79: Maîtres
Ravel & Glass
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune is a Joey Special. Here’s your hint: this composer has a centennial this year (I’m not saying whether birth or death). No Googling!
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 78
Villa Lobos, Quinteto em forma de chôros
If it weren’t for Listener Kevin coming to the rescue, we’d have had precious little success this week, but this was certainly an interesting piece and I’m glad to have become acquainted with it.
Kevin, as mentioned, did write in with the correct answer (how???) but the best I could muster was Nielsen, and we got an interesting guess from an interesting guesser, Listener Tammy, with Henryk Górecki. (This is likely the first ever mention of this composer in the pages of Tone Prose, and I don’t think he was ever name-checked in the CGF pod either.)
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.
Bolero
Another week, another movie trailer here at Tone Prose! This time around it’s Boléro, a biopic-ish film about Maurice Ravel’s creation of his most famous ballet score. The film comes out this week in France and France Musique is giving it wall-to-wall coverage.
There’s a lot in the trailer that looks great to me (Will), and as someone who has visited Ravel’s home, Le Belvédère, I think it’s extremely cool that they used the actual building as a filming location. But I have one huge caveat, which is that there seems to have been some romance snuck into the script, and that’s un grand faux pas as far as I’m concerned when it comes to Ravel. Read your biographies, people!
Album Review (Joey)
Minimalist American composer Philip Glass, one of the most famous living composers, recently put out an album called Philip Glass Solo, consisting of some solo piano music, played by Glass himself. Recorded at home over the course of the pandemic, the album is full of Glass classics, such as “Opening” from his 1982 album Glassworks, and his multi-movement piano work Metamorphosis.
Glass is an octogenarian and someone who has always been primarily a composer, so he’s no piano virtuoso, but that’s kind of the point of the album. His playing is not polished, and this rough-around-the-edges approach to recording is a bit en vogue (see Jeremy Denk’s 2019 album c.1300 - c.2000.)
Though Glass’s signature repeating polyrhythms are not mechanically perfect, the resulting sound is a moving interpretation that evokes images of an old man playing piano in his apartment during the COVID-19 crisis. [Will: And what could possibly be better than that?]
As with most Philip Glass, I suggest putting it on in the background, to add a moody, nostalgic flavor to your work-time.
Tone Praise
Henryk Górecki, Harpsichord Concerto
Since Listener Tammy mentioned Gorécki, I (Will) couldn’t help but include this piece in the newsletter. I was obsessed with Górecki’s harpsichord concerto when I was in college and I used to practice it incessantly. If you listen to even a minute of it, you’ll realize that was surely a sign of incipient madness. I really wanted to conduct a performance from the harpsichord.
This brings to mind another story that I can’t help but recall: the summer after my second year at the University of Chicago, the chair of the music department convened a special meeting of all the keyboard players to discuss an important issue that had arisen. Apparently someone had been stealing the school’s harpsichord piece-by-piece, removing individual strings, keys, and plectra, presumably with the goal of rebuilding it elsewhere. I guess it’s kind of the opposite of the Ship of Theseus, or perhaps more akin to the Star Trek transporter problem.
Wild times, wild place.
Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)
Another week that I (Will) find myself floundering with the NTT.
The music itself is quite lovely, and sounds like perhaps a variation from a set of themes & variations. Joseph left the door open for this being the centennial year of the composer's death, and certainly the tonal language would mean that this music could come from the 19th century, but of course, that could be a feint.
Saint-Saëns? Or maybe it's a rustic American writing in an older style, someone like Henry Cowell. (Not putting Cowell in my basket — timeline is way off.)
The piano makes things so difficult by reducing everything to a much simpler sonic landscape than something with more instruments, where you'd get so much more information about the stylistic writing.
I know that Bruckner's 200th anniversary is this year, but I don't know if that counts as "centennial" (i.e. if that term is a stand-in for any multiple of one hundred.)
I guess I'm going with Saint-Saëns. I'm too tired to guess anyone else!
Will, thanks for the tip about "She Came to Me" - I'd been looking forward to seeing it. I liked it even more than I thought I would. Somewhat disjointed, but quirky, funny, and poignant. The composer's "real life" encounters, and how they inspired and morphed into opera scenes, worked particularly well.
And what an unexpected and delightful surprise to see bass/baritone Greer Grimsley in a cameo role as the Generalissimo at the end of the movie in the Space Opera. He's been a long-time favorite of Seattle Opera subscribers, including me.
Just ran across this discussion between filmmaker Rebecca Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller) and composer Bryce Dessner that might be of interest to those who have seen the movie:
https://youtu.be/rBTg9P9nlTc?si=Fj0n6OX8dV0vZbyS