.
Last week, I sent you off to get yourself a CD or two, to listen to it, and see whether you liked what you heard. Most lovers of classical music --even if they're generally happy to hear classical music of any flavor-- do have their particular favorite kinds. Here are my thoughts about each piece (or
work) that I suggested in the previous post, just to give you a (possible) idea why you did or did not like the work, and to supply connections to others. I'm going on the initial assumption that you would probably like pieces with similar attributes, but of course you might like something completely different a lot better! Anyway, for what it's worth:
Chamber Music
I sent you off looking for
Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. This is a piece I really like, and I know I'm not alone. The
second movement, particularly, is just gorgeous: tender, contemplative, melodious, delicate. In contrast, the Rondo movement, with its main Minuet-like theme, is witty and jolly, though it stays within the more or less dignified mood that Minuets are generally associated with. (One episode is very much like a Laendler, the dance featured in the Sound of Music, in which Julie Andrews begins dancing with one of the boys, and ends up dancing with the Baron himself.) Mozart also wrote several wonderful string quartets, including this
String Quartet in G major.
My favorite composer is Bach, and I encourage you to try listening to some Bach chamber music.
Here is a
sonata for violin and harpsichord (being played by a recorder and harpsichord instead);
Here is a
trio sonata from The Musical Offering, one of the most beautiful movements in that collection;
another movement, played by the Kuijken family (notice the viola da gamba, which looks rather like a cello with way too many strings). This is Baroque music. The word Baroque is used to describe a highly ornate style developed around the sixteen hundreds, extending to around 1750. This period is sufficiently removed from the present for the music to sound "dated", which is something to recommend it to some tastes, and a setback to other tastes.
Haydn developed the String Quartet, a sort of very austere sonata for the four very closely-related instruments of two violins, a viola and a cello. Here is one of them (nicknamed "
The Lark"). The plinking sound in some places is gotten by using a technique called pizzicato, where the strings are plucked instead of bowed.
Brahms wrote several amazing
sextets (6 instruments). Mendelssohn wrote some gorgeous music for strings. His
Octet for Strings is one of the miracles of the modern world. Another genre is the Piano Trio (Piano+violin+cello). A famous work in that genre is the
Archduke Trio of Beethoven.
Concertos
The J. S. Bach Concertos:
1041, 1042,
1043. It's hardly possible to dislike these. Here is Anne Sofie Mutter playing the
last movement of the 1041. The rhythm is a gigue (or jig), and boy, does she play it fast. Who said Bach can't be exciting?
The Triple Concerto, 1044 has a wonderfully philosophical
middle movement, played by the soloists alone (sometimes with a cello backing the bass line). Triple concertos have a wonderfully different feeling to them, because the soloists form a team, and the success of the concerto depends as much on the feeling among the soloists as it does on their virtuosity.
[Added later:
Georg Friderik Händel, a German from Halle who settled in England, has written not only some of the most listenable and famous music played today. His more serious music is in the genre of Opera, which he loved. His lighter works, however, have immediate as well as lasting appeal. This piece is one of my greatest favorites: the
Alla Hornpipe from one of the Watermusic Suites. (This music always reminds me of a royal wedding; it is so grand and festive!) Handel's work is utterly musical, even if a little on the solid, foursquare side, far less complex, and a little more forward-looking that that of Bach, tending towards the so-called
galant style that was coming into fashion in the middle years of the 18th century. Even if I neglected to mention Handel in the first post in this series, he is by no means a mere footnote in the panoply of the music of the last four centuries. For example, look at his
concerto for organ.]
Mozart: The 5 violin concertos. These are lighthearted, melodious confections that are immediately attractive to the beginning listener, but lack the depth that will keep one coming back to them. The
A major (no. 5) is one of the most memorable. If you're destined to be a Mozart lover, though, these will signal that fact. The grace of Mozart's string writing is indescribable. This is Monica Huggett, one of the most respected violinist of the last few decades. Here is the first movement from
Concerto No. 1 in B Flat major, being played by an all-women orchestra, except for the director and soloist! (Why not a female soloist, too?)
[Added later: One of the most beloved pieces by Mozart is the famous
Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola. This is an utterly romantic piece which is a nice combination of brilliance and musicality.]
The Piano concertos are entirely another matter. They are serious works, with more to say than the violin concertos, and were intended as vehicles for Mozart himself. Here's
Keith Jarrett playing the first movement of the K488 (no. 23 in A major). Another clip features Zoltan Koscis,
playing the concerto while also playing along in continuo style, something that is coming back in fashion for Mozart concertos. The last movement is fast and exciting, and one of my favorites.
Mozart's
Clarinet Concerto, K 622 is a universal favorite. Here we hear a performance of the slow movement, evoking great tranquility and almost otherworldly stillness. (The slow movement of the Quintet also has a similar feeling in many spots, though the more intimate writing makes the effect more romantic.)
Beethoven: Here's
Concerto no. 4. As you can see, the piano itself plays the opening notes, an enormous innovation. (In
Concerto no. 3, you see how the piano stays silent until almost the middle of the movement, after which it makes its entrance and dominates the remainder of the movement.) These are works with great expressiveness, even if there is a great deal of display of bravura on the part of the soloist.
The violin concerto is a favorite among violinists, for the most part. Here is Itzhak Perlman playing (most of) the
first movement.
Mendelssohn's
Violin Concerto: this is a highly approachable concerto, and will probably make friends for violin concertos in general, and the violin as an instrument, than for Mendelssohn himself. Mendelssohn's music is gaining in importance, but is still on the fringes of the classical repertoire. (This clip is annotated, giving several items of trivia about the work, which keeps up the interest!)
Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto is interesting because of its uncompromising nature, the almost Beethovenesque willingness to make "ugly sounds", which one forgets in the sheer energy of the work. It is one of the most virtuosic pieces for violin and orchestra, and very, very Russian in flavor. Here is a very youthful
Sarah Chang playing the first movement.
Brahms:
Violin concerto, 2
piano concertos, and a
double concerto for violin and 'cello. The violin concerto is on the monumental side; the first movement goes on for around 20 minutes, most of one side of an LP record. This recording is by Henryk Szeryng. Brahms, though he had his lighter moments, was a serious fellow; to this day, it is a puzzle why I, of all people find his music so satisfying. It's as if Brahms is serious enough for all us, so that we can take a break from it. The piano concerti are simply wonderful, too. (In this excerpt you see how long a shadow Beethoven cast. I would say Brahms is chaneling Beethoven here, if it weren't so impertinent.) And the double concerto is also a gem; probably more beloved by Brahms lovers than by the general classical music world.
Dvorak: here's a tantalizing clip of the
Violin concerto. Dvorak inherited the marvelous repertoire of Mendelssohn and Beethoven, as well an inexhaustible fund of melody from his native land. (If we can judge from the music of Dvorak, the Czechs must be musical indeed.)
[Added later:
Schumann piano concerto: Here is the
last movement being played by Hélène Grimaud. The whole concerto is filled with simple joy, in great contrast to the life of this most literary of musicians, which was plagued with acute psychological problems (which appear, from their description, as caused by a very severe bipolar disorder). A concerto with a very similar mood, often paired with this one, is that of
Edvard Grieg, one of the first Norwegian composers to receive international recognition.]
To proceed:
One thing you have done, we hope, is to get a feel for a composer in the era 1700 - 1900 whose music you can relate to! (If you can't there is still a
huge variety of composers you could connect with, so hold on!)
Johann Sebastian Bach: If you liked the Bach excerpts, there is good news and bad news. Bach wrote lots of concertos, about a dozen, in addition to the famous Brandenburg Concertos, a set of 6 that hearkens back to an earlier style of concerto called a Concerto Grosso written for performance in noble houses, which contrasted a small group of expert musicians with a larger group of (probably part-time) musicians who played essentially easier portions which were repetitive and less intricate. By the time Bach got his hands on this form, there were really no easy portions in the works. One of the most famous Brandenburgs is No. 5 in D major, featuring a virtuoso harpsichord part.
In spite of all this, the major portion of Bach's output was for the Church, in the form of the great Cantatas he wrote for performance at Sunday services. If you like choral music, you should begin to look at Bach's choral music, which set a standard for choral music throughout the modern era (even though Beethoven, Handel, Haydn and Mozart made very important contributions, too). Finally, Bach wrote four fabulous Suites for Orchestra which are grand and brilliant, intended to bring the grandeur of Versailles to the smaller German courts of the 18th century. It is hardly possibly to dislike these Suites, which consist of a grand opening movement, followed by a set of a half-dozen old-time dances.
Here is an example.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The music of Mozart is puzzling in its mixture of simplicity and complexity. It is possible to love this music, then become bored with it, and then hear it again and fall in love with it a second time, and be completely baffled that you missed things in it all this while.
The Mozart Piano Concertos: these were written just at the time when composers were beginning to see composition as an expressive vehicle, sort of similar to writing a novel: a way of both becoming famous, leaving a legacy, and showing off one's talent. In the case of Piano concertos, the performer was usually Mozart himself (occasionally a special pupil). In his younger days, Mozart was very possibly quite satisfied to write a piece more brilliant than anything written before. As he matured, though, we see thoughts and ideas in those piano concertos approaching those that came out of Beethoven. These are difficult to put into words; they are a distillation of emotions and experiences that transcend words. Some piano concertos have a certain gravity, e.g.
Concerto no. 24 in C minor, played here by Andre Previn, but not sad. In contrast, the A major, no. 23, which is so sunny for most of its length, has spots that simply seem bewilderingly grief-filled. But the grief seems to pass, as if it were simply fleetingly remembered grief.
If you like Mozart, eventually (and I mean possibly months or years in the future) you must look at his operas, most notably the Marriage of Figaro. I'm not giving you a link, simply because you must wait until you really want to move into Mozart opera. Be aware that opera fans aren't often attracted to Mozart opera, but prefer Puccini or Verdi or even Wagner. (And certainly Bizet!)
If you prefer something a little more serious, but without pianos all over the place, try the Mozart Symphonies. The last two or three are the most celebrated, including the amazing "
Jupiter" (no. 41) and the well-loved
g minor (no. 40). (Warning; the "Jupiter" could be seriously underwhelming at first.)
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote in most instrumental forms, but when one hears the name Beethoven, one usually thinks of his symphonies. Symphonies were invented several times over; first by J.C. Bach, then by Haydn, then by Mozart, and then by Beethoven, in such a way that all subsequent developments of the genre had to prove themselves against Beethoven's nine amazing symphonies. A good one to begin with is the famous
Eroica. My personal beginnings in classical music were with the famous
c minor symphony, No. 5.
Felix Mendelssohn, as I said, is highly underrated as a composer, a situation which is aggravated by his very early death, at the age of about thirty, of pneumonia, I believe. Mendelssohn wrote a vast volume of chamber works, the violin concerto, string quartets, quintets (at least one, anyway,) the octet, oratorios, incidental music for plays (especially a Midsummer Night's Dream), overtures, and symphonies. He wrote symphonies for string orchestras as a kid (around 15), and later, full orchestra symphonies, more of which are being discovered in recent times. Try his overtures (
Fingal's Cave) and his
Italian Symphony. All his music has a certain effervescent quality which is very addictive!
Peter IlyichTchaikovsky, of course, is famed for his ballet music. He wrote several symphonies, which are not played as frequently as are his ballets (Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker), and several piano concerti. It's easy to find clips of these on YouTube, to check whether any of them appeal to you. This clip from the
sixth symphony presents a very unusual waltz-like movement in quintuple time. It's hard to believe that it could sound so utterly natural.
Johannes Brahms wrote a large volume of piano music, several symphonies, several concerti, an "inter-denominational" requiem mass (for his mother), chamber music, choral music for a girl's choir, and several other miscellaneous pieces, including works for the organ, which are considered excellent. I'd like to suggest a short work called
Variations on the St Anthony Chorale, which is a suite of variations on a hymn-tune once attributed to Haydn. (This is thought to be Brahm's very first orchestral work.) Here is the famous
Hungarian Dance no 5. The majority of Brahms's works, though, are quite different from this, except for a few pieces such as the finale of the violin concerto which has a Hungarian flavor.
Antonin Dvorak wrote, in addition to his concertos, several symphonies (including
From the New World, inspired by the United States of America). He, too, wrote several
Slavonic Dances, which are really fabulous, and some really unique chamber works, including the
Bagatelles. This one features a harmonium!
[Added later:
If you liked
Robert Schumann, you should definitely listen to his piano miniatures, such as
Kinderschenen. He also wrote a large number of gorgeous, atmospheric Lieder (art songs). Here is
Die Lotosblume sung by Dorotea Roschmann. (I wish she had given us a less dramatic reading of it; it seems to require a more lyrical interpretation...)
[Added still later: Here is Karita Mattila of Finland singing
Die Lotoblume]
Edvard Grieg, unfortunately, is not a composer I know much about. There is a celebrated orchestral suite titled
Peer Gynt, who is a popular Norwegian legendary character. You should have no trouble looking up other piano music by Grieg, as well as a number of songs. I know that Solveigg's Song is a favorite of sopranos.]
Archimedes
The first opera in the tetralogy (actually written last) was Rhinegold. This brilliantly written opera serves as a prologue to the action of the remaining three operas: A Dwarf, Alberich, steals the magic Rhinegold from the Rhinemaidens. Meanwhile, the Giants have built Valhalla for the gods, and need repayment. The trickster god Loge (Loki) steals the magic Ring forged by the Dwarves of the Rhinegold, and gives it to the Giants. For the moment, everyone is happy, except the Dwarves and the Rhinemaidens. (Back then the Dwarves had their own eminent domain principle, except for when people stole things from them!) [The painting at right is a depiction of Alberich and a Rhinemaiden by Arthur Rackham.]
Wagner's peculiar invention was the concept of the Leitmotif: a tiny musical fragment that is highly recognizable, which would serve not merely as the basis for mood music, but very specific aural allusions to persons, feelings, incidents, objects, principles and events. So when in Star Wars the score recalls Darth Vader, or The Empire, or The Rebellion, or The Force, we must remember that Wagner, decades earlier, invented the means to do this in a way perhaps a little too subtle to succeed in modern Cinema. Modern Cinema has embraced the idea of broad musical themes that refer to persons, places or events, but not at the miniscule, atomic level of Wagner's Leitmotifs. (The score for Gone With the Wind, by Max Steiner, for example embodied this modified Leitmotif principle.)
Now Wagner's ideal was to present the entire saga of the Rhinegold using all these media of music, art, dance, poetry and drama. He started with his own script (libretto), written all in verse of an appropriate epic meter, and set about creating a score that had the highly imaginative principle of the Leitmotif at its heart.
The opening scene of the entire four-opera tetralogy (some 13 hours of music-drama) opens under the surface of the river Rhine. Before the curtain goes up, the Overture to Das Rheingold begins simply with a huge B Flat chord.
Deryck Cooke, a well-known British musicologist who has spent a large proportion of his life in studying the Leitmotifs of Der Ring des Nibelungen, suggests that this theme is the basic theme of Nature. (Note: Wagner himself has written at length about his own Leitmotifs for the Ring; I simply use Deryck Cooke's description because I'm more familiar with it.)
Gradually the Nature theme transforms into a more 'churning' theme, that of the River Rhine. Here you get the first, simplest example how Wagner developed musical ideas via transformation of these atoms of meaning, to represent related ideas by related atoms of musical melody and harmony. (He adds that the pentatonic theme of the Rhinemaidens, from whom the Dwarves stole the gold in the first place, as characteristic of nature elementals in the story, such as the Wood bird, who appears in the third opera, Siegfried.)
Later, in subsequent operas, Wagner introduces variants of the opening Nature motif to represent the World Ash Tree, from which Wotan cuts himself a staff, or spear. A similar, but minor-key theme represents Erda, the earth-goddess. Here is her first appearance, her minor-key theme a counterpart to the major theme of the River Rhine. (After warning Wotan of sad consequences of his actions, she foretells the downfall of the gods, and under her words is an ominous descending, major version of her rising, minor theme.)
Here is a sequence of scene fragments from Rheingold, staged by the San Francisco Opera. In this clip we have (1) the Rhinemaidens frolicking, shortly before being robbed of their gold, (2) Wotan, the King of the gods, (3) Wotan being talked at by his consort, (4) the two giants, Fasolt and Fafnir talking about not getting paid for their construction work, (5) The Dwarf Alberich, (6), (7), (8) scenes I don't recognize, and (9) Wotan leading the way over the Rainbow Bridge into the (finally paid-for) Valhalla.
The giants, who are given the Ring, fight among themselves, and one kills the other. The survivor, Fafnir, turns himself into a dragon, the better to guard the Ring. (The fight among the Giants is echoed in Smeagol killing his brother Deagol in Tolkien's Ring Saga.) The gold is cursed, and has an appropriate theme, which one hears in the orchestra at critical moments when the Ring influences events around it, usually ending in death, war or destruction.
The second opera (the first of the real operas after the prologue, Rhinegold) is Die Walküre. In it, Wotan puts into motion his devious plan to retrieve the Ring from the Giants, and, maybe, return it to the Rhinemaidens. Wotan arranges for a man and a woman to be born, who would be the parents of a great hero. But the plans go wrong, and the woman (Sieglinde) ends up married to the wrong man. But Wotan arranges for the man he intends should be Sieglinde's lover to stumble into her home during a storm. They fall in love, and run away together while the husband lies sleeping. The betrayed husband follows, and there is a mighty battle where both men die, but luckily Sieglinde already bears the child who is to be the hero.
During the duel, the valkyrie Brunhilde aids the lover, in defiance of Wotan's explicit instructions, because she has pity on the pregnant woman and her lover. (This is a poignant moment, because Wotan, in his heart of hearts, supports Brunhilde's action, while his instructions to Brunhilde were in obedience to his wife Fricka's command. Wotan's wife Fricka is the deity who guards the sanctity of marriage, and is naturally appalled at Wotan's plot to have this lover come between a man and his wife.) Now Brunhilde faces Wotan, and after a lengthy accusation of treachery, he condemns her to a magical sleep, after which she has to marry the mortal who wakes her, which takes away her immortality, of course. Losing immortality is a major deal, as we have learned from Tolkien's Ballad of Luthien Tinuviel. The opera ends with the magic fire music, representing the magical ring of fire Wotan arranges to be placed around the sleeping Brunhilde, to ensure that only the exceptional hero can wake her.
Sieglinde has already been smuggled away from the scene of the battle by Brunhilde, and hidden away in a cave in a forest, near which it happens that the Dragon Fafnir has his lair. She is given shelter by the brother of Alberich the dwarf, and gives birth to the hero Siegfried.
Siegfried, the third opera, recounts how the young hero, brought up by the dwarf in the forest out of sight of humans, forges his father's broken sword, kills the dwarf, kills the dragon Fafnir, get
s the Ring, and proceeds to discover the sleeping valkyrie Brunhilde, who wakes and falls in love with him. Siegfried gazes at her in amazement; he has finally found a human woman, the first one he has ever seen.
But the Ring causes trouble, and Götterdämmerung, the last episode, recounts how when the couple arrive at a nearby court, Siegfried is offered another bride, and amid the cross-currents of jealousy, suspicion and avarice, Siegfried is murdered, Brunhilde in grief rides her horse into the flames of the funeral pyre, Valhalla catches aflame from the burning pyre (!!), and the Ring falls into the Rhine, where it belongs. [The painting at right is a depiction by Arthur Rackham of Brunhilde riding her horse Grane into Siegfried's funeral pyre. Equine actors in operas have famously been reluctant to do this bit.]
Wagner appears to have looked for a story in which the true hero is presented with a series of dilemmas, in which the choices were invariably inevitable but regrettable. To that extent, Wagner's choice of this tortured storyline is understandable, though the inevitability of the choices are occasionally questionable. Wagner's hero is, of course, not Siegfried, but Wotan. While, on the surface he appears to manipulate everything, he is simply the puppet of blind fate, the way Wagner seems to have seen life.
To conclude, the entire cycle of four operas (three operas and one opera-length prologue) is driven by the lyrics sung by the actor-singers, the fantastic scenery (nowadays too often substituted with modern interpretations, such as the California Gold Rush, etc), and the amazing score, played by Wagner's enormous orchestra, featuring special instruments for the purpose, such as special tubas to represent the the dragon Fafnir.
The story of the Ring of the Nibelungen is a variant of a German-Norse epic, the Nibelungenlied, written by an author whose identity remains a mystery. Wagner conflated this story with that of another legend, the Vollsung Saga, to portray a net of deception and disappointment intense enough to motivate his dramatic requirements. The sequence of betrayals is painful enough on which for Wagner to build the ultimate destruction of Valhalla, and the return of the Ring to the Rhinemaidens at the end of the whole drama. Today, to modern eyes, the melodrama seems too unreal and too long-drawn to be taken seriously. But granted that it was going to be realized in some medium, it is hard to think of a better one than Wagner used, or a more effective execution, if one takes into account the amazing musical creativity and planning that Wagner undertook, and achieved.
With the medium of Cinema available today, such projects can be implemented with much greater success, as we see in the Lord of the Rings project with J.R.R. Tolkien's book and Peter Jackson's movie trilogy. Since these were created by an author rather than a composer, the literary characterization is certainly more successful. Understandably so, since Tolkien had not only all German mythology and epic poetry for his sources, but Wagner's work as well. The musical score of the movie, however, takes a secondary place. While it is entirely possible that the score could have been written with the fine attention to detail of Wagner's Ring Cycle score, the needs of modern cinematic production procedures and the level of sophistication of movie-going audiences (compared to opera audiences) all dictate a simpler approach to movie scores.
The music community is divided over Wagner's music, especially his Ring cycle. Many musicians and aficionados regard Wagner's music overblown, heavy and self-indulgent, and one can see why. (Many composers after Wagner absorbed a lot of his ideas --Verdi, Mahler, Humperdinck-- but managed to keep their music more agile and their orchestras more compact, thus avoiding the worst of the criticisms that followed Wagner everywhere.) Still, we in the 20th and 21st centuries are accustomed to being indulgent with artists whose egos and ideas would probably dwarf those of Wagner. Perhaps Wagner's greatest mistake was that of being born too early!
In later posts, I plan to look at other operas by Wagner that are greater successes, artistically, and which reflect a more mature personality in the composer: Parsifal, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Archimedes
