“Magnificat in D, BWV 243: 3. Quia Respexit Humilitatem; 4. Omnes Generationes” by Johann Sebastian Bach [1733] performed by Maria Stader with Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Orchestra & Choir [1979]

Lest you forget that music could be so sublime… here is the soprano aria and exhilarating chorus that follows it from Bach’s Magnificat. This older recording was paired with the same musicians performing Bach’s other most famous choral work, Cantata #140 “Wachet Auf.” The album has been re-released multiple times since the 1979 original, although it appears to be out of print at present. [Amazon]

“Concerto for Recorder, Strings & Continuo in C major, TWV 51:C1 - I. Allegretto” by Georg Philipp Telemann [1725-1735] performed by Michala Petri with Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Inoa Brown [July 1980]

Michala Petri reminds us all that the recorder, now an important music teaching tool with children, was once a legitimate concert instrument. This Telemann concerto, written sometime between 1725 and 1735 in Hamburg, Germany, appeared during the instrument’s Baroque-era peak. 

Georg Philipp Telemann, hand-colored aquatint by Valentin Daniel Preisler, after a lost painting by Louis Michael Schneider, 1750.

“I Love You, Earth” by Yoko Ono [1985]

Last week for class I read an intriguing recent article by Benjamin Lazier about how humans (primarily, or at least initially Americans/Westerners) re-conceptualized their place in the universe after what the author deemed the “Earthrise era.” Lazier argued that photographs such as the famous “Earthrise” [1968] and “Blue Marble” [1972] images (see below) altered the way people viewed the relationship between themselves and the planet on which they live. It was no coincidence, he argued, that the language used by the modern environmental movement formalized in this context. James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis stands as possibly the most famous example. According to Lazier, the new “global environment” set up an “organic alternative to the runaway artifactualism of its technological competitor.” 

In class we debated some of Lazier’s finer points, but ultimately conceded that he was right based on the fact that seeing the whole earth—as photographic images that lack the cultural baggage we map onto globes—no longer creates the self-questioning awe it did in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As Lazier said, “Views of Earth are now so ubiquitous as to go unremarked.”

(The “Earthrise” image, beamed back to our home planet on Christmas Eve, 1968, also gives me a chance to plug the 1968 Exhibit, which finally opens at the Minnesota History Center a week from today, October 14.) 

Evidence for Lazier’s argument plays out across many cultural mindscapes. While there were certainly folk and pop songs before 1968 that reflected a Romantic desire to return to nature or to escape urbanism for a pastoral setting, songs like the one posted above simply could not have existed before the “Earthrise” era. The way Yoko Ono presents Earth as not only a single entity, but also as a pseudo-deity (earth with a capital “E”), owes itself to the drastic conceptual change sparked by such images. I would add to these real images space-race era science fiction in general, but especially the Richard Strauss opening credits and Johann Strauss waltz sequences in Stanley Kubricks’ 2001: A Space Odyessy, which preceded (and foreshadowed) the “Earthrise” image reaching a wide audience by some eight months. Notice also the cover art for Ono’s album. Holding the whole Earth in her hands played on both the earlier spiritual song’s metaphoric meaning and the newer idea of the global environment set against the void (as Lazier says). 

Yesterday I posted a song about Karl Marx. A friend of mine suggested another representative music idea that owes itself to Marx: the conductorless orchestra. This is a video of the first and arguably most famous such orchestra of the 20th century: Persimfans. The group was founded in 1922 specifically on Marxist ideals. I tried but failed to find either an audio or video recording of the original group, which was active until 1932. Read more about the first incarnation.

Anyway, here is the revamped Persimfans performing Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Of course, to deal with the practical matter of not having a leader, the orchestra sits in a circle so each member can play off the others.

String Quartet No. 1, “The Kreutzer Sonata:” III. Con moto-Vivace-Adante by Leoš Janáček [1924] performed by Julliard String Quartet [1996]

Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1 was his third piece based on Tolstoy’s novel The Kreutzer Sonata. Of the three, it is the only one to have survived to the modern day in its entirety. Paralleling the book, “according to Josef Suk, who led the premiere of the quartet on October 17, 1924, Janácek wished with this work to protest the tyranny of men over women” (1). “’I was imagining a poor woman, tormented and run down, just like the one the Russian writer Tolstoy describes in his Kreutzer Sonata’, Janáček confided in one of his letters to his young friend Kamila Stösslová” (2).

“La Flûte enchantée” from Shéhérazade by Maurice Ravel [1904] performed by Hans-Martin Schneidt and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra with Gisella Pasino [1991]

An Exploration of Music and Poetry, Day 5: Layers

In the introduction to this music and poetry playlist, I said we would skip over most of classical art songs that set published poetry to music. I lied. I swapped in this early Ravel work because it highlights just how entwined the two art forms can become. 

Ravel first composed a work around the Persian story Shéhérazade in 1899. In fact, that overture was his first major concert piece. A few years later he returned to the theme with a short three song cycle for soprano, based on the poetry of multi-dimensional artist Tristan Klingsor (whose pseudonym comes straight from Wagnerian opera). The middle movement gave Klingsor’s poem “La Flûte enchantée” (“The Enchanted Flute”) an appropriate musical setting.

The shade is sweet and my master sleeps,
Wearing a conical silk bonnet,
With his long yellow nose in his white beard.
But I, I wake again
And hear outside
The song of a flute pour forth
By turns sadness and joy.
A song by turns languorous and frivolous
Which my dear lover plays,
And when I approach by the window.
It seems to me that each note steals away
From the flute toward my cheek
Like a mysterious kiss.

In other words, we have a poem about a musical subject, set to music. Moreover, the words of the poem describe the ebb and flow of the flute’s melodies, which mirror the tempo and rhythm of the poetic phrases themselves.

See? Layers. I think you get the idea. 

“Der Lindenbaum” from Winterreise, Op. 89 by Franz Schubert [1827] performed by Thomas Hampson and Wolfgang Sawallisch [1997]

An Exploration of Music and Poetry, Day 1: Intro

Music and poetry. One can utilize, incorporate, inspire, or simply be the subject of the other. For the next few weeks Music History will post songs and poems from a few specific eras and contexts that provide insight into the various relationships between poetry and music.

Music History has previously looked at a number of classical art songs, many of which took their words from works of famous poets. Today, we will use “Der Lindenbaum” as nothing more than an introduction. The song, a typical Schubert Lied, comes from his 24-song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey). Each song was a musical setting of the poems of Wilhelm Müller, a German poet who died at age 33 before hearing any of Schubert’s work. 

A second reason I chose “Der Lindenbaum” as an introduction is that its words parallel (inspired?) the famous 20th century poetic children’s story The Giving Tree by Shel Silversteen. See for yourself:

He comes to the linden tree, with its pale flowers and heart-shaped leaves. that stands at the gate; in the shade of this tree he has dreamt many beautiful dreams, and in the bark he has carved words of love. It was his favourite place. Now he passes it with his eyes shut, even though it is deepest night, but the branches rustle to him, ‘Come here old comrade, find your rest here’. A gust of wind blows his hat off, and many hours afterwards he remembers the tree, and it seems to say ‘You should have found your rest here.’ It is a tacit invitation to suicide. (via)

I have already had fun putting this playlist together and I hope you, Music History followers, find it both unique and interesting. Thanks!

“Minuet 1 & 2” from Music for Royal Fireworks by George Frideric Handel [1749] performed by Karl Münchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra [1982]

I’ve tried to ignore the royal wedding happening tomorrow because I think the obsession over a wedding that would mean something only if it were occurring 300 years ago is a bit overdone. Still, to appease those of you who will be rising in just a few hours to watch the pomp and pageantry, I give you music by Handel that was written and performed for King George II in 1749—or just a few years after Sir Robert Walpole first proved the need for a “prime minister” in the King’s cabinet.

(Image: George II - via)

Pelléas Et Méllisande, Op.46 - 9. “Mélisande’s Death” by Jean Sibelius [1905] performed by Paavo Berglund and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra [2001]

I just posted a couple days ago about coming to terms with saying a final goodbye to my grandmother last weekend. Well, she passed away earlier tonight, still sooner that we expected. This sublime Sibelius piece conveys my and my parents’ emotions all too well so I’ll leave it at that tonight.

“Sanctus” from Messe propre pour les Couvents by François Couperin [1690] performed by Pierre-Yves Asselin [1984]

In 1690, at the ripe old age of 22, François Couperin composed two masses for organ that remain among the most famous works of French organ music. They immediately brought notice that the young Couperin had the potential to surpass the status of his many talented musical relatives.

This recording by Canadian-born organist Pierre-Yves Asselin includes interspersed readings, just as the Santcus portion of the mass would have been performed in the late 17th century. Moreover, the organ you hear is an original French Baroque organ from the church of Saint Christopher in the French Town of Houdan (see below), built by L.A. Clicquot in 1734. (Info taken from the liner notes to the album 10 Glorious Organs in Europe.)

(images via)

Simply beautiful. (See also this humorous anecdote.)