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Category: music to ponder
February 17, 2012
Beethoven’s Sonata no 14 in C-sharp minor, “Quasi una Fantasia”, opus 27, no 2 (the “Moonlight Sonata”)
Beethoven’s Sonata no 14 in C-sharp minor, “Quasi una Fantasia”,
opus 27, no 2 – better known as the “Moonlight Sonata” after a
music critic several years after Beethoven had died likened its
famous first movement to impressions of moonlight, and the
Pathétique“, the most famous piano sonata in the history of
music, its name alone is hard to forget, and its murmuring
chords, like passing clouds before the quiet and uncluttered
simplicity of its central melody, like the longings of the very
moon, is etched in our Western cultural subconscious
“Quasi una Fantasia” means “in the manner of an improvisation”,
an idea already which would’ve been considered impudent earlier
at court, where decorum and form had held rigorous sway
but Beethoven begins as well with a slow movement, an “adagio
sostenuto“, a sustained adagio, suggesting the inexorable passage
of time, interrupted only midst its unending undulations by the
mournful cry of a melody, silken, yet solitary, as a moon
so plaintive a display of pathos would not have played well
before an aristocracy which, ruled by codes of honour, would
have found common, base, such flagrant self-indulgence
but times had changed, discontent was having its say, and
Beethoven was fervently speaking it, for his era, and for very
history
that a sonata would start with a slow movement also put into
question the very tradition, ineluctable until then, of having
to keep its place in the middle, by changing the order of play
the order of emotional commitment necessarily followed,
suggesting that these could be manipulated as in a play, a
novel, a poem, a narrative, wherein notes would speak like
words, Beethoven was devising to make music thus into a
veritable language
just listen
after a short middle movement, the allegretto, faster than
the first, the presto, the last and fastest movement of all,
usually the shortest movement of a sonata on account of
its technically difficult speed, is longer here than both other
movements put together, to concert pianists a very Everest,
a test of their mettle and skill, an irresistible challenge to
any ambitious virtuoso, another, more pragmatic, reason,
incidentally, for the success, and survival, of a piece, which
is championed, kept in view, by an artist for its ability to
make him or her technically impress, thereby creating the
canon, another word for the repertoire
despite a few fluffed, here and there even discordant, notes,
a completely convincing interpretation, not easily bested
enjoy
Richard
February 10, 2012
Brahms piano concerto no 1 in D minor, opus 15
this morning as I washed the dishes – nary a butler had
managed to show, nary a merciful maid – I thought I’d,
as often I do, put on some Classical music, Romantic,
Impressionist, something, to tide me through the tedium
there was a Brahms Piano Concerto no 1 to look into I’d
set aside, his opus 15, in D minor, Emanuel Ax with
Bernard Haitink
Emanuel Ax – a man I’ve come to admire above all other
musical giants for his humble roots, Winnipeg trained, and
for the dizzying heights he’s reached in the musical
firmament, humbly, not so austere, not so patrician as his
European counterparts, and obviously, maybe consequently,
finding joy in, not empire over, the music – does the pianistic
honours
Bernard Haitink conducts in perfect synchronicity, leading
the impeccable Chamber Orchestra of Europe, at London’s
Royal Albert Hall, August 18, 2011
by the third movement my hands were out of the water,
dry, my undivided attention was riveted, ready to all out
applaud a thrilling concert, which indeed I did, long, loud,
and with all my heart
you too likely will
Richard
February 9, 2012
“The Connoiseur” – Norman Rockwell
“The Connoiseur” (1962)
____
serendipitously trolling Rockwells after sensing his spirit in a
poem I’d just been reading I happened upon this marvelous
piece, an homage of course to Jackson Pollock, perhaps the
most successful of the Abstract Expressionists
but lurking behind the obvious surface of this painting it was
easy to recognize also another glaring, though not as explicit
maybe, tribute, misted perhaps by the transformational
permutations of context and time, wherein a seed becomes
a tree, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, to no less an iconic
masterpiece than Caspar David Friedrich‘s “Wanderer Above
a Sea of Fog“, the work we just, a blog or so ago, explored
both look upon their own idea of a new horizon
and a Pop Art stab at an Abstract Expressionist through a
High Romantic is a cute trick, witty, wonderful, wise
it’s an easy step to a literary counterpart from there, Keats’
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” nearly automatically
comes to mind, another iconic Romantic new dawn
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Beethoven, were I to go to music, is always, especially in his
later works, contemplating new dimensions, new worlds, he
more than any other composer is a metaphysical explorer
maybe also Pink Floyd
who’ve taken me to their own also exalted musical galaxies,
awesome commanding perspectives, transcendental heights,
to my own “wild” indeed “surmise / Silent, upon a peak in”
my version of “Darien”
Richard
psst: Chapman’s “Homer”
January 21, 2012
“Somebody That I Used to Know” – Walk off the Earth
this is surely a musical first, and quite probably a musical
last, not so much for the quality of the performance, which
is impressive, but for its daunting logistics
the five instrumentalists here, Walk off the Earth, are
apparently from Burlington, Ontario, they might be called
a quintet though this term usually applies to players playing
an equal number of instruments, they are performing what
January 20, 2012
Debussy, “L’isle joyeuse” (“The Joyous Island”)
here’s Daphne doing Debussy, his “L’isle joyeuse“, from 1904,
a long way from Beethoven, 1798
had it not been for Beethoven though, making music into a
language, instead of merely a Mozartean, a Haydnesque
aristocratic entertainment, Debussy wouldn’t have even
been possible, where were their “Moonlight Sonata“s, their
“Tempest“s, their “Appassionata“s for that matter, their
“Hammerklavier“s, these earlier composers, for a weightier,
more abstract, topic, Mozart and Haydn were having courtly,
though ever so inspired, fun, while Beethoven would proclaim,
pronounce, discover and describe, open up to the imagination,
upon these earlier, nevertheless mighty, Classical shoulders,
a whole new, transfigured, world
“L’isle joyeuse“ is not a sonata, it only has one movement,
1840-1926, is written all over it, the same shimmer,
ephemerality, must’ve been the light, not to mention of
course, at his most ethereal, Beethoven
Richard
January 16, 2012
Beethoven’s “Pathétique Sonata”, no 8 in C minor, opus 13
the very first chord of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata,
no 8 in C minor, opus 13, does the same for the
Romantic Era as Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”
and Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be” did for the
Age of Reason, it defined its parameters, and set it
on its path, I can think of no other literary equivalent
with anywhere near the same power, the same clarity
and precision as that bold, peremptory statement for
that burgeoning period
Delacroix, too nationalistic, the Romantic poets too
introspective, Beethoven perfect, blending the political
with the personal, the personal with the philosophical,
the philosophical with the transcendental, and the
transcendental finally with the sublime, you come out
of a Beethoven composition not only entertained but
informed, inspired, transformed, he takes you there
though unknown, to me at least, not yet among the
immortals, Daphne Honma acquits herself quite well
here in Beethoven’s masterpiece, perhaps a little too
plodding at the beginning, I thought, for my taste,
stretching nearly embarrassingly her sforzandos,
those initial arresting statements, Beethoven would
never ‘ve called for that, too much melodramatic
excess would only blur, he knew, the sheen of
unadulterated oracles
but all is soon set aright, indeed redeemed by what
comes next, Daphne Honma deserves much more
applause than is here her portion
one of Beethoven’s early works, it’s 1798, Beethoven
is 27
Richard
psst: an “unadulterated oracle”
December 27, 2011
from Haydn to Beethoven
in my pantheon of pianists Sviatoslav Richter, 1915-1997,
is a paragon, if you’ll pardon that parade of p’s, here he
plays two not especially eminent Classical masterworks,
though neither not uninteresting nor unimportant
Haydn, along with other composers of his time, wrote
sonatas mostly for their students, young ladies frequently
looking for marriageable advantage, he saved the cream
therefore of his art for his more public pieces, symphonies,
oratorios, string quartets, these last, to my mind, his most
impressive vehicle
you’ll nevertheless be delighted by this effervescent musical
jewel, Haydn’s piano sonata no 39, Hob. XVI 24*, in D major
idiosyncracy
it’s 1984
you’ll note in a Classical musical composition even the
adagio, the slow movement, will be wistful, never even
melancholy, never ever forlorn, considered impudent,
impertinent, by a genteel aristocracy, their code of
noblesse oblige would’ve frowned on emotional excess,
considering it undignified, common
Beethoven’s fire bursts through these Classical strictures
already in his very first piano sonata, opus 2, no 1,
adhering to the Classical sonata form, even its intention,
but he’s revealed unequivocally by his passion and fury
his adagio here might be lilting but it’s unmistakably
at the very least emotionally compromised, beyond
wistful, though Beethoven at this point, is giving it an
honest try, the movements are in traditional order
despite an extra fourth instalment, and of course any
extra length, as I’ve earlier pointed out, always means
more substance, gravitas, already something of an
impertinence to the traditional, more unbending
contemporary social cast
by the prestissimo, the last and appropriately most
explosive of the movements, he is anything but courtly,
his music already, three years before the Revolution in
France, will no longer submit to imperious aristocracies
flexing no longer tolerable muscle, he cannot, in his very
bones, be confined to merely niceties, and you can hear it
Beethoven can no longer be Mozart, Haydn, though he
has studied profoundly at their schools, his are
tempestuous seeds in that fertile, their Classical, soil, of,
just round the corner, its flower, the more unruly but
profoundly introspective Romantic Movement, the
exploration, the prioritization, of the human soul,
the burgeoning era of human rights
Beethoven will define it, set it firmly on its path, give it
an anthem, a credo, a forthright example, a solid ground
to build a new world on
the piano sonata, opus 2, no 1, of three in his second
opus, is Beethoven’s very first piano sonata, it’s 1795
stick around, this is just the start
Richard
* Anthony van Hoboken, 1887-1983, rather than
chronologically like Köchel Mozart, organized Haydn’s
work according to its musical form, l for symphonies for
instance, lll for string quartets, XVl for piano sonatas,
of which this is the 24th, therefore Hob. XVI 24, van
Hoboken‘s catalogue, the Hoboken-Verzeichnis, was
first published in 1957
an alternate method, published in 1963, from Christa
Landon, is arranged chronologically, where this is
Haydn’s piano sonata no 39, incidentally, of 1773
confusing maybe, but kind of like the EEU being
referred to just as often as Europe, same place,
different organizational catalogue, not so tough
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