Shostakovich - 8th Quartet

A life in 20 minutes

https://open.spotify.com/user/sjangramaekers/playlist/4yzmEntwZYf65VmCKmHRwz?si=49uvvSYKSNSirfNCu-Vc9Q

Photo from 1942,
Shostakovich died 40 years ago

Listen to Shostakovich 8th quartet and you have heard half his other work as well. This work written in 1960, seems to reflect the composer full emotional journey. Stories tell that Shostakovich was suicidal at this point in time, struggling with his health and with his decision to finally join the Communistic Party. His son recalled that his decision brought Shostakovich in tears[50] and he later told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed.[51].

Shostakovich's musical response to these personal crises was the Eighth String Quartet, composed in only three days. He subtitled the piece, "To the victims of fascism and war",[54] ostensibly in memory of the Dresden fire-bombing that took place in 1945.

Like the Tenth Symphony, this quartet incorporates quotations from his musical monogram DSCH and work from the past: his symphonies 1 & 5, the Cello Concerto and the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk). It shows the freedom of mind Shostakovich still had. The opera was the vehicle for the  general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the Communist Party in early 1936. Shostakovich also brings in a Jewish melody in the second movement, which he had also used in the 2nd Piano Trio in 1944. He was intrigued by Jewish music’s "ability to build a jolly melody on sad intonations".[76], , but as you can picture, Jewish music was not so popular in the Stalin days.

Some modern composers have been critical on the work of Shostakovich. Pierre Boulez dismissed Shostakovich's music as "the second, or even third pressing of Mahler".[86] The Romanian composer and Webern disciple Philip Gershkovich called Shostakovich "a hack in a trance".[87] A related complaint is that Shostakovich's style is vulgar and strident: Stravinsky wrote of Lady Macbeth: "brutally hammering ... and monotonous".[88] English composer and musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion."[89]

Well listen for yourself in this 8th Quartet, especially the recreation by Shostakovich pupil Rudolf Barshai. Shostakovich declared that the arrangement was an improvement of the original. I guess a comment like that for a re-work of this so personal piece, can be considered a hugh compliment. 

The piece start with 5 minutes of such mournful music, clearly the componer carries the whole world on his shoulders. The second piece is almost like the opposite and typical Shostakovich: high energy, almost violent. The third piece seems inspired by the Danse Macabre and he finishes with the Russian song  “Exhausted by Harsh Imprisonment”.

I like these emotional expressions with deep dark music. You as well?

About me and this blog

About me

My name is Sjang Ramaekers and I love to listen to music with an impact, music that moves me.I like to read and learn on those pieces which i find beautiful and then capture what i find out over that music. 

I will use this blog for that, as my external memory. I do copy from others and will mention it if i do (if i dont forget)

Vivaldi - Nisi Dominus

Competing for the best

Chiesa di S. Maria della Pietà

In the Netherlands, we had a time where youth choirs made it attractive for people to go to the church for a ceremony. The churches were interested in having good choirs to attract a new audience and the choirs were happy as they had a platform to perform.

In the time of Vivaldi, we had a similar situation in the sense that churches were competing against each other but also against concert halls to bring the best possible music.

And if you had to compete who better to have for writing the music than priest and musician Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Vivaldi mind was certainly with music, perhaps more then with being a priest. During masses, he simply stopped if a musical thought had to be captured. Life is all about setting the right priorities.  

He may have gotten the assignment from the Ospedale della Pieta, where he was working as a violin teacher in 1703, to compose the Nisi Dominus (RV 608). In the Ospedale della Pieta, Vivaldi had excellent singers and very strong instrumentalists, which you can hear in the way the piece is set up.

The part for the viola d ‘amore for the Gloria was written down  treating three of the four upper strings as transposing ‘instruments’—the open strings of the viola d’amore are tuned to D, F and D instead of the E, D and G familiar to a violinist—a procedure that leads to bizarre visual effects.  Fingered as they would be on the violin, however, the notes make perfect harmonic and melodic sense. (Michael Talbot)

“ The Nisi Dominus (Psalm 126) is a long and very ambitious piece whose nine movements vary enormously in their style and scoring. It has two simple continuo arias (´'Vanum est vobis' and 'Beatus vir'), one with string accompaniment in unison with the voice ('Sicut sagittae'), two lively concerto church arias ('Nisi Dominus', and its reprise 'Sicut erat in principio') and one ('Cum dederit') that's written in the slow siciliana style with chromatically ascending lines that Vivaldi often used to convey the idea of rest and sleep. It's third movement ('Surgite') is an accompanied recitative in which Vivaldi juxtaposes rapid ascending figures with slow ones at 'panem doloris'. At the words "Sicut erat in principio" (As it was in the beginning), Vivaldi calls on the old Baroque trick of returning to music heard at the very beginning of the work. The 'Gloria' which instead of being the expected set of joyous exclamations is a marvelously dark and solitary passage that leads us, suitably chastened, to the Alleluia-like Amen.”  (from markfromireland’s site Saterday Chorale)

The part I like most is the fourth movement, an Andante, which begins by relating how the Lord gave his beloved people both sleep and children.

Cum dederit dilectis suis somnum: 

ecce haereditas Domini, filii: merces, fructus ventris.

For he brings rest to those he has chosen
behold an inheritance from the Lord – sons:
a reward, the fruit of the womb.

  

The ‘Cum dederit’ is music of the greatest poise and delicacy, similar in mood to some of the slow movements in The Four Seasons, except more chromatic and suspenseful.

Please listen and sit back.

Monteverdi - Orfeo

Rubens’ Orpheus and Eurydice
Heritage Images/Getty Images

Don´t Look Back

You will find lots of documents describing the importance of Monteverdi´s masterpiece Orfeo (1607). It is being regarded as the first real opera by many and seen as one of the very best and still performed regularly today.

Monteverdi blends the ancient Greek mythology with his highly innovative and expressive music style, going against the strict rules of the contemporary style. 

Monteverdi's work is regarded as revolutionary, marking the change from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period.[2] 

He developed two styles of composition: the prima practica – the heritage of Renaissance polyphony, and the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque, the seconda practica.[3] In Prima pratica the harmony controls the words.[10] InSeconda pratica the words should be in control of the harmonies.[10] 

Prima pratica was the ideal of the sixteenth century, with flowing strict counterpoint, prepared dissonance, and equality of voices. Seconda pratica uses much freer counterpoint with an increasing hierarchy of voices, emphasizing soprano and bass, adding recitatives and basso continuo. This represents a move towards the new style of monody, with a single solo line with musical accompaniment, in opposition to homophony and polyphony, in which groups of voices sang independently and with a greater balance between parts.

For this major musical development, Monteverdi selects the really powerful story of Orpheus & Eurydice. Just after their marriage, Orpheus loses his wife Eurydice because of a bite of a snake. Orpheus is a gifted singer and goes with his lyre to the world of the death and convinces Hades to give him back his so beloved wife. Hades agrees but under one condition. During the trip back to the world, Orpheus is not allowed to look back to see if his wife is still following him. Of course agreeing, he then walks with a joyful spirit back our earth. But slowly he starts to doubt if she is following him. A sudden terrible noise makes him so concerned and doubtful that he does look back. In a split second he sees the beautiful shining eyes of Eurydice again but then she leaves for ever. 

Monteverdi follows the story in a beautiful telling manner (act 4). The upbeat during the first part of the walk, then a slow down with the questioning and doubting Orpheus. The sudden noise, music stopping and then with Eurydice in sight, the harsh and cold harpsichord changes for just a few bars into the soft organ sound before Eurydice vanishes.

Lesson for all of us, you can’t win from death but still you should not look back and focus on the future!

The piece I like perhaps most from this opera, depending on my own mood,  is ‘Rosa del Ciel’, in which Orpheus sings about his happiness with his beloved wife. I like it maybe so much as Rosa is also the name of my daughter, who is soon returning for a couple a days from far away Canada, (although I would not compare that to the Underworld).

Look forward to hear this beautiful piece of music

El Canto de la Sibila

El Canto de la Sibila

Music and religion, it seems that they are very connected. In an earlier blog, we saw religion being the source of inspiration for great composers like Anton Bruckner. Also the first music captured on paper and so surviving times was the Gregorian Chant, bringing the audience into a state of devoutness.

In 2010 Unesco recognized `El Canto de la Sibila` as intangible cultural heritage. The Song of the Sibyl is a liturgical drama and a Gregorian chant which is performed in allmost all churches of Mallorca and in the Italian city of Alghero at the evening church services on December 24th. Recently, it has been recovered in other locations such as Barcelona and in the Valencian cities of Onteniente, Jaraco and Gandia. 

The chant was introduced all around Europe in the Middle Ages and it reached Majorca with the Christian conquest in 1229. The lyrics compose a prophecy describing the Apocalypse.

The figure of Sibil comes from the time of ancient Greece. There are many persons who are referred to as Sibil and these women were oracles in, for example Delphi. They were incorporated into the Christian Church as their apocalyptic visions included the promise of the second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world. Michelangelo included Sibil in his beautiful paintings in the Sistine Chapel, so confirming the importance she and her messages had for the church as it leaves nothing to the imagination of what will happen to unbelievers:

The Day of Judgement

will appear For those who have made ​​service.

Jesus Christ, Universal King,

eternal God and true man

Heaven will come to pass judgment

and give to each their just reward.

Great fire will come down from Heaven;

springs and rivers will all burn.

Fish will scream loudly

losing the natural charms

The sun will lose its brightness

becoming dark and veiled.

The moon will give no light

and the whole world will be full of sadness.

To evil people I will say bitterly:

- Go, you damned, into the torment!

Go, go to the eternal fire

With your Prince of Hell

In the present-day performance, a boy or girl sings, accompanied by two or more Altar boys carrying candles. The singer holds a sword upright in front of his or her face during the entire song. The verses are sung in a single voice and without instrumental accompaniment, apart from when the organ plays between the verses. 

It is fascinating to listen and look to the performance of this work, it is as looking back 800 years and easy to imagine the impact it had and still has on the audience in a dark and cold church in the middle of the winter: Believe or Die

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg7y-mqqvVk
http://player.qobuz.com/#!/album/0884385733575

Bruckner - Ave Maria

Devote

What kind of a person was Anton Bruckner?. Mahler describes him as half an idiot, half a genius. Very devote, falling in love with teenage girls even at higher age, keeping a photo of his dead mother (as he had no photo from her still alive....). It indeed pictures a remarkable man. Also an insecure man it looks like when it concerns his work. For most of his symphonies we know of many re-writes as Bruckner wanted to please his critics of whom there were many. 

Max Kalbeck, a friend of Brahms wrote in the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, February 13, 1883:

The tonal ghosts are altogether too mad: it is as though a pack of wolves met on Walpurgis Night, such stamping and roaring, raging and screaming goes wildly on. If the future can relish such a chaotic piece of music, with sounds echoing from a hundred cliffs, we wish that future to be far away from us.

Where Bruckner had no struggle was with his devotion to God: he believed. Where we see in Mahler searching for God in Nature and in himself and going from assurance to doubt, Bruckner sang of his God and for his God. His 9th symphony was dedicated to God and he hoped He would grant him the time to finish it. Which didn't happen as he had to leave the work unfinished.

Bruckner studied intensively the music of Palestrina and Bach and after working as an organist at the court of Vienna and taken over from his teacher Sechter his professorship at the Vienna Conservatory, he spent his final decades creating his nine symphonies. These symphonies are sometimes refer to as "cathedrals of sound". Mahler expands the scope of the symphony even further - he famously argued with Sibelius that a symphony should contain the universe. - and he created an unmistakably modern musical language by including sounds from the ‘outside world’, using cowbells, military band music, uncommon wind instruments, mandolins and guitars, even vocal soloists and chorus

My choice here is not for one of these complex symphonies but his motet Ave Maria. The work dates from 1861 and features three parts for female and four for male voices. Witzenmann links Bruckner's Ave Maria to four motets of Palestrina one being the Stabat Mater. 

Close your eyes when listening!

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/7744169

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/15521295

Philip Glass - Einstein on the beach

Walk in and out

An opera of 5 hours, too long to stay focused? Well, that is why you are allowed to walk in and out. That is the case with Einstein on the beach, created by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson in 1976. Einstein prepared the way for much of what has happened in music theater since its premiere. 

Glass and Wilson decided to create an opera based around a historical persona. Einstein was selected after they could not agree upon Charlie Chaplin or Adolf Hitler. Albert Einstein was the eventual compromise. The work is one out of serie of three where Glass portraits people whose personal vision transformed the thinking of their times through the power of ideas rather than by military force.


Although i appreciate minimal music for its capability to slow down time, 5 hours is a lot to handle. The little piece I like a lot is the music within the first of the opera's "Knee Plays" which features repeated numbers accompanied by an electric organ. Glass states that these numbers and solfège syllables were used as placeholders for texts by the singers to memorize their parts, and were kept instead of replacing them with texts. This numerical repetition offers an interpretation as a reference to the mathematical and scientific breakthroughs made by Einstein himself. 

Hypnotizing!

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/4781440
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDuZq7RVAM

Machault - Messe de Notre Dame

Machaut

Messe de Nostre Dame is a beautiful polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377). It is one of the great masterpieces of medieval music and of all religious music. Opposite to the Tournai Mass, it is not a compilation from several composers but created by Guillaume as single composer. 

It is possible that Machaut was familiar with the Tournai Mass. The Gloria and Credo of the Messe de Nostre Dame show similarities to the Tournai mass, such as textless musical interludes, simultaneous style, and long melismatic Amens. The other four movements of Machaut's mass are composed in motet style with mass text.

For me, the Pater Nostre is one of the most lovely pieces, as it reminds me of being as a young kid in the cloister of my uncle, who was a Benedictine monk. Their chant was filling the church the same time as the incense was filling it and the sun entering through the Rose window. Felt like a heavenly experience.

Please also listen to the Introitus with the beautiful bells joining the voices!

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/989650

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/989663

Brahms - Warum

Warum / Brahms

No need to write my own text if it has been done so thoroughly already:

http://www.kellydeanhansen.com/opus74.html.

Brahms achieves with his tempo and dynamics, a heavy emotional load in ´Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen?´. The perfect balance between the motet contrapuntal technique and romantic expression, makes this work one of the absolute highlights of choral literature.

This dramatic powerful music was written in 1877 during a peaceful summer holiday. Not sure how you are going to spend your next holiday?

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/20221682

Heinrich Bach - Ich danke dir, Gott

Heinrich Bach

Was beautiful Sunday over here and even if you are not religious, this music of Henrich Bach expresses well how you can be grateful and not only for the weather.

Heinrich Bach (1615-1692) was the brother of Christoph Bach, who was the grandfather of Johann Sebastian Bach. Heinrich, then on his turn was the grandfather of Maria Barbara Bach, who was the first wife of Johann Sebastian. 

The music seems simpler in its beauty than the complexity i would assume in these relations. Upon his death, he was praised highly as "an organist who touched the heart."

Heinrich Bach's vocal concerto, or cantata, Ich danke dir, Gott is the only vocal work by him which survived. It makes you wonder about the other pieces we do not know....

Mahler - Symphony 3

Mahler Symphony 3:

Lechner about the first movement of the Third Symphony:

That almost ceases to be music; it is practically the sounds of nature. It is eerie how life gradually wrests itself free from the inanimate, rigid matter—I could have named the movement “What the Craggy Mountains Tell Me.” . . . Again, the atmosphere of a stifling heat on a summer midday hangs over the introduction to this movement. Not a breath stirs. All life is suspended. The sun-soaked air shimmers and flickers. I hear it in my mental ear, but how to find the physical tones?s

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/580242

Mahler - Symphony nr. 5

Mahler

The Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony, played at funerals, was written as a love letter- another instance of Mahler's writing music that points in opposite ways

Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor : 4. Adagietto (Sehr langsam) 

http://player.qobuz.com/#!/track/528538