Happy Belated Birthday, Camille

Tuesday was the birthday of composer Camille Saint-Saens, the Frenchman who wrote such pieces as "The Carnival of the Animals" and the "Organ Sympony" (#3). Even though I played the Organ Symphony back in the day, I can never hear the last movement now without thinking of the movie Babe.

New Music

I found a couple of music-related links yesterday, so let's make it Music Thursday:

1. There's a new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations out, recorded under a Creative Commons license--which means you can download everything for free (including the score), or just listen online at opengoldbergvariations.org.

2. I  read about Nick Waterhouse in my round of blogs, and listened to nothing else for the rest of the workday (sorry, Bach).  He's a young kid who's found a horn section and is doing his best to channel 50's and 60's R&B, down to recording and editing everything on analog and overdriving the mics. I know it sounds like it could be hipster-ironic, but it's just really great music--plus, his blog has so many clips of forgotten 45s.

Here's the "official" video  from his first album, Time's All Gone, but you can find more of him on YouTube or Spotify.

A Night With My Imaginary Boyfriend

Tonight I get to hear my imaginary Russian boyfriend sing in the Met's "Live in HD" broadcast of La Traviata. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure he is, too. 

It's been non-stop culture around here lately. I'll have to listen to this if I start feeling too fancy.

Incredible

Here's a rough trailer for an upcoming documentary Alive Inside, about music and how it helps "awaken" people with memory loss. (Bonus Oliver Sacks!) Like my dog rescue video last week, this one starts off sad, but at least watch from about 3:00 - 4:00.



Incredible. If I ever decide I want to use my powers for good, maybe I should go into music therapy.

Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian

It's Bach's birthday today, in 1685. Here's a happy little piece from the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin: the Prelude from the E Major Partita.



I love the ending, starting about 2:40.

The E Major Partita has always sounded like spring to me, which is appropriate since yesterday was the equinox.

Music History

In late winter I always revisit Russian music, and lately it's been Shostakovich. How about the finale to his Fifth Symphony to get your blood going this morning?


He wrote this after managing to get on Stalin's bad side with an opera and after pulling his Fourth Symphony to not further anger the dictator. The party was pleased with the Fifth (which the composer subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism"), but, as Shostakovich later wrote:

I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat... It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,'' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.''...You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.

More music history here. Happy Thursday, comrades!

Happy Birthday, Gustav Mahler

Mahler was born in 1860 today. I haven't listened to a lot of his music in the last year or so--it's just too much sometimes, and I'm trying to preserve my calm emotionless life, thank you very much--but, thinking of what to share today, I listened to the final song of his Rückert-Lieder and realized that sometimes it's ok to let oneself be destroyed. It's catharsis, right?



No, really, it's a pretty song. Take nine minutes and listen to it. :)

Check Him Out

Oh yeah, that's my boyfriend and his open shirt in the Met's production of Il Trovatore, which I am seeing tonight. My mom and I have always wanted to see one of the live Met broadcasts to movie theaters, but the live date of this ended up being Skyler's birthday and we both decided we'd be too distracted checking for updates. Fortunately, the Met re-broadcasts them.

I haven't spent time with Dmitri since I re-watched Eugene Onegin at the end of March (which is both a good and a bad thing to do if you're railing against fate), so I am excited to go from really dramatic Russian drama to really melodic Italian drama. And for the chance to see more of him in his tunic.

Happy Birthday, J.S. Bach!

Today the composer I'd listen to if I couldn't listen to anything else was born. Bach was also my favorite composer to play, back when I was playing (especially this). I'd always think of a Bradbury quote from The Martian Chronicles when I was practicing:

He built an architecture of Bach, stone by exquisite stone, raising a music cathedral so vast that its farthest chancels were in Ninevah, its farthest dome at St. Peter's left hand. The music stayed and did not crash in ruin when it was over, but partook of a series of white clouds and was carried away among other lands.

"Not too much, or the soul could not sustain it"

After my weekend fling with opera I went through Monday and Tuesday wishing real life were like that, with passion and tenderness and great loves instead of house hunting and craft projects and work deadlines. I thought the cure was to listen to music that wasn't opera--I pulled out The Song of the Earth, the Missa Solemnis, unaccompanied Bach--but instead of helping I think that gave me Stendhal Syndrome.

So it's a good thing that going through the blog archives yesterday to find a picture of that jacket, I found this quote from An Equal Music:

Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music--not too much, or the soul could not sustain it--from time to time.



(Related, and probably adding to my music issues this week: Does anyone out there need a semi-professional grade violin? I have mine up for sale; it's German, and does wonders with gut strings. Email me through my portfolio site in the right sidebar if you want more info.)

Russians Make The Best Imaginary Boyfriends

Over the weekend I had a fling with this guy:

He's Dimitri Hvorotovsky and he was the lead in the Met production of Eugene Onegin (opposite Renee Fleming!) that I had on DVD for two glorious days.

Damn, he can wear a t-shirt. And sing.

Sorry, Mikhail, but you've been replaced. I miss hanging out with musicians anyway.

Check out my new boyfriend in action here (older, but with subtitles) or here (that special production we shared over the weekend).

Music For Hobbies, Music As Hobby

I've been out of touch with the classical music world ever since I graduated college, and the only classical CD I've bought this year has been Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, but back in the day I loved to listen to chamber music on the Saint Paul Sunday Morning radio program.

As I was doing some sewing a few weeks ago, I thought, "Why not see when that program is broadcast so you can start listening again?" They've dropped "Morning"--it's just Saint Paul Sunday now--and even better, you can stream all the programs online. Which is how I discovered that vocal group Anonymous 4, the experts on early music, had branched out into American shape-note, folk, and gospel songs. In 2004. Yes, out of touch.

But the happy news is that I now have a bunch of free music to catch up on, and whatever Anonymous 4 sings is magical. (Here's that 2004 broadcast.) Every program gives you all kinds of good stuff to listen to, with enough background discussion with the host to jog your memory (if you, say, got a degree in all this) or teach you something new.

Also: Happy Veterans Day to all the veterans out there!

Today's Post Taken Directly From The Writer's Almanac

But it's about Beethoven, so it's OK:

"It was on this day in 1812 that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote two famous love letters to an unknown woman. Beethoven wrote the letters from the Czech resort town of Teplitz, which his physician had recommended for his health, and there he became friends with the poet Goethe. And over the course of two days, he wrote three letters to a mysterious woman who has come to be known as "the Immortal Beloved."

Today's Almanac post also includes the full text of all three letters, the last one of which is so sad:

Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life — Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men — At my age I need a steady, quiet life — can that be so in our connection? Be calm — love me — today — yesterday — what tearful longings for you — you — you — my life — my all — farewell. Oh continue to love me — never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

He was already mostly deaf at this point. Poor Beethoven.

Schubert Weather

This partly cloudy end of May with the honey locusts in bloom reminds of when I first discovered the Schubert Cello Quintet eight or nine years ago (and blackberries in cream-top yogurt, and the difficulties of sad people, but that's not what we're talking about today). I had to listen to it twice this weekend while sewing, and you should listen to it, too. The second movement, the loveliest, is below, but the whole thing is worth an hour of your time.

Happy Brithday, Famous Composers

Today is the birthday of Johannes Brahms AND of Piotr Tchaikovsky. Poor Brahms was in love with Clara Schumann his whole life, which was tricky because Robert Schumann was his good friend and mentor, and poor Tchaikovsky was gay at a time when that was illegal in Russia. (Hell, it still might be.)

I recommend listening to the Brahms string sextet #1, which I found online here (pretty good, but find the Berlin Octet recording). And for Tchaikovsky, you can watch The Music Lovers, but then you'll be depressed, so you'd better just put on the 1812 Overture.

Good Times In The Pit

Readers who aren't my family may not know that I was a musician for a long time--all through school, high school, and even a college degree. (What, sell out for advertising? Okay!) Back in the days of corn mazes and desperate crushes, I played in the pit orchestra for my high school's productions of 1776 and Guys and Dolls. While I have fond memories of the piccolo playing fife tunes in my ear and having a desperate crush on the senator from South Carolina in 1776, my favorite memory is from the Guys and Dolls run, where the Salvation Army chorus sings a number "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat." (Literally. That line is the entire chorus.)

My stand partner and the cellist and I were all friends, and we were walking out after the dress rehearsal discussing the performance. The cellist, Brian, said that he thought it was going to be good, and that he really liked the "Sit Down Boat" song.
Stand partner and I look at each other. "What song, B?" we asked.
"You know, the one where they sing 'Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down BOAT!"

And we had to laugh, because that is exactly what it sounded like the chorus was singing. I can only imagine what the pit orchestra sounded like. Good times with diction and high school music.