Johann Strauss ll | Richibi's Weblog

__________

it didn’t take me long, after wondering

about precedents for Debussy’s nursery

piece, Children’s Corner, to ferret out

Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, a work

with a similar theme, childhood

fantasies

but the Nutcracker Suite

l. Miniature Overture

ll. Danses caractéristiques

a. Marche

b. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies

c. Russian Dance

d. Arabian Dance

e. Chinese Dance

f. Reed Flutes

lll. Waltz of the Flowers

is not to be confused with the complete

ballet, from which it had been excerpted

to great acclaim before the ballet itself

was presented, but to much less

enthusiasm, until George Balanchine

revived it in the 1960s

note that Tchaikovsky’s ***Suite*, in 1892,**

contains still the traditional elements

of the suite – see above – a prelude, or

overture, followed by a series of

dances, only a few years before

Debussy’s Children’s Corner, 1908,

redefined the form, made the

movements indiscriminate, not

confined to dance rhythms

note also that Tchaikovsky sounds

a lot more like the Strausses, father

and son, Romantics both, than he

does like Debussy, an Impressionist,

a generation later only

here’s the orchestral Nutcracker Suite,

a suite, in other words, is not limited

to one instrument

here’s a riveting version of it for two

pianos, not to be missed

R ! chard

July 27, 2018

“Lament From Epirus” – Christopher King

“Blind Man’s Portion“ (1903)

Pablo Picasso

________

though you’ll have to actively listen
to Christopher King rather than
merely hear him here, as you might
have been doing with many of my
suggested musical pieces, should
you be at all interested in the history
of music, he is fascinating, dates his
investigations back millennia to very
Epirus, Ancient, nearly primordial,
Greece, to mirologia there, ancient
funerary chants

some have survived, and have been
recorded for posterity, one, in 1926,
by a Greek exile fled to New York City,
Alexis Zoumbas, a year later, however
improbably, by an American, a blind
man, his own story inspirational, akin
to that of Epictetus, one of the two
iconic Stoic philosophers, the other,
incidentally, an emperor, though the
blind man here, Willie Johnson, was
never himself a slave, but only, by a
historical whisker, the emancipations
of the American Civil War

Christopher King‘s comparison
of an Epirotic miralogi with an
American one brings up, for me,
the difference between Mozart
and Beethoven, notice how the
Willie Johnson version is more
rhythmic, the cadence is much
more pronounced than in the
Greek one, Johnson would’ve
got that from the musical
traditions Europeans had
brought over from their native
continent, probably also from
Africa, Africans

Beethoven would’ve been
surrounded, meanwhile, by Roma,
perhaps called gypsies then, their
music ever resonant in his culture,
not to mention later Liszt‘s, and
the Johann Strausses’ even, for
that matter, Paganini also seems
to have been imbued with it, it
having come up from Epirus
through, notably, Hungary – not
to mention, later still, that music’s
influence, and I’ll stop there, on
late 19th-Century Brahms

Christopher King, incidentally,
sounds a lot like someone you
already know, I think, from his
eschewing – Gesundheit – cell
phones, for instance, to his
enduring preoccupation with
death, not to mention his
endearing modesty, indeed
his humility, his easy
self-deprecation, despite his,
dare I say, incontestable, and
delightful, erudition

makes one wonder why that
other hasn’t become also
famous yet

what do you think

R ! chard

September 17, 2017

on the origins of the waltz

“Waltz“ (1891)

Anders Zorn

____________

had the waltz been confided to any
other but the Johann Strausses,
father and inveterate son, we may
never have distinguished it from
the polka

at the start, this amorphous new
dance was deemed shameless,
even shocking, by a scandalized,
apparently, aristocracy, used to
the more discreet, less conjugal,
minuet

some nobles, sowing wild,
irresistible oats, however, at the
festivities of their more irreverent
servants, brought the new dance
back home to their more informal,
less stuffy, entertainments, avidly,
though surely under their hats

to Belvedere, Schönbrunn, even
Schloss Esterházy, Haydn‘s
stately old stomping haunt

thus was the waltz born, whirling
indiscriminately like a polka at first,
with indefinite still, however, timing

which then was reduced to only ever
3/4 time, by the Strausses, the metre
in which this comment, coincidentally,
is written

read it aloud, you’ll want to wrap
your arms around the nearest
partner, I assure you, and whirl,
twirl, deliriously surrender

had we not had the Strausses, neither
had we had Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers,
“Shall We Dance” from the glorious
“The King and I”, nor the irrepressible
“So You Think You Can Dance“ either

nor me, for that matter, writing in 3/4
verse, essentially, dactylic poetic metre,
about these celebrated accomplishments,
something I deem eminently worthy of
reporting

such is the impact of veritable art, I
warrant, the waltz was not inevitable

listen to Strauss Jr’s’ “Wiener Blut”,
“Viennese Blood“, or “… Spirit“
in English, for instance, for
corroborating confirmation, and
corresponding, however inadvertent,
even, inspiration

ever