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This Friday’s interlude is a bit different only because I can say that I’ve also sung what you are about to watch. The Scene of the Drunken poet is not only comedic, but musically interesting as well. Listen in the chorus parts while the sopranos, alto’s, tenor’s and basses play with the melody line in quick succession. Let me assure you, it takes a fair amount of practice to get your notes to fall in the right places. :)
The Große Fuge (or Grosse Fuge, also known in English as Grand Fugue), Op. 133, is a single-movement composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven. A massive double fugue, it originally served as the final movement of his Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major (Op. 130) but he replaced it with a new finale and published it separately in 1827 as Op. 133. It was composed in 1825, when Beethoven was completely deaf, and is considered one of his late quartets. It was first performed in 1826, as the finale of the B♭ quartet, by the Schuppanzigh Quartet.
The Große Fuge is famous for its extreme technical demands and its unrelentingly introspective nature,[1] even by the standards of his late period. It is the largest and most difficult of all of Beethoven’s string quartet movements.[2]
History of composition
Beethoven originally composed the Große Fuge as the final movement of his String Quartet No. 13 (Op. 130). When the work was first performed, the audience demanded encores of only two of the middle movements of the quartet. Beethoven, enraged, was reported to have growled, “And why didn’t they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!”[6]
However, the fugue was so demanding of contemporary performers and unpopular with audiences that Beethoven’s publisher, Matthias Artaria,[7] urged him to write a new finale for the string quartet. Beethoven, although notorious for his stubborn personality and indifference to public opinion or taste, acquiesced to his publisher’s request on this occasion. He composed a replacement finale in late 1826. In May 1827, about two months after Beethoven’s death, Artaria published the first edition of Op. 130 with the new finale, and the Große Fuge as Op. 133, as well as a four-hand piano arrangement, Op. 134.[8]
Analysis
The Große Fuge opens with a 24-bar Overtura, which introduces one of the two subjects of the fugue, a tune closely related to the one which opens the String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132. The music of the Overtura consists of a series of unresolved fragments separated by long pauses. The fragments anticipate the main sections of the fugue, but in reverse order.[2]
Beethoven then plunges into a violent and dissonant double fugue, with a second subject of dramatically leaping tones, and the four instruments of the quartet bursting out in triplets, dotted figures, and cross-rhythms.
Following this opening fugal section is a series of sections, in contrasting keys, rhythms and tempi. Sections often break off suddenly, without real preparation, to create a structural texture that is jagged and surprising. Toward the end, there is a slowing, with long pauses, leading into a recapitulation of the overture, and on to a rushing finale that ends the movement.
Like some of Beethoven’s other late finales, such as the “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth Symphony, the Fugue can be seen as a multi-movement form contained within a single large movement. Each of the smaller sections is built on a transformation of the original theme. In addition, the Große Fuge is an example of a compositional process Beethoven explored late in life: a combination of elements of variation form, sonata form, and fugue. The lyrical section in G♭ has the weight of an independent slow movement; some commentators have even attempted to analyze the entire piece in terms of sonata form.
During the 20th century, quartets came to play Op. 130 with the original Große Fuge finale. Opinion today is decisively in favor of using the fugue; most musicians would agree that the quartet is stronger in its original form.[9]
The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi’s best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season. For example, “Winter” is peppered with silvery pizzicato notes from the high strings, calling to mind icy rain, whereas “Summer” evokes a thunderstorm in its final movement, which is why the movement is often dubbed “Storm.”
The concertos were first published in 1725 as part of a set of twelve concerti, Vivaldi’s Op. 8, entitled Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest between Harmony and Invention). The first four concertos were designated Le quattro stagioni, each being named after a season. Each one is in three movements, with a slow movement between two faster ones. At the time of writing The Four Seasons, the modern solo form of the concerto had not yet been defined (typically a solo instrument and accompanying orchestra). Vivaldi’s original arrangement for solo violin with string quartet and basso continuo helped to define the form.
S. Malinowski’s original composition.
Don Giovanni premiered in Vienna in 1787. The author of the libretto, Lorenzo da Ponte, described it as a dramma giocoso, a work that includes both comic and tragic elements. The comedy includes a variety of mishaps, while the tragedy includes attempted rape, murder, and finally the Don being dragged straight to Hell, complete with a chorus of demons.
The background to the scene above: Don Giovanni happens upon a wedding party. Zerlina, played by Joan Rodgers, is the bride. Giovanni decides he wants Zerlina, and arranges for her to become separated from the rest of the wedding party, including the groom. He tries to seduce her, but the seduction is interrupted when one of Giovanni’s previous victims happens on the scene. In the video clip, Zerlina is re-united with her future husband, who is extremely jealous of the attention Giovanni is paying to her. Zerlina wins his affection back with a combination of flirtation and self-abasement.
I’m currently working on learning this aria. There are a lot of things that make it fun to sing. It’s fun to sing flirtatious characters. The melody is relatively simple, but is entertaining from a technical perspective, with its interesting leaps and runs. Done well, it’s an excellent show-off piece. I hope to get it to that point.
I also hate it. It seems to be a case of Feminism Ruins Everything. To me, a woman who has grown up expecting to be treated as an autonomous human being and the equal of any man, it’s a really disturbing piece. Masetto should be reassuring Zerlina that he will do his best to support and protect her, not blaming her for Giovanni’s unwanted attention! And, given that Masetto is being a jealous prick, Zerlina should be tearing him several new orifices, not offering to stand like an unresisting lamb to be beaten and then kiss his hand. Trying to wrap my emotions around the idea that Zerlina’s behaviour could be realistic for a woman of her social status in that era, is sobering. It’s not really that long ago, after all, that women really did need to get married Or Else. And that any suspicion of non-virginity or infidelity would lead to Or Else. A woman like Zerlina might have been so totalized in her identity that it would never occur to her to expect anything but jealousy from Masetto, and that she would in fact blame herself for having attracted Giovanni’s attention. Unfortunately, when I’m as disturbed as this idea makes me, I don’t sing well. Still working on finding a way of singing this aria musically, without grossing myself out.
The finale begins with an extended slow introduction based on several pregnant thematic ideas. The first, high in the violins, is a minor-mode transformation of what will become the main theme of the finale, but here broken off by an agitated pizzicato passage. A tense section of rushing scales is halted by a timpani roll leading to the call of the solo horn, a melody originally for Alphorn that Brahms collected while on vacation in Switzerland. The introduction concludes with a noble chorale intoned by trombones and bassoons, the former having been held in reserve throughout the entire Symphony just for this moment. The finale proper begins with a new tempo and one of the most famous themes in the repertory, a stirring hymn-like melody that resembles the finale of Beethoven’s “Choral” Symphony. (When a friend pointed out this affinity to Brahms he shot back, “Any fool can see that!”) The movement progresses in sonata form, but without a development section. The work closes with a majestic coda in the brilliant key of C major featuring the trombone chorale of the introduction in its full splendor.
Mozart’s music is used during the opening scene of X-Men 2, as far set pieces go to establish a movies ‘tone’ I think this one works quite well. (ed. Fox is being all DMCAish on youtube as of late, thus the changing of the link)
Go here to watch it on dailymotion.com.
For the more classically inclined, please see this video for the non teleporting, non-(physically)ass kicking version of Mozart’s Requiem.
The Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer’s death. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife’s death.
It is one of the most enigmatic pieces of music ever composed, mostly because of the myths and controversies surrounding it, especially around how much of the piece was completed by Mozart before his death. The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated introit in Mozart’s hand, as well as detailed sketches of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies irae as far as the first nine bars of “Lacrimosa”, and the vocal parts of the offertory. It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost “scraps of paper” for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus as his own.
Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart’s widow Constanze. A modern contribution to the mythology is Peter Shaffer‘s 1979 play Amadeus, in which the mysterious messenger with the commission is the masked Antonio Salieri who intends to claim authorship for himself.
The Requiem is scored for 2 basset horns in F, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets in D, 3 trombones (alto, tenor & bass), timpani (2 drums), violins, viola and basso continuo (cello, double bass, and organ). The vocal forces include soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass soloists and a SATB mixed choir.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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