There are a ton of Mozart Violin Sonatas out there and I’ve posted all of them below but you can also see them individually at IMSLP, or the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, where all of Mozart’s works, analysis of editorial issues and other scholarly stuff is cataloged.
The earlier K numbers in the set of sonatas were (as would make sense considering the catalog is based on the chronological order of the works written by Mozart) written at a very early age, when Mozart was barely a pup. Accordingly the music is extremely simple, with the violinist playing an accompaniment role to the piano (I’m sure these works get played even less because all the diva violinists hate playing accompaniment). The later sonatas are far more mature, with some being written around the time Don Giovanni was.
I recently posted my latest work on the site here along with a description and the texts used in the songs. I haven’t gotten around to syncing the nice audio and the HD video for The Arrow and The Song but I have posted To Mary, Sonnet 138 and Hymn on Circles and Lines’ Youtube channel. Below are the videos, enjoy.
Last Sunday I went to see Redhooker and Arturo en el Barco at Le Poisson Rouge. Arturo en el Barco (AEEB) was the “opener” for Redhooker even though they appeared afterward. AEEB is headed by Angélica Négron, a member of my composer consortium Circles and Lines, so I won’t be reviewing them as it would be a conflict of interest except to say that (as always) she was great.
Redhooker is headed up by guitarist Stephen Griesgraber and featured violinists Maxim Moston, Andie Springer and Peter Hess on Bass Clarinet. The band is a crossover act which mixes classical art music and a mellow electronica which blends together into a nice minimal texture. In Sunday’s show, all of the tunes played were slow and undulating, usually building up to an understated emotional peak and then concluding similarly to the way the song began. The songs mostly consisted of Mr. Griesgraber setting an ostinato on his guitar and Mr. Hess laying down a flowing bass line that would counterpoint nicely to the violins on top. Ms. Springer and Mr. Moston would start by introducing simple melodic fragments and then elongate them as the piece progressed. Sometimes there would be vamps, or time taken for the various instruments in the band to create electronic distortions.
Rarely did any of the of sound textures move beyond the simplicity of these ideas. This is part of appeal, but sometimes during the “open” bars for the band members to explore the grunge of feedback loops or other effects, the band would loose control of the sound. I am sure that this was intentional, and it clashed with the vanilla, demure sounds the band was creating at all other times. In a more contrived setting (like their album) it is far more effective. Overall the show was enjoyable. Simple, unagitated music is a nice conclusion to a week of studying all other kinds of classical music.
I was first introduced to this video a few years ago and my first thoughts, (before my general revulsion towards the aesthetics of the work manifested) were that this work is a seriously poor allocation of resources. If you think about the money sunk into the work to contract and fly the four helicopters for the day, along with their retrofitting to make it possible to record, it becomes very clear that the grant money, or private funds expended could have been used to put on so many other works (hell, even by the same composer) here on the ground where other people can listen, live.
I know that half of the point of the work is its luxurious irony, but at the time of Helicopter String Quartet’s premiere (1995), classical music was already overextending itself in that many great composers thought they could write anything and it would be successful (critically or economically). This is part of the reason why new classical music is viewed as out of touch or irrelevant to many people, the artists have radicalized the art form into something unapproachable for the lay listener. Alex Ross underscores this nicely in the context of the String Quartet:
It was not, as Mr. Stockhausen claimed, important research into new sound materials, nor anything of consequence in purely musical terms. It was a grandiose absurdist entertainment, not unlike Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstag back in Berlin.
Aside from my aesthetic rejection of the music, the concept of the work is quite entertaining, surely it was meant to press buttons (it has mine). But once again I find myself returning to my original, economic peeve; there must be a cheaper way to piss listeners off?
These are songs for Mezzo Soprano and Piano that I wrote a few months ago and were performed at the latest Circles and Lines concert in December. I’ll hopefully have recordings for you all soon. The texts are below each blurb about the piece.
The cycle is intended to have a key around F (but I have no problem with transpositions). The first song, To Mary takes the hyper simple motif of a scale and plays around with it. It’s in Ternary form (An F Minor-C Minor-F Minor harmonic under pinning) that is achieved just by raising Db to a D natural, the difference between F Minor and C minor. The introduction’s scalar patterns have this effect going on in a microcosm of the entire work’s harmonic structure.
Beloved! amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path-
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose)-
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.
And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea-
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms- but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o’er that one bright island smile.
-Edgar Allan Poe
The second song in the set, Hymn, is also in ternary form, with a harmonic arc of Bb, Eb, Bb. The idea, once again, is to have the plagal micro-surface-motion that is heard in the bell like beating of the piano to also be reflected in the larger harmonic structure. The harmonic language I used in this work was an attempt to explore how extended dissonances can rub up against the basic supporting chordal units, yet still maintain a consonant quality. What I ended up with were some very colorful affects.
At morn – at noon – at twilight dim –
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe – in good and ill –
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
-Edgar Allan Poe
Sonnet 138 was an exploration of axial tonality. I chose a mode of B, C Db, F, F#, G and tried to construct a key center of C but not stray too far into a limited version of functional tonality (by going C-F-G-C). Most of the chords and melodies are constructed through interval quality with which I tried to maximize angularity. The work is a sonata form, but that is coincidental as the real goal was to fashion a symmetrical form that reflected the mode.
When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young.
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both side thus is simple truth suppress’d:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
-Shakespeare
In the recent performance, the order of Hymn and Sonnet 138 were switched. I am currently conflicted about the order, because the performance order I just mentioned has much a better arc and a more fulfilling aesthetic purpose. I also find that Bb Hymn can make sense right before the final key area of F major in The Arrow and The Song as it reflects the plagal motion instilled in it. Alternatively, the key area of C in Sonnet 138 fits the more traditional billing of being the dominant to The Arrow and The Song‘s final tonic in F. I believe that in future editions of this work I am going to have the order be:
To Mary
Sonnet 138
Hymn
The Arrow and The Song
Traditional harmonic practice isn’t all that good of a reason to keep something that wants to be a certain way from being that way.
The Arrow and The Song is a cute show piece with three sections for each stanza in the text the song is based on. This work was mainly about exploring text painting while throwing bizarre notes into what is really just simple, functional harmony to reflect the jocularity of the text. The text is kind of cheesy and cheerful, so it’s hard not to have a bright compositional color.
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
This is the first complete quartet I performed in public setting, so it holds a special place of malice in my heart. The struggle that the viola and cello have in getting those 16th notes in the opening bar to match in articulation and duration is frustrating. As always, these are re-hosted from IMSLP.
Greg Sandow has a seriesofposts on diversity in classical music where the principle idea is derived from Ramon Ricker’s quote:
Thinking about the well-documented changing demographic of the US towards greater numbers of citizens with other than European (read: white) ancestry, I can’t believe that this population, in 50 years or probably less, will want to sit in a concert hall and listen to Mahler. It’s not in their DNA or culture. And that’s not a put down. They also don’t get exposure to this music in schools. If I keep going along this line of thinking, I don’t see a bright future for “classical” music in general or US orchestras in particular. Sure this music will be with us, but will professional musicians be able to make a living playing it? That’s already difficult to do today in all but the largest US cities.
…
When trying to envision the future, I am reminded of this quote that is attributed to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. It’s a good one. When asked how he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and consequentially scored more goals than others, he replied, “I don’t go where the puck is. I go to where the puck will be.” Orchestras and musicians—maybe we should try to be like Gretzky.
When reading this, the first thing that comes to mind is that these ideas are already well on their way to being implemented. Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, the ascendancy of Osvoldo Golijov, and Philip Glass’ Orion are all examples of pressures on classical music to expand the cultural heritage of western classical music.
In one of the subsequent posts that Sandow made, he reiterated one of his own conclusions that:
The classical music world doesn’t look outside itself enough, doesn’t understand what’s happening elsewhere in our culture.
To this point, I disagree. In the current new music scene, world music, which seeks to adopt other culture’s music into the classical heritage, is one of the most significant threads. Cross over acts between art/avant-pop and classical music are also becoming more frequent. Head over to New Amsterdam Records and you’ll find a plethora of different, interesting takes on where art music is heading. If I may offer a more specific conclusion to be drawn, it is that most classical music institutions are cloistered, failing to look outside.
This is understandable though, the major donors and patrons of these institutions are the gray haired audiences that attend the current concerts, programmed with music which is usually over a century old. Since these institutions are supported by people who want to hear 19th century music, they have every incentive to continue to put on a restricted program, even if it doesn’t make any long term economic sense.
This ascendancy of world music in the scene could be accounted for as some sort of market pressure to expand classical music’s horizons for a more diverse audience, but I’ve always seen it as something else. The world music thread provided an aesthetic “out” for western music. For quite a while, a work’s ability to delimit what music canbe has judged it’s significance in the 20th century pantheon (open a music history text book and peruse the museum of addled ideas that, while philosophically correct, have done more than anything else to engender the idea that classical music is for sophists). World music’s “out” has provided institutions and composers a way to an accessible aesthetic while also allowing them to avoid charges of being sell outs, cheesy, or old fashioned.
That this movement in classical music has also begun to broaden audience demographics (see the example Sandow cited from another commenter) is fantastic. I hope that it continues to be a part of the classical tradition even as us musicians and composers go about fixing the “western side” of the music. Ramon Ricker should know, though, we’re is already heading for where the puck will be, but that doesn’t mean we’ll score.
One of my favorite contemporary composers and a fantastic young orchestra. Listening to this particular work is interesting, as I generally think of Golijov as a world music composer, and yet these songs must have fascinated the arranger so much that he would use his orchestration style to mingle with the Romanticism of Schubert. The result is a placid exhale of neo-romanticism that lingers on in my early morning, jet-lagged stupor.
I find this effect to be very different from the original Schubert piano-soprano arrangements, as the first three songs in the set Golijov used have much more Strum and Drang (This is fitting as the text is by Goethe). Take a listen and you’ll hear how Schubert’s more overt “longing” and “suffering” get bent into something more bittersweet and nostalgic. I think that this is partly due to the color changes that come from an orchestral arrangement.
I have the video of The Knights playing it below, and beneath the break are the original renditions of the songs by Schubert.
A unique chamber music program featuring young up-and-coming composers Angelica Negron, Noam Faingold, Conrad Winslow, Eric Lemmon and Dylan Glatthorn, with world premieres by Lemmon and Glatthorn will be offered at the historical venue, Greenwich House, on December 10th, 2009 at 8pm. The program features solo works as well as duos and trios drawing from a wide range of influences including ambient/electronica, rock, tango, minimalism and traditional classical.
Circles and Lines is a new composers consortium dedicated to providing an eclectic and accessible sample of compositional styles in contemporary classical music.
Program
LEMMON – Love Songs –
(Mezzo Soprano, Piano) Annie Rosen, Ruka Shironishi
FAINGOLD – Tango Variations –
(Double Basses) Matthew Rosenthal, Matt Weber
WINSLOW – Slippery Music –
(Violin, Cello, Piano) Joshua Modney, Isabel Castellvi,
Baris Buyukildirim
GLATTHORN – Fantasy for 171st Street –
(Oboe, Bassoon, Piano) I-Shan Cheng, Matt Rosenberg, Manuel Laufer
-intermission-
WINSLOW – Getting There –
(Violin, Bass, Percussion) Josh Modney, Greg Chudzik,
Matt Donello
NEGRON – PSR –
(Accordian, Piano) Angelica Negron, Lucia Caruso
FAINGOLD – A Knife in the Water –
(Violin, Cello) Andie Springer, Alisa Horn
$5 at the door. The closest subway stop is the Christopher St. stop on the 1 train.
