Last fall, during his consultancy to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma visited the Illinois Youth Center, a correctional institution in Warrenville. He accompanied the female inmates as they rehearsed a musical show based on their life experiences, as part of the C.S.O.’s program to reach communities far from Symphony Center.
In December, the superstar soprano Renée Fleming, in her role as the Lyric Opera’s creative consultant, outlined plans to draw new audiences to the Lyric’s home on Wacker Drive. They include the classic American musical “Show Boat” in the operatic season and concerts by non-opera artists like Sting.
That sort of thinking should appeal to Anthony Freud, who was named the Lyric’s new general director on April 21. His previous tenure at the Houston Grand Opera included creation of the world’s first mariachi opera, one of several programs establishing him as an envelope-bursting innovator in this country and in his native Britain.
That these three audience-builders should appear on the Chicago scene within the last 16 months is no accident. Even before the recession, the 21st century posed challenges to classical-music institutions. Not even the venerable giants have been immune. In April, the 111-year-old Philadelphia Orchestra voted to seek bankruptcy protection. The C.S.O. and the Lyric are healthy enough, but they can hardly ignore the warning signs around them.
Ms. Fleming and Mr. Ma — the first creative consultants employed by either institution — are spearheading the response. In addition to influential ideas, they bring a charisma that carries beyond concert halls and into popular culture.
Add the world-renowned Riccardo Muti, who recently took over as the C.S.O.’s music director, and you have the sort of star-power lineup that, say, the Cubs have been seeking for years. Even more than sports teams, classical music needs that kind of celebrity these days.
No niche of the performing arts has felt the sting of the digital revolution more than music. The record industry has been damaged by easily copied MP3 files. IPods allow listeners to hear music all day, everywhere: no need to step into a concert hall or arena. As improved technology brings higher-quality downloads and high-definition video streaming, even the most persnickety orchestra and opera fans can find reasons to avoid live events: why contend with traffic, parking, audience sniffles or a plain old off-night on stage?
A 2008 study by the National Endowment for the Arts surveyed adults attending arts performances at least once during the previous year. Since 2002, the classical music audience has declined by almost 20 percent and the opera audience by 30 percent.
Susan Mathieson Mayer, director of communications for the Lyric, put the blame for the drop in attendance on cutbacks in arts education in public schools. “We survey opera subscribers continuously, and almost invariably they had some kind of exposure when they were kids: music lessons, parents taking them to concerts, et cetera,” she said. “Times are very different from 20 years ago. We’re dealing with maybe two generations who did not have the same kind of exposure that their parents did.”
Deborah F. Rutter, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, identified another factor. “The competition for leisure time is so much more challenging than it was 20 to 30 years ago,” she said. In fact, given the lure of computer-driven entertainment, she finds it “fascinating that this passion and excitement still exist for the live concert experience.”
But that passion belongs to an increasingly older audience. The N.E.A. survey found that in 2008, nearly 40 percent of the symphony audience, and about 35 percent of operagoers, were older than 55. By comparison, the audience for Latin music, among the most popular idioms surveyed, counts only about 20 percent of its audience in that demographic.
Both Ms. Rutter and Ms. Mayer say their challenge lies in enticing younger audiences to show up a few times and then to turn that interest into habit, so that by the time they reach their 30s and 40s and have more disposable income, they might become regular attendees and even subscribers.
Ms. Rutter describes the strategy as “Trick them into loving you for the rest of time.” The C.S.O.’s student ticket policy is a case in point. For $10, registered students can reserve a ticket online weeks before a concert; when they show up, they get the best available seats. “They could be in a lower balcony seat that normally runs $120,” Ms. Rutter said, noting that last year the program attracted some 14,000 students.
The Lyric’s NEXT program sends an e-blast to college students announcing unsold tickets. “This past year we had probably close to 10,000 college students attending, at a cost of $20 a ticket” for seats that can sell for up to $200, Ms. Mayer said.
Some seemingly novel concepts are firmly rooted in centuries of tradition. Ms. Fleming hit on the idea of bringing Broadway to the Lyric last summer when she was in Vienna, visiting an exhibition about Gustav Mahler, the 19th-century composer and opera director. “Mahler was quoted as saying how excited he was to be presenting works by Mozart 100 years after they were written,” Ms. Fleming said. “I thought that would be a good place to start in the U.S. too,” with homegrown works from the previous century.
At Houston Grand Opera, Mr. Freud left his stamp with “The Refuge,” a 2007 production for which he commissioned a poet and a composer to interview hundreds of non-native Houstonians to learn their “journey stories” — how they ended up in the city — and turn them into a full-fledged production.
“On one level, you can regard opera as a 400-year-old European art form,” he said in Chicago the day after his hiring. ”But if you distill opera, it’s simply telling stories through words and music, and that transcends history and ethnicity.”
The Lyric has already dipped a toe in these waters, notably with the 2010-11 season’s finale, “Hercules.” The famed director Peter Sellars drew on weeks of workshops with American military veterans to transfer the story from ancient Greece to the modern United States, and to explore the difficulties that returning soldiers have in leaving the traumas of war on the battlefield.
Do such productions build audiences? At a reception following the opera’s dress rehearsal, which was attended by more than 75 of the military veterans who had worked with Mr. Sellars, several allowed that this was their first opera experience and that they did not really follow much of the action onstage. While it is unlikely that many of them will return, the production did attract major news media exposure.
Similarly, the inmates from Warrenville probably will not rush off to sign up for the new season at the Chicago Symphony when they are released. But the idea behind that program, and others in the orchestra’s ambitious Citizen Musician initiative, is to expand the audience indirectly, by building community ties. “By going beyond the seats in Orchestra Hall, they’re doing the right thing,” Mr. Ma said.
And such experiences leave their mark on the consulting musicians as well. “What a musician does is collect all these experiences and then report back in sound,” Mr. Ma said. “I know after this, the Dvorak Concerto sounds different when I play it. There’s more love there — more humanity.”
- we do not hear two instruments being played at the same time as being twice as loud as one.
"If we have two instruments (such as glockenspiels), we only get double the effect if the up-down-up-down pressure ripples (sound waves, which have the effect of alternating increased and decreased pressure) from them are perfectly in step with each other. If so, they can act together to give a [perfectly synchronized] UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN pressure ripple.
"But, when we hit both instruments, you can bet your life that we don't hit them exactly at the same time, so the pressure ripples from the two instruments won't be in step when they reach the microphone. This means that sometimes the 'pressure up' part of one ripple will be trying to raise the air pressure as the 'pressure down' part of the other is trying to lower it. if the wave patterns were perfectly out of step, the up-down-up-down of one of them would be canceled out by the down-up-down-up of the other - and we wouldn't hear a note at all.
"This is weird but true - it's how some farmers protect their hearing when they are driving noisy tractors all day. They buy 'active ear defenders' which look like headphones. Inside each of the earpieces is a microphone and a speaker connected to some electronics. The microphone listens to the sound which is about to reach your eardrum and makes the speaker produce the same pressure wave - but out of step with the original one. The idea is that when the two pressure waves meet, one of them tries to raise the pressure at the same time as the other tries to lower it - so nothing much happens and the eardrum is left in peace. In practice the sound waves are too complicated for this to work exactly, but it does reduce most of the noise.
"Going back to our glockenspiels, the canceling out is nowhere near perfect because it would be too difficult to organize - the sound waves are coming from different places in the room and also bouncing off the walls, and it's incredibly unlikely that you would hit the instruments at precisely the right times to get the ripple patterns exactly out of step just at the point where they meet the microphone. What actually happens is that we do get more sound pressure from two instruments than we would from one - but there is some interference from the low-pressure bits of one wave pattern with the high-pressure bits of the other, so there is some canceling out.
"If more instruments are involved, the amount of canceling out gets more serious. The pressure of the air next to the microphone can only be higher than normal (pushing the microphone inward) or lower than normal (pulling it outward): it can't be both at once. If we play forty glockenspiels, each of our forty glockenspiels has an 'up pressure' or 'down pressure' vote at any point in time -but a lot of these votes cancel each other out. If a forty-first glockenspielist joins our little party, then his note will be mostly canceled - though a little bit will get through to contribute to the overall loudness.
"This effect is not the only one involved in our appreciation of loudness. If it was, 100 instruments would sound ten times as loud as one. But we perceive 100 instruments as being only four times as loud as one. This extra diminution in perceived loudness is the result of the way we humans are designed - so let's have a look at that.
"Why don't our brains add up sounds normally? The surprising answer is that our brains and ears add up sounds in an unusual way in order to help us stay alive. From the times of the earliest cavemen to the present day, we have used our ears to help us avoid danger. This is one of the main reasons we have ears in the first place (although they are also useful for supporting your sunglasses). To
be effective, your ears have to be able to hear very quiet noises (like the sound of someone creeping up on you), but also they must not get damaged by loud noises (such as thunder). It wouldn't be any good if you had excellent hearing for quiet noises but your ears stopped working after the first loud noise you heard.
"Our ears are organized in such a way that quiet noises can be heard clearly but any increase in the volume of the noise has progressively less and less impact. This effect is also true of our other four senses: smell, taste, sight and touch. Six smelly socks aren't six times as smelly as one on its own (even though each of the socks is releasing the same amount of smell) and ten salted peanuts in your
mouth aren't five times as salty as two of them (even though you now have five times as much salt on your tongue). If you light 100 candles one at a time in a dark room you get the same effect as you got with the [glockenspiels] - the first one makes the biggest difference and the eighty-seventh makes hardly any difference. If you are daft enough to stick a pin in your fingertip then it will hurt, but if you stick a second one in (next to the first one) the pain will not be doubled."
Author: John Powell
Title: How Music Works
Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell
Pages: 85-87
"But, when we hit both instruments, you can bet your life that we don't hit them exactly at the same time, so the pressure ripples from the two instruments won't be in step when they reach the microphone. This means that sometimes the 'pressure up' part of one ripple will be trying to raise the air pressure as the 'pressure down' part of the other is trying to lower it. if the wave patterns were perfectly out of step, the up-down-up-down of one of them would be canceled out by the down-up-down-up of the other - and we wouldn't hear a note at all.
"This is weird but true - it's how some farmers protect their hearing when they are driving noisy tractors all day. They buy 'active ear defenders' which look like headphones. Inside each of the earpieces is a microphone and a speaker connected to some electronics. The microphone listens to the sound which is about to reach your eardrum and makes the speaker produce the same pressure wave - but out of step with the original one. The idea is that when the two pressure waves meet, one of them tries to raise the pressure at the same time as the other tries to lower it - so nothing much happens and the eardrum is left in peace. In practice the sound waves are too complicated for this to work exactly, but it does reduce most of the noise.
"Going back to our glockenspiels, the canceling out is nowhere near perfect because it would be too difficult to organize - the sound waves are coming from different places in the room and also bouncing off the walls, and it's incredibly unlikely that you would hit the instruments at precisely the right times to get the ripple patterns exactly out of step just at the point where they meet the microphone. What actually happens is that we do get more sound pressure from two instruments than we would from one - but there is some interference from the low-pressure bits of one wave pattern with the high-pressure bits of the other, so there is some canceling out.
"If more instruments are involved, the amount of canceling out gets more serious. The pressure of the air next to the microphone can only be higher than normal (pushing the microphone inward) or lower than normal (pulling it outward): it can't be both at once. If we play forty glockenspiels, each of our forty glockenspiels has an 'up pressure' or 'down pressure' vote at any point in time -but a lot of these votes cancel each other out. If a forty-first glockenspielist joins our little party, then his note will be mostly canceled - though a little bit will get through to contribute to the overall loudness.
"This effect is not the only one involved in our appreciation of loudness. If it was, 100 instruments would sound ten times as loud as one. But we perceive 100 instruments as being only four times as loud as one. This extra diminution in perceived loudness is the result of the way we humans are designed - so let's have a look at that.
"Why don't our brains add up sounds normally? The surprising answer is that our brains and ears add up sounds in an unusual way in order to help us stay alive. From the times of the earliest cavemen to the present day, we have used our ears to help us avoid danger. This is one of the main reasons we have ears in the first place (although they are also useful for supporting your sunglasses). To
be effective, your ears have to be able to hear very quiet noises (like the sound of someone creeping up on you), but also they must not get damaged by loud noises (such as thunder). It wouldn't be any good if you had excellent hearing for quiet noises but your ears stopped working after the first loud noise you heard.
"Our ears are organized in such a way that quiet noises can be heard clearly but any increase in the volume of the noise has progressively less and less impact. This effect is also true of our other four senses: smell, taste, sight and touch. Six smelly socks aren't six times as smelly as one on its own (even though each of the socks is releasing the same amount of smell) and ten salted peanuts in your
mouth aren't five times as salty as two of them (even though you now have five times as much salt on your tongue). If you light 100 candles one at a time in a dark room you get the same effect as you got with the [glockenspiels] - the first one makes the biggest difference and the eighty-seventh makes hardly any difference. If you are daft enough to stick a pin in your fingertip then it will hurt, but if you stick a second one in (next to the first one) the pain will not be doubled."
Author: John Powell
Title: How Music Works
Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell
Pages: 85-87
defining the difference between musical notes and ordinary noises
"Every day you will hear millions of sounds and only a few of them will be musical notes. Usually, musical notes are created deliberately from a musical instrument, but they can be produced in non-musical situations - when you 'ping' a wineglass or ring a doorbell, for example. Whenever and however they are produced, musical notes sound different from all other noises.
"What's the difference between a musical note and any other sort of noise? Everyone you know will have some sort of answer to this question, but most of them will be based on the idea that musical notes sound ... er ... musical and other noises are ... er ... not musical. ...
"If you throw a stone into a flat, calm pond you will disturb the surface of the water and create ripples which travel away from the initial splash. Similarly, if you click your fingers in a quiet room, you will disturb the air and ripples of disturbance will move away from your hand. In the case of the stone in the pond, the ripples involve a change in the height of the water and our eyes can clearly see what's going on: the height of the water goes up-down-up-down-up-down as the ripples travel away from the splash.
"When you click your fingers (or make any other sound, including a musical note), the sound ripples traveling toward your ears involve changes in the pressure of the air. We can't see these ripples but our ears can hear them. When the ripples reach our ears, the air pressure goes up-down-up-down-up-down and this makes our eardrums go in-out-in-out-in-out at the same rate - because our eardrums are like tiny, flexible trampolines which are easily
pushed in and out by changes in the air pressure. Your brain then analyzes the in-out movement of your eardrums and decides what's going on - is it time to run away or time to order dessert? ...
"If we could see the pressure ripples of these non-musical sounds, we would notice that they were very complicated. ... The noise ripple shape [of, for example, a door closing] which eventually arrives at the eardrum is extremely complicated because it is made up of a chaotic group of individual ripples which have no relationship to each other. This is true of all noises which are not musical notes. The noise ripple shape which eventually arrives at the eardrum is extremely complicated because it is made up of a chaotic group of individual ripples which have no relationship to each other. This is true of all noises which are not musical notes.
"Musical notes are different from non-musical noises because every musical note is made up of a ripple pattern which repeats itself over and over again. ... To be a musical note, it doesn't really matter how complicated the individual ripples are, as long as the pattern repeats itself. Our eardrums flex in and out as the pressure ripples push against them. However, our eardrums can't respond properly if the ripple pattern repeats itself too quickly or too slowly - we can only hear patterns which repeat themselves more often than twenty times a second but less often than 2o,ooo times a second.
"Musical notes don't need to be made by musical instruments, in fact, anything which vibrates or disturbs the air in a regular way between twenty and 20,000 times a second will produce a note. High-speed motorbike engines or dentists' drills produce notes. In the song 'The Facts of Life,' the band Talking Heads uses what sounds like a compressed air-powered drill to produce one of the notes of the background accompaniment. This combination of music and engineering fits well with the lyrics, which compare love to a machine.
"Musical instruments are simply devices which have been designed to produce notes in a controlled way. A musician uses finger movement or lung power to start something vibrating at chosen frequencies - and notes are produced."
Author: John Powell
Title: How Music Works
Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell
Pages: 20-24
"What's the difference between a musical note and any other sort of noise? Everyone you know will have some sort of answer to this question, but most of them will be based on the idea that musical notes sound ... er ... musical and other noises are ... er ... not musical. ...
"If you throw a stone into a flat, calm pond you will disturb the surface of the water and create ripples which travel away from the initial splash. Similarly, if you click your fingers in a quiet room, you will disturb the air and ripples of disturbance will move away from your hand. In the case of the stone in the pond, the ripples involve a change in the height of the water and our eyes can clearly see what's going on: the height of the water goes up-down-up-down-up-down as the ripples travel away from the splash.
"When you click your fingers (or make any other sound, including a musical note), the sound ripples traveling toward your ears involve changes in the pressure of the air. We can't see these ripples but our ears can hear them. When the ripples reach our ears, the air pressure goes up-down-up-down-up-down and this makes our eardrums go in-out-in-out-in-out at the same rate - because our eardrums are like tiny, flexible trampolines which are easily
pushed in and out by changes in the air pressure. Your brain then analyzes the in-out movement of your eardrums and decides what's going on - is it time to run away or time to order dessert? ...
"If we could see the pressure ripples of these non-musical sounds, we would notice that they were very complicated. ... The noise ripple shape [of, for example, a door closing] which eventually arrives at the eardrum is extremely complicated because it is made up of a chaotic group of individual ripples which have no relationship to each other. This is true of all noises which are not musical notes. The noise ripple shape which eventually arrives at the eardrum is extremely complicated because it is made up of a chaotic group of individual ripples which have no relationship to each other. This is true of all noises which are not musical notes.
"Musical notes are different from non-musical noises because every musical note is made up of a ripple pattern which repeats itself over and over again. ... To be a musical note, it doesn't really matter how complicated the individual ripples are, as long as the pattern repeats itself. Our eardrums flex in and out as the pressure ripples push against them. However, our eardrums can't respond properly if the ripple pattern repeats itself too quickly or too slowly - we can only hear patterns which repeat themselves more often than twenty times a second but less often than 2o,ooo times a second.
"Musical notes don't need to be made by musical instruments, in fact, anything which vibrates or disturbs the air in a regular way between twenty and 20,000 times a second will produce a note. High-speed motorbike engines or dentists' drills produce notes. In the song 'The Facts of Life,' the band Talking Heads uses what sounds like a compressed air-powered drill to produce one of the notes of the background accompaniment. This combination of music and engineering fits well with the lyrics, which compare love to a machine.
"Musical instruments are simply devices which have been designed to produce notes in a controlled way. A musician uses finger movement or lung power to start something vibrating at chosen frequencies - and notes are produced."
Author: John Powell
Title: How Music Works
Publisher: Little, Brown
Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell
Pages: 20-24
do, re, mi
"Actually it was ut, re, mi, etc., that the Italian monk Guido of Arezzo invented. He got the names of the notes - ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la - from the initial syllables of the half lines that make up the first stanza of an eighth-century Latin hymn to John the Baptist written by Paul the Deacon. In this work, each nonitalicized syllable below fell on a higher successive tone of the hexachord, the first six notes of the major scale (c, d, e, f, g, a):
Ut queant laxis resonare fibris
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
Solvepolluti labii reatum ...
(So that your servants can, with unrestrained voice, sing the wonders of your deeds, remove the guilt of our tainted lips!)
"The initial letters of "Sancte Iohannes," the next words in the text, which directly address St. John, later gave us the name of the note si, which was eventually changed to ti, just as ut was later changed to do and sol to so in many countries for reasons of euphony. The singing of vocal exercises to these syllables is termed solfeggio or solfege, names deriving from sol and fa, just as solmization itself is derived from sol and mi.
"The background to this development was the difficulty of teaching monks and cathedral singers the Gregorian chant, which was named for Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), though it probably coalesced about two hundred years after his time. This official music of the Roman Catholic liturgy was a monodic plainchant, meaning that the same notes were sung by all the voices. Although the Arabs had developed a system of musical notation in about 700, and the French manuscript called Musica enchiriadis ("Handbook of Music") used Latin letters for notation in c. 870, the most common system in Europe by the early tenth century was notation by means of neumes (from the Greek for 'breaths').
"Looking like accent marks placed higher or lower over words to be sung, neumes indicated in a slapdash way whether the pitch was rising or falling. This crude way of reminding singers of the direction their voices should go was better than nothing, but the specific pitches had to be laboriously memorized for each individual piece of music - and the church had a vast repertoire of hymns and liturgical songs.
"Enter the Benedictine monk Guido of Arezzo (c. 991 - 1050) a composer, choirmaster, and theorist of liturgical music who is sometimes called 'the Father of Modern Music.' Building on insights gleaned from a French musical treatise, he and a fellow monk named Michael began to experiment with the teaching of music at the northern Italian monastery of Pomposa on the Adriatic coast.
"Their success was such that Guido became something of a celebrity in the locale, and the envy of the other monks caused him to depart for the city of Arezzo, southeast of Florence, in about 1025. Bishop Theodald of Arezzo gave him a job training singers of the cathedral school and asked him to write a book on musical theory. The resultant Micrologus de disciplina artis musicae (Manual of the Art of Music) in twenty chapters included discussions of early polyphony and was used as a standard European text for several hundred years.
"Guido's major innovation, however, was a protomodern system of musical notation. In his day, two lines were sometimes used to indicate the range of pitch within a composition - a red line to indicate the note now known as F and a yellow or green line to indicate C, and the aforementioned neumes were placed at varying distances from them to roughly indicate pitch. Guido added a black line between F and C and another black one above C to create the first four-line musical staff (the current five-line staff first appeared in 1200). He thus made use of his lines - as well as the spaces between them - to place letters indicating the specific notes. He continued to mark the C and F lines - the C would appear above the F for a song with a high melody, and the reverse would be the case for a lower melody. His symbols for these notes have now become our treble and bass clefs. Following on Guido's notation, square notes appeared in the thirteenth century, the ancestors of our oval ones.
"Now that musical intervals could be clearly indicated with Guido's notation and four-line staff, music could be learned much more rapidly - and composed and preserved much more efficiently - than in the past."
Author: Peter D'Epiro
Title: The Book of Firsts
Publisher: Anchor Books
Date: Copyright 2010 by Peter D'Epiro
Pages: 231-232
Ut queant laxis resonare fibris
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
Solvepolluti labii reatum ...
(So that your servants can, with unrestrained voice, sing the wonders of your deeds, remove the guilt of our tainted lips!)
"The initial letters of "Sancte Iohannes," the next words in the text, which directly address St. John, later gave us the name of the note si, which was eventually changed to ti, just as ut was later changed to do and sol to so in many countries for reasons of euphony. The singing of vocal exercises to these syllables is termed solfeggio or solfege, names deriving from sol and fa, just as solmization itself is derived from sol and mi.
"The background to this development was the difficulty of teaching monks and cathedral singers the Gregorian chant, which was named for Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), though it probably coalesced about two hundred years after his time. This official music of the Roman Catholic liturgy was a monodic plainchant, meaning that the same notes were sung by all the voices. Although the Arabs had developed a system of musical notation in about 700, and the French manuscript called Musica enchiriadis ("Handbook of Music") used Latin letters for notation in c. 870, the most common system in Europe by the early tenth century was notation by means of neumes (from the Greek for 'breaths').
"Looking like accent marks placed higher or lower over words to be sung, neumes indicated in a slapdash way whether the pitch was rising or falling. This crude way of reminding singers of the direction their voices should go was better than nothing, but the specific pitches had to be laboriously memorized for each individual piece of music - and the church had a vast repertoire of hymns and liturgical songs.
"Enter the Benedictine monk Guido of Arezzo (c. 991 - 1050) a composer, choirmaster, and theorist of liturgical music who is sometimes called 'the Father of Modern Music.' Building on insights gleaned from a French musical treatise, he and a fellow monk named Michael began to experiment with the teaching of music at the northern Italian monastery of Pomposa on the Adriatic coast.
"Their success was such that Guido became something of a celebrity in the locale, and the envy of the other monks caused him to depart for the city of Arezzo, southeast of Florence, in about 1025. Bishop Theodald of Arezzo gave him a job training singers of the cathedral school and asked him to write a book on musical theory. The resultant Micrologus de disciplina artis musicae (Manual of the Art of Music) in twenty chapters included discussions of early polyphony and was used as a standard European text for several hundred years.
"Guido's major innovation, however, was a protomodern system of musical notation. In his day, two lines were sometimes used to indicate the range of pitch within a composition - a red line to indicate the note now known as F and a yellow or green line to indicate C, and the aforementioned neumes were placed at varying distances from them to roughly indicate pitch. Guido added a black line between F and C and another black one above C to create the first four-line musical staff (the current five-line staff first appeared in 1200). He thus made use of his lines - as well as the spaces between them - to place letters indicating the specific notes. He continued to mark the C and F lines - the C would appear above the F for a song with a high melody, and the reverse would be the case for a lower melody. His symbols for these notes have now become our treble and bass clefs. Following on Guido's notation, square notes appeared in the thirteenth century, the ancestors of our oval ones.
"Now that musical intervals could be clearly indicated with Guido's notation and four-line staff, music could be learned much more rapidly - and composed and preserved much more efficiently - than in the past."
Author: Peter D'Epiro
Title: The Book of Firsts
Publisher: Anchor Books
Date: Copyright 2010 by Peter D'Epiro
Pages: 231-232
Frank Sinatra
"When he let himself go, as he did in the three up-tempo numbers he recorded in a remarkable July session orchestrated by George Siravo and the great Sy Oliver ('It All Depends on You,' 'Bye Bye Baby,' and 'Don't Cry Joe'), the results were thrilling. Lacquer-disc safety copies of the Sunday-evening session (Sinatra always preferred recording at night - 'The voice is better at night,' he was fond of saying), transcribed and analyzed by the Sinatra musicologist Charles L. Granata, have preserved Frank's obsessive pursuit of artistic perfection in exquisite detail:
"The recording date is July 10, 1949. As the evening session gets underway at Columbia's cavernous 30th Street Studio, Sinatra, arranger Sy Oliver, and conductor Hugo Winterhalter are auditioning a second instrumental run-through of George Siravo's arrangement of 'It All Depends on You.' Tonight's date will be jazz-flavored, the orchestra really a big 'band' - no strings. Amid the chatter and bustle on the studio floor, the vocalist, listening intently to a passage by the brass section, feels that something is amiss ...
" 'I'd like to hear the introduction, with the muted brass,' he instructs the conductor. The musicians comply, and the brief section is played for his approval. After hearing the passage, Sinatra carefully instructs both the musicians and the engineers: 'I'd like to get that as tight as we can. Trombones: you may have to turn around and face the microphone or something. I'd like to hear the six of you, as a unit,' he says. The engineer brings down a microphone with two sides, to help capture the precise tonal quality that Sinatra desires. The section played through again, the singer continues. 'Just once more, Hugo, and would you use less volume in the reeds, with the clarinet lead~ And would you play it lightly, trumpets and trombones, if you don't mind? I mean softly," he emphasizes.
"The trombone problem rectified, Sinatra, now in the booth, turns his attention to the rhythm section. He inquires of drummer Terry Snyder: 'You got enough pad on the bass drum? It booms a little bit.' Then, without the slightest hesitation, he turns to the studio prop men. 'Would you put in a small piece of carpet, enough to cover the entire bottom of the drum?' Satisfied, he addresses the pianist. 'Say, Johnny Guarneri, would you play something, a figure or something, and have the rhythm fall in? We'd like to get a small balance on it.' Guarneri begins an impromptu riff on the melody, as bassist Herman 'Trigger' Alpert, drummer Snyder, and guitarist Al Caiola join in. After a few moments, Sinatra's directions continue. 'Bass and guitar: Trig, can you move in about a foot or so, or you can pull the mike out if you wish. And the guitar-also move in a little closer. just a sbade-uh, uh, uh-that's enough.'
"This was no mere voice: this was a great artist in full command his powers and the means required to convey his art."
Author: James Kaplan
Title: Frank
Publisher: Doubleday
Date: Copyright 2010 by James Kaplan
Pages: 389-390
"The recording date is July 10, 1949. As the evening session gets underway at Columbia's cavernous 30th Street Studio, Sinatra, arranger Sy Oliver, and conductor Hugo Winterhalter are auditioning a second instrumental run-through of George Siravo's arrangement of 'It All Depends on You.' Tonight's date will be jazz-flavored, the orchestra really a big 'band' - no strings. Amid the chatter and bustle on the studio floor, the vocalist, listening intently to a passage by the brass section, feels that something is amiss ...
" 'I'd like to hear the introduction, with the muted brass,' he instructs the conductor. The musicians comply, and the brief section is played for his approval. After hearing the passage, Sinatra carefully instructs both the musicians and the engineers: 'I'd like to get that as tight as we can. Trombones: you may have to turn around and face the microphone or something. I'd like to hear the six of you, as a unit,' he says. The engineer brings down a microphone with two sides, to help capture the precise tonal quality that Sinatra desires. The section played through again, the singer continues. 'Just once more, Hugo, and would you use less volume in the reeds, with the clarinet lead~ And would you play it lightly, trumpets and trombones, if you don't mind? I mean softly," he emphasizes.
"The trombone problem rectified, Sinatra, now in the booth, turns his attention to the rhythm section. He inquires of drummer Terry Snyder: 'You got enough pad on the bass drum? It booms a little bit.' Then, without the slightest hesitation, he turns to the studio prop men. 'Would you put in a small piece of carpet, enough to cover the entire bottom of the drum?' Satisfied, he addresses the pianist. 'Say, Johnny Guarneri, would you play something, a figure or something, and have the rhythm fall in? We'd like to get a small balance on it.' Guarneri begins an impromptu riff on the melody, as bassist Herman 'Trigger' Alpert, drummer Snyder, and guitarist Al Caiola join in. After a few moments, Sinatra's directions continue. 'Bass and guitar: Trig, can you move in about a foot or so, or you can pull the mike out if you wish. And the guitar-also move in a little closer. just a sbade-uh, uh, uh-that's enough.'
"This was no mere voice: this was a great artist in full command his powers and the means required to convey his art."
Author: James Kaplan
Title: Frank
Publisher: Doubleday
Date: Copyright 2010 by James Kaplan
Pages: 389-390
Opening your ears to classical music
People wishing to expand their musical horizons beyond pop may find the decision to explore classical music daunting.
That's to be expected considering classical music dates back more than 1,000 years if one regards Medieval music as the starting point. The timeline continues to include Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th-century music. I'm sure there's 21st-century music to incorporate, but I'll plead ignorant.
So with all those different eras, composers and types of compositions to consider, how does one start building a classical music library without going crazy or broke or both?
Perhaps this mildly subjective guide will help. To try to be as comprehensive as possible without penning a tome, the following list will include at least one composition from each era and one work that demonstrates a specific type of composition, such as a symphony. Because of space limitations, not every type will be represented. So all you sextet fans out there are out of luck.
For convenience's sake, I'll start at the beginning.
MEDIEVAL MUSIC: For the classical music debutante, this era from roughly 500 to 1400 might prove challenging unless you have a weakness for Gregorian chants. OK, that's not fair, plenty of variety exists here with instrumental music galore. The instruments even have great names like psaltery, rebec and chittarone. Sounds like a law firm. The Anthology of Medieval Music provides a superb primer.
RENAISSANCE MUSIC: This era, from roughly 1400 to 1600, also might not wow listeners accustomed to catchy tunes and big beats. Not that the period was devoid of melody and rhythm as the motets and chansons of Josquin des Prez and the madrigals of Don Carlo Gesualdo demonstrate. Look for collections of their music.
If polyphony is your thing, this is your era. Simply put, polyphonic music consists of two or more independent tones sounding simultaneously. It can test the ears of listeners accustomed to hearing a single tune.
One of the era's polyphonic masters is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and one of his masterpieces is the Mass for Pope Marcellus. Sure to please those who want to hear the voices of angels in music.
BAROQUE MUSIC: Now we're talking accessible, not that the era, stretching from 1600 to 1750, failed to produce complex music, as Bach's fugues demonstrate. A fugue provides another example of polyphony.
One of the towering geniuses in the classical biz, Bach didn't invent any forms of music. He just perfected every type of composition he touched. Case in point, the cantata, a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment. Of the 250-plus cantatas Bach composed, the most famous is arguably no. 80, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."Vocal writing to thank God for.
For brilliant examples of instrumental writing, you can't go wrong with Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos. For organ aficionados, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor pulls out all the stops. So to speak.
George Frideric Handelrates as another Baroque biggie. Since virtually everyone is familiar with the "Hallelujah" chorus from "Messiah," why not own the entire work? It's long, but it's rewarding, loaded with wondrous vocal writing.
To avoid execution from the Antonio Vivaldi fan club, I will include the outrageously popular "Four Seasons," four concertos ideal for violin connoisseurs.
CLASSICAL MUSIC: The period, dating from around 1750 to 1820, produced its share of masters, but two stand out: Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The former is known as the father of the symphony and the string quartet. Though he didn't invent these composition types, Haydn added intellectual weight to both of them.
In the quartet category, I recommend Haydn's Opus 33 and Opus 76 (six quartets in each opus). A typical string quartet consists of two violins, a viola and a cello. Think of the work as a musical conversation among four people.
As for symphonies, Haydn's "London Symphonies" (nos. 93 to 104) are considered among his finest. From this group, I suggest no. 104.
Mozart, the ultimate child prodigy, wrote masterpieces in nearly every genre, and he wrote constantly. It's frightening to contemplate how much more music he would have written had he not died at 35.
While this scribe would like to recommend all the works from Mozart's mature years, let's settle on opera, specifically "Don Giovanni," arguably the greatest opera ever written. The work has it all: drama, humor, love, seduction and, of course, death. Mozart could not only write wonderful melodies, he had a strong theatrical sense and he put it to good use in his operas.
ROMANTIC MUSIC: If the Baroque era is known as a period of textural intricacy and the Classical era the period of structural clarity, the Romantic era, running from about 1820 to 1900, showcased no-holds-barred originality. A strong sense of individuality - apparent in the rise of the virtuoso - and nationalism also blossomed here.
The dominant figures of the period's early years are Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Since the former is acknowledged as one of the greatest symphonists in the galaxy, I recommend buying all nine. If you're on a budget, however, get no. 9. If the "Ode to Joy" last movement doesn't tingle your spine, you have the emotional makeup of a pebble.
Like Mozart, Schubert died way too young - 31 - yet he still wrote some 600 songs, or lieder, and is considered one of the finest contributors to this genre. His song cycle, "The Winter's Journey," is among the finest ever written with music, piano and lyrics forging a perfect union. If lieder knock your lederhosen off, the other great Romantic song composers include Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf.
The Romantic era produced a slew of great pianists and piano composers, chief among them Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt. The former wrote almost exclusively for the piano - think of him as the poet of the keyboard - and his works form a musical bible for pianists. From a lengthy playlist of masterpieces, I'll select the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. You might recognize the funeral march from the second movement.
Liszt has received the title of the world's greatest piano virtuoso. Listen to the Transcendental Etudes and you'll understand why. These 12 compositions won't be confused with Chopsticks anytime soon.
Liszt learned the showmanship trade from Nicolo Paganini, arguably the greatest violin virtuoso on the firmament. While his violin concertos contain plenty of flash, I'll recommend his 24 Caprices, ideal as an introduction to different violin techniques. Double-stop trills, anyone?
One composer who was diametrically opposed to such theatrics was Johannes Brahms, another one of those towering geniuses whose compositions frequently take a walk on the intellectual side. That said, the first movement of his Second Symphony contains a melody based on his lullaby tune. I'm fond of the Symphony No. 4, however. The last movement rocks, with Brahms demonstrating his mastery of compositional forms from the past. In this case it's the passacaglia where the bass line gets a workout.
The Romantic era produced so many great works that omissions are sure to rile up fans of the omitted. To quote Steve Martin, excuuuse me. Here's my abridged list:
- Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 ("New World") - the "New World" is the United States where this Czech master composed the work on a visit. The second movement includes the moving Negro spiritual "Goin' Home" played first by an English horn, which is neither English nor a horn. It's a wind instrument likely to have originated from Silesia. Go figure.
- Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 - this dynamic gem emerged after the composer came out of a pathological depression thanks to Dr. Nikolai Dahl's hypnotic therapy. "You will compose a masterpiece." Piece of cake. Sergei could tickle the ivories, too, and his music combines elegant melodies with bravura playing.
- Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor - Another lyrical joy with violin gymnastics. Note Mendelssohn's characteristic use of the woodwinds.
- Ballet: Take your pick from the Peter Tchaikovsky triple play of classics: "Swan Lake," "Sleeping Beauty" or "Nutcracker." I'd go with the latter from Mr. Melody.
UIncidental music: Mendelssohn's "Midsummer's Night Dream" is the standard bearer here. Fairy-like magic captured in music. Anyone who has been to a wedding where traditional music is played might recognize the work's famous wedding march. The daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria had the march played at her wedding. The queen was a Felix fan. Nice endorsement.
- Opera: In classical music, opera devotees are a special bunch. You might call them fanatics. Kind of like members of Red Sox Nation. So expect some scribe-pillaging here for leaving out famous composers and famous operas.
We're going to include just four: Georges Bizet's "Carmen," Giacomo Puccini's "La Boheme," Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida" and Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." The first has tunes, the second elicits tears, the third goes for grandeur - think a spectacle with singing - and the fourth features groundbreaking harmonies. What's not to like?
TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC - And now for something completely different. Though not all romantic music disappeared at the turn of the century, the times, they were a-changin', and the leading practitioner of change was Arnold Schoenberg, who along with pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, championed the 12-tone technique where the music's tonal center goes on vacation. Do-re-mi becomes don't-re-mi.
We'll recommend Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Berg's opera "Wozzeck" and Webern's String Quartet (Opus 28).
An easier aural time should be had listening to the music of Igor Stravinsky. His ballet music is particularly powerful. Case in point, "The Rite of Spring." Fistfights broke out during the premiere of this work in Paris in 1913, and it's easy to see why. It's a tad harmonically and rhythmically radical for the time. But compared to most "modern" music, it's accessible. I won't disguise my general dislike for atonality, but this work kicks derriere.
For listeners who prefer a semblance of melody in their music, all is not lost. Here's an abridged list of composers and works worth considering:
- Gustav Mahler - Like your symphonies composed on a large scale? Here's your man. In case you're wondering how large the scale is, his Eighth Symphony is called "The Symphony of a Thousand," referring to the size of the orchestra needed to play it. It's not much of an exaggeration. For a more intimate work, consider the Fourth Symphony.
- Richard Strauss - Not to be confused with the Strauss of waltz king fame (that's Johann) or his son who wrote "Die Fledermaus" (that's Johann Jr.), this Strauss wrote music with a strong Romantic bent. Most of his famous tone poems were composed in the 19th century, such as "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (fans of the film "20O1: A Space Odyssey" will recognize its famous opening). For 20th-century masterpieces we suggest the opera "Der Rosenkavalier" and the Four Last Songs. Charming stuff.
- Serge Prokofiev - He wrote music that was incredibly beautiful. He also wrote music that was incredibly stringent. I have soft spots in my heart for "Peter and the Wolf," "Lieutenant Kije Suite" and the Classical Symphony. For bolder music, there's the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Symphony no. 5.
While classical music has been by dominated by Europeans, Americans have made their indelible marks. We'll list three. Let the outrage commence.
- Aaron Copland - the dean of American classical composers, he wrote in variety of styles. His most popular works are his hum-inducing, toe-tapping ballets, specifically "Appalachian Spring," "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo."
- Charles Ives - The greatest composer ever who was also an insurance agent. Startlingly original and light years ahead of its time, Ives' music is often not ear-friendly - care for some polytonality? - but it packs a punch. The Symphony No. 3 is one of his standouts loaded with nostalgia for America's past and intricate harmonies.
- George Gershwin - Other composers have mixed jazz with classical music, but no one did it better than this Brooklyn-born dynamo. Gershwin was equally adept as a composer of popular music. One can only imagine how many more great works he would have composed had he not died at 39. Must-buys include "An American in Paris," "Porgy and Bess" and "Rhapsody in Blue."
Now there are basically two ways to listen to classical music. You can just let the music wash over you and enjoy it for the simple pleasure it provides. While there's nothing wrong with this approach, it's kind of like reading Shakespeare just as words in sentences and ignoring the meaning behind them.
Basically, the more you know about classical music the more you can appreciate it. You don't have to take a music appreciation course - though that wouldn't hurt. An easier - and cheaper solution - is buying a book that serves as a guide. One of the better ones out there is the appropriately titled "What to Listen for in Music" by none other than Aaron Copland itself. It's less than 200 pages long and written for general public consumption. Imagine the joy and rapture to be derived from being able to distinguish the sound of an English horn, which, as we well know, is neither English nor a horn. OK, maybe not so much rapture.
That's to be expected considering classical music dates back more than 1,000 years if one regards Medieval music as the starting point. The timeline continues to include Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th-century music. I'm sure there's 21st-century music to incorporate, but I'll plead ignorant.
So with all those different eras, composers and types of compositions to consider, how does one start building a classical music library without going crazy or broke or both?
Perhaps this mildly subjective guide will help. To try to be as comprehensive as possible without penning a tome, the following list will include at least one composition from each era and one work that demonstrates a specific type of composition, such as a symphony. Because of space limitations, not every type will be represented. So all you sextet fans out there are out of luck.
For convenience's sake, I'll start at the beginning.
MEDIEVAL MUSIC: For the classical music debutante, this era from roughly 500 to 1400 might prove challenging unless you have a weakness for Gregorian chants. OK, that's not fair, plenty of variety exists here with instrumental music galore. The instruments even have great names like psaltery, rebec and chittarone. Sounds like a law firm. The Anthology of Medieval Music provides a superb primer.
RENAISSANCE MUSIC: This era, from roughly 1400 to 1600, also might not wow listeners accustomed to catchy tunes and big beats. Not that the period was devoid of melody and rhythm as the motets and chansons of Josquin des Prez and the madrigals of Don Carlo Gesualdo demonstrate. Look for collections of their music.
If polyphony is your thing, this is your era. Simply put, polyphonic music consists of two or more independent tones sounding simultaneously. It can test the ears of listeners accustomed to hearing a single tune.
One of the era's polyphonic masters is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and one of his masterpieces is the Mass for Pope Marcellus. Sure to please those who want to hear the voices of angels in music.
BAROQUE MUSIC: Now we're talking accessible, not that the era, stretching from 1600 to 1750, failed to produce complex music, as Bach's fugues demonstrate. A fugue provides another example of polyphony.
One of the towering geniuses in the classical biz, Bach didn't invent any forms of music. He just perfected every type of composition he touched. Case in point, the cantata, a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment. Of the 250-plus cantatas Bach composed, the most famous is arguably no. 80, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."Vocal writing to thank God for.
For brilliant examples of instrumental writing, you can't go wrong with Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos. For organ aficionados, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor pulls out all the stops. So to speak.
George Frideric Handelrates as another Baroque biggie. Since virtually everyone is familiar with the "Hallelujah" chorus from "Messiah," why not own the entire work? It's long, but it's rewarding, loaded with wondrous vocal writing.
To avoid execution from the Antonio Vivaldi fan club, I will include the outrageously popular "Four Seasons," four concertos ideal for violin connoisseurs.
CLASSICAL MUSIC: The period, dating from around 1750 to 1820, produced its share of masters, but two stand out: Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The former is known as the father of the symphony and the string quartet. Though he didn't invent these composition types, Haydn added intellectual weight to both of them.
In the quartet category, I recommend Haydn's Opus 33 and Opus 76 (six quartets in each opus). A typical string quartet consists of two violins, a viola and a cello. Think of the work as a musical conversation among four people.
As for symphonies, Haydn's "London Symphonies" (nos. 93 to 104) are considered among his finest. From this group, I suggest no. 104.
Mozart, the ultimate child prodigy, wrote masterpieces in nearly every genre, and he wrote constantly. It's frightening to contemplate how much more music he would have written had he not died at 35.
While this scribe would like to recommend all the works from Mozart's mature years, let's settle on opera, specifically "Don Giovanni," arguably the greatest opera ever written. The work has it all: drama, humor, love, seduction and, of course, death. Mozart could not only write wonderful melodies, he had a strong theatrical sense and he put it to good use in his operas.
ROMANTIC MUSIC: If the Baroque era is known as a period of textural intricacy and the Classical era the period of structural clarity, the Romantic era, running from about 1820 to 1900, showcased no-holds-barred originality. A strong sense of individuality - apparent in the rise of the virtuoso - and nationalism also blossomed here.
The dominant figures of the period's early years are Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Since the former is acknowledged as one of the greatest symphonists in the galaxy, I recommend buying all nine. If you're on a budget, however, get no. 9. If the "Ode to Joy" last movement doesn't tingle your spine, you have the emotional makeup of a pebble.
Like Mozart, Schubert died way too young - 31 - yet he still wrote some 600 songs, or lieder, and is considered one of the finest contributors to this genre. His song cycle, "The Winter's Journey," is among the finest ever written with music, piano and lyrics forging a perfect union. If lieder knock your lederhosen off, the other great Romantic song composers include Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf.
The Romantic era produced a slew of great pianists and piano composers, chief among them Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt. The former wrote almost exclusively for the piano - think of him as the poet of the keyboard - and his works form a musical bible for pianists. From a lengthy playlist of masterpieces, I'll select the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. You might recognize the funeral march from the second movement.
Liszt has received the title of the world's greatest piano virtuoso. Listen to the Transcendental Etudes and you'll understand why. These 12 compositions won't be confused with Chopsticks anytime soon.
Liszt learned the showmanship trade from Nicolo Paganini, arguably the greatest violin virtuoso on the firmament. While his violin concertos contain plenty of flash, I'll recommend his 24 Caprices, ideal as an introduction to different violin techniques. Double-stop trills, anyone?
One composer who was diametrically opposed to such theatrics was Johannes Brahms, another one of those towering geniuses whose compositions frequently take a walk on the intellectual side. That said, the first movement of his Second Symphony contains a melody based on his lullaby tune. I'm fond of the Symphony No. 4, however. The last movement rocks, with Brahms demonstrating his mastery of compositional forms from the past. In this case it's the passacaglia where the bass line gets a workout.
The Romantic era produced so many great works that omissions are sure to rile up fans of the omitted. To quote Steve Martin, excuuuse me. Here's my abridged list:
- Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 ("New World") - the "New World" is the United States where this Czech master composed the work on a visit. The second movement includes the moving Negro spiritual "Goin' Home" played first by an English horn, which is neither English nor a horn. It's a wind instrument likely to have originated from Silesia. Go figure.
- Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 - this dynamic gem emerged after the composer came out of a pathological depression thanks to Dr. Nikolai Dahl's hypnotic therapy. "You will compose a masterpiece." Piece of cake. Sergei could tickle the ivories, too, and his music combines elegant melodies with bravura playing.
- Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor - Another lyrical joy with violin gymnastics. Note Mendelssohn's characteristic use of the woodwinds.
- Ballet: Take your pick from the Peter Tchaikovsky triple play of classics: "Swan Lake," "Sleeping Beauty" or "Nutcracker." I'd go with the latter from Mr. Melody.
UIncidental music: Mendelssohn's "Midsummer's Night Dream" is the standard bearer here. Fairy-like magic captured in music. Anyone who has been to a wedding where traditional music is played might recognize the work's famous wedding march. The daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria had the march played at her wedding. The queen was a Felix fan. Nice endorsement.
- Opera: In classical music, opera devotees are a special bunch. You might call them fanatics. Kind of like members of Red Sox Nation. So expect some scribe-pillaging here for leaving out famous composers and famous operas.
We're going to include just four: Georges Bizet's "Carmen," Giacomo Puccini's "La Boheme," Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida" and Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." The first has tunes, the second elicits tears, the third goes for grandeur - think a spectacle with singing - and the fourth features groundbreaking harmonies. What's not to like?
TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC - And now for something completely different. Though not all romantic music disappeared at the turn of the century, the times, they were a-changin', and the leading practitioner of change was Arnold Schoenberg, who along with pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, championed the 12-tone technique where the music's tonal center goes on vacation. Do-re-mi becomes don't-re-mi.
We'll recommend Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Berg's opera "Wozzeck" and Webern's String Quartet (Opus 28).
An easier aural time should be had listening to the music of Igor Stravinsky. His ballet music is particularly powerful. Case in point, "The Rite of Spring." Fistfights broke out during the premiere of this work in Paris in 1913, and it's easy to see why. It's a tad harmonically and rhythmically radical for the time. But compared to most "modern" music, it's accessible. I won't disguise my general dislike for atonality, but this work kicks derriere.
For listeners who prefer a semblance of melody in their music, all is not lost. Here's an abridged list of composers and works worth considering:
- Gustav Mahler - Like your symphonies composed on a large scale? Here's your man. In case you're wondering how large the scale is, his Eighth Symphony is called "The Symphony of a Thousand," referring to the size of the orchestra needed to play it. It's not much of an exaggeration. For a more intimate work, consider the Fourth Symphony.
- Richard Strauss - Not to be confused with the Strauss of waltz king fame (that's Johann) or his son who wrote "Die Fledermaus" (that's Johann Jr.), this Strauss wrote music with a strong Romantic bent. Most of his famous tone poems were composed in the 19th century, such as "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (fans of the film "20O1: A Space Odyssey" will recognize its famous opening). For 20th-century masterpieces we suggest the opera "Der Rosenkavalier" and the Four Last Songs. Charming stuff.
- Serge Prokofiev - He wrote music that was incredibly beautiful. He also wrote music that was incredibly stringent. I have soft spots in my heart for "Peter and the Wolf," "Lieutenant Kije Suite" and the Classical Symphony. For bolder music, there's the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Symphony no. 5.
While classical music has been by dominated by Europeans, Americans have made their indelible marks. We'll list three. Let the outrage commence.
- Aaron Copland - the dean of American classical composers, he wrote in variety of styles. His most popular works are his hum-inducing, toe-tapping ballets, specifically "Appalachian Spring," "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo."
- Charles Ives - The greatest composer ever who was also an insurance agent. Startlingly original and light years ahead of its time, Ives' music is often not ear-friendly - care for some polytonality? - but it packs a punch. The Symphony No. 3 is one of his standouts loaded with nostalgia for America's past and intricate harmonies.
- George Gershwin - Other composers have mixed jazz with classical music, but no one did it better than this Brooklyn-born dynamo. Gershwin was equally adept as a composer of popular music. One can only imagine how many more great works he would have composed had he not died at 39. Must-buys include "An American in Paris," "Porgy and Bess" and "Rhapsody in Blue."
Now there are basically two ways to listen to classical music. You can just let the music wash over you and enjoy it for the simple pleasure it provides. While there's nothing wrong with this approach, it's kind of like reading Shakespeare just as words in sentences and ignoring the meaning behind them.
Basically, the more you know about classical music the more you can appreciate it. You don't have to take a music appreciation course - though that wouldn't hurt. An easier - and cheaper solution - is buying a book that serves as a guide. One of the better ones out there is the appropriately titled "What to Listen for in Music" by none other than Aaron Copland itself. It's less than 200 pages long and written for general public consumption. Imagine the joy and rapture to be derived from being able to distinguish the sound of an English horn, which, as we well know, is neither English nor a horn. OK, maybe not so much rapture.
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