which it is set.  The cast of egregiously but affectionately flawed characters wins our empathy in every episode and the next gag is always just around the corner, hiding in a cranny we could never expect.  The stories are always surprising, incredibly imaginative and clever in their twists and turns, and often exploiting logical and scientific paradoxes in the process that exercise our thinking muscles.

But what really makes me love Futurama is the variety of tones and themes it is able to explore without feeling forced or awkward.  Futurama is the only show of its kind that can convincingly and hilariously joke about the excretions of robots, and then turn around and ask big questions of existence and philosophy.  It is the only show of its kind which can juxtapose exaggeratedly farcical hijinks with the unexpected sincerity of the most human side of love and loss.  There are several episodes I could suggest to illustrate this, but as good as any is the final episode, called Meanwhile.  If you are unfamiliar with Futurama, I suggest you don’t watch this episode first as it provides the emotional closure for the love story between the two central characters, Fry and Lela, drawn out over the course of the series, and incredibly satisfying to those of us who watched the often frustrating and convoluted romantic machinations which brought them to that point.  At the end of the episode the writers use a contrivance of theoretical physics to give Fry and Leela a lifetime together which is touchingly summarized by a bittersweet montage of their aging and experience of the frozen world, accompanied by a piece of music that could only work in Futurama, Chopin’s sublimely touching Etude Op. 10, No. 3 in E major, a work he himself recognized as exceptionally beautiful, even among his illustrious output (see this post).  Chopin’s Etude is an exercise in sustaining polyphonic textures within a cantabile feeling, a technique at which he excelled, and one that was crucially important in advancing his revolutionary approach toward pianism to European audiences and pianists of his day.  The beloved and tender melody gently accompanies Fry and Lela through their marriage, enjoying the respite of the world’s stillness.  If you want to watch the episode, you can stream it on Netflix.  But this video will give you a sense of what it is like:

And Futurama is a comedy of course, so it refuses to leave on such a sincere note.  Here is the final scene of the episode, season, and series.  Spoiler alert, but not really, so go ahead and take a look:

None of the other animated shows could place this perfect work of Chopin within their storytelling as appropriately as Futurama did.  It’s just one of the reasons that I will always love Futurama more than its colleagues, and it is probably the biggest.  Even during its limited run, shorter than those of the other mature animated shows, Futurama managed to traverse a wider range of intellectual and emotional territory than the rest.  It is the only show of its kind that is able to pivot from intelligence to absurdity, and finally to rare moments of deep, sentiment-free humanity so seamlessly and gracefully.  For this reason it will always stand out in a class of its own.

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Get Your Exercise, Day 4 – Four Etudes for Orchestra by Igor Stravinsky

This week’s theme is…Get Your Exercise!  If you want to get stronger, you’ll go to a gym and work out.  But musicians can get stronger too, and to get their exercise, they practice might practice an etude, which is a French word for a piece of music written to strengthen a particular skill.  Etudes run the gamut from dry technique builders to stunning, complete musical statements that are worth hearing beyond their use to improve musicians’ aptitude.  This week look at some such examples.

Get Your Exercise, Day 4 – Four Etudes for Orchestra by Igor Stravinsky

Most of the time, if you see the word “etude” as the title of a piece of music, it is a performance exercise.  In other words, the music was written for the benefit of the performer, in order to strengthen a certain aspect of his physical agility or musical sensitivity.  Many etudes become beautiful music in their own right, presentable for the edification of audiences, but if that is what it is called, the study component is one of the major motivations for its existence and features.

Any growing instrumentalist should learn etudes of different varieties; they are typically the second item to be crossed off of a daily practice checklist, right after scales, and just before repertoire.  They inhabit the space between those two worlds, usually half pedagogical and half musical (sometimes that balance is shifted).  Having studied the violin and piano myself I have tackled etudes for both instruments, and many of my students do also.

One set of etudes I remember learning on the piano as a kid were those from a collection called The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises written by a French piano teacher named Charles-Louis Hanon, who died in 1900.  If you have spent any kind of significant time learning the piano, you may find their style of figuration familiar:

Over the course of these sixty exercises Hanon puts pianists’ hands and digits through every conceivable configuration in the interest of developing strength, independence, and dexterity.  Hanon’s etudes are world famous, and Sergei Rachmaninov once identified an emphasis on Hanon’s exercises as the reason for the Russian conservatory system’s impressive production of piano virtuosos, required as its students were to memorize all sixty of them and perform them at high speeds in every single key.  But Hanon’s exercises have their critics; they are most often criticized for their stiff, unimaginative and mechanical nature which, some say, hampers musicality in contrast to more artistically crafted etudes.  For some of the latter variety, we can look to a crucially important figure in the piano pedagogy of the Western tradition, Carl Czerny.

Czerny’s life spans the remarkable window between the creative lives of Mozart and Wagner (what a time to be alive!).  He was born less than a year before Mozart’s death and died as Wagner was beginning work on The Ring of the Nibelung and Tristan and Isolde, the operas that would seal his legacy into the present day.  Czerny’s story is remarkable and little known; he was a formative figure within the dense network of musicians inhabiting Vienna during the first half of the nineteenth century, practically Classical Music’s solar plexus (see this post).  He contributed a variation on Anton Diabelli’s Waltz along with his teacher, Beethoven, and his student, Liszt.  As such, he was the link between the two; Beethoven was passing away as Liszt came into his own, and Czerny served as a resource to the younger composer, conveying everything of value he had learned from the old German master.  Liszt would later return the favor, dedicating his first significant collection of piano exercises, his monstrously difficult Transcendental Etudes (see this post) to his teacher and link to Beethoven.

Czerny was massively prolific, leaving more than 1000 published works, many of which were pedagogical etudes that masterfully distilled the idioms of the best piano playing of the day, having been digested by Czerny’s calm, keen vision of the musical world surrounding him.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Carl_Czerny

His exercises are of a different musical order than Hanon’s, sublimely musical and sensitive:

 

But not every etude is written to benefit the performer.  What if you encounter an etude written for orchestra?  Is it an exercise in orchestral ensemble technique?  Possibly.  But probably not.  More likely it is an etude for the composer, a study in some element of technique such as orchestration or harmony.  They are considerably less common than those written for the technical benefit of the performer, but they are out there.  Here’s a colorful example:

 

In 1929 Igor Stravinsky compiled some short movements he had written for string quartet and pianola (player piano) and orchestrated them for more considerable forces.  The Four Etudes for Orchestra is the result.  Here are the three movements for string quartet…

 

…and here is the etude for player piano…

 

Hard to know exactly why he called the movement for pianola an etude (what exactly would that be exercising?), but Stravinsky, who frequently rearranged, revised, and reorchestrated his own works throughout his life, saw an opportunity to compile these four short movements and repackage them for different forces.  The resulting short orchestral sketches channel the voice of Stravinsky’s massive ballets and other notable works into concise miniatures, microcosms of his distinctive sonic mannerisms.  At times we feel the rhythms of Petroushka, at others the lyrical discomfort of The Rite of Spring, and still at others the quirky neo-classicism of Pulcinella and Dumbarton Oaks.  When Stravinsky calls these movements “etudes”, we can think of them like the “studies” of a visual artist, the rough, preparatory sketches that painters and sculptors often make to sharpen their vision of the detailed masterwork ahead.

Sometimes composers write etudes for themselves.  They are rare, but provide an interesting glimpse into their creative lives.  More often, etudes are written for performers, and Stravinsky has these too:

 

While many do not know his name, Carl Czerny is practically the Abraham of Western pianism, influencing generations of pianists, and transmitting Beethoven’s charisma forward through time like an apostolic succession:

He was not above criticism even if his etudes stand out from the likes of similar works by Hanon – Robert Schumann accused him of being unimaginative – but he was greatly admired, and not just by his students.  Stravinsky is on the record as expressing his admiration, and for more than his pedagogy:

“As to Czerny, I have been appreciating the full-blooded musician in him more than the remarkable pedagogue.”

Claude Debussy, too, paid homage to Czerny in his own piano etudes:

His name has become synonymous with the essence of the etude to many musicians in the Western tradition, so prolific and admired was he in their production.  One could easily, and without exaggeration, call Czerny the father of the etude, and not just of those for the performer, but also of the rich and interesting variety in which composers exercised their craft.

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Want to listen to the entire playlist for this week and other weeks?  Check out the Smart and Soulful YouTube Channel for weekly playlists!

Do you have feedback for me?  I’d love to hear it!  E-mail me at smartandsoulful@gmail.com

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Get Your Exercise, Day 3 – Etude by Shinichi Suzuki

This week’s theme is…Get Your Exercise!  If you want to get stronger, you’ll go to a gym and work out.  But musicians can get stronger too, and to get their exercise, they might practice an etude, which is a French word for a piece of music written to strengthen a particular skill.  Etudes run the gamut from dry technique builders to stunning, complete musical statements that are worth hearing beyond their use to improve musicians’ aptitude.  This week look at some such examples.

Get Your Exercise, Day 3 – Etude by Shinichi Suzuki

Every now and then someone comes along and gives the world an incredible gift, a gift that transforms something about the way things are done here.  There are many examples – Gutenberg, the Wright Brothers, Isaac Newton.  Their innovations flow so completely through our way of life that it is practically impossible to imagine a time before them.  Some gifts are humbler, but deeply touching for many who experience them, for example, the gift of Shinichi Suzuki.

Suzuki’s innovations are somewhat controversial, but I would argue that they have dramatically improved the standards and results of music education in our lifetimes, quite reliably giving students the tools to wield challenging musical instruments with astounding mastery and precision before they have even matured into adults.  Students of the finest Suzuki teachers play their instruments at a level of professional maturity that seems far beyond their years.  I would challenge anyone who doubts the efficacy or benefit of the method to research it thoroughly before arriving at a conclusive judgement.  Make sure you are criticizing what it is and not merely what you think it is.  Speaking personally, had I had the benefit of Suzuki instruction in my youth my musical career could have been much different, and for the better; it is a gift I am happy to give to my own students and children.

The overall philosophy and practice of raising a Suzuki student is complex, multi-faceted, and potentially very immersive.  Every family and their teacher must find a balance that works within their lives, and for this reason approaches and results vary widely from teacher to teacher and family to family.  But what we can measure rather objectively is the repertoire Shinichi Suzuki ordered in his library of pedagogical music.  While the Suzuki Method is available today for a large and diverse group of musical instruments, including harp, flute, piano, trombone, double bass, voice, and more, it is important to remember that the only repertoire that was ordered by Suzuki himself is that of the violin method.  It is that sequence of pieces that Suzuki labored to order over the course of what must have been decades, and all the other methods are based on the work he did for the violin sequence.

As any Suzuki teacher will tell you, his original ordering is a breathtaking achievement of pedagogical insight.  Over the course of ten different books, students begin by playing simple folk tunes and end up tackling complete concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, treasured by violinists the world over for their challenging transparency and charming melodic invention.  On the way Suzuki covers significant violin works by composers ranging from Beethoven to Vivaldi, from Corelli to Carl Maria von Weber, Bach to Boccherini.  In short, a violinist who learns by the Suzuki method will develop an impressive and varied personal repertoire.  So, how did he do it?  What astounds so many music teachers about Suzuki’s path for violinists is what perhaps its strongest aspect: the grading.  Each piece builds just a little on the previous piece, but is always manageable enough to learn rather easily so long as the challenges of the last one have been overcome satisfactorily.  The violin method is practically seamless in this regard, and I think Suzuki’s brilliance is best understood in examining the structure of the very first book.  This is where a considerable measure of the Suzuki magic happens.

As anyone who has taught or coached a Suzuki violinist knows, you will hear Twinkle Twinkle Little Star thousands of times along this road.  It is the first complete song that Suzuki included in the method, actually a set of variations cleverly designed to start practicing the bowstrokes which form the matrix of many of the challenging works that are ahead (for example the famous “Mississippi Stop Stop variation includes the bowstroke found at the beginning of the Concerto for 2 violins in d minor by J.S. Bach – how clever is that?!):

 

After Twinkle, Book 1 covers a handful of folk songs, and finally ends up with classical pieces by Bach, Schumann, and a French composer named Francois-Joseph Gossec.  But it’s the way the folk songs and the classics are linked that is truly brilliant.  Here is the complete contents of Suzuki’s Book 1 for violin.  Does anything jump out at you?

1. Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, A major (Traditional/Suzuki)
2. Lightly Row A major, A major (Traditional)
3. Song of the Wind, A major (Traditional)
4. Go Tell Aunt Rhody, A major (Traditional)
5. O Come Little Children, A major (Traditional)
6. Song of the Wind, A major (Traditional)
7. Long, Long Ago, A major (Bayly)
8. Allegro, A major (Suzuki)
9. Perpetual Motion, A major (Suzuki)
10. Allegretto, D major (Suzuki)
11. Andantino, D major (Suzuki)
12. Etude, G major (Suzuki)
13. Minuet I, G major (Bach)
14. Minuet II, G major (Bach)
15. Minuet III, G major (Bach)
16. The Happy Farmer, G major (Schumann) see this post
17. Gavotte, G major (Gossec)

So, what do you notice?  Well, look at the keys first.  Numbers 1 – 9 are all in A major, and they use only the 8 notes of the A and E strings in first position.  These strings are easiest to bow well for beginners and their bright clarity responds to young bow arms better than the D and G strings, which are mellower and a bit more difficult to grip with the hair of the bow.  After learning the basics of violin operation with 9 songs in A major, Suzuki quickly guides his violinists though navigating the D and G strings, and by the end of the book they are playing on every string with ease and facility.  Now look at the composers.  Do you see it?  Long, Long Ago, a ballad by an English composer named Thomas Haynes Bayly, is so directly tuneful that it could easily be mistaken for a folk song.  So, if we grant that, we see then Suzuki starts with folk songs, then includes five original compositions, and then proceeds through classical composers like Bach, Schumann, and Gossec.  As soon as the violinist hits the first Bach minuet, every piece that follows in the  repertoire is a classical composition.  So, essentially, Suzuki saw the gulf between the folk songs plains and classical music plateaus and figured out exactly which music to write in order to build a stairway connecting the two.  Astounding, no?

Suzuki’s five originals, the only original compositions by him in all of the Suzuki repertoire, are short studies that, in my estimation, serve two purposes.  The first is to travel through the keys of the violin’s open strings – Suzuki’s first two originals are in A major, like the folk songs, his next two are in D major, and his final one is in G major, the key of all the classical pieces at the end of the book.  The other is to gradually increase the intricacy of the voice leading which the violinist must control as they coordinate the choreography of their bowing and left hand fingers.  And it happens so gracefully through those five tuneful and carefully-crafted exercises that it is easy to miss.  But Suzuki possessed some amazing insight as to how this was most effectively done.  Allegro is very much like a folk song, but Etude is an intricate and beautiful, classically-inspired work with a highly polyphonic sensibility, just what is needed to prepare a violinist in training for the similar challenges in the music of J.S. Bach.  Many students of the Suzuki Method actually experience the Etude to be MORE difficult than the Bach Minuets, so it could be argued that the exercise actually overprepares its students.  The other three originals effectively fill in the graded space between Allegro and Etude.  Here are Suzuki’s 5 originals, in their order of presentation in Book 1 so you can follow their increasing intricacy:

And here’s a score of Etude that you can follow along and observe the intricacy of the voice leading:

One of my most formative teacher trainers once described the entire Suzuki method as “a series of etudes cleverly disguised as pieces so that children will want to play them”, an apt observation.  Anyone with experience in the Suzuki world knows that there are few events more exciting than being granted permission to proceed to the next song.  But Suzuki is winking at us, and he realized that observation on a deep level.  He could have called all of his brilliant little originals “etudes”, but he probably knew that could come across as dry, sterile, and demotivating for students.  So he opted instead to name them after tempos, with one perpetual motion thrown in for good measure.  But make no mistake, they are brilliantly crafted etudes, every single one, written precisely for the needs of the growing violinists in his care.  And the amazing success of his most insightful method ensures that there will be students in his care for years to come.

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Want to listen to the entire playlist for this week and other weeks?  Check out the Smart and Soulful YouTube Channel for weekly playlists!

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