A Lithuanian Nightingale for Saturday

The recent resurrection of the amazing works of Vytautas Bacevicius has put a new face on Lithuanian classical music, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that the bulk of American music lovers didn't know Lithuania even had a face of classical music.  This is understandable, as Lithuania is a small country tucked away in a corner of what was the Eastern Bloc for most of the 20th century, and before that the most exposure it got artistically might have been its passing inclusion in Alfred Jarry's batshit anti-art masterpiece Ubu Roi.  However, one name did rise to international prominence at the beginning of the 20th century, not only in music but in painting and literature - Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis.  A dedicated proponent of the symbolist movement, Ciurlionis crafted a considerable body of paintings and musical pieces that show a vivid and fearless imagination with an emphasis on epic fantasy and rich aesthetics.  Before we get to his music I need to show more of Ciurlionis's boss paintings:

Now that's the kind of thing that inspires people to go to art school.  It's clear that Ciurlionis had a passion for unique naturalism, and few piano pieces of his live up to that goal better than The Nightingale, op. 19, no. 3:

Many of Ciurlionis's pieces are miniatures in a Scriabinist vein, though the textures and harmonies he uses are very different, leaning towards sturm und drang forebodingness.  One wouldn't think that a nightingale would inspire creeping dread but Ciurlionis did it and did it with real craftsmanship.  The piece is essentially variations on an ostinato, the first measure in the left hand transposed and unfurled over and over while a right hand whistles and dances in the air.  The melodic figures here are highly chromatic and skewed towards odd angles, deftly imitative of how varied and improvisatory the song of the nightingale really is.  His tempo marking, Con grazia e rubato, quasi un' improvvisazione, allows the pianist to bend and sworl through the bird's turning song, and this pianist takes great and wonderful license in this regard.  It's a great addition to a long line of fascinating nightingale pieces (though nothing will beat Ervin Schulhoff's Bass Nightingale) and a sly introduction to Ciurlionis's very personal music, and at leaf length what more could you need?

~PNK

Alain in an All-Day Rain

Many years ago when I was a student at the University of Puget Sound I came across a CD called Radical Piano.  It was a collection of eclectically progressive works from the first half of the 20th century performed by Easley Blackwood, including Berg's Sonata, Copland's Piano Variations and works I'd never heard of before, such as Prokofiev's Sarcasms, Nielsen's 3 Piano Pieces, op. 59 and Blackwood's own Ten Experimental Pieces in Rhythm and Harmony.  I would later write about Blackwood's microtonal electronic music for my first article for Rhyme of the Unheard, a group-effort blog that gave me my start in this game (and it would later be reposted at Dregs of the Earth), so it's a nice memory trip to revisit my fond memories of his adventurous programming.  Most of the pieces were provocative, even aggressive, but one piece stuck out from the rest as a kind of hypnotic balm to the rest:

I had never heard of Jehan Alain before hearing this piece, so I'm really glad this was my introduction to his unique musical imagination.  This is dream-music done expertly well, focusing not so much on special effects or fragmentation but rather the enveloping sweep of walking through a dream world - the seemingly endless time frame, textures and sounds that wrap themselves around the dreamer like a blanket, unidentifiable moods and a feeling of weightlessness.  Its inspiration is the famous "Ballade des pendus" by Francois Villon, a haunting plea for understanding and mercy by men being sent to the gallows, and an appropriate sense of earnestness in the face of the foreboding permeates the work.  It's a wonderful piece, and it prompted me to look into his other works.

Alain is mostly known today for his organ works, well-set in the French organ tradition that influenced the likes of Abel Decaux and Rene Blin, and for his tragic early death - he was part of a motorcycle unit in the French army in WWII and was killed in action at the age of 29.  While he hasn't gained the kind of international reputation earned by his main influences, Debussy and Messiaen, he has achieved a small but impassioned fanbase, and most of his works remain in print and have been recorded at least once.  The oeuvre of his that I'm most familiar with is his piano literature, published in three volumes posthumously and mostly consisting of enchanting, experimental miniatures.  They reveal a wide array of influences, such as Baroque music, far Eastern cultures and modern poetry, but today I'd like to spotlight one of his most Debussyian pieces, and I'll give you three guesses as to which piece influenced this one:

All of your guesses were most likely "Jardins sous la pluie" from Estampes, and luckily for you this one is called Il pleuvra toute la journee... (It will rain all day...).  Alain's method is highly concentrated - create clashing arpeggios, daisy-chain them together at a high intensity and speed, make a big landing, echo with intentional ambiguity.  The harmonic language is certainly impressionistic but with more instability than Debussy or even the early Messiaen pieces Alain was familiar with.  The title has a great deal of poetic weight to it, allowing the piece to take on a psychological arc of anger and resignation rather than a programmatic one.  This tactic is quite Debussyian - Debussy hated the term "impressionism" being attached to his work and instead considered himself a symbolist like Baudelaire.  Many of his titles, chiefly the titles tacked on to the ends of his Preludes for piano, were poetic evocations rather than strict instructions, such as with the seventh prelude, "Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest" ("What the West Wind Saw") - he piece has similarities to a rushing wind but is more interested in psychological allusion.  Alain also places evocation over strictness by writing without a written meter (even though the piece is clearly in 4/4) and leaving the last bar open rather than writing in an ending barline.  This tactic was pioneered by Satie and was adopted by a number of similar-minded (as much as one can be to Satie) composers such as Federico Mompou and Manuel Blancafort (and myself, occasionally).  Another little touch is the pair of fermati in the last bar - normally the composer would only adorn the final note with one, but that moment of hesitation adds a whole new layer of interpretive poetry for the performer.  As the long streak of really nice May days here in Seattle was recently snuffed by cold-'n'-rainy interludes this is a nice piece to look at, and hopefully we'll be able to look at more Alain music in the near future.  Remember - if your weather reporter says rain is coming, play the piano.  It's the only solution.

~PNK

Forgotten Leaves meets the new Sopranino Tuba repertoire

Classical music is generally a polite environment, free of trash talk and slams (at least when Satie stays out of it).  That doesn't mean that the scene isn't entirely insultless, such as today's case.  I'm a member of a Facebook group called Composers for Performers, Performers for Composers, and just today a one Dillon Henry (whose name is the reverse of the usual) decided he was fed up with Bill Smith, a fellow CFPPFC composer whose work tends towards the New Complexity end of things.  Unamused, Henry posted the following just today:

(Click to enlarge)

John Stump has been influential after all.  Scored for sopranino tuba, an instrument you readers might recognize as about as extant as the contralto triangle, When once confined in a heuristic demolition of neo-Napoleonic platitudinal radii pulls no punches in its quest for pure musical horsehockey.  Not confined by barlines, staves or sense, Henry shotguns the score with impossible extended techniques, Greek constellations and at least one Frasier reference.  One of the best details is a noteless repeated section with the instruction "Just fucking throw 'Dies Irae' in there a few times for good measure."  Another repeated section says to "Dauntily consume a hard-boiled egg."  I could go on for hours but that's the opposite of fun and, as everyone knows, fun rules.  Also, have that hard-boiled egg.

~PNK

Reger Kills Fugues and Patriotism with One Stone (leaf)

My introduction to Max Reger (1873-1916) came from an amusing book called The Best, the Worst and the Most Unusual, an overview of notable achievements in (mostly Western) literature, sports, music and the arts as decided by a wide survey of critics in the mid-70's.  Reger's name popped up as the "worst" composer, and the entry rattled off a number of eccentric and unattractive details of Reger's personality and biography (including his odd dietary habits, obviously the most germane factor in assessing one's oeuvre) while inaccurately calling him out as attempting to blend modern classical techniques with 16th century marching band music, while not a single piece of his displays that particular genre as an influence.  Reger was enormously prolific during his brief composing career, writing over 150 works of often striking complexity and craftsmanship in a wide variety of instrumentations, always sticking to the grand "absolute music" tradition of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.  His style pushes tonal writing to its breaking point in terms of daisy-chained diminished chords, gnarly counterpoint and Wagnerian denial of the tonic, and part of his quixotic reputation comes from how he would sometimes take such leaps in tonal logic that the development from one key to the next would be so abrupt as to give the listener whiplash.  I'll admit that I don't like every work of his I've heard but I'll never fault someone for trying as hard as they can within their own artistic language.He was especially skilled at writing fugues and managed to churn out dozens of them despite their being very difficult to write - I know, as I took fugue class at two different schools and mostly wrote crap.  One of his most celebrated works, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by J. S. Bach, op. 81, ends with a 7-1/2-minute fugue that is among the greatest I've ever heard (though nothing will top this one by this guy).  On a more modest scale, we've got this little guy:

This fughetta lacks an opus number but was written in 1916, the year of his untimely death of a heart attack at age 43.  The "deutschlandlied" is Deutschland uber Alles, the German national anthem, and Reger was correct in thinking that it would make a nice subject for a fugue with its clear stepwise motion and neat harmonic progression.  While this is far from the thickest of the Reger fugues little chromatic squibbles are still present and the piece serves as a good introduction to his habit of logically elliptical harmonic motion.  The end has that dark, accented quality that the end of Bach's fugues often take on and prompted Arnold Bax to say that the finales of Bach pieces sound like "the running of a sewing machine".  Either way you slice it the Fughette is a congenial leaf that would make a fine encore to an all-Germanic piano recital, and it's nice that, when the pianist Markus Becker mounted a multi-CD overview of Reger's complete piano output, he didn't forget this piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQG_E2de-M

Embedding disabled by request, sorry :(

~PNK

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.

(Click for larger view)

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 Monday Modinha by a Mozart (not that one)

It's always bugged me that Villa-Lobos has remained the sole face of Brazilian classical music for decades, not because I'm an expert in the field but more because I was always a bigger fan of Camargo Guarnieri.  Usually dropping his first name of Mozart (seriously) in his published works, Guarnieri worked closely with Brazilian folk models for much of his music but took a great many technical and expressive risks and added to many a hard-worn genre (symphony, string quartet) with immense creativity and flair.  The piano was his canvas for a great many excellent works and he had a knack for miniatures by themselves and in sets, and his Suite Mirim is a fine and accessible introduction to his work by way of little ivory ticklers.  Cast in four movements, the Suite is based on traditional Brazilian dances, keeping it in line with the traditional point of a suite but not about to fall for the old "allemande" trick.  All four dances ("Ponteado", "Tanguinho", "Modinha" and "Ciradinha") are short but only one has that leafy thinness we so desire at FL, the third.

A modinha is a sentimental love song and likewise the "Modinha" is the most delicate and modest of the four dances, and even just glancing at the first line one can see how well those classes in close-voiced imitative counterpoint payed off.  The reduced volume and thorough craftsmanship allude to sentiments long dead, like faded floral stenciling or an antique photograph of a young bride in a tin box.  It's a little marvel of economy and class and adds a rich heart to a very fleeting set whose harmonies veer into the privately quixotic.  You can hear (and see) the Suite below, and as we enter our second week of nice days here in Western Washington it's nice to remember that we were just recently stuck indoors with mugs of tea - though the more Guarnieri I hear the more I want to swap the tea for a caipirinha.

~PNK

A pair of viola ganders at Tui St. George Tucker

Tui St. George Tucker has been in my sights for quite a while, and while I'm not sure I can whip up a full article for her just yet (mostly due to a lack of decent recordings of her stuff), her sheer sui generis-ness can't be ignored any longer.  Named for a New Zealander (-ish?  -esque?) bird and primarily based at a North Carolina boy's camp, Tucker was a musical figure unlike any other, combining the technical variety of Ives with the amateur-applauding enthusiasm of the John Cage/Larry Polansky/David Mahler outsider tradition, Tucker went from 40's NY Avant-Garde fixture to near total obscurity, crafting a strange and charming body of work, all unpublished until after her death in 2004, when a website appeared and posted her oeuvre.  Her musical voice ranged from opaque atonality to nostalgic jazz throwbacks; drew inspiration from subjects as diverse as Zen Buddhist call-and-response games, Lutheran hymns, and peyote; developed a personal approach to microtonality; and expanded the technical and expressive possibilities of the recorder, arguably writing more music for it than any other 20th-century composer I can think of (aside from Fulvio Caldini, that is).  She also wrote a great deal of music for the viola, which brings us to a pair of leaves for the instrument that an enterprising violist performed as part of an American Female Composer retrospective and uploaded to YouTube.  Let's viola, shall we?

Compared to some of her wackier pieces (like that bit in the Peyote Sonata for piano that has a 17:16 rhythmic juxtaposition) the Partita and Cassation for solo viola are pretty normal looking.  The Partita is among a long line of muscular atonal curtain-openers for solo instruments inspired by Bartók - even though I can't prove it's inspired by Bartók it doesn't take too much squinting to divine that conclusion.  There's a lot of double-stops running around and scales switch on a dime, not to mention the brusque rhythms and restlessness.  At 2 minutes it'd seem a natural fit for college recitals, so it's good someone took the risk at least once.

On a graver note, Tucker uses a strange, non-abstract Jackson Pollack painting as the inspiration for a Cassation, starting on a slow plod down the stairs and switching things up right quick.  As in the Partita the harmonic language is highly reminiscent of darker Eastern European works from the 40's and 50's, albeit with a volatile execution, and would make a fine intro for George Crumb's Sonata for Solo Cello if anybody reading this is planning on doing a collegiate duo recital (*COUGH*COUGH*).  If nothing else it could be paired with Stravinsky's Elegy for solo viola, his only solo work for the instrument and just one of dozens of sorely underplayed viola works that I'd like to see performed live.  Seriously, if I had the money I'd sponsor seasons full of chamber recitals just for these blogs, and I bet someone out there has money, don't you?

So here's the deal - this stuff is nothing.  I don't mean nothing in that they're bad pieces, but rather that her music has so much more variety than these, just not in leaf form.  There's stuff like the Peyote Sonata for piano that features a 15:16 rhythmic juxtaposition:

Her many microtonal works for recorder, clarinet and other instruments, like the Amoroso:

And whatever this is:

There's a heck of a lot more where these came from, and you can see it all at the scores page of her website.  I'll warn you ahead of time that almost none of her scores were typeset, so most look like they were accidentally used to clean cannon barrels.  But isn't that exciting?  You're part of the excavation, diving into the wilds of unpublished music!  And the people running her website were pretty thorough, putting up a bunch of unfinished works and fragments alongside the finished ones, so anybody can play amateur musicologist if they wish.  Boys' camps in North Carolina never had it so good, let me tell you.  Also, if you're interested in any of this see if you can find a copy of the Centaur Records retrospective CD of her work, comprised of amateur recordings most likely made at Camp Catawba during her life and showcasing the full breadth of her peculiar oeuvre.