CGF Newsletter 40: The Three Bs

Saariaho on Bach, Joey on Beethoven, Smyth on Brahms

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Joey special. Here’s your hint: This composer had multiple love affairs. 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 classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 39
Charles Ives, Largo for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano, S. 73

I didn’t just walk into a trap this week, I walked into a landmine—I got caught red-handed enjoying the music of Charles Ives!

I’ll get back to that in a second. Congratulations are very much in order, because Listener Laurie had yet another spectacular round of NTT, finding her way to Ives in a series of comments. Her other guesses were Hindemith (also a great guess) and Ligeti.

As for me, I guessed Enescu, Kodaly, and Martinu. I’d say those were all decent guesses from a chronological point of view, as this piece was written in the 1890’s. Well, sort of. Apparently Ives wrote it when he was a student at Yale, but as part of a violin sonata. He ended up replacing this movement in the sonata with a different slow movement based on—I kid you not—a song called The Old Oaken Bucket, which, frankly, I think would be a great nickname for Charles Ives himself.

I do have a chip on my shoulder with regard to Charles Ives because generally speaking I do not care for his work, and yet my own music has been compared to his on more than one occasion. But that’s just because people don’t know Alfred Schnittke, which is a shame, because yes, his stuff does have certain superficial commonalities with Ives, but Schnittke is just orders of magnitude better.

For some reason, I recently found myself listening to The Unanswered Question and I thought it was a really apt title, because I could not for the life of me figure out why I was doing that.

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.

NEWS!

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho died this past week at the age of 70. She was a big deal in the world of new music, a critical darling for her operas (especially L’amour de loin), and of course it’s very sad that such a creative and inventive person dies of a tragic cause like brain cancer. She and her music meant a great deal to a lot of people.

I can’t say I number among that crowd, though I’ve tried many times. (I do regard her highly as a style icon who decided to live in Paris for 30 years though.) Her death gave me a new opportunity to try to find an entry point into her music, and I think I’ve finally found it in her 2006 oratorio called La Passion de Simone:

This piece is modeled on the Bach Passions, though its subject is the 20th century philosopher Simone Weil, who herself died grievously young at the age of 34 when she went on a hunger strike in sympathy with the people of occupied France (she had escaped to England.)

A Bit of the Old Ludwig Van

I (Joey) revel in list-based listening and playing projects, and my most recent of the latter is to devote a week to each of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. Though I have only just reached the late works (the last five sonatas), I feel familiar enough with those to present a few of my personal musings as I worked through this corpus.

1. Though the typical early–middle–late periodicity reigns in most thought about Beethoven’s work, I found myself noticing a more distinct difference, in the playing experience, that his work more neatly divided into the two halves. Between Op. 57 (the “Appassionata”) and Op. 78, (“A Thérèse”) there is a large gap with no piano sonatas. Despite only a four year difference—1805 to 1809—I find a strong qualitative difference in the pacing of movements, the willingness to depart from typical Classical formulas, and even the feel in the hands. Importantly, sonatas from Op. 78 generally feel more “gentle” than what comes before. 

2. From his music, one could reasonably guess that old Ludwig was a pretty happy guy! Though the Sturm und Drang of Beethoven’s music is certainly not a myth, there are so many moments of absolute bliss, joy, satisfaction, good cheer, and above all, humor. Most of the sonatas have at least one funny moment (“funny” used broadly to encompass surprising and clever composition.)

3. Though I’m “in love” with less than 10% of the movements in the whole set (which isn’t bad! If I was in love with 10% of all music I’d have far too much on my hands), there is no sonata in the whole set that doesn’t contain a moment that I adore. This must be a part of the lasting appeal of these works—I think everyone can find at least one moment that speaks to their very soul.

4. Counterpoint, counterpoint, counterpoint.

5. “Beethoven doesn’t write good melodies”—kinda? His “melodic sense” is not the long narrative line that the masters like Mozart and bel canto opera composers have. It’s more that his short melodies —motives, moments—are incredibly catchy and flexible.

6. The most famous ones really are generally the best. What can I say? The “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” are incredibly powerful, the “Pathétique” histrionic, the “Moonlight” stunningly avant-garde… the test of time works!

Smyth on Brahms

Listener Jeff sent me this video last week before CGFN 38’s NTT was revealed to have been Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D, so it was quite a coincidence! 

I’ve been thinking a lot about Brahms lately, so listening to this was a total gas, not least because of her patrician elocution, and I recommend it most highly. Here’s a taste:

In society, and indeed in private, if anything upset him, he was totally lacking in what the Italians call educazione. His deficient breeding was painfully evident when people tried to thank him for the raptures his music gave them. This is always a difficult thing to do, but I am certain he would have missed it had the attempt been given up as too hazardous. Oh, hazardous it certainly was! And many a time have I seen some shy, elderly, but perhaps profoundly musical lady slink away almost in tears because of his sarcastic reception of her remarks.

Classical Mixtape

Haydn, “Fidelity”

 Until about a week ago, I did not know that Franz Joseph Haydn had penned so much as a single art song, much less that he had written fifteen such compositions on English texts! But this album of Haydn songs (in English, Italian, and German) by the incomparable Elly Ameling was just re-released, and now I know, and I’m glad I do.