Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune is a Joey Special. Here’s your hint: this composer was once described by a friend as “half monk, half guttersnipe.” No Googling — unless it’s to look up the definition of “guttersnipe.”
As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 75
Debussy, Petite Pièce pour clarinette et piano
Two victors this time around: moi (Maestro Will) who guessed Debussy (along with Frank Bridge, Delius, and Rebecca Clark) and Listener Gregor, who guessed Debussy along with Ravel and Satie.
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
RIP Seiji Ozawa
If you’re reading this newsletter, you will certainly have heard of the passing of the great conductor Seiji Ozawa, protégé of both Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan, the first Asian conductor to break out onto the Classical music scene in the West in a big way.
This CBS Sunday Morning clip from 1998 shows him in his prime, talking about not only the music that he loved, but the sports that he enjoyed:
To that, I (Will) will add that people should really check out the curious book Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa by Haruki Murakami. I say “curious” because a) Murakami is one of the great novelists of the contemporary era, so it’s an interesting zag for him to do a non-fiction book of interviews and b) as the conversations reveal, Murakami knows way more about Ozawa’s discography and interpretations than Ozawa himself! The book is best when they get away from the details of one track versus another and expand into more philosophical territory.
Finally, I’ll mention that I thought this was a very clever and moving tribute from the BSO, where Seiji Ozawa reigned as music director for 29 years:
Movie Trailer
She Came to Me is about the least probable of film projects I (Will) could have imagined: Peter Dinklage plays an opera composer who is struggling to find inspiration for his next project. He’s married to Anne Hathaway, but falls in love with Marissa Tomei, a tugboat operator. Suddenly he’s hatched the idea for his new opera.
I have no idea when or where this movie will be available, but it looks like it might actually be good (or at the very least, interesting), so let’s all keep an eye out for it!
Concert Report: Ursula & Friends
Saturday, February 3, 2024
Merkin Hall, New York
I (Joey) recently attended a celebration concert at Merkin Hall in New York City in honor of the 80th birthday of Ursula Oppens, the pianist and titaness of new music. I am a sucker for these sorts of homage concerts — I recently attended one in honor of the Cuban-American composer Tania León — and I can’t tell if they’re becoming more of a thing or if I’m seeking them out. But they tend to be very sweet affairs that start and end with everyone in a good mood, as the audience is generally “in the know” and in the mood to give a generous reception.
Ms. Oppens received robust applause as she made her way on stage at the very beginning. Dubbed the “Modest Queen of Contemporary Music” by Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times, she lived up to that name as she smiled warmly toward the audience on her way to the piano. Her generous manner was matched by her performance of a beautiful diatonic wash of a piece by Tobias Picker, highlighting her ability to voice chords beautifully even now.
Oppens’ collaborators have included some of the biggest names in 20th century music: William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Anthony Davis, Tania León, Donald Martino, Conlon Nancarrow, Joan Tower, Frederick Rzewski, and Charles Wuorinen all wrote pieces expressly for her hands. If that’s not enough to get a new musician’s mouth watering, her pedagogical record is marked by her students’ performances of new music, and that’s what this concert was really about.
The show featured several of her past and present students performing solo piano music that was written for her over the years, and the modernist atonal aesthetic of most of these works stood in stark contrast to her choice of the Picker to start everything off. Her students were each remarkably excellent technicians, and personal highlights for me included Natasha Gwirceman’s rendition of León’s Mística, Ice Wang’s virtuosic Or Like a… an Engine by Tower, and Carl Patrick Bolleia’s enthusiastic performance of Charles Wuorinen The Blue Bamboula. (How often do you get an enthusiastic Charles Wuorinen anything??)
The concert ended with Oppens and her good friend, Juilliard professor Jerome Lowenthal (a great pedagogue in his own right) performing a four-hands piece. This was possibly the cutest part of the concert, thanks to the participation of these two legendary octogenarians with a beautiful friendship, performing a piece called 12 Blocks, named after the 12 blocks Lowenthal would walk to visit Oppens every day during the pandemic.
Though their playing was uneven, starting and stopping a couple times, all was forgiven. The piece even started with a bit of a mix up: Lowenthal came on stage first, from the audience, and wandered around looking for Ursula as she came on from the opposite side. The dramatic irony made the audience giggle with joy!
It was a feel-good concert all around.
Tone Praise
Domenico Gallo, Trio sonata no. 1
I (Will) was thinking I might go for Stravinsky this week, just because it seems like it’s been a while since we’ve had him, but then I got little twinkle in my eye and decided to go with this piece by Domenico Gallo, which provided the raw material for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella.
Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)
Hmmmm an interesting NTT to be sure. At first, I thought it might be Bartok, given some of the folky turns in the tune. But then I realized it was way too mellow for Bartok. Then the slightly jazzy harmonies brought to mind Piazzolla, but this is maybe because I just conducted something by him.
Now if I wanted to split the difference between Bartok and Piazzolla, and I wanted to come up with a piece for violin and piano, I'd go with Enescu, who wrote three violin sonatas at the turn of the 20th c. However, I don't think this is any of them. Plus, I know that Joseph has been trying to do a little more of a normie turn lately.
"Half-monk, half-guttersnipe" has me at a bit of a loss. Unless it's Poulenc. Final answer.