Yesterday I was able to travel to London and go to the Science Museum. Whilst such an undertaking may seem ill-advised on a Saturday in school holidays, I needed to visit now because it was my only chance to see Universe of Sound: The Planets, an exhibition featuring Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia performing Holst's eponymous suite, as well as a new commission from Joby Talbot entitled Stars, Systems, Worlds, Infinity. All this was intended to demonstrate the workings of the symphony orchestra and its constituent instruments, and as such each section of the orchestra has its own curtained 'chamber' with the surround sound and video matched to give the impression of sitting amongst the players at that location.
I'd initially been alerted to its existence by a friend who is working as a guide at the exhibition, and who was very pleased to see me there. It turned out I'd fortuitously arrived during a lull in visitors (apparently it can become quite busy with families, and indeed the installation was extended by a month to cope with visitor numbers) and was able to try my hand at percussion in Mars and Venus, playing along to the suite. This is harder than it might seem even for a seasoned performer, not least counting tens of bars in rests or held rolls and then coming off at the right moment (snare drum technique is also not nearly as intuitive as it looks). Anticipating that many visitors will not necessarily read music, there are helpful video screens in which players from the orchestra explain what you need to do and guide you in with the help of some Guitar Hero-style graphics. I gave the tam-tam a resounding whack and then played some gentle glockenspiel notes before my guide showed me over to the conducting pods. 'These are really cool' he explained, demonstrating how the motion sensors would detect my hand movements as I followed the beats on the 'conductors-eye' screen. The simulator is limited to controlling volume and showing accuracy of beating; the music will continue even if you stop and there is no way to control tempo or interpretation. (I suspect no current technology is sophisticated enough to interpret the nuances of a conductor's direction in the way human players do, and indeed the facial and non-beating gestures I made were pointless). But it is a good way of demonstrating what the conductor must do.
Even as somebody who regularly plays in several orchestras there was a great deal of interest in walking round to a different section to my own, and hearing the sound of the orchestra from another point - wind, brass, organ. The curators had helpfully put out the instrumental parts in their respective chambers for those who could read them, so I would spend each Planet following what I though was most interesting - harps in Saturn, upper strings in Uranus, horns in the Talbot piece. Possibly the most interesting part was a split-screen showing variously the horn, bassoon, trumpet, violin and timpanist. Below them was a continuous commentary of their thoughts as they were playing the piece (presumably transcribed from listening through afterwards). This included a little banter over virtuosic passages, but also fascinating insights into the actual business of performing the music - the trumpeter explaining how the repeated notes in Mars became uncomfortable to play by the end, the violinist explaining how he watches both the conductor and the leader at once, the timpanist counting rests and the conductor watching his stick. The most touching was the principal horn trying to articulate what it was like to play the solo that opens Venus, how she just let herself play it and trusted she had judged the acoustic of the room and the other players that followed her. It was a wonderfully intimate moment to see the other players responding appreciatively and her satisfaction at performing what was essentially just four notes, but notes of such significance which had been entrusted to her. Next to this screen was another showing Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and, in a similar vein, his thoughts on the music and its merits. 'In two minutes he has changed the character utterly' he mused, a little after the aforementioned horn solos in The Bringer of Peace. Also insights into the business of conducting: 'Muti used to watch for the brass players' embouchure to place the downbeat - sometimes the conductor is led by the orchestra'; 'what makes the rhythm avoid becoming repetitive is that he is always changing what is happening around it...sometimes it's 3+2 and sometimes 2+3...you have to be very controlled and not get carried away by the excitement of the music'. Best of all; 'the sound of the symphony orchestra...something you cannot get from anything else' and 'People who don't really listen to classical music, don't know much about the orchestra - they still know The Planets'.
I must have spent nearly two hours - two complete performances of all the music - in the gallery and eventually left back through the clocks and hourglasses to eat lunch. I was very pleased to discover that although a little out of the way on the first floor, the installation is right above the main ground floor gallery which is open to the roof, and so Holst was being broadcast right over all the cars and steam locomotives and rockets where most of the museum's visitors were. Whilst one might, being critical, wonder what a piece of music based on astrology is doing in a science museum, I am tempted to include this brief summary of the exhibition in my 'myth of elitism' series, as it is yet another laudable method of opening up to the public the joy and wonder of classical music and the amazing worlds of sound created by the orchestra. The Planets, although overplayed in parts (I'm thinking especially Mars and Jupiter), deserves the fame it has achieved, and has always been a favourite piece of mine, particularly Neptune with its glittering textures, chilling dissonances and that extraordinary use of voices (something I pay homage to in A Child of the Snows, and which also featured in the Talbot piece). I hope Holst's music, for all his later misgivings about its popularity, will continue to bring many more souls under the spell of the orchestra.
Having picked up some reduced-price chamber music from Chappells (I wanted a score of Holst, but they only had big ones which were overpriced) I then raced home and got back in enough time to see the Olympic Torch being carried through my city. Yes, it was historic. Yes, we all briefly felt part of something big, proud that our largely unremarkable town was a small part of a huge event. But I have to say I will remember the exhibition with more affection than the minutes spent on a street corner, with all the vapid sponsors' stooges faking a party in the drizzle and finally a man with a surprisingly small gold stick running past in few seconds. For all its ceremony, the Olympic relay felt ordinary and mundane; Holst, by contrast, seemed otherworldly and transcendental, filled with wonder and fascination. Better still, it is more accessible. One does not have to wait in the rain or fight through a crowd to experience the music, it is available to anyone as long as there are ears to hear it. That, surely, is the more lasting and generous legacy?
Showing posts with label composers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label composers. Show all posts
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Wallpapering
I tend to change my PC's desktop background (known colloquially as 'wallpaper') about every month. Almost always the image is a picture I've snapped on a recent trip, having got into the habit of trying to take a shot or two that contains a large area of the same colour suitable for displaying icons and a calender on top of. However, recently I had the nice idea to create a series of Great Composer wallpapers which could be easily made from 'found' objects on the internet (a la Berio) and knocked up in an hour or two using fairly simple tools in a graphics programme. Here I'm going to show you how it's done, should you wish to copy the concept yourself or just are curious.
The basic idea consists of using a portrait of the composer, their signature and a suitable excerpt of their music. All of these objects could be found from open-source websites, chiefly Wikipedia and IMSLP, and then with a little bit of experimentation arranged to fill the screen space. Depending on the images used and direction the portrait faces, there is scope for some variation with the composition. The program I used for the project was Paint.NET, a free open-source raster graphics program that was initially developed by Microsoft as a replacement for the standard Windows Paint but then dropped and left in the hands of a community of internet users. It would be an excellent program even if it were payware - it does nearly everything that Photoshop or Coral Draw will, although if you want vector graphics you'll have to get the equally excellent Inkscape. The reason for not using this instead (vector graphics, should you be curious, are a system whereby the pixels become infinitely small as you zoom in and so images don't get blurred) is partly that file sizes will be much larger and that I have a much greater level of proficiency on Paint.NET. Also, it has a number of plugins included that we will be using for this project.
Setting up/Portrait:
The first stage is to set up the canvas for the wallpaper. As I'm creating this background for a standard 17" flatscreen monitor, I will be using a resolution of 1024x468 pixels, so I create a new document in Paint.NET and alter the canvas size to these dimensions (choose Image - Canvas Size). (If you are unsure how big your screen is, right click on your desktop, choose 'Properties' and look at the 'Settings' tab. There will be a slider half-way down which will show your current resolution - most likely this is already at 1024x468). The next thing is to choose a subject for our wallpaper. The composer I settled on was Haydn: definitely one of the 'greats'; and with several portraits to choose from available in high-resolution. As we need to show both the portrait and some music, I intended to divide the space about half-and-half. This also means that when our background is 'in situ', desktop icons can all fit over one side or the other depending on what offers the best contrast and visibility. A little searching on Wikipedia Commons brought me to the Thomas Hardy portrait which I copied and pasted into Paint, and then resized to fit just the head into the frame.
At this point we need to introduce a new concept which is one of the best features of Paint.NET and similar programs: layers. In ordinary MS Paint, everything is on the same layer and only one colour can be displayed as 'on top'. If you draw over something, it disappears. Cut an area out and you cut down to the background. But with Paint.NET, we can have multiple layers of a drawing superimposed on top of each other. This means you can draw a background and then create another layer (or several) on top, on which you can draw, move, cut, paste and alter anything without affecting the layer(s) below or above. We're going to exploit this feature in making our wallpaper.
The Haydn portrait I've just copy-pasted will sit on top of a background layer, which we'll create in a minute. What we need to do first is to 'cut out' his head so we can add a background to avoid an untidy difference between the square portrait and the rest of the screen (I experimented with stretching the painting's background to fill the space, and the result was some way from satisfactory). There is no easy way of doing this other than to get out the eraser tool and carefully go round the edge of the wig and features with a small tip size. My tip is to release the mouse frequently; this means if you make a mistake and have to hit 'undo' you'll only lose a small amount of correct erasing.
I decided to leave 'Papa' Haydn's hand and pen in, as it makes a nice touch and would have looked a little odd otherwise. I have also left in the painted background behind him as this serves our purpose quite well already. Once all this is complete, I name the layer 'Portrait' or something similar for clarity (select the layer and choose 'Layer Properties' from the small menu at the bottom of the Layers window) and save. We're not quite finished with this layer yet, but for now let's move on to creating the background.
Background:
Create a new layer from the window and name it 'Background'. Then - and this is important - move it down using the arrows to below the portrait layer we already have. Anything we draw in this new layer will be visible only where the portrait layer is transparent - the chequered space in the screenshot above. (This is possible due to the file having something called an 'alpha layer', but we don't need to worry too much about the workings of this for our current project). Rather than a single colour background, I wanted something slightly mottled that matched the oil paint of the portrait. To get this, in the background layer I stretched a rectangle over the entire canvas (make sure it's set to 'Draw filled shape' at the top when the polygon tool is selected) and then in the visible area scribbled a load of wiggles over it in green, brown and tan. Making sure only this background layer was selected, I then used the Gaussian Blur tool (Effects-Blurs-Gaussian Blur) on this layer in two separate passes, turning up the blur radius until the wiggles were very subtle. I also ran the 'Oil Painting' effect on this layer, although I'm not sure how much difference this actually made after all the blurring. The finished effect is very subtle but looks much more classy than a plain colour.
The next thing to do is to return to the portrait layer and run another plugin from the Blurs tab called 'Feather'. It may appear at first glance that this has done nothing, but look again at the edges with the background layer displayed. They will have been blurred outwards a little, removing the 'hard' join between layers. We're done with the portrait layer now.
Music:
Create another new layer and name it 'Music'. It needs to be moved down between the two existing layers - it will be on top of the background but beneath the portrait. At this point I needed to choose a suitable excerpt form the literature to represent the composer. I settled on a passage almost immediately - The Heavens are Telling from The Creation, which is possibly his most famous and masterly work. I decided just to use the vocal lines rather than including the orchestral accompaniment, but this is a personal judgement. The staves can be captured by taking a screen shot of the vocal score from IMSLP and pasting it into a new document. To get the music to sit on top of the background we're going to need to cut out all the spaces. Trim using the 'Crop to selection' tool and then get to work with the Magic Wand tool to remove anything that isn't ink. The Wand selects any area bounded by the same colour and will allow us to erase the 'holes' between ledger lines and notes far neater than we could ever do by hand. Again, there is no quick way of doing this: we're going to have to just keep clicking until all the white on the page is removed and we can see the chequers of the alpha layer.
Having done this, there was one little addition I wanted to make: the score only showed the words in English, and I rather wanted to have the German text as well. Apart from personal satisfaction and an acknowledgement of Haydn's nationality, this would also better make the staves fill the space. The German text was copied from another score and then typed in Paint.NET using the text tool, getting the font as close as possible to the existing type. I also put it into italics just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately the program's text editor does not not seem to have any provision for special characters, so to get the umlauts in 'erzählen' and 'Hände' I had to manually draw pairs of dots and position them over the letters. They've come out rather faint but they're there. I also had to move the existing staves to fit the new lines of text in. This was done by moving all the text to a new drawing, then very carefully selecting each part with the lasso tool and copy-pasting it into a new layer. I then moved this selection up a few pixels and copy-pasted the German text (already aligned with the notes) into the layer before manoeuvring the whole lot in position so it was aligned above the rest of the staves. This was done separately for each voice until I had four layers which could be merged back into one (we'll cover merging at the end). The only problem that now remained was to fill in the gaps in the stave brace: this was done by selecting the existing area and stretching it over the gap from each side like elastic. Done!
As the wallpaper has a dark background we need a light image on top. To do this for the music I selected the image and used the 'Invert colours' tool to turn the black to white, then copy-pasted the whole lot back over to the 'Music' layer of the original file. I also reduced the transparency of this layer a little and added a very slight blur to avoid the harsh contrast created by sharp pure white. It serves as a sort of 'semi-background' and also seems to match the colour of Haydn's wig...
The result is very satisfactory. I enlarged the layer and moved it across to position the music tucked slightly behind the portrait - again personal taste. The inclusion of the line 'The wonder of his work/displays the firmament' seems particularly fitting, and I would like to think this could be seen as alluding to the mastery of Haydn's music as well as the creation text. All that remains now is to place Haydn's signature and dates in a new 'Text' layer. The signature (there are two different Haydn signatures, I chose the one with his initials in) was found on IMSLP and adapted in much the same way as the music: white background cut out using Magic Wand, then the colours inverted and moved into position at the bottom left on Joe's shoulder . The name and dates were done in Paint.NET's own text tool and positioned top right.
Finishing:
The final stage is to make this into a usable picture file by flattening it. If we've been saving our work regularly, as wise precautions advise, the default file type will be one with a .pdn extension. This is Paint.NET's own file format, one which supports the layering we've been using. However, we can't use a file like this as a normal picture because no other program can actually display a Paint. NET file with layers, so we need to change it into a .png, .jpeg, .gif or similar format. To do so, we need to merge all the layers together into one. Paint.NET makes this easy for us by including a 'Merge layers down' tool in the Layers window, but first we need to double-check what goes on top of what and move them up or down if necessary. The order of layers in the window should be Text- Portrait- Music-Background. Starting with the top layer, hit the 'Merge down' button and the two layers will combine into one. When you've finished, the drawing will be a single-layer image that can be saved in any picture format. I would recommend using a png or a jpeg to keep the file size down, but check the quality is turned up to maximum. I saved it as 'Haydn desktop'.
All that remains is to navigate to the new file, right-click and choose 'Set as Desktop Background'. Give the cogs a moment or two to whirr and you should have Haydn sitting as your background screen.
The basic idea consists of using a portrait of the composer, their signature and a suitable excerpt of their music. All of these objects could be found from open-source websites, chiefly Wikipedia and IMSLP, and then with a little bit of experimentation arranged to fill the screen space. Depending on the images used and direction the portrait faces, there is scope for some variation with the composition. The program I used for the project was Paint.NET, a free open-source raster graphics program that was initially developed by Microsoft as a replacement for the standard Windows Paint but then dropped and left in the hands of a community of internet users. It would be an excellent program even if it were payware - it does nearly everything that Photoshop or Coral Draw will, although if you want vector graphics you'll have to get the equally excellent Inkscape. The reason for not using this instead (vector graphics, should you be curious, are a system whereby the pixels become infinitely small as you zoom in and so images don't get blurred) is partly that file sizes will be much larger and that I have a much greater level of proficiency on Paint.NET. Also, it has a number of plugins included that we will be using for this project.
Setting up/Portrait:
The first stage is to set up the canvas for the wallpaper. As I'm creating this background for a standard 17" flatscreen monitor, I will be using a resolution of 1024x468 pixels, so I create a new document in Paint.NET and alter the canvas size to these dimensions (choose Image - Canvas Size). (If you are unsure how big your screen is, right click on your desktop, choose 'Properties' and look at the 'Settings' tab. There will be a slider half-way down which will show your current resolution - most likely this is already at 1024x468). The next thing is to choose a subject for our wallpaper. The composer I settled on was Haydn: definitely one of the 'greats'; and with several portraits to choose from available in high-resolution. As we need to show both the portrait and some music, I intended to divide the space about half-and-half. This also means that when our background is 'in situ', desktop icons can all fit over one side or the other depending on what offers the best contrast and visibility. A little searching on Wikipedia Commons brought me to the Thomas Hardy portrait which I copied and pasted into Paint, and then resized to fit just the head into the frame.
At this point we need to introduce a new concept which is one of the best features of Paint.NET and similar programs: layers. In ordinary MS Paint, everything is on the same layer and only one colour can be displayed as 'on top'. If you draw over something, it disappears. Cut an area out and you cut down to the background. But with Paint.NET, we can have multiple layers of a drawing superimposed on top of each other. This means you can draw a background and then create another layer (or several) on top, on which you can draw, move, cut, paste and alter anything without affecting the layer(s) below or above. We're going to exploit this feature in making our wallpaper.
The Haydn portrait I've just copy-pasted will sit on top of a background layer, which we'll create in a minute. What we need to do first is to 'cut out' his head so we can add a background to avoid an untidy difference between the square portrait and the rest of the screen (I experimented with stretching the painting's background to fill the space, and the result was some way from satisfactory). There is no easy way of doing this other than to get out the eraser tool and carefully go round the edge of the wig and features with a small tip size. My tip is to release the mouse frequently; this means if you make a mistake and have to hit 'undo' you'll only lose a small amount of correct erasing.
 |
| The result of somewhat painstaking work with the Eraser tool. |
Background:
Create a new layer from the window and name it 'Background'. Then - and this is important - move it down using the arrows to below the portrait layer we already have. Anything we draw in this new layer will be visible only where the portrait layer is transparent - the chequered space in the screenshot above. (This is possible due to the file having something called an 'alpha layer', but we don't need to worry too much about the workings of this for our current project). Rather than a single colour background, I wanted something slightly mottled that matched the oil paint of the portrait. To get this, in the background layer I stretched a rectangle over the entire canvas (make sure it's set to 'Draw filled shape' at the top when the polygon tool is selected) and then in the visible area scribbled a load of wiggles over it in green, brown and tan. Making sure only this background layer was selected, I then used the Gaussian Blur tool (Effects-Blurs-Gaussian Blur) on this layer in two separate passes, turning up the blur radius until the wiggles were very subtle. I also ran the 'Oil Painting' effect on this layer, although I'm not sure how much difference this actually made after all the blurring. The finished effect is very subtle but looks much more classy than a plain colour.
The next thing to do is to return to the portrait layer and run another plugin from the Blurs tab called 'Feather'. It may appear at first glance that this has done nothing, but look again at the edges with the background layer displayed. They will have been blurred outwards a little, removing the 'hard' join between layers. We're done with the portrait layer now.
Music:
Create another new layer and name it 'Music'. It needs to be moved down between the two existing layers - it will be on top of the background but beneath the portrait. At this point I needed to choose a suitable excerpt form the literature to represent the composer. I settled on a passage almost immediately - The Heavens are Telling from The Creation, which is possibly his most famous and masterly work. I decided just to use the vocal lines rather than including the orchestral accompaniment, but this is a personal judgement. The staves can be captured by taking a screen shot of the vocal score from IMSLP and pasting it into a new document. To get the music to sit on top of the background we're going to need to cut out all the spaces. Trim using the 'Crop to selection' tool and then get to work with the Magic Wand tool to remove anything that isn't ink. The Wand selects any area bounded by the same colour and will allow us to erase the 'holes' between ledger lines and notes far neater than we could ever do by hand. Again, there is no quick way of doing this: we're going to have to just keep clicking until all the white on the page is removed and we can see the chequers of the alpha layer.
Having done this, there was one little addition I wanted to make: the score only showed the words in English, and I rather wanted to have the German text as well. Apart from personal satisfaction and an acknowledgement of Haydn's nationality, this would also better make the staves fill the space. The German text was copied from another score and then typed in Paint.NET using the text tool, getting the font as close as possible to the existing type. I also put it into italics just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately the program's text editor does not not seem to have any provision for special characters, so to get the umlauts in 'erzählen' and 'Hände' I had to manually draw pairs of dots and position them over the letters. They've come out rather faint but they're there. I also had to move the existing staves to fit the new lines of text in. This was done by moving all the text to a new drawing, then very carefully selecting each part with the lasso tool and copy-pasting it into a new layer. I then moved this selection up a few pixels and copy-pasted the German text (already aligned with the notes) into the layer before manoeuvring the whole lot in position so it was aligned above the rest of the staves. This was done separately for each voice until I had four layers which could be merged back into one (we'll cover merging at the end). The only problem that now remained was to fill in the gaps in the stave brace: this was done by selecting the existing area and stretching it over the gap from each side like elastic. Done!
 |
| Having added the additional text, the lines of the staves were manoeuvred back into position. |
As the wallpaper has a dark background we need a light image on top. To do this for the music I selected the image and used the 'Invert colours' tool to turn the black to white, then copy-pasted the whole lot back over to the 'Music' layer of the original file. I also reduced the transparency of this layer a little and added a very slight blur to avoid the harsh contrast created by sharp pure white. It serves as a sort of 'semi-background' and also seems to match the colour of Haydn's wig...
The result is very satisfactory. I enlarged the layer and moved it across to position the music tucked slightly behind the portrait - again personal taste. The inclusion of the line 'The wonder of his work/displays the firmament' seems particularly fitting, and I would like to think this could be seen as alluding to the mastery of Haydn's music as well as the creation text. All that remains now is to place Haydn's signature and dates in a new 'Text' layer. The signature (there are two different Haydn signatures, I chose the one with his initials in) was found on IMSLP and adapted in much the same way as the music: white background cut out using Magic Wand, then the colours inverted and moved into position at the bottom left on Joe's shoulder . The name and dates were done in Paint.NET's own text tool and positioned top right.
Finishing:
The final stage is to make this into a usable picture file by flattening it. If we've been saving our work regularly, as wise precautions advise, the default file type will be one with a .pdn extension. This is Paint.NET's own file format, one which supports the layering we've been using. However, we can't use a file like this as a normal picture because no other program can actually display a Paint. NET file with layers, so we need to change it into a .png, .jpeg, .gif or similar format. To do so, we need to merge all the layers together into one. Paint.NET makes this easy for us by including a 'Merge layers down' tool in the Layers window, but first we need to double-check what goes on top of what and move them up or down if necessary. The order of layers in the window should be Text- Portrait- Music-Background. Starting with the top layer, hit the 'Merge down' button and the two layers will combine into one. When you've finished, the drawing will be a single-layer image that can be saved in any picture format. I would recommend using a png or a jpeg to keep the file size down, but check the quality is turned up to maximum. I saved it as 'Haydn desktop'.
All that remains is to navigate to the new file, right-click and choose 'Set as Desktop Background'. Give the cogs a moment or two to whirr and you should have Haydn sitting as your background screen.
 |
| The finished article in use. |
A few concluding thoughts:
- This concept is highly versatile as long as one has a portrait image and another work example to use. It could easily be adapted for any figure or object of history. As mentioned, there is scope for variation of the basic idea: the portrait could be bigger, smaller, face the other way, the signature could be elsewhere, different fonts, etc.
- Oil paintings will probably produce a more satisfactory result than colour photographs, as they are easier to merge with other colours and avoid overly sharp edges when cut around.
- Using a fairly dark colour scheme seems to have worked well with the bright icons and calendar that sit on top of it. All are still legible and easy to locate, one of the design principles of desktop wallpaper.
- Be aware that with a system tray at the bottom of the screen, some of the image will be obscured. Luckily, this doesn't seem to create any adverse effect in this case.
- The next one of these will probably be Mozart. I plan to offer these as free downloads from this blog once I have a small collection.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Mahler and me
Today, May 18th, is precisely 100 years to the day since Gustav Mahler breathed his last. This has chiefly been commemorated by musos through smart-arse Facebook statuses, something that I have wholeheartedly participated in. Top marks appear to have been taken by my former conducting teacher and doyen of Sunday-cricket , Levon Parikian (who maintains a superb blog, Runny Thoughts) for numerous witty gems.
But I'd like to talk seriously for a bit, if I may. I am, unashamedly, a Mahlerian. The core of his music contains a philosophy I agree with wholeheartedly (whilst still being just about able to appreciate why unenlightened people do not share my passion). For a start, Mahler's famous exchange with Sibelius (whom I equally admire) about the symphony 'being like the world' is at the heart of his conception of music, their very reason for existence. His symphonies don't last for an hour and a half or more just because they can, it's because they need such a time-scale in order to contain the hugely important and transcendent ideas he is trying to articulate. A Mahler symphony really is a world of its own, and possesses both an 'architectural' quality of form and an emotional range that journeys over a huge expanse of space. Interestingly, the equally lengthy symphonies of Anton Bruckner (who taught Mahler for a time) work in a completely different way, unfolding a concentrated nucleus gradually within a tight structural and colouristic scheme, rather than exploiting rapid changes from one particular extreme to the other as we are propelled through so many landscapes.
This last characteristic of Mahler's writing has been the cause of criticism, apparently too reliant on over-the-top, flashily orchestrated histrionics and 'ironic' symbolism within the musical material. My response is that; firstly, every note of his output is carefully crafted and coloured with exceptionally skillful deployment of the instrumental or vocal resources used; and secondly, Mahler's heart-on-sleeve approach to - well, everything in his music - is both provider of the individuality in his voice and the reason he is able to compare to the pantheon of great composers, for to play or listen to his music is to be utterly drawn into something that cannot help but have a compelling and profound effect, and it is the greatest music which creates the greatest effect. The hammer blows in the Sixth Symphony are not cheap film-music clichés, nor are they merely colouristic effects like the wind and thunder machines in Strauss' Alpine Symphony, they are the actual force the composer wished to depict, the mighty blows of fate striking down defenceless mortals.
I am a little uncertain as to when I first heard, and then really fell under the spell of, Mahler. I knew the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony - probably the piece most people hear first - from when I was a teenager, but it was later before I became aware of the youthful exuberance and sweeping turbulence contained in the First Symphony, the Titan. Later still I discovered the rest of the Fifth, and then in my first year at university ULSO, the intercollegiate orchestra which I would soon join, played the Third, a concert I shall never forget. Aside from the sheer length of the work, I was completely possessed by the music, music that was more epic and more encompassing of everything than any piece I had heard before. I was lucky enough to hear the Third live again at last year's Proms, and relived everything I had felt the first time - from the doom-laden opening march, to the night-world of the fourth movement, the chorus of angels in the fifth and the almost unbearable depiction of complete resolution in the finale. But I think my most compelling Mahler experience was earlier in that year, when ULSO performed the Sixth in Cadogan Hall. Even after the read-through there was a feeling that we had been possessed by some strange dream, that we had lived the sound that was being lifted from the page. There is a moment in the finale where the turbulence suddenly subsides and the violins, harp and celeste leap up an octave out of the storm. It is as if one is suddenly lifted into the night sky and transported to a hillside under the stars, with cowbells and a solo horn glinting in the distance. I cannot think of any other composer who can paint so vivid a picture without the slightest mention of any actual programme in the score.
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to take part in a performance of the Ninth Symphony, so like and yet so unlike any of the others. There was over a minute of silence after the last, faltering note in my section had died, the culmination (nearly) of not only eighty minutes of music, but a lifetime of vision as lofty as the mountains over the Attersee.
But I'd like to talk seriously for a bit, if I may. I am, unashamedly, a Mahlerian. The core of his music contains a philosophy I agree with wholeheartedly (whilst still being just about able to appreciate why unenlightened people do not share my passion). For a start, Mahler's famous exchange with Sibelius (whom I equally admire) about the symphony 'being like the world' is at the heart of his conception of music, their very reason for existence. His symphonies don't last for an hour and a half or more just because they can, it's because they need such a time-scale in order to contain the hugely important and transcendent ideas he is trying to articulate. A Mahler symphony really is a world of its own, and possesses both an 'architectural' quality of form and an emotional range that journeys over a huge expanse of space. Interestingly, the equally lengthy symphonies of Anton Bruckner (who taught Mahler for a time) work in a completely different way, unfolding a concentrated nucleus gradually within a tight structural and colouristic scheme, rather than exploiting rapid changes from one particular extreme to the other as we are propelled through so many landscapes.
This last characteristic of Mahler's writing has been the cause of criticism, apparently too reliant on over-the-top, flashily orchestrated histrionics and 'ironic' symbolism within the musical material. My response is that; firstly, every note of his output is carefully crafted and coloured with exceptionally skillful deployment of the instrumental or vocal resources used; and secondly, Mahler's heart-on-sleeve approach to - well, everything in his music - is both provider of the individuality in his voice and the reason he is able to compare to the pantheon of great composers, for to play or listen to his music is to be utterly drawn into something that cannot help but have a compelling and profound effect, and it is the greatest music which creates the greatest effect. The hammer blows in the Sixth Symphony are not cheap film-music clichés, nor are they merely colouristic effects like the wind and thunder machines in Strauss' Alpine Symphony, they are the actual force the composer wished to depict, the mighty blows of fate striking down defenceless mortals.
I am a little uncertain as to when I first heard, and then really fell under the spell of, Mahler. I knew the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony - probably the piece most people hear first - from when I was a teenager, but it was later before I became aware of the youthful exuberance and sweeping turbulence contained in the First Symphony, the Titan. Later still I discovered the rest of the Fifth, and then in my first year at university ULSO, the intercollegiate orchestra which I would soon join, played the Third, a concert I shall never forget. Aside from the sheer length of the work, I was completely possessed by the music, music that was more epic and more encompassing of everything than any piece I had heard before. I was lucky enough to hear the Third live again at last year's Proms, and relived everything I had felt the first time - from the doom-laden opening march, to the night-world of the fourth movement, the chorus of angels in the fifth and the almost unbearable depiction of complete resolution in the finale. But I think my most compelling Mahler experience was earlier in that year, when ULSO performed the Sixth in Cadogan Hall. Even after the read-through there was a feeling that we had been possessed by some strange dream, that we had lived the sound that was being lifted from the page. There is a moment in the finale where the turbulence suddenly subsides and the violins, harp and celeste leap up an octave out of the storm. It is as if one is suddenly lifted into the night sky and transported to a hillside under the stars, with cowbells and a solo horn glinting in the distance. I cannot think of any other composer who can paint so vivid a picture without the slightest mention of any actual programme in the score.
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to take part in a performance of the Ninth Symphony, so like and yet so unlike any of the others. There was over a minute of silence after the last, faltering note in my section had died, the culmination (nearly) of not only eighty minutes of music, but a lifetime of vision as lofty as the mountains over the Attersee.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Categorisation
As you may have noticed, one of the many noble purposes of ITM has been to champion the existence of composers who have, we feel, been unjustly neglected, such as this one and this one. It would be very easy to saturate this blog with the lives and music of hundreds, nay thousands, of obscure figures in the vain hope of igniting a little interest in their output, but this seems both an impractical and an inadvisable course of action. How can one be sure that any musician is actually worth celebrating?
To this end, and also fulfilling an earlier promise, I have prudently devised several categories in order to aid with the Neglected Composers series. This are designed as a quick field guide to determining the reasons for the aforementioned neglect (a printable leaflet version with diagrams, life cycle, conservation status etc may become available should demand arise) and allow the observer to determine the worthiness of hitherto unheard-of composers through five easy labels:
#1. 'Loada Rubbish': Composer's music is genuinely worthless; either over-contrived, formulaic, uninteresting, juvenile or in some other way considered by our good selves to be, in a nutshell, a pile of crap. Examples: I lack the legal clout to provide a full list, which is a strong hint that most of the exponents are composers still alive and working.
#2 'Of its Time': Music is either too obscure in conception to be appealing without specialist knowledge, too reliant on dead cultural idioms to make ready sense to modern ears, or boring due to subsequent repeated pillaging of ideas. Examples: all kinds of medieval chaps such as Anonymous I, II, III and IV, Hildegard of Bingen etc; most pre-Tudor folk song; increasingly musique concrete.
#3. 'Wrong Side of the Fence': Composer worked under insular regime, was in exile, imprisoned, or from territory with few cultural links to the rest of the world. This can also apply to certain periods of output from otherwise well-known figures. Examples: Tubin, Popov, Pavel Haas.
#4. 'They Liked it Back Then, But...': Music is popular/fashionable, even to the point of celebrity, during composer's lifetime, but inevitable dip in interest following death has turned into a nosedive of obscurity. Examples: Rubinstein, Salieri, Stanford.
#5. 'Who?': Composer has made little or no attempt at posterity - music either written for personal enjoyment, deliberately unpublished, or lacking in any commercial nouse. Either that, or too new to have yet reached a mass audience. Examples: Sorobji, Gesualdo, scores of contemporary composers lucky enough not to be in Catagory One.
Rest assured, dear reader(s) that in future posts we shall continue to select only figures worthy of mention on ITM. Alternatively, the occasional post along the lines of 'Just Exactly What's Wrong with Morten Lauridson' may not go amis either.
To this end, and also fulfilling an earlier promise, I have prudently devised several categories in order to aid with the Neglected Composers series. This are designed as a quick field guide to determining the reasons for the aforementioned neglect (a printable leaflet version with diagrams, life cycle, conservation status etc may become available should demand arise) and allow the observer to determine the worthiness of hitherto unheard-of composers through five easy labels:
#1. 'Loada Rubbish': Composer's music is genuinely worthless; either over-contrived, formulaic, uninteresting, juvenile or in some other way considered by our good selves to be, in a nutshell, a pile of crap. Examples: I lack the legal clout to provide a full list, which is a strong hint that most of the exponents are composers still alive and working.
#2 'Of its Time': Music is either too obscure in conception to be appealing without specialist knowledge, too reliant on dead cultural idioms to make ready sense to modern ears, or boring due to subsequent repeated pillaging of ideas. Examples: all kinds of medieval chaps such as Anonymous I, II, III and IV, Hildegard of Bingen etc; most pre-Tudor folk song; increasingly musique concrete.
#3. 'Wrong Side of the Fence': Composer worked under insular regime, was in exile, imprisoned, or from territory with few cultural links to the rest of the world. This can also apply to certain periods of output from otherwise well-known figures. Examples: Tubin, Popov, Pavel Haas.
#4. 'They Liked it Back Then, But...': Music is popular/fashionable, even to the point of celebrity, during composer's lifetime, but inevitable dip in interest following death has turned into a nosedive of obscurity. Examples: Rubinstein, Salieri, Stanford.
#5. 'Who?': Composer has made little or no attempt at posterity - music either written for personal enjoyment, deliberately unpublished, or lacking in any commercial nouse. Either that, or too new to have yet reached a mass audience. Examples: Sorobji, Gesualdo, scores of contemporary composers lucky enough not to be in Catagory One.
Rest assured, dear reader(s) that in future posts we shall continue to select only figures worthy of mention on ITM. Alternatively, the occasional post along the lines of 'Just Exactly What's Wrong with Morten Lauridson' may not go amis either.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Neglected composers (#2)
Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)
I'm often surprised by the regularity of which people casually engaged in conversation about music have come across Tubin, and the mutual delight which issues forth when his name is uttered. 'Tubin is funktastic!' was the reply to my advocacy of his music on a certain Facebook group, named (perhaps with a hint of tongue-in-cheek) 'Pretentious Classical Music Elitists'. By pure chance, I came across his Third Symphony on a free magazine CD from about ten years ago and was hooked. This was brilliant music, clever, assured, colourful melodic and contrapuntal. The rest of his orchestral output similarly avoided disappointment.
Tubin falls into the third of my categories regarding neglected composers; the 'wrong place at wrong time' reason. (I realise that at no point have I actually set out the various reasons for neglect, so you will just have to accept that this is Reason number Three). Having learned the piano (which his father bought for the price of one cow), flute and violin as a child, Tubin was creating quite a promising career for himself in independent Estonia between the wars, doing a bit of folk-song-collecting (a career must for any non-serialist composer in the early twentieth century) and writing appealing early symphonies and chamber music for his less-than-a-million fellow countrymen. (Just think about that number for a moment - equivalent to your national audience being the same as the population of Merseyside). The first few symphonies sound a little like a mixture of Sibelius, Nielsen, Vaughan Williams and Glazunov with just a hint of Ravel, although they're actually a lot better than that. The Second 'Legendare' opens with the strikingly original sound of heavily divided strings, and with further sections making imaginative use of timpani and piano shows what a superb orchestrator Tubin was. The patriotic Third Symphony ('Heroic') is a tour de force for the brass and contains some terrific counterpoint, as well as an unexpected and beautiful violin solo in the hybrid scherzo-cantalina of the second movement. The Fourth ('Lyrical') 'is probably his first real masterpiece, combining a deft sense of pacing with wonderfully expressive lyricism and masterful orchestration. The slow movement is one of the most gorgeous nocturnes in the symphonic repertoire. And it's a cut above mere cow-pat pastoralism, too.
Other works from this period are similarly attractive, if a little more slight. The First Violin Concerto is a pleasingly pastoral work, whilst it's difficult to understand why the Estonian Dance Suite is more popular, or at least included on ABRSM exam syllabuses from time to time, for its melodic virtues are many. Both the violin and piano and violin and orchestra versions are easily as good as the Holberg Suite or Britten's Simple Symphony, and in several places provides inventive harmonic twists that many more notable composers wouldn't have thought of.
Sadly it all went to pot in 1944 with the German, then Soviet invasions of Estonia. Tubin fled to Sweden not long after the première of the Fourth Symphony (although not before the Luftwaffe had bombed the theatre in Tallinn in which score was kept in a safe. The safe was pulled from the rubble the next morning with the score - singed but intact - still inside it. Many pages were fragile and Tubin had to copy out a new score of the entire symphony to conduct from in future). In Sweden he was an unknown and worked several menial jobs before he was eventually allowed to join the Royal Society of Musicians and earn royalties and teach. He returned to Estonia infrequently, and from the Sixth Symphony onwards his music is considerably darker and more dissonant, although still essentially lyrical and melodic - think Berg, Henze, late Britten or Shostakovich. His masterpiece of this period is the Eighth Symphony (1966), which although a four-movement sonata is still an extraordinarily powerful and pertinent modernist work. Tubin heard a recording of the symphony not long before he died and noted how 'the final dissonant chorale rises up and disappears into the distance'. It is not hard to imagine the composer staring out into the bleakness of the Baltic Sea trying and failing to glimpse his homeland across the waves. Indeed, several quiet endings in my own works have been inspired by the closing bars of this symphony (as well as the very loud tam-tam crash that precedes it!).
To me, Tubin always sounds like he's aware of his obscurity and is trying extra hard to give his music lasting value. And, as is so often the case, upheaval actually enhanced his creative powers and forged a great advancement in his style. Tubin would certainly have been a lesser figure had he not had to move to Sweden and adopt a grittier musical language. If nothing else, how many other composers (apart from Hindemith) wrote a double bass concerto? And how many have written a concerto for balalaika?
Essential listening: Symphonies 3,4 and 8; Violin concerto No.1; Estonian Dance Suite; Toccata
Also interesting: Symphonies 2, 5, 6 and 9; Piano Sonata No.2 'Northern Lights'; String Quartet; Double Bass concerto; Music for Strings; Kratt (ballet)
As if often the case, the brilliant Swedish label Bis have covered much of his output, including all the symphonies and concerti, pretty much all the chamber music and some other good bits. Even better, there are now two competing Tubin symphony cycles, so you can choose either Neeme Jarvi on Bis or Arvo Volmer on Alba (I would reccomend the Swedish Radio SO and Bergen SO on the former over the Volmer's Estonian National SO, but the Alba sound quality is generally better). A great amount of the aforementioned recordings are also on Spotify.
I'm often surprised by the regularity of which people casually engaged in conversation about music have come across Tubin, and the mutual delight which issues forth when his name is uttered. 'Tubin is funktastic!' was the reply to my advocacy of his music on a certain Facebook group, named (perhaps with a hint of tongue-in-cheek) 'Pretentious Classical Music Elitists'. By pure chance, I came across his Third Symphony on a free magazine CD from about ten years ago and was hooked. This was brilliant music, clever, assured, colourful melodic and contrapuntal. The rest of his orchestral output similarly avoided disappointment.
Tubin falls into the third of my categories regarding neglected composers; the 'wrong place at wrong time' reason. (I realise that at no point have I actually set out the various reasons for neglect, so you will just have to accept that this is Reason number Three). Having learned the piano (which his father bought for the price of one cow), flute and violin as a child, Tubin was creating quite a promising career for himself in independent Estonia between the wars, doing a bit of folk-song-collecting (a career must for any non-serialist composer in the early twentieth century) and writing appealing early symphonies and chamber music for his less-than-a-million fellow countrymen. (Just think about that number for a moment - equivalent to your national audience being the same as the population of Merseyside). The first few symphonies sound a little like a mixture of Sibelius, Nielsen, Vaughan Williams and Glazunov with just a hint of Ravel, although they're actually a lot better than that. The Second 'Legendare' opens with the strikingly original sound of heavily divided strings, and with further sections making imaginative use of timpani and piano shows what a superb orchestrator Tubin was. The patriotic Third Symphony ('Heroic') is a tour de force for the brass and contains some terrific counterpoint, as well as an unexpected and beautiful violin solo in the hybrid scherzo-cantalina of the second movement. The Fourth ('Lyrical') 'is probably his first real masterpiece, combining a deft sense of pacing with wonderfully expressive lyricism and masterful orchestration. The slow movement is one of the most gorgeous nocturnes in the symphonic repertoire. And it's a cut above mere cow-pat pastoralism, too.
Other works from this period are similarly attractive, if a little more slight. The First Violin Concerto is a pleasingly pastoral work, whilst it's difficult to understand why the Estonian Dance Suite is more popular, or at least included on ABRSM exam syllabuses from time to time, for its melodic virtues are many. Both the violin and piano and violin and orchestra versions are easily as good as the Holberg Suite or Britten's Simple Symphony, and in several places provides inventive harmonic twists that many more notable composers wouldn't have thought of.
Sadly it all went to pot in 1944 with the German, then Soviet invasions of Estonia. Tubin fled to Sweden not long after the première of the Fourth Symphony (although not before the Luftwaffe had bombed the theatre in Tallinn in which score was kept in a safe. The safe was pulled from the rubble the next morning with the score - singed but intact - still inside it. Many pages were fragile and Tubin had to copy out a new score of the entire symphony to conduct from in future). In Sweden he was an unknown and worked several menial jobs before he was eventually allowed to join the Royal Society of Musicians and earn royalties and teach. He returned to Estonia infrequently, and from the Sixth Symphony onwards his music is considerably darker and more dissonant, although still essentially lyrical and melodic - think Berg, Henze, late Britten or Shostakovich. His masterpiece of this period is the Eighth Symphony (1966), which although a four-movement sonata is still an extraordinarily powerful and pertinent modernist work. Tubin heard a recording of the symphony not long before he died and noted how 'the final dissonant chorale rises up and disappears into the distance'. It is not hard to imagine the composer staring out into the bleakness of the Baltic Sea trying and failing to glimpse his homeland across the waves. Indeed, several quiet endings in my own works have been inspired by the closing bars of this symphony (as well as the very loud tam-tam crash that precedes it!).
To me, Tubin always sounds like he's aware of his obscurity and is trying extra hard to give his music lasting value. And, as is so often the case, upheaval actually enhanced his creative powers and forged a great advancement in his style. Tubin would certainly have been a lesser figure had he not had to move to Sweden and adopt a grittier musical language. If nothing else, how many other composers (apart from Hindemith) wrote a double bass concerto? And how many have written a concerto for balalaika?
Essential listening: Symphonies 3,4 and 8; Violin concerto No.1; Estonian Dance Suite; Toccata
Also interesting: Symphonies 2, 5, 6 and 9; Piano Sonata No.2 'Northern Lights'; String Quartet; Double Bass concerto; Music for Strings; Kratt (ballet)
As if often the case, the brilliant Swedish label Bis have covered much of his output, including all the symphonies and concerti, pretty much all the chamber music and some other good bits. Even better, there are now two competing Tubin symphony cycles, so you can choose either Neeme Jarvi on Bis or Arvo Volmer on Alba (I would reccomend the Swedish Radio SO and Bergen SO on the former over the Volmer's Estonian National SO, but the Alba sound quality is generally better). A great amount of the aforementioned recordings are also on Spotify.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Neglected composers (#1)
Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
As of this year, my Tuesday evenings are spent at orchestra rehearsals, specifically the City of Southampton Orchestra. Trying desperately not to look like like a shameless plug, the next concert on 9th April features Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Walton's Portsmouth Point Overture. What most delighted me about the programme, however, was the second item of the first half - The Sea by Frank Bridge.
The politics and indeed ethics of attempting to champion a figure whom one feels is unjustly neglected are fraught with dangers, toils and snares, and will almost certainly be dealt with in a future blog post. Needless to say, I feel confident enough about the merits of Bridge's music to stick my neck out.
Almost every potted biography begins with the line 'Frank Bridge is primarily known for having taught Benjamin Britten...' a cliché whose use is not without justification, for it was Bridge that encouraged Britten's interest in continental avant-gardists such as Schoenberg and Bartok, influences which also found their way into his own music. In fact, both composers show a distinct development in style as their careers progress, from late Romanticism and Impressionism to full-blown modernism, touching on much else in between. Britten obviously was sufficiently impressed with his teacher's work to compose the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge as one of his earliest mature compositions.
I first came across Bridge when choosing pieces for my cello diploma, back in what now seems like very opaque mists of time, and my then teacher suggested playing part of his Sonata for the instrument. On the strength of this, I not long afterwards purchased a record which featured, amongst other things, The Sea, and was mightily impressed. Hence my delight at having the chance to play the work in the coming weeks. The music is obviously a nod to Debussy both in subject and in style, but with sufficient quantities of Wagner and that elusive entity, Englishness, to maintain its originality. Bridge also happens to be a superb orchestrator, although again with a somewhat different palette to Debussy, something which became immediately apparent when we came to read-through the suite. The four movements had some of the best cello parts I have ever come across - very playable, interesting and demonstrating a skilful deployment of the section. This is not to say they were easy (in particular the Alpine Symphony-type chromatic frenzy of the 'Storm' movement, but that is not the point of good orchestration.
As is so often the case, Naxos and other independent record labels have risen to the challenge of providing performances of Bridge's music on disc. Mostly this consists of his chamber and piano music (the majority of his output), but the disc containing The Sea (and possibly his masterpiece, Enter Spring) surveys a sizeable sample of the orchestral music.
Oh, and to add weight to another thesis of mine, Bridge was a viola player.
As of this year, my Tuesday evenings are spent at orchestra rehearsals, specifically the City of Southampton Orchestra. Trying desperately not to look like like a shameless plug, the next concert on 9th April features Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Walton's Portsmouth Point Overture. What most delighted me about the programme, however, was the second item of the first half - The Sea by Frank Bridge.
The politics and indeed ethics of attempting to champion a figure whom one feels is unjustly neglected are fraught with dangers, toils and snares, and will almost certainly be dealt with in a future blog post. Needless to say, I feel confident enough about the merits of Bridge's music to stick my neck out.
Almost every potted biography begins with the line 'Frank Bridge is primarily known for having taught Benjamin Britten...' a cliché whose use is not without justification, for it was Bridge that encouraged Britten's interest in continental avant-gardists such as Schoenberg and Bartok, influences which also found their way into his own music. In fact, both composers show a distinct development in style as their careers progress, from late Romanticism and Impressionism to full-blown modernism, touching on much else in between. Britten obviously was sufficiently impressed with his teacher's work to compose the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge as one of his earliest mature compositions.
I first came across Bridge when choosing pieces for my cello diploma, back in what now seems like very opaque mists of time, and my then teacher suggested playing part of his Sonata for the instrument. On the strength of this, I not long afterwards purchased a record which featured, amongst other things, The Sea, and was mightily impressed. Hence my delight at having the chance to play the work in the coming weeks. The music is obviously a nod to Debussy both in subject and in style, but with sufficient quantities of Wagner and that elusive entity, Englishness, to maintain its originality. Bridge also happens to be a superb orchestrator, although again with a somewhat different palette to Debussy, something which became immediately apparent when we came to read-through the suite. The four movements had some of the best cello parts I have ever come across - very playable, interesting and demonstrating a skilful deployment of the section. This is not to say they were easy (in particular the Alpine Symphony-type chromatic frenzy of the 'Storm' movement, but that is not the point of good orchestration.
As is so often the case, Naxos and other independent record labels have risen to the challenge of providing performances of Bridge's music on disc. Mostly this consists of his chamber and piano music (the majority of his output), but the disc containing The Sea (and possibly his masterpiece, Enter Spring) surveys a sizeable sample of the orchestral music.
Oh, and to add weight to another thesis of mine, Bridge was a viola player.
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