danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

As a general rule, I am not particularly fond of transcriptions.  First, transcriptions suggest that the composer didn’t get it right himself, and, second, transcriptions are seldom as good as the original.  Exceptions to the rule certainly exist – most famously Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which is far superior in Maurice Ravel’s orchestration.  Listen to this excerpt from the last movement, “The Great Gate at Kiev”, first in Mussorgsky’s original piano version, then in Ravel’s arrangement, and notice how much more colorful and interesting Ravel makes it:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Maurice Ravel, Leopold Stokowski, Franz Liszt, and a handful of others were accomplished musicians who knew what they were doing.  Too often, however, transcriptions are made by instrumentalists or ensembles looking to perform music that wasn’t written for their respective instruments or combinations thereof.  Thus, you often find clarinet sonatas by Brahms performed by flutists, or any piece by anybody performed by brass quartets.  Guitarists are frequent offenders.

For years now, a compact disc has popped up on the play-lists of one of my colleagues that I have resisted adding to my own.  The disc is of the Amsterdam Guitar Trio playing their own transcriptions of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque and Petite Suite, and Gabriel Fauré’s Dolly.  This is music I love, but couldn’t help but feel the transcriptions gimmicky.  I’ve changed my mind.  After all this time, I have finally come around to liking it.  Those pieces aren’t so serious as to preclude a three-guitar treatment, and hearing it that way is a refreshing diversion.  Listen to this bit from the Petite Suite:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

After years of avoiding this recording, I finally bought my own copy this week.

Debussy: Petite Suite; Suite Bergamasque. Fauré: Dolly, Op. 56. Chopin: Rondo in C Major, Op. 73.  Amsterdam Guitar Trio.  RCA 7800

Filed under: Music, WAYLTL, Work on June 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

Decca 417 783-2

I am going to try to bring back the “What Are You Listening to Lately?” feature I used to post regularly.

While I haven’t exactly been successful in making it an Earth Day tradition, today I did listen to Gustav Mahler’s great orchestral song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde.  The Decca compact disc with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic–and soloists James King and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau–is my only recording of this music, but I don’t feel the need to own another, such is the quality.

I will try to upload previous editions of “WAYLTL?” as time permits.

Filed under: Music, WAYLTL on April 22nd, 2010 | No Comments »

Today is Johann Sebastian Bach’s 325th birthday.  I listened to the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 (my favorite of the set), and the cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden and selections from the Well-Tempered Clavier.  Last week I listened to the St. Matthew Passion.  This week I intend to hear the St. John Passion, as well.

I know this older photo doesn’t show the composer’s correct age, but I love it anyway.

Filed under: Music, Special Occasions, WAYLTL on March 21st, 2010 | No Comments »

Samuel Barber was born a hundred years ago today.  If he had only written Knoxville: Summer of 1915 he would still be important in my book.  It is the perfect marriage of music and text, namely, James Agee’s recollections of his childhood.

But Barber, of course, wrote much more.  Yesterday, for example, I listened to Gil Shaham’s wonderful recording of Barber’s Violin Concerto, which deserves a place in the regular concert repertoire.

Happy Birthday, Samuel Barber.

UPDATE:  When I arrived at work this morning, I noticed that Exploring Music this week is devoted to Samuel Barber.  Tomorrow, in fact, the show will feature Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and the fabulous Summer Music for Woodwind Quintet.  Friday’s show will have the Piano Concerto played by John Browning – a recording I have on CD.

Filed under: Music, Nostalgia, Special Occasions, WAYLTL, Work on March 9th, 2010 | No Comments »

Bombadil: Tarpits and Canyonlands – Ramseur Records 2729

For many people, I suppose, music is an evolving art, and what suits the taste is what is new and “relevant”.  I am not one of those people.  I don’t dispute that music evolves.  On the contrary, I have made it my profession to know how music has changed over time, and what those slow, incremental changes sound like.  But I don’t care what is current or popular.  Indeed, my favorite piece of music of all time was first presented in 1721, and my favorite piece of popular music was written over thirty years ago.  Music, to me, needn’t be modern.  It needn’t even be relevant to my own experience.  But sometimes it is both, and those are happy occasions.  Bombadil’s new album, Tarpits and Canyonlands, is such a record.

Tarpits and Canyonlands explores one major theme: marriage.  It isn’t difficult to imagine how the band arrived at this concept.  The members all seem to be around the age when marriage is the thing to do.  At their Gainesville show this spring, there was a handwritten note on the electric piano which read, “Just Married”.  I am no longer a newlywed, which makes this album especially relevant, since one question prominently asked is, “What lies beyond the honeymoon?”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

That clip is from later in the song, but in it you hear Bombadil employ a classic musical device, by bringing back the main musical motif of the song, heard here in the first verse:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And what lies far, far beyond the honeymoon, after decades of being married to the same person?  “What would you say of marriage after…I hurt your dream job offer because I was scared?”  What if “I broke your confidence with a lover that was in my past?”  What if “the nursery rhyme stork never brought a baby to you?”  This is marriage:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The messages in the lyrics are often serious, and even downright melancholy, when the music itself beguiles you into feeling more cheerful.  An up-tempo number with hand-clapping and a catchy piano riff reminds you of your “Sad Birthday”:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And even when you get a message from home, “they forgot to say ‘happy birthday’”.

The album’s most powerful lyric comes from a song called “So Many Ways to Die”.  I am wont to avoid a song with such a sinister title, but a more apt name might have been “So Many Ways to Stay Alive”, since the tune asks us to examine the way we look at our own bleak circumstances and find something positive.  “So many ways to think how differently we interpret the brink between the side of life worth living and the point at which you’re better off to sink”:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I hope you’ll forgive that I made a small edit in the clip above, because I wanted you to hear the second chorus, where the singer rises an octave from where he sang the first chorus.  I really appreciate the extra energy, and the strain in the voice seems honest and appropriate to me.  It’s my favorite moment in the whole album.

I don’t mean to suggest that Tarpits and Canyonlands is all unhappy, all the time.  “Oto the Bear”, and “Kuala Lumpur”, both of which they played at their Gainesville show, are jaunty and fun to sing along with.  “Laurita” is a Spanish-language song with a catchy tune and an adorable arrangement, complete with a change in rhythm – a frequent musical device on this album.

Tarpits and Canyonlands describes marriage as a pyramid.  That may not be instructive, and, indeed, it leaves more questions than answers.  But so do the Pyramids, and, sometimes, so does marriage.  And, though I don’t expect any album to last 4,000 years, I do anticipate that this record will remain a rich and rewarding document well beyond the honeymoon.

Filed under: Popular Music, WAYLTL on July 8th, 2009 | No Comments »