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