Dead-Composers Society

[Parker Owens]

1 hour ago, AC Benus said:

Waldteufel78 performs "Samt und Seide" (Velvet and Silk) from Carl Michael Ziehrer's operetta Der Fremdenführer (The Tour Guide). A rendering like this shows how late-era waltzes smoothly contributed to the formation of Ragtime in the 1890s (in Saint Louis, its birthplace. The first Rag was printed there in 1896).

 

I can hear exactly what you mean about how music like this leading to rag’s development. 
Additionally, I’d argue that this performer’s video is an excellent reason for changing customary concert dress.  

[Parker Owens]

Events have me in this frame of mind tonight.

 

[AC Benus]

Carl Michael Ziehrer's "From the Danube to the Spree" from 1900 

 

[AC Benus]

Better than a cup of joe on a cool autumn morning, Herbert von Karajan leads the Berliner Philharmoniker in a rousing interpretation of Carl Maria von Weber's overture to Euryanthe

 

[AC Benus]

L'amico Fritz. Before Puccini, there was Mascagni -- and what a glorious production this is

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

 

[Zombie]

The day Jeff Buckley (1966-97) sang Dido’s Lament, by Henry Purcell (1659-95)

This was never meant to be recorded and preserved for all time. Like most live music performances, it would exist only in that moment, forever lost when time moved on.

We have it because some bootlegger in the audience captured it on a crappy recording device but, despite the poor recording, the amazing quality of Jeff Buckley’s voice shines through, loaded with feeling and emotion.
It is my favourite recording of this song.

 

Some background on how Jeff came to sing this song, which was written c 300 years before his time, can be found in a book by Jeff's manager (Dave Lory) “Jeff Buckley: from Hallelujah to Last Goodbye", Post Hill Press, 2018

'We had a small shopping list of stuff Jeff had asked us to pick up: peppermint tea, black hair dye, and a CD of “Dido’s Lament.”

The week after Glastonbury, Jeff had been booked to appear at Meltdown, another prestigious annual event, held in London at the Royal Festival Hall. Each year an artist known for being eclectic was made guest curator of a week of genre-crossing concerts, and that year’s curator was Elvis Costello, who had invited Jeff to sing with an orchestra. 

After discussing singing some Mahler in the original German, Jeff decided he wanted to try “Dido’s Lament.” Sam had located a music shop in Bath where we could pick up the CD. It was a tiny place up a steep hill, so small that six skinny people would fill it. There were no racks; you just asked at the counter for what you wanted. An old guy was serving, and when I asked for a copy of “Dido’s Lament” for one of my male artists, he laughed and told me no man could sing it. The only other person in the store was a young dude, around eighteen years old, who asked which artist it was for. “Jeff Buckley,” I said. He turned to the shopkeeper and said, “Jeff Buckley can sing it.” I laughed, tickled that word about Jeff had reached out here ...

The show was a few days later and, although not quite a black-tie event, the atmosphere was very formal—the crowd was seemingly classical music fans having a daring night out. There were some priceless looks on their faces when this rumpled dude came out and started singing. It was so much fun watching their reaction that I hardly watched Jeff. But he sounded incredible.

That kid in the Bath music store knew what he was talking about. I got chills.

Elvis Costello: “When he started singing ‘Dido’s Lament,’ there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here’s a guy shuffling up onstage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of a specifically developed voice, and he’s just singing, not doing it like a party piece but doing something with it.” “

”That’s an understatement,” says cellist Philip Sheppard, who was in the orchestra. “I remember the silhouette of his frame as he bent almost double to wrench every ounce of meaning from a song written three hundred years ago. Better than any classical musician I’ve ever heard. It’s probably the greatest musical experience of my life; it turned my world inside out…made me realize I was a musician who played through study rather than played through feel, an incredibly pivotal moment for me. I think about him nearly every day, which is quite strange really, because I only met him for about half an hour.”

Edited November 19, 2023 by Zombie

[AC Benus]

Victor Julien-Laferrière, and Marie Jacquot leading the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, perform Korngold's cello concerto in January of 2023.

(I start the vid with the ravishing second subject of the first movement) 

 

[Parker Owens]

Isn’t that wonderful? Korngold is one of my favorites. 

[AC Benus]

Gérard Poulet and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra -- led by Vladimír Válek -- perform the most convincing version of Lalo's famous Concerto Russe I've heard

 

 

Edited March 24 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

Valentine's Day, and once again I present the most perfect chocolate-box opera to give your love. Vincent Martín i Soler's 1788 L'arbore di Diana. High-minded Cupid comes down to frigid Diana's sacred grove to spice things up. And oh, do things get hot! 

Of musical note is the opening number of three nymphos, um, nymphs discovering a lush young man in their grove. Da Ponte's scene here was later rolled into a similar situation in Mozart's Magic Flute, and the music shows it. 

 

Edited February 14 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

Four of Renée de Brimont's same-sex love poems were set to music by Gabriel Fauré as Mirages ["Illusions"] in 1919. Here is the third of the series called Jardin nocturne ["Nocturnal Garden"] performed by Marianne Crebassa. The text follows.

 

Jardin nocturne

by Renée de Brimont

 

Nocturne jardin tout empli de silence,

voici que la lune ouverte se balance

en des voiles d'or fluides et légers;

elle semble proche et cependant lointaine...

Son visage rit au cœur de la fontaine

et l'ombre pâlit sous les noirs orangers.

 

Nul bruit, si ce n'est le faible bruit de l'onde

fuyant goutte à goutte au bord des vasques rondes,

ou le bleu frisson d'une brise d'été,

furtive parmi des palmes invisibles...

Je sais, ô jardin, vos caresses sensibles

et votre languide et chaude volupté!

 

Je sais votre paix délectable et morose,

vos parfums d'iris, de jasmins et de roses,

vos charmes troublés de désirs et d'ennui...

ô jardin muet! -- L'eau des vasques s'égoutte

avec un bruit faible et magique... J'écoute

ce baiser qui chante aux lèvres de la Nuit.

 

 

Nocturnal Garden

 

A nocturnal garden filled with silence

the open moon sways

in light, flowing veils of gold;

she seems near and yet far away...

Her face laughs in the heart of the fountain

and the shadows pale beneath the black orange trees.

 

No sound but the faint sound of the wave

dripping on the edge of the round basins,

or the blue shiver of a summer breeze,

furtive among invisible palms...

I know, O garden, your sensitive caresses

and your warm, languid voluptuousness!

 

I know your delectable, morose peace,

your fragrances of iris, jasmine and rose,

your charms troubled with desire and ennui...

O mute garden! -- The water in the basins drips

with a faint, magical sound... I listen

to the kiss that sings on the lips of Night.

 

[DeepL translation]

 

 

Edited February 16 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

Sometimes, people get stuck on Faure’s Requiem, and never explore his other works. While Requiem is wonderful, you’ve posted something that shows us how much more there is to hear. 

[Zombie]

TV companies sometimes commission surprisingly good quality original compositions for their shows. This is Jim Parker’s Agnus Dei, a short but beautiful piece written for the second episode of ITV’s popular police detective series Midsomer Murders, Death Of A Hollow Man, first shown in 1998

 

Edit: silly zombie - Agnus not Angus!

Edited February 17 by Zombie

[Parker Owens]

3 hours ago, Zombie said:

TV companies sometimes commission surprisingly good quality original compositions for their shows. This is Jim Parker’s Angus Dei, a short but beautiful piece written for the second episode of ITV’s popular police detective series Midsomer Murders, Death Of A Hollow Man, first shown in 1998

 

 

One can only hope that this lovely piece has seen many other live performances. 

[Zombie]

I messed up editing my post, mistakenly creating this new post instead which I can’t delete

So here’s a bonus post - a fascinating and weirdly beautiful version of Prelude #1in C major from Book 1 of JS Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier

Bach is famous not just for his music, but also his compositional technique, reversing + inverting phrases throughout many of his works.

This is an entire piece (the prelude) that’s been ‘inverted’ by American composer, Andrey Stolyarov. 

Although turning the music ‘upside down’ keeps the same rhythm, it changes the key from C major into a diminished minor and creates something very surprising, completely different in sound, mysterious and wonderful. You’ll want to play it again!
 

 

Edited February 18 by Zombie

[AC Benus]

Oddly, this 1837 scherzo movement reminds me strongly of Mahler 

 

[AC Benus]

I found this recording on youtube this morning! I bought the CD containing this chamber music nearly 30 years ago, and it's the first time I'm seeing it online.

This Ukrainian composer is the Russian Empire's Haydn, having composed numerous works throughout a long career, including the hymn that became Russia's national anthem before the Bolsheviks replaced it.

The Moscow Ancient Music Ensemble perform Bortniansky's 1790 Piano Septet 

 

Edited March 24 by AC Benus

[Parker Owens]

The only piece of Bortniansky’s I knew was that hymn tune (the Russian anthem as it was). This is a revelation. 

[AC Benus]

 

[AC Benus]

More from the "They Keep So Much From Us" category. Who out there discusses the irrefutable fact that Mahler's song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen -- for tenor -- is Gay af?

In it, the protagonist first laments his love is getting married; but mein Schatz is the male form. So, a Gay guy is bummed his sweetheart -- a man -- is falling into the trap of conformity and marrying a woman. 

This tone sets up the entire morose atmosphere of the cycle, coming back around several times in the grammar to hammer home the situation that the be-grieved, lost love is a man. 

When others try to hide this by having sopranos sing the cycle, the grammar is messed up because the singer also has to be male for the syntax to function correctly.

There is simply no argument to be made that Mahler did not "mean" same-sex love to be discussed here, as he himself wrote the text

 

[Parker Owens]

You make two excellent points about this beautiful piece. The first is that this is clearly intended as a same-sex love lament. The language you explain makes it clear, and the music cements it. What or who impelled Mahler to write this, I wonder?  
 

The second, unarticulated one, is that in order to keep this kind of understanding in the minds of just a very few, we teach the barest minimum of foreign languages and music. It’s no surprise that both of these subjects are on the chopping blocks at both college and high school all over the country. 

[AC Benus]

1 hour ago, Parker Owens said:

You make two excellent points about this beautiful piece. The first is that this is clearly intended as a same-sex love lament. The language you explain makes it clear, and the music cements it. What or who impelled Mahler to write this, I wonder?  

The second, unarticulated one, is that in order to keep this kind of understanding in the minds of just a very few, we teach the barest minimum of foreign languages and music. It’s no surprise that both of these subjects are on the chopping blocks at both college and high school all over the country. 

And as I understand it, this song cycle meant a great deal to the composer, for though there is a made-up origin story involving a girl, who was actually no more than an acquaintance of the young man -- crafted decades later by a clean-up crew of biographers -- Mahler kept coming back to this early composition to revise it, and ultimately, provide full orchestration for it in the 1890s

No one would write this as a reaction to anything but a rejection of one man's love for another 

[AC Benus]

If you know, you know. Niccolò Piccinni is more responsible for 21st century musical stagecraft than almost anyone else. Not only did his Cecchina of 1760 establish the model of what a perfect comic opera (or play, for that matter) should be, his Iphigénie en Tauride won 'the battle of the clowns' in Paris (over Gluck) and established beyond refute Le grand opéra. No opera coming after Iphigénie en Tauride would remain unaffected.

But besides laurels, Cecchina remains perennially fresh. The action married to the music is timless and spiritually refreshing. Love will win. And his Iphigénie en Tauride is ever majestic and tragic on the stage; an intoxicatingly well-balanced draught of chorus usage, the dance, solos and ensanbles to tell an ancient Greek tale as vital and real as your own heartbeat. 

Here is Jordi Castella performing O Notte, o Dea del mistero solo on piano

 

Edited April 6 by AC Benus