The Naked Orchestra

Stripping down classical music one layer at a time

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra Session 34 - Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story’”,

Awesome Orchestra will be performing “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” a purely instrumental adaptation of the original musical. It’s become almost as well known as the songs themselves mostly because the music is crazy fun. You’ll hear elements from all over the musical but the man himself broke it down into the following movements:

Prologue (Allegro Moderato)

"Somewhere" (Adagio) @ 4:16

Scherzo (Vivace e Leggiero) @ 7:52

Mambo (Meno Presto) @ 9:55

Cha-Cha (Andantino Con Grazia) @ 12:04

Meeting Scene (Meno Mosso) @ 13:18

"Cool", Fugue (Allegretto) @ 13:44

Rumble (Molto Allegro) @ 17:27

Finale (Adagio) @ 18:55

The piece usually runs a little over twenty minutes depending on how “risky” the conductor feels. Really, the musical styles in this piece are immense, including the many Puerto Rican styles, post bebop jazz, the already well established American musical theater tradition, and of course the European concert orchestral tradition. Managing the transitions between all these styles requires makes for a wonderful piece of music but it is tremendously hard work.

I won’t go into detail on the plot as it’s a retelling of Romeo and Juliet a story that gets referenced in popular culture more than the Bible [citation needed], but here is the basics of what you need to know (also please, please, please go see a production and or watch the movie, you really need to see the dancing to really appreciate the work as a whole. Here’s a short gif from the film version).

Two rival youth gangs struggle for control of a 1950’s New York City neighborhood. Tony (Romeo) has left the white gang (we’re never given much more than clues to their ethnicity) known as the Jets. They compete with the Puerto Rican gang known as the Sharks and Maria’s (Juliet) brother is their leader. The old story of star crossed lovers breaks out and things go pretty much like how Shakespeare wrote it, except of course that Maria totally lives in this telling.

Each group gets music based on their respective cultural backgrounds. The fascinating things about this piece is how well Bernstein brings all these styles into a unified whole to tell a classic story of doomed love and conflict between cultures. Apparently, the original working of West Side Story had the central conflict between Jews and Catholics.

Bernstein, the son of Ukrainian Jewish parents, was deeply aware of the potential for tragedy when members of different cultures cultivate hateful and exclusionary attitudes. Changing the characters from Jew and Catholic to “American” and Puerto Rican keeps the many of the same ideas at the core of the story (although it would be a mistake to say effect would have been identical).  

West Side Story is really on the of great works of American art. First off, it’s essentially a story of immigrants, struggling to stake their claim to Americanness or more specifically to “whiteness”. This is why it’s interesting to know that the show was originally conceived as  between Catholics and Jews because those two groups defined the conflict between newly arrived immigrants in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. This change makes a little more sense thinking of it in this light.

Second, it’s really freaking awesöme music. The music of the United States and of Puerto Rico are both the result of the coming together of a number of different cultures but primarily West Africa and Spain (African slaves and the descendants of the colonizers) in Puerto Rico and in the United States from West Africa Britain, France, Germany and the Caribbean (as the centers of the slave trade were the traditional colonial ports of power in the Gulf of Mexico). Bringing together these two families of music, Bernstein creates something uniquely American and something people seem to keep loving.

Listen for the recognizable interval that serves as a unifying device for the work: an F# to a C, a tritone. You’ll hear it every and it forms a starting for lots of material in the piece. “Maria” is the most obvious example but in a very cool characterization Tony brings his music together with Maria’s and they make something new (America!).

Just a quick word about on the massive section that encompasses about half the piece. More than any other single song, this is the dance everyone tends to remember. 

"Cool", Fugue (Allegretto)

So, Cool is the song the Jets sing after a long day working at their legitimate jobs making a nice living for their families. Just kidding, of course it’s the advice sung by the Jets’ leader telling his gang to wait and kill some people later. This part of the music reflects the rhythm, instrumentation, and styles of late fifties/early sixties jazz: alto sax, vibraphone, and drums all get featured; rhythmically we are solidly in the realm of swung eighth notes (listen to that ride cymbal!!) as opposed to the straight eighth notes we hear in the sections of Latin based rhythms; sound wise, it’s ridiculously complex both rhythmically and harmonically. Oh and did you see that it’s a fugue? Writer and musicologist Nigel Simeone called it “possibly the most complex instrumental music heard on Broadway to date,” and it’s known among musicians as some of the hardest music to put together. It’s also essentially dance music. Enjoy!

[nakedorchestra]

Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro/Le nozze di Figaro Opera Walkthrough: Act III

Well after the act II finale, all previous plans have been shattered and everyone is a little shook up. The Countess has a new plan and convinces Susanna to promise the count she will met him that night in the garden which Susanna very begrudgingly does. The Count can hardly believe his luck until he overhears Susanna telling Figaro not to worry about anything “the case is already won/hai già vinta la causa”. Realizing he’s being somehow put on, he sings a fabulous and furious aria– here’s Simon Keenlyside ranting around at BBC Proms.

You can contrast this with Figaro’s angry aria Se vuol ballare in Act I, and while Figaro tread lightly and playing on folk-like melodies the Count’s music calls to mind much more aristocratic

Don Curzio, Bartolo, Marcellina (the three baddies in case all these names are getting confusing) and Figaro have all come to speak with the Count about the ongoing contract argument but the case seems clear as Don Curzio announces “O pagarla, o sposarla/ Marry her or pay her” which is a great business motto for a law firm if anyone’s looking… Figaro protests saying he can’t get married without his parents permission...but of course he has no idea where they are because he was stolen as a baby. He mentions his birthmark, and it is revealed that he is actually Marcellina and Bartolo’s long lost love child.

Yeah it’s a little weird his mom was desperately/obliviously trying to sleep with him but at least he gets a mom now right? It’s just not that kind of opera guys.

Joyous reconciliation commences much to the disappointment of the Count. Susanna comes in with the money to repay Figaro’s debt but when she sees Figaro and Marcellina embracing, assumes the worst and in some of the most wonderful music in the opera, is talked down from her rage until the whole family happily joins together in harmony. 

Both couples declare they will be married that day just to make everything extra official.

Lest you think everything might actually be okay, the countess is back with a really f•king awesome aria about her misery in the first andante section of her aria and then growing some balls by the second half allegro. Unfortunately this youtube video of Miz Renee Fleming has no subtitles but you can find a translation to follow along here. 

This music is shares a similar aristocratic air with the Count’s aria at the beginning of the act which is a nice little sign from Mozart that these people may be pretty nicely suited to each other after all.*

Right so now Susanna comes in and she and the Countess draft a letter from “Susanna” to the Count planning a romantic nighttime encounter under the trees. It’s sealed with a fancy pin which the count will have to send back to signal that he’s coming...because I guess that’s a fun sexy thing in 1786. Anyway, the ladies sing the really lovely if sometimes overplayed duet, Che soave zeffiretto

"Canzonetta sull'aria..."A little song on the breeze

Che soave zeffiretto...What a gentle little Zephyr

Questa sera spirerà….This evening will sigh

Sotto i pini del boschetto...Under the pines in the little grove.

Ei già il resto capirà...And the rest he'll understand.

; )

[winky face emphasis ours]

And then the wedding happens! Really! Finally! All the ladies come to present flowers to the Countess (this is...normal when you’re noble I guess?) and among them is Susanna’s cousin Barbarina with a girl who looks suspiciously like Cherubino in drag...oh fine that’s who it is. Once again the Count walks in on this nonsense but Barbarina sweetly reminds him of that time he told her if she made love to him he’d give her anything she wants and that pretty much shuts down his protestations. And then….MARRIAGE!

Welp that’s been opera...oh no wait there’s more.

Susanna slips “her” note to the count at the wedding and Figaro notices that the Count seems to have some romantic rendezvous planned for the night and mocks him, because for whatever reason, Susanna and the Countess haven’t told him about their new plan. And that’s the uneasy note we leave this act on folks. Everyone’s married but who is meeting who in the garden tonight??!!?? We’ll finish it off in Act IV...

*Fun fact..some people believe this was supposed to come right after the count’s aria, and so sometimes in staging it will be presented that way. It’s a lot of aria if you do it that way, but it also gives the Baritone a chance to take a little break before he sings the sextet.

[nakedorchestra]

Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro Opera Walkthrough: Act II

Act II picks up with an incredibly sad and beautiful aria which is something Mozart does so well. The Countess appears and gives us a peek into her misery, asking love to return her husband. Here’s Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing a beautiful version.

Susanna appears and attempts to cheer her up while they talk about what a creep her husband is. The Countess gets a pretty nasty man-zinger in there saying

“This is how modern husbands are: unfaithful on principle, fickle by nature and all jealous out of pride.”

(Come lo sono i moderni mariti: per sistema infedeli, per genio capricciosi, e per orgoglio poi tutti gelosi.) 

Figaro comes in and they begin to scheme up a very complicated scheme to keep the count busy until he and Susanna can have their wedding. He’s already sent an anonymous letter to the count warning him that his wife is cheating on him that evening so he’ll spend all his time trying to figure out who the fellow is. Also they’re going to dress Cherubino up as a girl and try to get the count to hook up with him so they can expose him.

Sure. Sounds simple enough. 

So anyway he sends Cherubino in. You could cut the sexual tension between Cherubino and the Countess with a knife and poor ole’ Susanna is third wheeling/chaperoning along. She encourages Cherubino to sing one of his songs for the Countess. He’s very nervous and you can hear that the aria starts out very simply both harmonically and rhythmically and gains complexity as Cherubino gains confidence. This aria is also diegetic music to the opera, and so Susanna is supposed to be accompanying him on the guitar so you can hear the arpeggiated bass line is meant to imitate a guitar. Here is an amazing version sung by my imaginary girlfriend Kate Lindsey, from a modern setting of the opera (note Susanna teaching him Elvis moves at the beginning). Subs if you speak French or a quick translation here

Then begin the cross-dressing Cherubino shenanigans. Everyone gets very giggly as they undress the hot young guy. Somewhere in the undressing, they notice that Cherubino’s military commission is missing its official seal. Susanna sings an aria (Venite inginocchiatevi)  goes out to grab something leaving the Countess and Cherubino ALONE. SCANDAL.

Except  that the Count has received that letter about his adulterous wife and has come to confront her. Cherubino hides in the closet, and the Countess proves herself to be a terrible liar, trying to say that Susanna is in the closet trying on her wedding dress but...just...CAN’T...come out. As they’re arguing about this, Susanna actually does reenter the room and tries to figure out what the hell is happening. The Count decides to go get tools to open the closet door himself, and to ensure that whoever is hiding can’t escape he’s bringing the countess with him and locking the damn door.

Well damn. Now Susanna and Cherubino are both locked in the room where they are going to freak out in a whirlwind of a duet where Cherubino decides to jump out of the window despite Susanna’s protestations. Here’s Diana Damrau (Susanna) and Monica Bacelli (Cherubino)

Susanna then hides in the closet and the Count and Countess return and just as they’re about to get the closet door open, the Countess spills the beans and confesses Cherubino is the one in the closet. Enraged the Count throws open the door to reveal...Susanna.

Everyone is confused and Susanna is having the time of her life. She sings a little minuet as she exits, showing us that it’s not just Figaro who gets to make the Count dance. This is Mozart’s very long and truly masterful finale. It’s about 25 minutes of continuous ensemble music and continuous scheming and upheaval. I could try to summarize it and it would take a small novel, or you could just watch it from the 2012 Glyndebourne production set in 1960’s Spain (which I LOVE). Settle in cuz...

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra’s 33rd Session: Music from the Adventures of Robin Hood by Erich Korngold

In the above video, recorded at the 2013 BBC Proms, the commentator tells a quick story about the famous conductor Andre Previn. Someone observed that “Korngold sounds like Hollywood,” Korngold corrects him: “Oh no. Hollywood sounds like Korngold,”

Ah Erich Korngold. Possibly the most famous composer you’ve never heard of, this is the guy who established what big Hollywood blockbusters were going to sound like: big, lush Romantic scores that sound of Strauss and Liszt. You’ve heard this kind of music everywhere from Gone With the Wind to Star Wars. It’s what Hollywood SOUNDS like. Insert sly reference to the quote above.

So, what’s to listen to when you listen to a soundtrack without the movie it was written with?

Korngold was always clear that he intended his scores to be function like an opera without words (That’s what it says in the Grove so I’m gonna say it!) and he approaches the score in the same way that Richard Strauss approached setting a libretto.

Each character gets their own little theme or melody (what Wagner called “leitmotif”) when they first appear on screen. Think of Darth Vader. There’s some very specific music playing in your head if you’re like me:

Now that’s some characterization. That’s Darth Vader’s music and when you hear it you know there’s something going on that has to do in some way or another with Darth Vader. The music becomes just as important as what’s happening on screen because the music is telling just as dramatic a story.

The 1938 movie The Adventures of Robin Hood features the story and look (those tights) of the Robin Hood story that we know and love today. You’ve got all the standard Robin Hood characters in their most stereotypical form. It’s the same story you’ve heard a hundred times: while returning from the Third Crusade Richard the king of England has been taken hostage by the Duke of Austria (a whole other story) and his brother the (in pretty much every telling of the story) evil Prince John has set up as interim ruler of England. Robin Hood is a small time nobleman himself and his, unlike his king, managed to get back to England after terrifying the Mediterranean. In this telling, the prince and his henchmen, Sheriff, etc, represent the Norman ruling class while Robin Hood and his Merry Men are oppressed Saxons fed up with those darn Normans. Robin Hood causes trouble for the Prince and his buddies, falls in love, gets tricked like a punk into showing up at what is an obviously elaborately staged trap to shoot arrows at a target, and in the end helps a newly arrived home King Richard put down the coup of his irritating brother. Yay Robin Hood!

Each character gets their own theme and you’ll have little trouble keeping track of the plot in what you’re hearing.

Listen for themes and try to associate them with a character or a scene from the story. It gets pretty clear when you’re hearing Robin (heroic), the Prince (Evil!!), and the Lady Marian(Tender) when there’s a fight happening or a rescue or a love scene.

If you’ve got a keen ear (or know the movie) you might notice that the theme for King Richard and the theme for England end up sounding almost the same and that our good friend Robin Hood has a theme that develops into sounding suspiciously like the king of England’s.

Oh and go watch the movie!

If you’re in the Bay Area, be sure to come to hear our friends at Awesöme Orchestra play this gem on Friday, July 3rd from 6:30-9:30 at American Steel Studios (1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakland)

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra’s 33rd Session: Philip Glass’s The Canyon

So here is where we would usually dive into the context needed to understand the piece, and then we would tell you a couple of musical things to listen for and then we would rant about how great this piece is. Today, that’s going to be a shorter process, because today we are getting MINIMAL.

Minimalism was a movement in the 1960′s/70′s, where composers intentionally simplified rhythm, melody and harmony. Repetition is minimalism’s best friend. But listen, just because it’s simplified, and just because we aren’t going to say a whole lot about it doesn’t mean this music isn’t incredibly rich. The richness comes from your experience of it though and we can’t really write about that, but we’ll help you get there.

Philip Glass is widely considered one of the “major minimalists” today, lauded by classical music audiences as well as winning Oscars for his film scoring. 

The Canyon is what Glass calls a “dramatic episode”. It’s one of his three “portraits of nature” from 1988. It is not meant to reference any specific canyon but rather 

“...an idealized canyon of the imagination.“

Wowwwwwww. Listen, you can see why this music has a reputation for being popular around the marijuana smokers. But you don’t need weed to be cool kids! This stuff is good anytime.

Like we said, repetition is a big deal here. This piece is one long crescendo till the very end when it gradually dies away again, but throughout there is a strong rhythmic groove, starting in the percussion (maracas and snare drum) then moving to the strings. To enjoy this we highly recommend getting a physical groove going– here’s some inspiration:

Get into that beat...and then suddenly the percussion is going to come in and totally throw you off. Clap hard for your percussionists guys, this is not easy stuff. Repeat. This is an awesome 16 minute ride guys, so jump on that groove train and just ride it. Don’t think too much, just let these harmonies and rhythmic disjunctions wash over you. Think about the canyon.

If you’re in the Bay Area, be sure to come to hear our friends at Awesöme Orchestra play this gem on Friday, July 3rd from 6:30-9:30 at American Steel Studios (1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakland)

[nakedorchestra]

Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro Opera Walkthrough: Act I

ACT I

This opera starts with a total whirlwind of an overture. It starts with a little whisper, a buzz in the halls which slowly picks up some speed until BAM the entire orchestra joins in. There are so many lines which one instrument begins and another one picks up the melody line and chases after it. It contrasts very noble and lofty lines (such as the bass line at 1:10) with sweet and simple lines (like the melody at 1:28) already setting up the Upstairs/Downstairs world that The Marriage of Figaro inhabits.

Look how much fun Gerard Korsten has conducting it!

And tada! It’s Spain! In roughly the 1780’s (unless the production chose to set it somewhere else…). It’s Figaro and Susanna’s wedding day!

Figaro is a valet to the Count and is hard at work measuring out a space in a room within the palace. Susanna, the countess’s maid, joins in this opening duet when she enters with her new cappelino (a little hat/veil type contraption) for their wedding. At first Figaro ignores her and continues working until eventually she not only garners his attention but makes him join in her melody, giving us a strong hint about who wears the pants in this relationship.

He tells her he’s measuring out the space for their wedding bed. She becomes horrified realizing that this is the room they will inhabit once they’re married. Figaro is totally confused because this is the best [servant’s] room in the house and they can easily run to their respective master/mistress’s chambers. Susanna is reluctant at first to tell Figaro because “I am Susanna and you are an idiot” (MEN amirite?)

But  she eventually clues him in that the Count is planning to send him off to London, and meanwhile sneak over to Susanna and bring back prima nocte.

Figaro then sings his aria “Se vuol ballare”. Here’s Christian Van Horn doing it great service.

He begins telling us that if “Lil’ master count” (signor contino) would like to dance, it is Figaro who will set the tune, and he does so in a minuet, which is generally a noble’s dance, but when he breaks into the second half, he tells us he plans to overturn all the Count’s deceit, we hear a contredanse which is an English country dance more fitting to a servant. THANKS MOZART. THAT’S VERY CLEVER. Also something that 1780s audiences would have picked up on, so welcome to the inside joke!

Then the baddies come out. Bartolo and Marcellina who are both old, uncute and not fun pop out to patter about their plans to legally blackmail Figaro into marrying Marcellina to repay a debt he owes her. Bartolo sings a #tbt aria which mostly concerns his sputtering rage about things that happened in The Barber of Seville. It’s fine. Marcellina overhears Susanna come in and pretends not to hear her so she can say some nasty stuff. A war of politeness ensues as each delivers calls the other a ho but, you know, POLITELY. This is a palace after all.

Cherubino enters and sings about how damn horny he is and when it’s done right it is such a great portrayal of what it is to be a teenager. The accompaniment is seriously muted and relies heavily on offbeats and sudden swells that perfectly depict the electricity and sudden heartstops that come with crushin’ HARD

(especially when you’re crushin hard on your godmother the countess…)

Here’s Frederica von Stade wearing a crazy wig and rockin’ this aria

Bear with me here as I try to explain a farce plot…

The count comes in as Susanna frantically hides Cherubino behind a chair..

...where he overhears the Count making unrequited moves on Susanna until the Count’s slimy friend Basilio appears. Now the Count also hides for PROPRIETY dontcha know, but he goes to hide behind a chair so Cherubino now jumps into the chair where Susanna covers him with laundry. Basilio begins to gossip and the Count jumps out upon hearing that Cherubino may be interested in the countess and...you know what just watch the video….

Figaro arrives with a whole damn chorus of townspeople to try and trap the Count into marrying him and Susanna right then in an impressive flashmob cock-block. The Count tells everyone he just wants to give them a REALLY nice party so they’ll have to delay it till that night. Then he dooms our fancy friend Cherubino to a life in the military, starting that day. Figaro mocks him and his beautiful curls and fanciful feather hats, sung to a brisk and jolly march with little fanfares rising out of the orchestra and that’s the end of act one kids.

[nakedorchestra]

Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro: The Preliminaries

Mozart’s opera “Le nozze di Figaro” or “The Marriage of Figaro” is the perfect summer opera. It’s beautiful, funny, equal parts sarcastic and sassy to sincere and sweet. It’ll make you cry, it’ll make you laugh and no one is going to die. We’re going to go act by act here and will have limited video so let’s get into some watching recommendations. Obviously if you can get to a live show that’s the best option and if you’re willing to do a little work, decent tickets to major opera houses are usually available for around $25.  Otherwise the youtube giveth and giveth and these are some options...

-This is a great production from The Glyndebourne Festival in 1994 with fabulous singers AND English subtitles AND great quality! Part 1 and Part 2

-This is a great production from Paris in 1980 with more fabulous singers AND subtitles! Right here

-Here’s the slightly awkward film version they made in 1973 but the singers are all top notch and Karl Böhm leads the Wiener Philharmonic. Watch it here

And there are many many more

Let’s do the historical background of this work so we can dig into the MUSIC! The libretto/script for this opera was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte* who also collaborated with Mozart on Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. It was based on the second play in Beaumarchais’ scandalous trilogy which came out during brewing instability shortly before the French Revolution and lays out that nobility are not any better or smarter than commoners, and are also privileged assholes. If you went to an occupy protest, you will like this opera.

But the 1% are weirdly touchy about hearing things like that and Beaumarchais’ play was banned in Vienna. DaPonte made copious changes in his translation (mostly to sweeten up the character of Figaro who is INTENSE in the play) and sweet talked the H.R. Emperor Joseph II into approving the libretto before Mozart wrote a single note.

Once that approval was on the table though, Mozart wrote plenty of notes and possibly wrote this whole opera in just six weeks, which is nuts. This is a lengthy opera even by operatic standards clocking in somewhere between three and four hours depending on cuts** The opera was a hit, even causing the Emperor to allow encores only for arias in order to keep the show moving.

If this is your first opera….well first…

Ok sorry just a little excited there. 

So you’re going to hear arias (character solos), ensembles and then the orchestra will drop out leaving you with the harpsichord and a whole lot of ...this… (from Don Giovanni)

Welcome to secco recitative. Dry is right there in the name. Personal opinion: This is the worst thing about classical period opera from a musical point of view. It serves as a vehicle to push the plot along and get through dialogue quickly, and the musical lines are simple although from time to time there are beautiful little moments and jokes hidden in the recit.

Also

There is a TON of crossdressing in this show. In opera generally. Some of it (fine, lots of it) is plot, however some of it is thanks to the infinite glory of the Pants Role. See, in opera composers like to write roles of teenaged boys for women, and most frequently mezzo-sopranos. And it’s great. LEARN TO EMBRACE IT. Shhhhhh just let Joyce hold your hand

Ok. I think we’ve got everything settled now. This opera is the bomb.com. Every time I hear this music it’s like it gets more beautiful, more funny and more incredibly witty. But let’s get into that in our next post on Act I!Pick a video and follow along!

*Dude...Da Ponte had a totally amazing and insane life. How is there not a movie about this man yet?

**In many operas, particularly earlier ones, it’s totally acceptable to cut large swaths of less popular music and excessive, unimportant recitative.

[nakedorchestra]

One of the members of the Naked Orchestra is live tweeting the final dress rehearsal of San Francisco Opera's production of Mozart's beautiful work "The Marriage of Figaro"/"Le nozze di Figaro" at 2pm! Also stay tuned for a four act dissection of the work starting tomorrow!

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra Session 32: Beethoven- Symphony no.7

So, the actual symphony mentioned in the title of this post. Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, known as his dance symphony due to its use of dance rhythms as its foundation, contains some of Beethoven’s most famous music that isn’t from his 5th or his 9th symphonies. The 7th Symphony was premiered at a charity concert for soldiers injured in a victory over the armies of Napoleon in 1813. Beethoven initially thrilled at what Napoleon seemed to accomplish as a champion of Enlightenment ideals, but when it was clear that Napoleon intended to expand his power at any costs and in every direction Beethoven took it pretty hard. His contributions to the evening’s concert also included Wellington’s Victory  a tribute to the English naval victory over Napoleon earlier that year. Get em Beethoven!

This symphony is exciting and raucous and we get to enjoy good use of Beethoven’s mastery of playful rhythmic techniques. Lots of what we hear is taken from well known dance music of the time and each of these dances has a character and style totally its own. Listen for repeated use of specific rhythms as they will surprise with when and where and in what voice they may reappear.

You will almost certainly recognize the famous second movement, the Allegretto, which has gotten to be the go for music TV and film makers to let the viewer know they should feel overwhelming sad. Or at least emotionally conflicted. This movement keeps attempting to push itself into a sweeter major key but every time it almost established itself it falls back into the minor key. Cheer up Beeths! (This is what I call him cuz we’re close like that.)

Seriously, play the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony while watching the above gif and try not to tear up. Same for this moving picture of a pug:

Yeah, good luck.

The second movement has immense power due to its persistent, driving rhythms in the lower strings which Beethoven uses as the groove (it’s a dance rhythm so I’m call it a groove!) on which he builds a massive crescendo using the rest of the orchestra. It’s not surprising that many folks hear a funeral procession as this music begins but regardless any specific associations one might feel, you can’t deny that these nine minutes (or so) depict just an incredibly sad emotional whirlwind. Really, the entire symphony is an emotional whirlwind.

After the second movement we launch into the boisterous third movement which draws on an Austrian folk melody and just exudes charm. I mean this is a movement you wanna take to a party.

Maybe that’s just my thing…

Anyway, the last movement just keeps that party going. I once heard this symphony called “undemanding” and that’s exactly what it is. This isn’t a piece of music that you need to understand references or historical context to really feel and enjoy. Have some drinks, grab a friend, feel the feels and dance along with Awesöme Orchestra this Saturday June 6th from 12-3pm at 3075 Adeline St. in Berkeley!

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra Session 32: Why Beethoven??

So, why Beethoven? Why of all the great composers in history does this guy seem to continuously come out on top when folks talk greatest music of all time? You can’t turn around in this country without bumping into your local orchestra playing some a Beethoven symphony or concerto.. Beyond appearing on concert programing pretty much everywhere, Beethoven still gets his own tribute nights! The San Francisco Symphony is hosting it’s “Beethoven Marathon” later this month. No one else has come to represent musical art in quite the same way that we see with Beethoven. Why, why Beethoven?

Well, in the Grove Music Online’s (The Grove is THE place to start for any research into music history) vast, vast entry on the life of Beethoven, Scott Burnham presents a three pronged answer (musicians and music historians love groups of three) to the question, Why the heck do we care so much about Beethoven?

First, Beethoven is a perfect fit to the myth of the artist as hero. The whole idea of the noble starving artist (the martyr to music), willing to sacrifice everything for one’s art in the face of an adversarial outside world that doesn’t comprehend the beauty and sublime nature of his work grows out of the writings of early Romantic authors like E.T.A. Hoffman and Bettina Brentano. For these and many, many others Beethoven was the perfect human specimen to embody the ideals of what man could look like when he has realized the greatness of his potential. So, for a large number people, Beethoven serves as this arch-genius, archetypal, German super hero.

Oh, did I mention that German nationalism is a huge element in the elevation of Beethoven as artist supreme? Yup, Beethoven came to be seen as embodying ideals of German purity of spirit and noble intent, a model in line with state sanctioned morality. Take a wild guess as to which ultra nationalistic 20th century German regime was a HUGE fan of Beethoven. 

Which brings me to the second big factor in Beethoven’s staying power: the appropriation of his music for outright political purposes. Even during the 1820’s while Beethoven was still alive, the rapidly growing state of Prussia (flush with new territories following acquisitions made after the fall of Napoleon, which in 1815 doubled the size of Prussia’s population) utilized Beethoven’s music to cultivate the sort of aesthetic and civic character that would be vital in the building of the future state of Germany.

In 1870, our old friend Richard Wagner famously publishes an article extolling Beethoven as the ideal saint of the new state of Germany, as clear a partisan use as any as that year marked the official birth of the united German empire under Wilhelm I of Prussia (and his buddy Otto von Bismarck) as well as the hundredth birthday of Beethoven. German politics have had a long relationship with Beethoven from this point on. The rise of Germany as an economic and political player and their adoption of Beethoven as a patron saint, means that Beethoven has received direct institutional support from one of the most powerful countries in the world for 195 years. To this day Beethoven has keeps his hand in politics: at the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was the composer of choice for any number of celebratory unification concerts and the European Union uses his 9th symphony as their “Anthem of Europe”.

The third big reason we remember Beethoven is of course the small issue that he tended to revolutionize whatever style he chose to work in(with the possible exception of opera, as his one attempt, Fidelio, is not everyone’s favorite). Every composer after has to deal with the legacy of his body of work. Beethoven’s musical influences merit their own, extended post, but for right now let’s just look at the symphony. As a genre and format, the symphony is a musical piece that had developed most its key characteristics under Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven’s first two symphonies sound very similar to these early composers but breaks out stylistically and aesthetically with his third. Beyond the actual music itself, composers before Beethoven were always writing their symphonies for patrons, wealthy individuals looking to show off their prestige and sophistication by presenting, at their own expense, music composed and played by the hottest talent. Symphonies were tools of aristocratic peacock strutting.

Beethoven wrote symphonies for himself. Though benefiting greatly from rich sponsors, Beethoven achieved a level of economic autonomy which allowed him to compose without needing to satisfy the tastes of whoever put down the cash. Beethoven managed to develop an artistic voice outside the influence of any other individual. Friedrich Nietzsche traces a three part progression (there’s that three again) that starts with Rousseau (birth of the enlightenment, inherent value of the individual/human rights/dignity/Democrary), goes momentarily and wildly astray with Napoleon (who starts as idealistic believer in the rights of man and proceeds to demolish the rights of any individual not part of his empire) and reaches its perfection in the person of Beethoven(and Goethe too) (the triumph of the individual achieving true agency and independence all the while refraining from you know, conquering the world Yay!)

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra Session 32: The Carousel Waltz

Oooo the Carousel Waltz. This is the beginning of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic music Carouse and the piece is actually somewhat of an anomaly in music which is always fun to talk about so let’s go!

Generally when we sit down for a musical or opera we can expect a nice old overture at the beginning. A typical overture would normally be a fun medley of tunes we’ll hear throughout the evening and most likely is unstaged. Richard Rodgers was having none of that. Apparently he didn’t like overtures because the “banging of seats by latecomers” ruined the music. To get the audience to sit up and focus, Rodgers composed wholly original music to be accompanied by a pantomime onstage which establishes our protagonists Julie and Billy’s whole relationship (which is most of the plot of this show) and foreshadows the trouble it will cause, skipping the whole overture and typical “opening number” business and lets us dive into the story right away.

Ballsy! 

Here’s the full waltz in all its glory without pantomime…

And here’s what they did in the 1956 movie. You’ll notice the waltz has been cut up a lot, but because unfortunately there’s not a great video of the opening pantomime floating around, this is the best thing. And it’s pretty great! Because of movie magic they can cram a lot into their shorter cut.

The music sets up the pantomime with fantastic musical imagery. You can hear the sun set at the beginning, as the boardwalk starts to come to life. What I love about the melody is that it’s a great example of diegetic music (that is, music that is an actual part of the story, that the characters themselves can hear and experience), since it’s the music playing on the carousel. Some recordings/arrangements use a tambourine or bells which strengthens that mechanical feeling.There’s a great moment around 2:12 in the first video above where we hear the carousel barker get all tough in the brass and you can practically hear guys flexing their muscles. I have to say that I always love a harp glissando to add a little magic and romance to any piece and rodgers is just tastefully cheesy enough, as you can hear at around 0:52 in the same video. 

This piece also sets up a little bit of the musical characterization of Julie and Billy which is continued throughout the musical. Billy favors simple and regular 8th note rhythms (short short short short etc) where Julie more frequently uses a dotted rhythm (long short long short etc) so all the anticipation we hear at the beginning (around 0:49) begins to Julie’s music and all the bravado of the carousel barker theme fits into Billy’s simpler, stauncher rhythmic patterns.

We’re actually not going to delve into the plot here because it’s not totally necessary for the waltz and because someday we hope to give Carousel a full entry to itself. But heck it’s JUNE

Sorry guys, got carried away there…just because it’s June! June! Juuuuuuuuuuuneeeeeeee!

So if you live in the bay area, come on down to the Ed Roberts Campus, 3075 Adeline St. in Berkeley on June 6, 12-3pm to hear Awesöme Orchestra play this unique piece in musical theater repertoire. I’ll just leave you with this last bit of carousel magic…

[nakedorchestra]

Awesöme Orchestra Session 32: Make Our Garden Grow- Bernstein

Candide, a bastard and hopeless and naive optimist who just wants to have a lovely little farm and babies someday, falls in love with Cunegonde, the daughter of a noble family in the kingdom of Westphalia.

They’re caught together and Candide is banished from the kingdom which is soon after attacked and destroyed. Candide finds Cunegonde’s dead body and sings the most beautiful tragic aria.

But Cunegonde isn’t dead after all! (for reasons which are never explained) She appears in France and sings an awesome insane aria.

Hooray! The characters have been strewn across the globe and continue to adventure through all manners of vice and sin. At last they are reunited and horrified at what they have all become. They reconcile and all a bit wiser, join together in Make Our Garden Grow.

I am going to mostly avoid the really intense hole of philosophical discussion that I fell into while researching this. Half of the world believes that this is a moment of true simplicity– they’ll somewhat passively farm their own backyard and not worry about larger philosophical matters, and the other half believe this is farming the garden of life, continuing on in the fight against injustice and immorality.

It’s like choose your own adventure! Choose your own philosophy! Which is exactly what good music should evoke in us right? Thanks Bernstein!

What a cutie.

There are some hints in the music as to Bernstein’s interpretation though. Bernstein is not the kind of man to shy away from extremes in music, and this work takes us on a beautiful journey. From a very simple beginning with just Candide and a very light orchestral accompaniment from the strings, slowly the woodwinds, harp and Cunegonde join in. Bit by bit, the rest of the orchestra begins to unite, as do the other minor characters and finally the chorus and just when the brass and percussion are starting to get really carried away with themselves the orchestra suddenly drops out, leaving the singers alone suspended in perilously high vocal ranges, till it swoops in at the end for a grand send off into the future.

So musically this finale takes us from the very small contributions of a few, which grows and grows until everyone has been effected and joins in.To me this seems like the joining of those two philosophies together– make your own small difference and it will start the ball rolling to change the entire world. But this is choose your own philosophy adventure so interpret as you will!

Here’s Bernstein conducting, also featuring some stellar vintage concert wear.

One more musical thing to point out! Candide’s “optimist” theme is riddled throughout this piece. If you click on that beautiful sad music I mentioned before you’ll hear it all over the place, and we get a version of that here at the end as well. Here’s a little video first playing Candide’s theme, and then the beginning of the melody for “Make Our Garden Grow”.

So quite literally Bernstein plants the seed at the beginning of the opera and we watch it grow. Pretty snazzy. One last little bit of trivia for you musical theater nerds out there. This opera was originally supposed to end with a wedding scene and Bernstein wrote a lovely little duet for it before ultimately scrapping it for this much more epic ending. That duet didn’t go to waste though– it premiered the next year in West Side Story as “One Hand, One Heart”.

Wanna watch the whole show? Here’s a great version with a bunch of Broadway greats. Is it my favorite musically? Nah Is it a great production? Hell yeah.

If you live in the bay area come hear this great piece Saturday June 6th 12-3pm on the Ed Roberts Campus, 3075 Adeline St in Berkeley. More info here!

*What’s the difference anyway? This is a big argument happening in Opera World right now, as more and more opera houses are putting on works by Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Bernstein. I think this article from 1999 has got the right idea going on.

[nakedorchestra]

Happy Birthday Wagner!

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Perhaps the most divisive operatic composer to continue to draw huge audiences to festivals devoted entirely to performances of his works, Richard Wagner continues to loom large over the musical world. Raised in Germany in a thoroughly middle class world, Wagner was hugely influenced by his stepfather’s career as an actor and playwright and was actively involved in the theater from an early age. Wagner’s dual interest in drama and music led to his development of on of those big German words that gets thrown around in music history discussions: Gesamtkunstwerk, meaning literally “total work of art” but intended to indicate a synthesis of art forms into something distinct from its constituent parts. To Wagner, opera embodied the potential for such work perfectly, except that no had written any good opera! (Yet)(According to Wagner).

(clips from the Met’s Siegfried)

Opera was the bringing together of stage drama, visual art, and music. However, the evolution of these distinct forms had yet to completely subsume into a new form: it was hard to lose oneself in the drama of an opera when the works so clearly moved from overture, to aria, to chorus, to orchestra set piece, back and forth ad nauseum. Wagner’s genius was to remove the formal structure of the individual parts of a work. In a typical Mozart opera, to take a common example, one can hear Baroque dances, military marches, funeral dirges, individuals break into songs that fully stop the action on stage and fit into recognizable song forms. While Wagner clearly draws on the same musical traditions as his predecessors, gone are the recognizable forms that break up a work into easy to follow segments. Instead of songs, Wagner gives us melodies that never, ever seem to resolve and rhythms that cause one to question their grip on reality.

(clips from the Met’s Das Rheingold)

Wagner’s goal was to use every artistic tool at his disposal to enhance his drama. Unlike the vast majority of composers before or after, Wagner even wrote his own libretto (text) to his operas. One of his great (and easy to identify) contributions is his use and development of “leitmotifs”, melodies that represent specific things in the story, including people, feelings, places, even enchanted items. While composers had been using melodic figures to designate specific ideas long before Wagner (just listen to a Requiem mass by just about any composer ever) he was the first to build his musical drama from the ground up using these components as a massively systematized whole. By establishing that certain melodies represented certain, exact things in the story, Wagner expanded exponentially the dramatic potential in any given musical moment. If we hear our hero onstage accompanied by his personal theme punctuated by music associated with angelic and godly elements we can understand this as meaning something profoundly different if his music were intermingled with that of the woman he loves. in this way Wagner showed opera composers how to really make proper use of subtext. There are some writers who argue that this use of subtext was his exploration of the importance of the unconscious mind decades before Freud.

While his works completely changed the direction of 19th century opera, Wagner’s development of dramatic musical techniques became the bedrock for the 20th century’s dominant art form: film.

Wagner more or less figured out how to use musical cues and coding to portray literal meaning in his operas. The idea that a composer could assign musical cues to essentially anything you wanted turned out to be a novel approach to accompany film, a medium that allows the director to assign whatever visual cues they might choose. Film composers took the ideas of Wagner and his chief successors, chiefly Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler and ran with them. Composers like Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, and Alfred Newman created lush masterpieces using the orchestral palettes of Strauss and Mahler to accompany many of the biggest movies of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s establishing the American film score tradition.

[nakedorchestra]

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique- 4th Movement- Marche au supplice

Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique is a richly dramatic piece of program music, that starts with daydreaming about love and ends with a witches sabbath in hell. The personal drama that accompanied the creation of this work isn’t any less unhinged, so sit back and let’s delve into some serious 19th century, drug and love induced dramz. 

Hector Berlioz went to a production of Hamlet and fell madly in love with the actress Harriet Smithson who played Ophelia. Despite having never met her, Berlioz began writing her impassioned letters. He quite openly wrote Symphonie Fantastique with her as his muse. He invited her to the premiere of the Symphonie Fantastique which she did not attend much to his disappointment. Eventually after Harriet was facing waning popularity and increasing debt, her sister convinced her to go to the premiere of Léilo (the sequel to Symphonie Fantastique), where she realized these works were about her and she and Berlioz were married soon after.

Hey that’s a pretty sweet story…

except this is the “plot” of the symphony:

The Artist is haunted day and night with thoughts of his love. He broods on his own loneliness and wishes he could have her…but then she might betray him… and then, well let’s let Berlioz tell it himself:

“Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution…He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath … Roar of delight at her arrival … She joins the diabolical orgy … The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches”

Huh.

I don’t know about you, but that’s just not the kind of thing that gets me in the marrying mood but hey whatever floats your boat right? …right guys?

Well regardless of weird personal drama, this is an incredible work of music and the whole thing is just totally awesome. We’ll do a post soon on the piece as a whole, but today we’re just focusing on the 4th movement–The March to the Scaffold (or Marche au supplice if you’re  feeling French) since that’s what our friends over at Awesöme Orchestra are presenting this week.

Berlioz claimed to have written the fourth movement in a single night, which seems plausible given the allegations that he was taking opium for at least part if not all of the composition process. This movement covers the bolded section of the synopsis above. 

At the beginning we experience the haze of the opium as the world slowly comes into focus and the percussion increases until BAM! The real world hits ( 0:33 in the video above).Then begins the slow march to the scaffold, where the melody is continuously dragged downward, and interrupted by sporadic interjections of the rather jolly live band represented by the brass section*, that’s come to accompany the execution. 

A demented bassoon solo joins in the fray, and thanks to his treatise on orchestration we know that Berlioz believed that the bassoon is “totally devoid of brightness or nobility, [and] has a propensity towards the grotesque” which gives us a good idea of his intentions here. The prisoner’s march and the live band both continue on towards the inevitable, and Berlioz increases the dynamics and adds in percussion including cymbals** as the crowd becomes more frenetic. Just before the end (6:27), the artist pauses and thinks of his beloved– we hear her theme return in a solo clarinet*** before the guillotine slams down. The last thing we hear are the crowd’s shouts of “Hurrah” as the executioner shows the head to all four directions.

…It’s a lot for less than ten minutes of music. It is also totally awesome. This piece of music had us fist pumping along and I may have knocked over a salt and pepper shaker…twice. We do not recommend listening to this piece on hallucinogenic drugs, but we DO suggest you get down to The Firehouse Arts Hangar to see Awesöme Orchestra play this Saturday (5/23) if you live in the Bay Area. More information here

*Including his highly favored trombones which could “awaken the dead or doom the living”-Berlioz

** “feminine timbre…virginal and pure”- Berlioz.

**”eminently suitable…for the feverish excitement of a bacchanal where joy turns to frenzy.”- Berlioz

[nakedorchestra]

Wagner’s Lohengrin- Prelude to Act III

Wagner’s Lohengrin premiered in 1850, and is based on a German fairy-tale. It also contains what is unquestionably Wagner’s biggest hit:

But just before that comes Wagner’s bombastic party music, the Prelude to Act III. But first let’s run down the story real quick.

The very basic story goes like this: The kingdom wracked with political upheaval (and subplots we won’t get into here). The Duke’s sister Elsa goes to pray, when suddenly a Knight appears in a boat pulled by swans. He declares himself her champion and her husband. Of course she says yes (because really, how do you say no to a man with a swan boat?). He lays down some conditions though– she can never ask him his name or where he comes from, and she must really love that swan boat because she agrees.

Quickly a political rival begins to sow seeds of doubt in Elsa’s head and soon after their marriage, Elsa asks the Swan Knight the forbidden questions. He reveals that he is Lohengrin, Knight of the Holy Grail sent to protect Elsa. However, if a knight’s identity is revealed he must remove himself from human sight. So a dove descends from heaven and pulls his boat to the Kingdom of the Holy Grail, and Elsa is so struck with grief she dies right on the spot.

Phew.

So what this whole piece comes down to, is a constant pull between two worlds–the holy and the earthly. Lohengrin, like the holy grail itself, exists on Earth but is not truly of this Earth. Wagner accentuates this contrast through clear musical differences between the heavenly and earthly realms.

The easiest way to see this is by looking at the Opening Prelude and the Prelude to Act III. Wagner himself told us that his Opening Prelude represented the descent from heaven of a host of angels bearing the Grail, and their return to heaven. Wagner sets a clear heavenly mood with incredibly delicate shimmering in the high strings (like the glistening of the holy grail) and virtually no percussion at all. The harmony develops continuously, winding in and out of different keys, so that it creates a sense of perpetual movement and a sense of timelessness, invoking the timeless nature of heaven. finally bringing in the brass for a big heavenly fanfare near the end.

(I don’t know exactly what the castle is about in this video, but it’s soothing and German so basically Wagner’s idea of Heaven)

Now let’s talk about the Prelude to Act III

This music comes just before the wedding, and sets the mood of the wedding feast– a grand but definitely earthly affair. Most of this music is the total opposite of the Opening Prelude–This thing starts out and ends loud, gaudy and bawdy like any other great party anthem. Loud brass sounding out the melody plus the constant tremolo in the strings build up tension and excitement right from the start. There’s even a tambourine, so you know it’s a good wedding.  In the middle you’ll hear the brass and percussion drop out, and the oboe picks up a sweet little melody that if you listen closely, you’ll notice is strikingly similar to the famous bridal march that immediately follows the prelude. It’s a sweet little moment where we remember that this is a wedding and not just a great party. The momentum doesn’t last long and soon we’re right back to our opening party theme to take us out.

Hold onto your party hats kids, and if you live in the Bay Area, come hear the Prelude to Act III plus the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, and the Fellowship fo the Ring Orchestral Suite- Shore, this Saturday 5/23, noon at The Firehouse Art Events Hangar! More information here.