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

Mozart's Walk through the Crystal Garden

Those of you who a.) saw the Golden Globes last Sunday and b.) are awesome might have noticed that the excellent Mr. Holmes was completely shut out, a doubly heinous crime considering that it featured one of the great stunt instruments of musical history, the glass harmonica.  It's part of a major turn of one of the film's main plots and is one of the only times it has appeared in a film, and considering the time period when the plot takes place (the turn of the 20th century) it's surprising that anybody would be playing it, much less teaching lessons on it.  The instrument is the most famous member of the crystallophone family, instruments that produce sound with glass, and is part of a larger family of friction idiophones, operating by the same mechanism of someone creating a tone by rubbing a wet finger on the rim of a wine glass.  The latter device became something of a vogue technique for composers writing for percussion in the late 20th century, specifically inspired by the use of crystal glasses in pieces by George Crumb and Joseph Schwantner, but that hasn't inspired a revival of the full glass harmonica, or armonica.  The most common form of the instrument is one designed by America's favorite renaissance man and horndog Benjamin Franklin - a set of concentrically-arranged glass bowls, each one a half-step apart in Western equal temperament, are partially submerged in a tub of water and turned with a foot pedal, allowing the player to simply touch their fingers to the bowls' rims to produce the notes.  Oddly enough, one of the biggest proponents of crystallophones in our time is Linda Rondstadt, and she produced an all-crystallophone album in the early Oughts performed by Dennis James.  The heyday of the instrument was in the late 18th century and use of hit virtually disappeared by the 1820's, as it was seen as an impractical novelty instrument and hardly any music was written specifically for it.  One of those pieces, however, was written by none other than Mozart himself, and it's actually quite lovely.

As producing sounds via glass friction is somewhat difficult Mozart's piece here is mercifully slow, though there are a few 16th-note passages to keep the performer on edge.  The mood is reverent and nostalgic, rife with suspensions and a handful of surprising harmonic twists, all made all the more enchanting coming from the glass harmonica's unearthly sound.  Both metallic and intangible, one can imagine that its tone quality is what one would hear walking through a greenhouse on a distant planet.  The performance here is a little incomplete, as the performer Martin Hilmer doesn't bother with the recap of the B section, but the technique is excellent as there are only a few notes that don't sound (and understandably so; I've never been able to make a note on a crystal glass).  Now, if there was only a leaf written for the cristal baschet...

~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