16 Perfect "Chosen" Bars for Sunday

Note: This article contains a music track auto-generated by YouTube which might not be playable outside the USA.  There are several other performances available there, though.

I'll never stop singing the praises of Herbert Howells (1892-1983), one of the greatest British composers of all time in my humble opinion.  Widely known for his choral music, Howells also excelled in instrumental music of all shapes and sizes, including his brass band classic Pageantry and his luscious Rhapsodic Quintet.  Far lower on the fame rung are his piano works, few of which were published in his lifetime, perhaps due to the fact that he never had a really big work (no sonatas like Bax or Tippett) except for large sets, chiefly his brilliant Elizabethan throwback sets Lambert's Clavichord and Howells's Clavichord.  In the late '90's Thames Publishing, a sheet music outfit I've never heard of before, published a two-volume collection of his shorter piano works with dreadfully dull green covers, and for the benefit of everybody who likes good things the most wonderful Margaret Fingerhut recorded a pile of those works along with a couple previously published: selections from Lambert's Clavichord and one of his last works, a Sonatina written for a piano competition.  I'll get to more Howells later (especially the Two Folk Dances recorded on that same album), but for now I'd like to look at a piece which should have long ago become a standard encore piece, not just for piano concerts but for pretty much any concert - and considering how beautiful the piece is I'd bet even big-time composers would work for free just to get the chance to arrange it.

The introduction to the Thames edition sums it up quite nicely:

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That's quite a bit of backstory for such a short piece, a mere 16 bars, but its concentrated artistry and resounding beauty justify its lengthy, personal germination.  Howells was very much a Pastoralist, my label for the English style of Impressionism that dominated the first half of the 20th century on the fair isles, and here we have one of his most soulful tunes, obviously influenced by his native folk music but crafted for maximum harmonic depth.  It was originally published for violin and piano as part of a set but to be honest I think a violin would only rupture the hymn-like perfection of the part-writing.  There aren't many pieces I would call "perfect", as perfection requires a great deal of restraint to achieve consistency and a lack of unnecessary elements.  Heck, one of my favorite pieces of music is Stravinsky's Petrushka, a ballet crammed with so many ideas it seems like he thought he'd never write again, so while it's far from a rigorously "perfect" piece it's still amazing.  The 'Chosen' Tune is perfect, perfect in its brevity, its craftsmanship and its timeless resonance.  It's so perfect that talking about it any longer is useless, so let's hear Ms. Fingerhut and have a warming Sunday evening in these cold days.

~PNK

England in its Sunday Best

While many of the leaves on this blog's slowly-growing branches were written by composers I was already endeared to, sometimes a page-long pearl glistens from a distant, unexpected pool, and in today's case from a composer I'd never think to investigate.  Best known for his church anthem Call to Remembrance, the 18th-century Brit Jonathan Battishill is a stranger to me and, as a guest in these blogly halls, in quite a strange land.  It was only three months ago that I wrote the first post on a post-Rococo, pre-Romantic composer, spotlighting a piece that Mozart wrote for the glass harmonica, and I regret to admit that today's post isn't exactly going to quicken the pace for leaves from the Age of Reason, but at least the piece is capital-"f"-Fine enough to tide over even the most ardent of post-Beethoven deniers.

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Written back when English organs typically didn't have pedals, the Air in D major doesn't need foot action to warm the cockles of the heart.  The continual, inversely flowing counterpoint wraps around the listener's ear like the belt to a fuzzy robe, maintaining a British stateliness throughout, especially that bit in the treble and bass of the last two measures of the second system that sounds right out of Holst's "I Vow to Thee My Country".  This is gooey part-writing at its most nourishing and before hearing it I didn't know I would have died without hearing the giant's steps of tenths and octaves in the third system - important public health information in these leaves, that's for sure.  It's a shame it's a bit too short for a church offertory piece, though repeating it might make the pewsitters feel the pressure to plunk down a few coins - warm, contrapuntal pressure flowing from the pen of an artist Charles Wood would've admired and a half.

~PNK

Autumnal Classics - The Fall of the Leafe by Martin Peerson

Every year I'm forced to agree more and more with cranky middle-aged people that Spring is, without question, the most overrated season.  As a lifelong Northwesterner I've been subjected to more than 25 dismal, bland Springs and have concluded that Europe's poets and artists hung on to Spring just because it beat dying of hypothermia.  Now that we live in more electrically civilized times where people comfortably live year round in frostpiles like Iceland artfarts like myself can better appreciate seasons with real poetic vitality, like Autumn*.  While the least-depicted season in classical music might still be Winter Autumn's aural evocations still remain elusive in the concert hall, though certainly not for a lack of trying by inspired composers.  Last year I used October to highlight some horror-themed pieces, so this year I'm trying something different and using November, a month more rarely considered than one thinks when Thanksgiving is removed from the equation, to highlight some autumn-inspired works of note by an international cadre of great composers.  There's plenty to find in the leafpile, so much so that my first article is a two-parter, starting with the smaller part and going all the way back to the Elizabethan age.

I've been neglecting the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book for far too long as a source of leaves, mostly because it never occurs to me to listen to Renaissance music until it's too late.  One of the major sources of British keyboard music from the late Renaissance, the Book compiles over 300 works by such luminaries as William Byrd, John Bull, Giles Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck among other names and many anonymous works to boot.  One of the more minor names, one of which I was completely unaware until just recently, is Martin Peerson, who was esteemed in his day and held powerful musical posts at St. Paul's Cathedral and possibly Westminster Abbey, most likely because very little of his music remains extant.  His entire surviving keyboard output is preserved in the Book, and one of his pieces gave inspiration to the next work to be featured in these blogs - The Fall of the Leafe.

The Fall of the Leafe takes the form of an alman, the Elizabethan word for an allemande, a German dance popular in the Renaissance that showed up in the works of Bach and others.  The mood is stately and sad, cast in two similar parts, each with a dirge-like A section and a B section marked reprise featuring a flowing descant line in the right hand on top of the same harmonic material in the left, as well as bars half the length of the A section, giving the feeling of double time.  The wedding of melody and harmonic motion her is superb, Peerson weaving some of the most yearning moments I've seen in Elizabethan music since Alfanso Ferrabosco's Dovehouse Pavane.  Of particular interest is the use of repetition in the third part of each section, such as in the piece's third bar where the melody finds itself in a downward rut.  There's a sense of arrested development in these moments, as if the player wants to continue but is rooted, or rather confined by space and time, a great reflection of humanity's increasing melancholy in the face of seasons turning for the darker.  My favorite moment is the third bar of the piece's second half where the left hand descends to the bottom of the virginal's range via some highly sophisticated part-writing for the time, allowing the natural, private resonance of the era's keyboard instruments quake the performer's hands in a way only they can truly appreciate.  It's a wonderful example of the expressive powers of Elizabethan music and I'm glad my research called my attention to it and its author.  It also touched the heart of a much better-known British composer hundreds of years later, resulting in a piece we'll look at next time in a different blog...

~PNK

*Autumn is a much more beautiful word than Fall, so much so that I can't think of a single autumnal work that calls the season "Fall" in its title.

A Viol Toy for Sunday

One advantage Renaissance music had, specifically Elizabethan instrumental music, was an overabundance of genres - flipping through large collections like the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book produces a wealth of genres, not only a ton of dance forms but also oddities like "dump", "robin", "nancie" and "dream".  It's a shame almost all of these have never returned (with the exception of Herbert Howells's excellent clavichord sets, Lambert's Clavichord and Howells's Clavichord), because I'd love to see someone like Ligeti take a crack at a "fortune" or "whistle".  The Elizabethan viol player and composer Tobias Hume was no stranger to these forms, and just the other day I was introduced to a charming 30'' piece of his in one of the more intriguing forms, "toy":

I promise not to tell if you admit to not being able to read that.  Written for bass viol, the piece is designed to be accompanied by a chord instrument such as a lute or guitar, and thankfully a wonderful man on YouTube can play both viol and guitar.  Ernst Stolz is a Renaissance music expert who has put up dozens of performances of pieces from all walks of the 16th and 17th centuries, and he was kind enough to supply the score with this performance.  He also included that neat woodcut at the top of this article, so if you're not a fan of playing soccer just imagine how annoying it would be to play wearing pantaloons.

~PNK

The Catch Club Sings to Suck Poor Mortals Dry

Choral music from the 18th century has to try pretty hard to be revived by modern choirs, let alone get radio play and recordings.  But William Hayes (1708-1777) found a way.  Trained at Gloucester Cathedral as an organist, he spent most of his career at Oxford, both as an organist (at Magdalen College) and composer.  He helped build the Holywell Music Room, Europe's oldest purpose-built music room, and was elected a "Privileged Member" of the Nobleman's and Gentleman's Catch Club.  A catch is a short piece of imitative counterpoint for two or more voices (usually at least three), and often contain a phrase in words that is revealed by overlapping or intersecting, oftentimes subversive or crude.  Hayes was no stranger to catches and glees (the source of the Glee Club), and he got an award for this leaf:

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However, the leaf I'd like to focus on is much more hilarious.  The vampire legend as we know it today didn't branch out from its Transylvanian homeland until the mid-18th century, which we all know was the birthdate of the gothic novel (The Castle of Otronto).  As the Western England Hoity Toity must have seen vampires as a quaint, amusing quirk of backwards folk, a catch was inevitable.

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Published in Hayes's second book of "Catches, Glees and Canons" in 1765, The Thirsty Vampires (or Thirfty, as I don't have that old-fashioned light "s" letter) couldn't be more appealing as a proto-horror curiosity.  I love that vampires were thought as a plausible explanation for tuberculosis, and the notion of piercing graves baffles me.  The moral appears to be a wish to drink as much wine as possible in life so as to become a vampire in death and drink wine forever; I have no idea why that's not a movie.  I'm no expert on how to sing these pieces, and I've been unable to track down instructions, so you're on your own as to how to perform it properly.  I was able to find a midi recording, though, but they've chosen a lute setting and it doesn't fix the problem of hearing all the words at the same time.  Just go here and click the yellow speaker button, clearly sourced from an educational PC program from 1996, which was of course the intention of William Hayes when he wrote the piece.

~PNK

One Harvey-Haiku for Sunday night

British composers

Think they can write haiku too;

It turns out they're right.

~PNK

A Sorabji fragment for Monday

The funniest thing about today's leaf is the reputation of its author, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988).  A Parsi-British man of great eccentricity, Sorabji was best known as a critic in his life but gained a mysterious, legendary status as a composer of impossibly difficult and unbelievably lengthy piano works.  As an example, his fifth piano sonata, Opus Archimagicum, lasts about 6 hours, and that's not even his longest piece for he instrument.  He also wrote imposing orchestral, chamber and vocal works, but he is best known for his piano pieces, including the notoriously difficult Opus Clavicembalisticum (1930), lasting over 4 hours via a 290-page score and opening like this:

Contrary to popular belief Sorabji did write some short pieces, including the 20 Frammenti Aforistichi, many of which are shorter than anything Webern could muster.  However, we're looking at one of his earliest works today, Désir Eperdu (1917).

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I've often heard the term "super impressionist" attached to Sorabji and this piece is a fine example of something more conservative than that.  He had only started composing a few years prior so this piece isn't quite up to his later insular standards.  I've also heard Sorabji called "un-analyzable", and I agree in that I don't think he kept himself to any strict theoretical standard, instead writing from his gut, ears, and eyes.  I'm still not convinced that he actually sat down and played some of the pieces he wrote, but they look incredible, vast organic tapestries of dense counterpoint and dozens of themes fighting for breathing room.  Désir Eperdu ("distraught desire") retains that tapestry feel by being printed landscape style and being defined by horizontal movement nocturne-ly.  You could make an easy Chopin connection in the left hand writing, but the mood is too volatile for any genre label.  It ends on an unresolved outcry, fitting for a desire as distraught as this.  Here's a semi-par recording:

 

~PNK