a veritable Schubertiade, III
“Impression, Sunrise“ (1872)
Claude Monet
________
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Tag: Impressionism
May 25, 2023
how to listen to music if you don’t know your Beethoven from your Bach, XIV – more rhapsodies
“Rhapsody” (1958)
Hans Hofmann
_______
now that you’ve heard New York in
Gerschwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and
Vienna in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody
on a Theme of Paganini, listen to
Hungary, or rather its Gypsy
component, however rejected,
reviled, at the time, but proud
enough, resilient, to strike back
with its infectious music, how
many times have we heard that
story before
Budapest doesn’t sound at all like
Vienna, though they’re only mere
blocks away, essentially, listen,
Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no 2,
in C# minor, he wrote nineteen,
you’ve probably heard this one,
it’s in our DNA
here are a couple of Spanish
rhapsodies, meanwhile, if we’re to
follow a national agenda, Chabrier,
a name you’ve probably never
heard before, but not so, I assure
you, his music, his España,
Rhapsody for Orchestra, is
written in our blood, listen
Ravel wrote also a Rapsodie
espagnole, more French than
Spanish, to my mind, steeped
in its early Twentieth Century
Impressionism, all textures,
soundscapes, not rhythms
Ravel makes up for it, though, in his
Bolero, perhaps the most Hispanic
piece ever of all, you tell me
both Chabrier and Ravel, incidentally,
were French, doing what Dvořák, a
Czech, had done, would do, for
Americans, honour their fascinating
rhythms
Liszt, by the way, was Hungarian, his
rhapsodies were native, if profoundly
influenced by Vienna
listen, enjoy
R ! chard
December 28, 2018
Études – Chopin /Debussy
“The Ballet Class“ (1871 – 1874)
Edgar Degas
________
ballet dancers will attach weights
to their ankles during exercises
to add lift to their legs when they
are on stage, such is the point of
études for a piano player, a
workout for the fingers before
public performance
Chopin, however, made them, by
themselves, works of great art,
followed by, among others,
Debussy
here’s Chopin, his Opus 25
here’s Debussy, his own “Études
pour piano, Livre 1“, or Book 1
how are they different
you tell me
listen
R ! chard
psst: this is an easy one, Chopin is
Romantic, Debussy, manifestly,
is not, Debussy is Impressionistic,
it is a new perspective, you can
hear it, it’s textural rather than
emotional, indeed, it’s even
abstract
but nearly a century has gone by,
and Impressionism is the new
aesthetic, the new preoccupation
which belongs to not only the
painters, let me point out, but to
all the arts, for better, once again,
or for worse
February 28, 2016
Bassoon Sonata, opus 168 – Camille Saint-Saëns
______
for my sister
a competition program that pits
youngsters against each other,
but on a variety of instruments,
with some operatic voice, has
riveted us to our sets on Friday
evenings, seven o’clock local
time throughout Canada
out of the province of Quebec,
however, and therefore in
French
“Virtuose“ lives up to its name
with extraordinary performances
from mere children, and some
adolescents, you can catch all of
the past episodes, and performers,
on their website
last week a young man delighted
us with a movement from a bassoon
sonata, an unlikely instrument, of
Saint-Saëns, his opus 168
my sister expressed surprise,
un basson, she marvelled
quickly I sought out, of course, the
full composition, it’s otherwise for
me like reading one chapter only
out of a book
it’s a short piece, no longer the
grand statements of the earlier
Romantic Period, but a series of
pastiches, fleeting impressions,
impromptu ruminations rather
than extended dissertations,
something like what I’m doing
here with these texts
you’ll recognize also a similar
approach in other composers of
the period, Debussy especially,
but too Satie, Ravel, Poulenc to
name only a few, the speed of
the new century precluded
extended musical peregrinations,
you’ll remark on the dearth of
symphonies, concertos,
composed during this epoch
the composition is in G major, my
cleaning lady had come over, was
already busy in an adjoining room
at the time, I was nearing the
end of the first movement, the
allegro moderato, a wistful
evocation of spring, I thought,
an innocent, fragile blossom
unfurling its delicate petals
with unaffected grace and
unconscious poetry
the final note sounded, the
bassoonist removed his lips from
the tube, but the note kept on
playing, coming, as I soon
understood, not from the video I
was watching, but from the other
room, Jo had turned on the
vacuum cleaner
o my god/dess, I uttered, hurried
over to where she was, subdued
my enthusiasm in order not to
unduly rattle her, as I brimmed
with my scintillating insight
your vacuum cleaner vacuums in
G, I gushed when she turned to
acknowledge me, it continued the
last note, I explained, of the first
movement of my sonata, Saint-
Saëns’ – say that three times with
a lisp, I interjected – until you
turned your vacuum cleaner off,
which is also, I pointed out, a
wind instrument
her delight was modest compared
to mine, however ever nevertheless
congenial, and quickly she returned
to her duties
I went back tickled pink to my
monitor and the following
movement, the sprightly and equally
enchanting allegro scherzando
Richard
February 22, 2016
String Quartet in G minor, opus 10 – Claude Debussy
______________
if I’ve been away from my post for so long,
it’s either because my muse had left me,
abandoned me to the rigours of an
especially inclement winter, cold, driving
rain, short somber days, weather for
isolation, insulation, hibernation
or, like Persephone, I’d been abducted
as to an Underworld, moral as well as
meteorological, however cosseted might’ve
been there my stay, eiderdown pillows,
blankets, books, Internet movies, concerts,
plays, until by permission of Pluto, fateful
consort, God of the Netherworld, by the
intercession of Mother Demeter, Queen of
the Harvest, I’ve been allowed, even urged,
to return for spring
where cherry blossoms are burgeoning,
flowers bud in their variety of colours,
birds sing, trees, like myself, begin to
scratch out their brimming script onto
the open-armed page of heaven
I’d left the string quartet evolving towards
Bohemia and Russia, in the capable hands
its solid roots in Vienna with Haydn and
it would evolve westwards, of course, too
to France eventually, as the centre of art
shifted somewhat from Vienna to Paris in
the late 19th Century, and spread, through
paint mostly, the eye superseding the ear,
wresting the cultural reins from music as
oracle for the times, the new perspective
of Impressionism
here’s a string quartet of Debussy, in G
the emotional seductiveness of
Romanticism, but rather driving, electric,
cosmopolitan, teeming with traffic, it’s
September 4, 2015
String Quartet no 1, “From My Life” – Bedřich Smetana
“Coucher de soleil sur le lac Léman“ (1874)
_________
paying attention to tenuti is not as
easy as all that, you’ll have found
probably that the music’s kept on
going and you’re not so sure if
what just went by indeed was a
tenuto, so brief, however stressed,
might’ve been the impression
rubati are easier, it’s hard to miss
them when they come round, for
being spread out through the
musical passage as a
consequence of being at the very
least three notes, usually
considerably more
tenuti happen on one note only,
one fleet fish in an ebullient river
rather than a more noticeable and
synchronous school
interestingly, not many of either,
rubati, tenuti, show up in music
history until the late Romantic
Era, the mid- to late 1800s, they’d
been only theoretically, and here
and there, part of the musical
vocabulary for having had no
purchase in music written for the
harpsichord, an instrument that
had allowed only minimal
resonance, though it laid the
foundations for composition,
and therefore dictated taste
into the very mid-nineteenth
century, a whole hundred years
after the invention of the piano,
by having entrenched the ideal
of strict tempo, the reflection,
note, of an ideal, and belief
then in a scientifically cogent
world
that was the Enlightenment
Romanticism came along to
express the ineffable reality of
the truths of the human heart,
in contrast to merely reason –
“Le coeur a ses raisons que la
raison ne connaît point”, says
Pascal, “The heart has its own
logic which allows it to
understand what the rational
mind cannot”, though he in a
somewhat other, much more
theological, context
but the shoe snugly fits, so I’ll
wear it, though with the same
consideration I’d render the
shoes, understand, of my
father
you can tell we’ve reached the
late 1800s when you start
hearing tenuti, ritardandi,
atonality, for that matter, and
also obscure and eccentric
repetitions
this pattern is probably more
evidenced in pictorial art,
where precision gives way to
individualized expression,
and the blurred lines of Early
Impressionism, see above
at the same time, the German
grip on the history of Western
music which it had held for a
hundred and fifty years, from
Bach to Brahms, began to loosen,
along with the idea, incidentally,
of a rationally, even irrationally,
conceived world, you can hear
it in the evolution of the tenuti,
the rubati, like canaries sense
altered conditions in a coal
mine
note however that music itself
is as indifferent to bald facts
as mathematics, it merely
describes, doesn’t comment
listen to Bedřich Smetana, a
Czech composer, his String
Quartet no 1, “From My Life”
follows in the footsteps of
the Germans, but with a
distinctively folkloric air,
there’s even a polka
tend the tenuti, relish the
rubati, if you can identify
them, they’re milestones
to the modern
but, more than anything,
enjoy
Richard
March 14, 2015
Bruch Violin Concerto in G minor, opus 26
______
still under the spell of the captivating
Akiko Suwanai, it didn’t take me long
to search out this enchantress further
as a follow-up to the perhaps tonally
discomfiting Berg I earlier highly,
nevertheless, recommended, I found
this utterly thrilling Bruch
Max Bruch, a Late Romantic, a
composer of the full flowering of the
Romantic Age, before Brahms, for
instance, Impressionism and the turn
towards social grievances rather than
the merely personal, Karl Marx, and
the rush towards isms, Capitalism,
Fascism, Communism, even indeed
Impressionism – is famous for
especially his Violin Concerto in G
minor, his first of three, and “Kol
Nidrei“, a setting for the introduction
of a Jewish service, suggesting
Bruch might’ve been Jewish, which
he wasn’t
I’ve always been indifferent to the
“Kol Nidrei“, perhaps because I’m
an utterly lapsed Catholic
but the Violin Concerto is something
else
Richard
psst: compare the Bruch to the Berg
for powerful historical insight
into the evolution of music in
the West
September 4, 2011
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto no 3, in D minor, opus 30
fully 150 years after Mozart the concerto was still a thriving
musical form though it had undergone some modifications,
you’ll hear a more passionate account in Rachmaninoff than
the more lyrical, less emotionally overt compositions of
Mozart, the variations in volume, tempo, tonality, the play
of harmonization and discords, all incidentally within a single
movement, show the passage of time, of Beethoven, of Chopin,
of Debussy between Mozart and the more Romantic, Impressionistic
Rachmaninoff, note the sweeping ritardandos, where the beat is
drawn out, stretched for pathos, a Chopinesque insinuation into
music not found in earlier stuff, one imagines torrid expressions
of fervent sentiment, note the evanescent flurry of notes passing
by like the fleeting glitter of stars, the ephemerality of an
incorporeal idea that Debussy originated and brought to music,
and of course note the irrepressibility, the authority, the masculinity
of a volcanic Beethoven underpinning the lot, you can hear them all
the Vladimir Horowitz Piano Concerto no 3 of Rachmaninoff at
Carnegie Hall, January 8, 1978, with Eugene Ormandy leading the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra is, after Van Cliburn’s historic
1950s account, May 19, 1958, again at Carnegie Hall but under Kiril
Kondrashin this time, and the now defunct Symphony of the Air,
don’t ask, the one I then grew up with, it was riveting even without
the pictures
with pictures here he is again a few months later at Avery Fisher
Hall in New York, September 24, 1978, under Zubin Mehta with
again the New York Philharmonic, so good you’ll even forgive
Mehta his usual sentimental excesses
incidentally Horowitz was 74 at this concert, he is astounding
Vladimir Horowitz, colossus and legend, 1903 -1989
enjoy, be transported, be transfixed, you have been warned
Richard
March 18, 2010
Still Life with Teapot and Fan – Wang Weidong
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