Now That’s What I Call (Classical Music): Baroque To Rock

Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D major, BWV 1050

I               Allegro

II             Affetuoso

III            Allegro

For reasons that remain obscure, only a relatively small part of Bach’s orchestral œuvre has been preserved for posterity.  The fact that so few works for instrumental ensemble have survived has let many researchers to the hypothesis that Bach was obliged to leave the majority of his compositions when he moved on to another post.  Other considerations establish a connection with the distribution of Bach’s compositions to his heirs after his death.  These reasons, coupled with a profound change in musical taste and fashion, led to Bach’s music plunging into obscurity after his death until his renaissance at the beginning of the 19^th century.  However, since then, Bach’s orchestral works have enjoyed enormous and enduring popularity.

In 1719, Bach visited Berlin on an errand, where he met Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg.  The following year Bach began to find that retaining his current position in Köthen was losing its appeal for a number of reasons, among which, reportedly, was Princess Friderica’s dislike of Bach’s music.  (Friderica was the new wife of Bach’s employer, Prince Leopold.)  Perhaps as a bid for a new position, Bach collected a group of his works and sent the dedicated score entitled ‘Six Concertos for Several Instruments’ to Margrave.

Now known as the ‘Brandenburg Concertos’ due to their dedicatee, each concerto has little in common with the others.  The instrumentation, keys and themes change from one concerto to the next, but in them, Bach took the realisation of the concerto form to a new level that was in every case convincing, novel and original.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 is famous for being considered as the herald of the keyboard concerto as a genre.  The virtuoso soloist is supported by a small concertino of flute and violin. The imposing harpsichord cadenza that almost bursts the boundaries of the first movement was added by Bach while he was preparing the definitive score for the dedicatee – presumably in order to remind the Margrave of his own skill as a virtuoso as well as try out a fancy new harpsichord he’d just purchased.  After the slow movement, an intensively worked-out quartet setting, the work concludes with a cheerful Gigue in a loose fugal form.

©  Elizabeth Boulton

Johann Sebastian Bach Orchestra Suite No.2 in B minor, 7. Badinerie

Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K.622 

I               Allegro

II              Adagio

III             Rondo. Allegro

Mozart wrote his only concerto for clarinet and orchestra for his friend Anton Stadler in the space of about 10 days, when he was at the height of his powers, and only two months before his tragically early death. In Mozart’s day the clarinet was still quite a new instrument and was undergoing development by various makers. Mozart had a love affair with the clarinet and basset horn, with their rich sonorities and almost vocal qualities of expression. Mozart wrote the concerto for what should properly be called the basset clarinet, not to be confused with the basset horn, which is a tenor version of the standard clarinet. The concerto has survived not in Mozart’s manuscript, but in a set of parts with the clarinet solo written for normal clarinet, issued in 1801 – 10 years after Mozart’s death. It was published by the firm of Johann Andre, who had bought all Mozart’s surviving manuscripts from his widow, Constanza, in 1799. It is presumed, but by no means certain, that the arrangement for normal clarinet was by Andre himself.

Despite its curious birth, this is a glorious work: the first great concerto for the instrument and some would say still the greatest. The solo part displays the range and agility of the instrument as well as its velvety and soulful qualities, particularly exploring the differences between the higher and lower registers. A certain chamber-music quality reigns over the entire concerto, achieved partly through the integration of soloist and orchestra and partly through Mozart omitting the oboes and clarinets from the orchestra, in order to leave the middle woodwind register free for the soloist to exploit.

The first movement, in classical sonata form structure, is a wide-ranging and continuous melody. Although it is rich and varied in its ideas, the occasional chromatic passages and the soft phrase endings subtly impart a melancholic character.

The outer sections of the reflective Adagio are simple but warm and rich. The middle section, like the coda, is more elaborate for the clarinet, much of it in the lower register. The movement ends with the sort of quiet, seemingly inconsequential coda that was a Mozart speciality. In only six lightly scored measures, it seems to sum up all that has come before. Profound loneliness resides in this languorous elegy.

The rondo, based on the interplay of two melodies, provides a mostly high-spirited conclusion, yet moments of sadness still persist. This was the last major work that Mozart completed. Nine weeks after writing the clarinet concerto, he was dead. In this swan song, he left a testament to happiness and sadness, to hope and resignation.

© Elizabeth Boulton

Elgar Serenade For Strings, 2. Larghetto

II             Larghetto

Edward Elgar was one of the greatest British composers, who wrote many famous works, among them the Pomp and Circumstance marches, which include Land of Hope and Glory, and the Enigma Variations. Two of his finest pieces are for string orchestra: this Serenade, and the Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra.

The Serenade is a charming and elegant piece, in three short movements. The second main theme of the movement is particularly beautiful. The slow movement has been compared to the slow flowing of the River Severn, which is near where Elgar lived, and it is a warm, rich piece, which calls to mind some of Elgar’s imposing later works.

© Ian Lush

Coleridge-Taylor Four Noveletten for Strings, 2. No.2 in C Major

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was just 27 when he completed his Four Novelletten in 1902, though he would die only a decade later from pneumonia. Nonetheless, he was a widely celebrated figure in his lifetime. Born in London to an English mother and a father from Sierra Leone, he gained his unusual name because of his mother’s love for the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and entered the Royal College of Music at the age of just 15, where he studied composition under Stanford. He was greatly admired by Elgar, and celebrated by Elgar’s editor August Jaeger (immortalised as ‘Nimrod’ in Elgar’s Enigma Variations), who called Coleridge-Taylor ‘a genius’. His huge trilogy of cantatas The Song of Hiawatha packed out the Royal Albert Hall for ten seasons in extravagant ballet versions conducted by Malcolm Sargent, though Coleridge-Taylor suffered, too, from significant racial discrimination, and his music was allowed to slip quietly from public consciousness after his death. It’s only in far more recent years that it’s undergone a major reappraisal.

His Novelletten may have been inspired by Schumann’s piano miniatures of the same name, but they were surely influenced, too, by Coleridge-Taylor’s own prowess as a concert violinist. The pieces’ lyrical, somewhat sentimental style nonetheless conceals quite a remarkable exploration of the sonic possibilities of a string orchestra, to which Coleridge-Taylor adds a tambourine and triangle.

© 2024 David Kettle

Piazzolla Libertango

Every artist aspires to develop a personal voice, and every good artist eventually does so.  But few arrive at a style so personal and so reflective of a unique vision that, while nonetheless achieving great international popularity, it is strictly sui generis.  The music of Ástor Piazzolla is just that. Single handedly he created a musical genre and style that began with the traditional elements of the Argentine tango, but was infused with so much of advanced twentieth century “classical” techniques, that the result almost obscures its popular roots.  Jazz, Stravinsky, Bartók, dissonance, counterpoint, ubiquitous chromaticism, and varied orchestration—they all are incorporated into Piazolla’s musical take on the tango.  His achievement might be compared to a hypothetical situation wherein Stravinsky decided to base all of his compositions—with all of his modernist, challenging elements—on a transformed Viennese waltz.  Just one genre subjected to almost every new cutting edge technique.  That would be personal, indeed!  Yet, Piazolla with his more than one thousand compositions has achieved something like that.   Ravel employed a similar approach in his La valse, but that was just once.  While many aficionados of traditional tango music—especially in Piazolla’s native country, Argentina—are less than thrilled with his novel style, he has garnered an enthusiastic following around the world with audiences and a variety of professional musicians.

Piazzolla was born in Argentina, but moved with his parents in 1924 to New York City, living in Greenwich Village, immersing himself in the musical culture and atmosphere of the great city.  Jazz, classical music, the blues—all were his métier—all the while his family exposed him to traditional Argentine music at home.  And although he and his music are inextricably bound to the sound of the bandoneón (the indigenous Argentine accordion, rather like a concertina), it was indeed in New York City that his father brought home from a pawnshop, little Ástor’s first bandoneón.  All the while Piazolla studied classical music, simultaneously composing his first tangos.  A meeting with the tango immortal, Carlos Gardel (of Por una Cabeza fame), cemented his life-long dedication to the genre.

He moved back to Argentina in 1936, and there ensued a long and remarkable career as composer of tangos and performer in myriad musical groups—all the while pursuing a side interest in classical musical composition.  Moving well ahead in his career, by the early fifties he was immersed in the study of Stravinsky and Bartók, studying composition with Ginastera, listening to lots of jazz, and composing “classical” music.  In 1953 he won a major prize with a symphony that he had composed, and was off to Paris to study with the famed Nadia Boulanger—teacher of such luminaries as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Elliott Carter.  Savvy woman that she was, she disabused Piazolla of dreams of becoming another Bartók, and insisted that he must acknowledge his brilliance in the tango, and to follow it for his success.  And so he did, but not without taking with him his deep engagement with the techniques of jazz, blues, and complicated contemporary art music.  The result was his unique style, what is often called tango nuevo.

In the following years he became a legend in his native country, composing hundreds of pieces, continuing to play in and lead many different tango orchestras, and building a worldwide reputation.  Typically, his works were performed by a small tango group, generally, but not always, consisting of bandoneón, violin, electric guitar, double bass, and piano.  Inevitably, his compositions were also transcribed for a large variety of instrumentations.  He toured the world, almost Zelig-like, appearing on television, in concerts, recording with a variety of artists—a true universal musician.  He composed chamber music, orchestral music, and made music with everyone from Gerry Mulligan to Mstislav Rostropovich.

Libertango is one of Piazolla’s most popular compositions, recorded by artists in over five hundred releases.   The title alludes to Piazolla’s conscious artistic shift—or liberation, if you will–from traditional tango style to the new “Tango Nuevo.”  And that will be easy to hear in this alluring composition, which, while obviously preserving so many of the beloved musical elements of traditional tango, nevertheless strikes out in new artistic directions.  Traditional rhythms are often eschewed for new ones, but without losing the innate intensity of the genre.  Novel is the incorporation of Piazolla’s signature chromatic harmony, forming the foundation of for the soaring, romantic lyric lines intrinsic to the tango.  It’s all a refreshing take on an old beloved style.

© 2017 William E. Runyan

Kate Bush (arr. William Newell) And Dream of Sheep

“And Dream of Sheep” is track 6 on Kate Bush’s seminal work, Hounds of Love; her fifth studio album. The song begins side two of the album, a conceptual suite of seven tracks dubbed, “The Ninth Wave”.

Kate Bush described “The Ninth Wave” as being “about a person who is alone in the water for the night. It’s about their past, present and future coming to keep them awake, to stop them drowning, to stop them going to sleep until the morning comes”.

“And Dream of Sheep” is the most literal of the suite, introducing the narrator who is lost at sea. The song is comprised only of Kate Bush’s signature voice, soft piano and acoustic guitar, punctuated by various samples and sound effects, highlighting key moments in the lyrics. Sea whistles and acoustic guitars appear near the end to finish the song.

© Genius