but only posted pictures of what I thought was beautiful.

that only catches a glimpse of beauty for me, so i thought i would backtrack and actually share things i find beautiful.

the first would have to be this piece of music which has captivated me since i first heard it in middle school.  It’s the Agnus Dei set to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

in the same vein that i find that hauntingly beautiful, i also find this song.

i find great beauty in the words of e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

i take great pleasure in the art of Barton Damer

and of Wassily Kandinsky

Mark Rothko

and Jackson Pollock

i adore the scripts of playwrights Horton Foote, David Mamet, & Tom Stoppard

i love the cinematic mastery of Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers

i find beautiful the dark prose of Cormac McCarthy

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

and i find amazing the wonderful words of William Shakespeare.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends

those are a few things i find beautiful.  i always look for the beauty and the redemptive qualities in anything i view.  art is created by broken people and although it sometimes is not “family friendly” it can still hold beauty.   all art eventually points me to what is behind the beauty.  it’s not the destination, it just points me in the right direction.

I am madly in love with DJ Tiesto.  He is my god, and I worship him.  When I was buying Elements of Life and Kaleidoscope at Best Buy, a teenage girl rang up my CDs who just happened to love Tiesto as well.  It made me happy to meet someone else who liked Tiesto.

I cried when I found out his concert in Chicago was 17 and over, or whatever.

-Nay <3 Tiesto

It’s time for a bit of variety today, with a classical piece. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Opus 11.

Last year I sent Eleven Plus Eleven by Nine Below Zero.

The year before I sent Song Eleven Could Take Forever by Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.

Zachęcam do przeczytania tekstu o innych niż Adagio for Strings utworach Samuela Barbera w Kulturze Liberalnej. Dorzucam jeszcze linki: archiwalne nagranie I symfonii do słuchania/pobrania oraz nagranie Barbera śpiewającego własną pieśń Dover Beach. Linki do Knoxville: Summer of 1915 znajdziecie w długim wpisie o tym dziele.

Today it is the 2002 release Lost For Words, from Asa-Chang & Junray. The track embedded below is the six-minute psychological piece “Hana,” a truly bizarre and introspective cut which is half-Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, half Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier.” The elegant string work lays a foundation for painstakingly compressed voice and drum samples (the voice speaks to us in Esperanto, for all the listener can tell). The drum nested-in-voice feature is truly unsettling.

The video is simple and low-key. And perfect, frankly:

This is a remarkable piece of music. Asa-Chang & Junray has a 2009 release titled Kage No Nai Hito, which the present correspondent is looking around for now. Stay tuned.

allora si fanno presenze dentro la distanza, quel campo che è dichiarazione di un magnificat, da (r)accogliere come un tempo facevano donne e bambini nei campi, (s)pigolando il tempo della miseria, in un silenzio messe e messale, come fosse anch’essa ricchezza, una speciale preghiera, un miserere da pronunciare in sè e nel dio, interratosi esso stesso, non rinunciando ad essere buio nel buio del solco, dove altri semi si contendono una luce, non rinunciando alle tempeste dei sensi. Tutti i sensi, amore compreso, la più ardua delle passioni, sempre un passaggio, un viatico, una pasqua che arde il c(‘)ero fino a consumazione.

.

Bill Viola- The crossing

Intr’a ’stu focu -In questo fuoco

Fòcu, fòcu méo

chi du sangu ìntr’i veni

m’ssìcch’u còri

fòcu, fòcu e sangu

- fòcu e sangu -

brùciam’i paròli

rùstimi la carni

fòcu, fòcu ‘i mmari chi vveni

rùmpimi i pinséri e sìccami a gola

di ’st’arsùra

ch’ a nun pozz’ chiù ciànciri

mentre ball’ e mi rivòtu

ghìntr’a ’stu fòcu

intr’a ’stu fòcu.

*

Fuoco, fuoco mio

che dal sangue dentro le vene

mi secchi il cuore

Fuoco, fuoco e sangue

- fuoco e sangue -

bruciami le parole

arrostisci la mia carne

Fuoco, fuoco di mare che viene

rompimi i pensieri e asciuga la mia gola

dall’arsura

ché non posso più piangere

mentre ballo e mi rivolto

in questo fuoco,

in questo fuoco.

.

Natàlia Castaldi

*  * *

Riferimento:

Intr’a ‘stu fòcu – In questo fuoco

So what exactly am I doing for NaNo 09?

The name of the this blog is a clue of sorts, as it shares said name with the title of my NaNo:

Ruins of Empire

The Throne of Stars remains empty. For three hundred years no one has has claimed the seat of the Galactic Empire. The last three centuries war consumed the length of the galaxy, with no clear winner in sight.  Now an unusual alliance of bitter rivals may change may place a young Duke on the Throne of Stars. But can he trust his new allies, his bride to be and survive the perilous journey from his home world to the very center of the galaxy? Will a new order rise out of the Ruins of Empire?

So what you think?

I’ll post more details tomorrow.

And now for some music:

Have you ever listened to Barber’s Adagio for Strings?  If so, what did you experience?

I have never forgotten my first time.  I must have been sixteen or seventeen.  Still in high school.  Sitting in the dark of the living room while the family watched Oliver Stone’s Platoon.  Stone’s words delivered by the actors, the cinematographer’s vision executed on screen, the historical context, and that music wrapping it all together.  I wish I could better explain the power of that moment and why today that music brings me to tears.

As a writer, I sometimes listen to music to help ground me or to help me tap into an emotional space.  Barber’s Adago helps me to pause, to breathe, and be carried away by the lines of music.  I have read that it is considered one of the saddest pieces of music ever.  Even sadness, perhaps especially sadness, we need to explore on occasion in writing, in music, in words, in pictures.  As a friend of my has a penchant for saying, “It’ll make you stronger.”

Today was David’s memorial service. It involved members of the Dallas Symphony, the Symphony Chorus, the Highland Park UMC choir, several soloists, and a variety of conductors. There were, by my count, some nine instrumental pieces and eight choral works, plus three solos—and I may have missed a piece or two. Of course, a number of people spoke, too.

David planned the service himself, which made it all the more special. (Though when I reach Heaven myself I’ll have a few words with him over that arrangement of Holy, Holy, Holy. “Seriously. Could you not have warned us? You know how tricky Gary Fry pieces are, and sight-reading through tears is NOT easy…”)

As I listened to the orchestra play Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings—surely the most passionately mournful piece ever written—I was struck again by the way music expresses our emotions in a way that words cannot. I think the Holy Spirit must live in music; Romans 8:26 says, “But the Spirit himself speaks to God for us, even begs God for us with deep feelings that words cannot explain.” Deep feelings that words cannot explain describe today’s service beautifully.

Listening to and making music together—music that testified to the awesomeness of God, the assurance of His love, and the comfort of His eternal presence—was a comforting and healing experience. I’m sure David knew it would be so when he chose the songs. The spoken words were also a comfort. I had to restrain myself from waving my soggy tissue and shouting “Amen!” at a crucial part of the message thanks to Dr. John McCoy and his passionate confidence in Christ’s resurrection and what that means for believers. (It didn’t seem quite the place and time for that kind of outburst, but I was waving and “amen-ing” on the inside.)

And so, we move forward. I’d like to end with the Affirmation of Faith from today’s service, taken from the Heidelberg Catechism:

My only comfort in life and death is that I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ;

And, therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth, to live unto Him.

Amen.

Zdjęcie z premiery baletu

Amerykańskiemu kompozytorowi Aaronowi Coplandowi przyświecała idea tworzenia muzyki poważnej dla każdego. Najwspanialszym wyrazem tej koncepcji jest napisany w 1944 roku, niejako ku pokrzepieniu serc, balet Appalachian Spring. To, co teraz nazwalibyśmy “typowo amerykańskim brzmieniem”, stworzył w dużej mierze właśnie Copland, w baletach Rodeo, Billy the Kid oraz Appalachian Spring. To ostatnie dzieło, grane zwykle w postaci niewiele krótszej od oryginału suity, różni się od pozostałych brakiem fragmentów westernowych. Za to, zgodnie z tytułem, jest wiosenne całą gębą. Najbardziej z panią wiosną kojarzy mi się melodia, która pojawia się po raz pierwszy we fragmencie Fast, po trzech minutach ledwo słyszalnego wstępu Very slowly (miało być dla ludu, więc kompozytor olał włoskie oznaczenia tempa).

Mam Appalachian Spring na płycie (20 zł) z serii Classics for Pleasure. Tytuł serii może mało ciekawy, ale jak najbardziej pasuje do ówczesnej ideologii Coplanda. W odróżnieniu od np. Arnolda Schoenberga, uważał, że łatwość odbioru i wartość artystyczna muzyki wcale nie wykluczają się nawzajem. A najlepszy dowód na to dał w postaci Appalachian Spring.

Linki, oby długo działały:

Cała suita Appalachian Spring:

Variations on a Shaker Melody, najbardziej popularny fragment:

-

A tak wyglądał sam balet w roku 1945 (!!!).

Zdjęcie z Library of Congress.

It’s said that music is a universal language. When different instruments vibrate and fuse into beautiful shades of complimenting sounds that touches something joyous and deep within, that even the actual language of the lyrics needs not to be literally understood. Instead, through the music and through energy of the vocalist and the tone of their voices, we hear the story. It doesn’t matter where the music comes from, or by whom. At this point the artist is separated from the ordinary human. Music can really bring people together, even if its for just a moment.

The best example, ‘The One Love Peace Concert’ was a large concert held on April 22, 1978 at The National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica. This concert was held during a political civil war in Jamaica between opposing parties Jamaican Labour Party and the People’s National Party. The concert came to its peak during Bob Marley & The Wailers‘ performance of “Jammin’”, when Marley joined the hands of political rivals Michael Manley (PNP) and Edward Seaga (JLP).

There is an organization that shares the idea of peace and harmony through the power of music. ‘Cultures in Harmony’ is a not-for-profit organization aiming to bring people together through music. Helping to improve the often rocky relationship between the US and the rest of the world. They don’t simply perform and leave, they’re far more interactive, by performing with local musicians and playing the local tunes.

 The String Quartet from New York came to our pretty little city of Islamabad at Junaid Malik’s Nysa Lounge. Junaid Malik’s Nysa Lounge has been gaining gradual popularity over the last few months because of his frequent events in the name of art. His last notable event with the Cultural Attache’ at the US embassy, calling the Ari Rolands Jazz Quartet from America, Rocklite, Ajmal Asad Qizilbash and, Arieb Azhar .

 On a regular sticky Saturday night, a very unusual night awaited. The String Quartet consisting of William Harvey on Violin, Christopher Jenkins on Viola, Emily Holden on Violin and, Ethan Philbrick on Cello began the night with a call to all those seated to stand up. Confused but polite, the crowd began standing up, curiously searching the room for any signs why. Nobody in the completely filled room was expecting to hear the Pakistani national anthem. The anthem had power yet incredible softness, it was definitely  my favorite version of the anthem. Many of us wanted to get up and sway but decided out of respect for the anthem not to.

 Things relaxed as the Quartet played a Cuban groove of Paquito d’Rivera’s “Wapango”. I couldn’t help but search the audience faces for reactions. Though all the members of the audience are well acquainted with western music and even some jazz and blues, but a string quartet is for many a new phenomenon. But the Qaurtet had nothing to worry about, though new, the sensuous sounds filled the air with refreshing delight.

 The Quartet stood in a light circle, softly swaying with their bows, like a story with it’s beginnings, climax and ends, their performance took us on a similar exciting coast. Just as they reclined into a soft arrangement they shook us with a quick leap into a spectacular passion. However, their star performance was, ‘Adagio for Strings’ by the American composer Samuel Barber. The room fell into complete silence, a haunting embrace, a journey that many of us had never taken before.

 For the rest of the night they began to collaborate with musicians. First up they collaborated with a local classical singer Ustad Sultan Fateh Ali Khan, with Natasha Ejaz on guitars. Not once did the western instruments disturb his mystical voice, a mistake that is sadly common even amongst our local bands.

 Next up was an instrumental jazz performance on Duke Ellington numbers with Allan Smith on drums. Using brushes typical to jazz drum performances, the Quartet turned up their feel to a very suave groovy swing. Then followed a Pakistani classic fusion with Ustad Ajmal Khan on tablas and Dr Taimur Khan on Sarangi. Together they played a twist on some of Pakistani folk and classical music. The two styles of music were in beautiful harmony. Another folk meets western fusion came with the performance of Arieb Azhar. Singing ‘Sager Kinare’ with his blazing vocals, the string arrangement making the songs sound fuller and complete almost. The audience sang along the entire time. Along with her guitar performance earlier, Natasha Ejaz also performed a couple of numbers for the night. For the rest of the evening the night progressed into a freestyle jam session. For all the drum pieces Allan Smith would perform. The setting was casual enough for the audience and the musicians to interact freely and talk about their experiences. And the rich array of artists filling the room listening, performing and, enjoying themselves was delighting sight.

 Aside from the memorable entertainment for all of us to take home to reminisce. There is something very important to learn from here. It is very important for even our governments and not-for-profit organizations to take a lesson from this story. They should all understand the power of all art forms to promote causes. Concerts, films, art, theater and, books will always produce greater personal interest and influence over a dry conference and policy papers. The current Pakistani reputation is in shambles, affecting the personal lives of every Pakistani. People are constantly defending their country even though they themselves are not entirely convinced. We fight harder to get trust for visa’s than ever before. We feel like criminals on our streets with the guns pointing at our faces daily and proving our identity at every barricade. Sharing our arts, in this case music, with the rest of the world proves to the world that we are approachable human beings who don’t mind a bit fun.

 However, in the future it would be nice to see our local bands receive something for performing in these events as well. It would be nice to see some of these bands, especially the younger ones actually have some monetary incentive, so that they actually are motivated to take these sessions more professionally, instead of a free jam session. Eventually building a platform to a more solid, profitable and, sustainable music industry which is in threat of dying because bands don’t receive any money from it.

 Catch the NYC String Qaurtet for in Lahore and Karachi soon for their upcoming and exciting local collaborations and takes.

For a while now, ive really been into these types of music genres. I can easily say that most of my music on my iTunes is Techno/Trance/Hardstyle related. I really like the genre, and i have few friends that enjoy it as much as i do. Which sucks, but w.e. But what i DO have is ignorant ppl that think Techno and Trance and House are all the same thing. Which obviously it isnt! because if it was, then there would be no need for different names.

Perfect example would be, when one day i was driving in my friends car, and she says “omg lets listen to some techno!” and i was completely surprised and im like “yea!! lets do it!” me thinking ofcourse that she knew what she was talking about. But ofcourse..i should have known better. she put on her CD..and some fucking Black Eyed Peas song came on….Fail.

So basically what im trying to say is that alot of ppl dont know what the difference between this genres really is and im here to kinda explain with some examples what they are.

First off lets start with Techno.

Techno, mainly focuses on electronic precussion and doesnt need melody to make it interesting. It usually has less “layers” than trance, so it may seem repetitive at times. Build-ups are rare in techno, unlike Hardstyle/Rave where they are the main substance. Techno is ofcourse “harder” than trance, and ofcourse less “trance inducing” than…trance lol

A Perfect example would be…

Next up is Trance.

Trance, is mainly all about the melody, it has more layers than Techno, which means its less repetitive. It usually brings 1 or more build ups, but ofcourse not as many as Hardstyle/Rave. And ofcourse the main characteristic is that its music for the “mind” it causes you to be in a trance state when listening and its very soothing with no lyrics involved.

An example is…basically anything by Tiesto.

And Last but not least…my favorite, Hardstyle.

Hardstyle, is very similar to Rave and sometimes is considered about the same. It consists of many build ups, ALOT and I mean ALOT of Bass. Lyrics are minimal, and usually repetitive and sometimes added as improv by the DJ. The organization is sometimes random, and very surprising. Its my personal favorite and i love syncing up to it, and it gets me pumped.

Example, and one of my favorite Hardstyle Songs…

Today’s song is Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei which is his vocal version for his Adagio for Strings (which also sounds sweeeeeet). When you hear this in person, as I’ve had the great fortune to do, you feel this is the type of thing the angel’s sing.  Written in 1936 for a string quartet then transcribed in 1967 to become Agnus Dei (lamb of God) this piece seems to be a bit of a lament, or maybe a praise, or maybe both at the sametime. It is a long song and repetitive so go ahead and check your facebook while being soothed. Enjoy!

..who listens to classical music under the age of 30?

Maybe it’s because I spent too much time listening to The Smashing Pumpkins when I was 14. You know how it went: warm cans of beer, sunny summer evenings round the back of the local Scout hut. Music with lots of distortion in it. And I loved it – the distortion, that is. I pretty much hated the beer, but I never stopped drinking it. And I never stopped loving distortion.

I got to thinking about the reason for this after reading an entirely idiotic review in The Independent of the debut album by Bombay Bicycle Club.  In this piece of subjective, blitheringly ignorant tosh, ‘reviewer’ Simon Price completely disregards what is an accomplished, exciting and enduring album created a group of seriously precocious young musicians, and resorts to an always irritating mixture of conjecture and piling headfirst on to the backlash bandwagon before it’s even properly parked.

Of Price’s 86 words of platitudinous twaddle about ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’, this irksome sentence, in particular, struck a nerve: “BBC are led by a singer with a singularly irritating bleat and a guitarist who has you considering a moratorium on the sale of reverb pedals.” Now I know he’s talking about reverb, and this blog is about distortion – I’m no boffin, but I’m pretty sure there’s an inextricable relationship between the two, so I’ll use them interchangeably. In any case, I’m not as dense as Simon Price, and anyone else prepared to, however light-heartedly, advocate banning the sale of any kind of effects pedal. It’s just completely missing the point.

I consider myself a music lover. I love great music, so it’s wasteful to discount any genre, and for this reason I will listen to pretty much anything. Every now and again I slip on Miles Davies’ jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue. I have a deep respect for the simultaneous elegance and power of Barber’s Adagio for Strings, although fully admit that, being a Philistine beyond rehabilitation, I’m only aware of the song because Oliver Stone used it in Platoon. I have been known to enjoy nodding my block to a bit of hip-hop, too: Common and Q-Tip being particular favourites. I even like Prince.

But I always come back to distortion; music capable of supplying the kind of unparalleled adrenaline rush you’re never going to get from, say, Katie Melua’s ‘Nine Million Bicycles’, however fit you might think she is. Which is very, by the way.

From the Pumpkins’ ‘Cherub Rock’ – still one of my favourite songs of all time – to Broken Social Scene’s ‘You Forgot It In People’, a glorious, shambolic tapestry of an album, deftly laced together with a huge whack of distorted guitars, and the stone-cold classic shoegazing of My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’, unashamedly soaked in so much dizzying reverb it never fails to make your head spin, at the right time, in the right place at the right moment, the visceral brain haemorrhage-inducing punch of this music makes it the best in the world.

Take Jimi Hendrix, one of the first artists to experiment with Fuzzbox effects pedals – according to the unshakeable authority of Wikipedia, at least. Would ‘Purple Haze’ or ‘Voodoo Chile’ – a song with a blistering intro that, if my memory serves correctly, John Squire of the Stone Roses once described as the best noise ever made by a human being – really have been the same without the liberal helpings of bone-crunching distortion layered throughout?

Then there’s the growling magic of distortion-saturated live performances. Remember Kurt Cobain and Nirvana playing ‘Territorial Pissings’ instead of ‘Lithium’ on ‘The Jonathan Ross Show’ and proceeding to smash the living shit out of the stage in front of the mouths-agape crowd – probably my favourite-ever rock’n’roll moment. Or the otherworldly set from Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, in which, after lithely nailing an amazing version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, he simulates intercourse with an amp then famously sets fire to his guitar. You need a big, guttural lashing of distortion to be able to get away with that. I can’t imagine Newton Faulkner doing it.

I went to Bombay Bicycle Club’s gig in Islington last week. They were a pretty thrilling live band, both tight and inventive, despite clearly being quite severely inebriated. And as the sublime ‘Magnet’ neared its rousing conclusion the venue became engulfed in a swirling crescendo of reverb that threatened to crush under its sheer weight any infidels reluctant to be picked up and swept away by it.

That Independent review churlishly asked, “Do we really need another early-evening festival band?” What the chuff is an early-evening festival band, fuck nuts? I’ve seen James Brown, Foo Fighters, Seun Kuti, Beck, Jurassic 5 and a particularly racy Sebastien Tellier, among many others, in early-evening slots at various concerts and festivals – so going by that any artist from any genre who happens to be on any stage at any festival before it gets dark fits in that pigeonhole – making it nonsensical and Price’s comment utterly redundant.

What we do need, though, is distortion. Big, loud, bolshy dollops of ear-splitting fuzz. There’s simply nothing else like it.

American Composer Samuel Barber

I am preparing a group of recitals of American Art-songs with American soprano Judith Kellock, which will include a selection of songs by Samuel Barber (1910-1982). The challenge for the pianist is, of course, the difficult piano writing. As Judith Kellock and I have not yet rehearsed our recital programme, I can not comment on the symbiosis between singer and accompanist in these songs. But it is a recital for which I can’t wait. Judith Kellock’s recording of Barber Songs has been highly acclaimed and I am looking forward to performing these songs with her in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth in August 2009.

Barber is known for the famous “Adagio for Strings”, in its original form for String quartet, arranged by Barber for String Orchestra or re-shaped as a choral “Agnus Dei”. This work sums up many aspects of Barber’s compositional style: the quintessential “American Elegy”, going directly to the heart of the matter, a powerful and soaring melody and a lush texture with which to support its emotional charge. These elements are found in most of Barber’s works, including his impressive body of vocal works.  Barber’s songs have become synoymous with the American Art song, attaining the status of American classics. He wrote songs throughout his life, starting in his teens. At 14, he was enrolled into the newly formed Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and a year later, his first known song, “A Slumber song to the Madonna” appeared. At 17 “The Daisies” became his first published song. His last song for solo voice and piano, “O Boundless, Boundless Evening” was written in 1972.

He wrote less prolifically in his last twenty years, but he was busy with vocal music throughout his career. Over 50 songs appear between other vocal works.

His affinity for the voice is clear. Consider operas “Vanessa” and “Anthony and Cleopatra”, along with many other vocal works  many scenas, cantatas and works such as “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” (set to a text by James Agee). He also maintained close relationships with singers thoughout his life. His aunt, the opera singer Louise Homer, gave many of the first performances of his songs. Pierre Bernac and Francis Poulenc were friends and supporters as well as performers of his works. And at a time when large parts of the American music world was still segregated, he supported careers of young black singers such as Leontyne Price and Martina Arroyo.

Barber’s music has been described as “Neo-Romantic”. He uses a contemporary harmonic and rhythmic language, but there is always a warm melodic content. His music is perhaps less “American” than, say, Copland, but then it is also less forbidding. There is always a deep passion in his writing. His seriousness as a person was overlaid with a witty mien, which his good friend and publisher Paul Wittke describes as “a defence against a deep-rooted melancholia.”  Pianist John Browning – a great interpreter of Barber – writes most beautifully: “Barber’s language is that of the poet – swift changes of mood and a pervading melancholy and loneliness conveyed on a sumptuous harmonic tapestry. There is a passionate sensuality which never lapses into cheap sentimentality or vulgarity” (Barber: The Songs, DGG CD Booklet, p10)

“Barberisms” include: • Rich orchestration and harmonies reminiscent of late romantic composers such as Rachmaninov or Strauss. • A solid grasp of polyphony. • Easy chromaticism that remains within a tonal framework. • A lush lyrical gift.

All his works contain memorable melodies. These elements fuse in his vocal works. Barber himself had many skills to contribute as an art-song composer. He was an excellent singer himself, having studied singing with Emilio de Gogorza and later in Vienna. He even flirted with a professional singing career, performing and recording as a singer, including the first recording in 1935 of “Dover Beach” for Baritone and String Quartet, a sophisticated work composed when Barber was just 21– and a beautiful performance it is. An excellent pianist, Barber studied with Russian pedagogue Isabelle Vengerova. Barber’s writing for the instrument is some of the most complex and virtuosic of the 20th Century. His Piano Concerto (premiered 1962) remains an Everest of piano technique and the Piano Sonata is considered one of the most challenging ever written. The Sonata was first performed by one of the great virtuosos Vladimir Horowitz. Here you can follow the score as you listen to the recording. The Fugue is famous for it’s demands. His songs make few concessions. Richly contrapuntal writing and filigree passages make his accompaniments a challenge and a feast for pianists.

Comfortable in various languages, Barber’s song-texts are of the highest quality. He read poetry in its original language (he was fluent in Italian, German and French) and almost never went anywhere without a volume of poetry within reach. Yet he claims to have had difficulty chosing poems, finding some to wordy or too introverted, and he always appeared to be reading poetry with an eye to it’s potential as compositional material.

Some thoughts on songs in the recital:

A Nun takes the Veil – Op.13, No.1 (Gerald Manley Hopkins) 1937

Schubertian in its purity, this song conjures up a young woman’s vision of the sanctity of a monastery. Harp-like broken chords alternate with hymnal solemnity to create a vision of spiritual ecstasy. Judith Kellock’s interpretation captures a wonderful intimate atmosphere .

The Secrets of the Old – Op.13, No.2 (W.B. Yeats) 1938

A Celtic folk-tale is conjured up in a quirky rhythm in odd-metres. It is a lovely combination of old-fashioned story-telling, the irony of which is made more poignant by the trademark harmonic bite. The bittersweet melody and contrapuntal textures reflect the new direction Barber’s music was taking after he spent two years living and travelling in Europe.

Sure on this shining night – Op.13, No.1 (James Agee) 1938

One of the greatest songs of the 20th Century, this song reminds of Robert Schumann in that the melody is echoed in a piano melody and supported by repeated chords. It has been recorded often, arranged as a choral work, and orchestrated by Barber. I enjoyed hearing Julia Metzler’s performance And of course Cheryl Studer in the now famous DGG recording of the complete songs.

Nocturne – Op.13, No.4 (Frederic Prokosch) 1940

This is another song with rich and luminous textures which lent itself to orchestration. Conjuring up the magic of night, the melody encompasses broad leaps, and some surprisingly angular intervals that become achingly tender when supported on waves of rich harmony. Despite many chromatic excursions, tonality is never abandoned and the piano filigree ripples through the water-imagery with Debussian delicacy. This song is hauntingly beautiful,  and exemplary of Barberian melancholy.

The Queen’s face on the summery coin Op.18, No.1 (Robert Horan) 1942

A much more complex Barber is encountered here. Written in the year of his “Second Essay for Orchestra” which the composer said himself reflected “that it was written in wartime”, the work uses canon and modal elements to create a work which does sit as uneasily on the heart as it does on the ear, stuck between a minor and diminished chord resolution.

Monks and Raisins Op.18, No.2 (Jose Garcia Villa) 1943

The quirky 7/8 rhythm is a perfect vehicle for this comic tale of pink monks eating blue raisins and blue monks eating pink raisins. By the time the storyteller eats both colours together one’s head is spinning with “the blue and the pink counterpointing”!

Nuvoletta Op. 25 (James Joyce) 1947

Joyce’s method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit in some of his works such as “Finnegan’s Wake”. Barber seems to follow the text in the same manner of free association and with a tongue-in-cheek- flutter of Nuvoletta’s light dress, the music disappears, and one is left trying to make sense of the recollections. Barber claimed in a radio interview that he included a few ironic quotes from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”. I am still learning this piece, and therefore I am still on the look-out for said quotation!

The recitals with Judith Kellock will include “Try me Good King”, a cycle by Libby Larsen, as well as “Four American Songs” by South African composer Peter Louis van Dijk.

Judith Kellock's CD of Barber Songs

By Dr. Karl Paulnack, Director of the Music Division of Boston Conservatory. Reprinted with the author’s permission.

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, “you’re wasting your SAT scores!” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they loved music: they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940 and imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose, and fortunate to have musician colleagues in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist. Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the Nazi camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-even from the concentration camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

In September of 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. On the morning of September 12, 2001 I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

Very few of you have ever been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but with few exceptions there is some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks. Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in a small Midwestern town a few years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. The concert in the nursing home was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”

Do napisania postu zachęciły mnie wyszukiwania, dzięki którym Czytelnicy trafiają na ten blog (“muzyka klasyczna top”, “smutna klasyka poważna”, “muzyka klasyczna od czego zacząć”). Oznaczają one, że istnieje zapotrzebowanie na a) wpisy typu “muzyka poważna dla początkujących – lista” oraz b) wpisy o smutnej muzyce klasycznej. Jest to więc lista typu “ponura klasyka dla początkujących”. A oto utwory, w porządku chronologicznym, wraz z linkami do wykonań i tytułami innych polecanych dzieł danego kompozytora:

1919: Edward Elgar – Koncert wiolonczelowy. O tym już było na blogu. Koncert napisany przez brytyjskiego mistrza melodii pod wpływem wstrząsu pierwszej wojny światowej. Stosunkowo mało nowoczesne w formie, ale porażająco piękne. Polecane: Enigma Variations, Sea Pictures.

1938: Samuel Barber – Adagio for Strings. A o tym, to było aż dwa razy. Utwór popularny w Ameryce od samej premiery, grany na pogrzebie prezydenta Kennedy’ego, a potem przypomniany w filmie Pluton. Polecane: Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Koncert skrzypcowy.

1942: Dymitr Szostakowicz – VII symfonia “Leningradzka”. Najtrudniejszy w odbiorze utwór na tej liście. Powstał w dość przerażających okolicznościach, a mianowicie w oblężonym przez wojska niemieckie Sankt Petersburgu (wtedy Leningradzie). Polecane: V Symfonia, III oraz VIII kwartet smyczkowy, I koncert wiolonczelowy.

1976: Henryk Mikołaj Górecki – III symfonia “Symfonia pieśni żałosnych”. Poprzez tekst środkowej części  również związana z wojną. Po prawie dwudziestu latach od premiery stała się światowym bestsellerem. Polecane: Trzy fragmenty w starym stylu, Totus Tuus.

1977: Arvo Pärt – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. Brytyjski kompozytor, którego pamięci dedykowany jest ten utwór, też napisał kilka rzeczy nadających się na tę listę (z War Requiem na czele). Zaś  Estończyk Arvo Pärt to prawdopodobnie najważniejszy współczesny twórca muzyki klasycznej. Polecane: Fratres, Tabula Rasa, Miserere.

Zachęcam do słuchania.

]]> http://todosossentidos.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/quem-tem-medo-da-musica-classica/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:00:01 +0000 Neo http://todosossentidos.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/quem-tem-medo-da-musica-classica/

“Adagio for Strings, op. 11″ é a peça mais famosa do compositor americano Samuel Barber, talvez por fazer parte da trilha sonora do filme Platoon, lançado em 1986 com enorme sucesso nos cinemas. Neste vídeo a peça é tocada pela Orquestra da BBC e conduzida pelo maestro Leonard Slatkin no Albert Hall em Londres no dia 15/09/2001, pouco depois do ataque terrorista que destruiu as Torres Gêmeas, nos EUA.

O Adagio é um andamento musical lento, o que pode dar uma característica melancólica e triste à música, mas geram melodias de uma riqueza ímpar. Esta emocionante peça foi tocada nos funerais de Franklin Roosevelt e do Príncipe Rainier de Mônaco…

Arrepiante!

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Eu já conhecia e gostava desta peça, mas a dica e informações são do blog Micaman’s Thoughts.