Penderecki on the art of dancing on violin strings

Krzysztof Penderecki has had a very long, storied career, pioneering Avant-Garde music in Poland right after Stalin and his artistic policies died and further distinguishing himself from there.  Unlike a lot of composers, however, Penderecki's music only got more accessible as it went on.  His most well-known work is the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima* for string orchestra, using space/time notation instead of meter and a variety of lines instead of notes to striking effect:

As the years rolled by and the Scene changed Penderecki's urge to experiment waned in the face of a career in no need of being proven to colleagues.  You might remember this part of his much later Symphony no. 3 from a little movie called Shutter Island, part of a fine line of horror movies since The Exorcist to rely on Avant-Garde composers for soundtrack bits:

Penderecki has long been associated with my old favorite composer Witold Lutoslawski, not just because they spearheaded the Warsaw Autumn festival as well as making Poland a major international voice in contemporary Classical music, but also because they both had an interest in using cutting-edge techniques to create music out of pure gesture and drama, and this "Passacaglia" movement from the third Symphony is just as in line with that sentiment as the Threnody, though admittedly a bit more...soundtracky. That was in the late 80's, and today we're going to look at a piece he wrote 2009, marking the 4th time we've covered a piece from the 21st century that I didn't write myself.

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Much like that the faster of the Tui St. George Tucker pieces we looked at back in March, the Tanz owes a lot to the overarching influence Bartók had on post-WWII music, especially Eastern Bloc countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia and the like.  The Tanz is so conventional compared to stuff like the Threnody and other pieces that will most likely end up on this blog it might as well be Paganini - in fact, it's more like Paganini than Bartók, ain't it?  This Tanz fits in nicely with that Romantic "gypsy" genre that was popular in salons throughout the 19th century and many years of the 20th, using lots of tricky double stops and savage downbows.  These tricks are also deeply ingrained in Eastern European folk music, though usually a bit more Southern than Poland.  I don't know who Janine is, though - any clues?  Penderecki's Wikipedia page gave me no clues.  My guess is a college student, as while this is difficult it's no far cry from a lot of the etudes violinists are given on the collegiate level.  In that same spirit, here's a collegiate-level violinist nearly pulling the piece off.**

~PNK

*The funny thing about the Threnody is that it was originally just called 8'37'', presumably as a nod to Cage.  He only added the Hiroshima reference after hearing the first performance and noticing the emotional resonance of the work, and decided to dedicate it to atomic bomb victims.

**Sorry, I couldn't find a better recording on YouTube.

A Hyllning for Hilding from Across the Baltic

Some of you may remember my article on Hilding Rosenberg's sixth Improvisation, and that piece is a mere taste of the work of one of the most inspiring Scandinavian composers of the 20th century.  Some of you may also remember Poland's border on the Baltic Sea, and so it's natural that the good stuff from Sweden would float over to Warsawian shores.  In 1982 the incomparable György Ligeti met Rosenberg and composed a violin & cello duet in his honor, and when the big publishers bother to publish your leaf there's a chance it's pretty boss.

A hyllning is a tribute, and the parenthetical description alludes to the soundworld of Bartók, inarguably the most influential Hungarian composer of all time and pioneer of classical fauxlk music.  All the germ material is set up in the first line, a snakily modal melody in the cello accompanied by doubly-stopped fifths in the violin.  After that it's just a matter of variations, and each twist of the pen proves more inventive and beautiful than the last.  The lines are steadily reduced with each repetition, letting the gradual crescendo cathart like crazy once bar 13 comes around.  The last line ramps the quarter notes, giving the impression of acceleration downward, with lots of insistence pushing the instruments to the final four chords.  Ligeti was a man of seemingly endless range, and while he had previously taken audiences to the borderlands of luscious noise he shows a true mastery of good ol' polytonality here.  As tricky as the double-stops may seem they sound whomping fantastic, especially the last couple of bars with their kneading minor seconds.  I'm not sure who did the recording below but I have a feeling it's the phenomenal Arditti Quartet, modern music's BFF and my vote for Most Unflappable Chamber Group.  I've never seen a Swedish-Polish combo restaurant, but I'd never have guessed that their food would taste so sweet.

(Nice picture, rauthku.)

~PNK

Witold's Brass CUBE

Brass instruments were made for fanfares, and any fanfare without one is so lacking it may as well be a waltz.  Late in his career, Witold Lutosławski, one of my favorite composers, was commissioned to write a short series of fanfares for various organizations, and one of them leafed its way into my grasp.

Lutosławski was known for a number of different styles and techniques in the course of his career, including populism, serialism and aleatoric methods, but Fanfare for CUBE uses none of those styles and is perfectly well off doing its own thing.  Mostly written in Debussy's Lydian/Mixolydian mixed mode (a major scale with a raised fourth and a lowered seventh), the brass quintet shows how nice it is to hear the first five notes of a Lydian scale played at once.  It naturally expands and contracts, only breaking the scale in bars 6, 7 and 8 to make a semi-VI-V-vi dim-I resolution.  There's not much more to say, and why bother?  Sometimes a CUBE is just a CUBE.  Here's a recording, along with Witold's Fanfare for the University of Lancaster as a chaser.

~PNK

A Tansman Dumka for Friday

Though he's not talked about much today, the music of Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) was once very popular, as he was one of the most prolific and high-profile figures in French Neo-Classicism in the years between the World Wars (and beyond).  The Neo-Classical style utterly dominated French music at the time, and it's all to easy to write off its authors as riding trends (much like the American populist style of the 40's and 50's), but when they were good they were good, and Tansman had a consistently excellent grasp of the language that bespoke a personal identity.  Though he lived and worked in France for the majority of his life, he was Polish by birth and maintained a strong sense of his heritage in his works.  His Quatre Danses Polonaises from 1932 are an excellent synthesis of Polish folk music and Neo-Classical techniques, and as I perused it a leaf blew my way that resonated very well with the Holiday conurbation.

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One of Tansman's prettiest pieces, the Dumka keeps a deep emotional resonance so treasured in Eastern European music, at once yearning and dolorous.  Much like Debussy's The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, Tansman is able to use modern harmonic and textural techniques in a way that doesn't distract from the tune, or its recognizably Polish harmonic structure.  Americans are trained to think of snow whenever we hear Slavic music, so the Dumka may spark those warm Christmas feelings in US listeners.  I personally think that Lutoslawski's 20 Polish Christmas Carols is the definitive document of Eastern European Christmas music, but I can't fit that into a leaf article (but perhaps Re-Composing).  The Danses Polonaises also exist in an orchestral version, and that's the version I've got a recording of.  The Dumka is the third movement, and shows off Tansman's creativity in orchestration - with a haunting treat in the last five measures.  The other dances are pretty boss, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WERhS1jnVXY (embedding disabled, sorry)

~PNK