You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘The DWR Friday Musical Interlude’ tag.
Speaking of music most likely to get you killed while driving… Here’s what I must never listen to in the car. Not while driving because it could get me killed, and not as a passenger because it could get me committed. I air-conduct. I air-bass-drum. And I sing along. The dynamic marking is fff and the top note is G#5, and that is a powerful note for me, and I bring it.
Crank up your audio, hang onto your butts, and have a listen:
Singing in the Verdi Requiem has been one of the top musical highlights of my whole life so far. Being in the middle of the action in the Dies Irae is an amazing not only sonic, but physical, sensation. In the performance I did, the percussionist had two bass drums and hit one with each hand, and you could feel it through the floor. The conductor said to us choristers, “There’s no way I’m telling the orchestra to hold back dynamically at this part, you’ll just have to be louder.” So we were. Goddam folks. And holy fuck. We leaped to our feet at the first beat of the bass drum, and we breathed as one, and we were glorious.
Bottom line: if you ever get the chance to hear the Verdi Requiem live, do it. You don’t have to believe any of the text to have your socks knocked off.
Instrumentation
The instrumentation is: two piccolos (2nd ad lib.), two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in A, bass clarinet in A, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns in F, two trumpets in F, two cornets in A, three trombones, tuba, three timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, triangle, side drum, jingles, and tambourine ad lib.), two harps, organ, and strings.
History
The best known of the set, it had its premiere, along with the more reserved second March, in Liverpool on 19 October 1901, with Elgar conducting the Liverpool Orchestral Society.[4] Both marches were played two days later at a London Promenade Concert in the Queen’s Hall London, conducted by Henry Wood, with March No. 1 played second, and the audience “…rose and yelled… the one and only time in the history of the Promenade concerts that an orchestral item was accorded a double encore.”[5]
The Trio contains the tune known as “Land of Hope and Glory”. In 1902 the tune was re-used, in modified form, for the Land of hope and glory section of his Coronation Ode for King Edward VII. The words were further modified to fit the original tune, and the result has since become a fixture at the Last Night of the Proms, and an English sporting anthem.
In the United States, the Trio section “Land of Hope and Glory” of March No. 1 is often known simply as “Pomp and Circumstance” or as “The Graduation March” and is played as the processional tune at virtually all high school and some college graduation ceremonies.[6] It was first played at such a ceremony on 28 June 1905, at Yale University, where the Professor of Music Samuel Sanford had invited his friend Elgar to attend commencement and receive an honorary doctorate of music. Elgar accepted, and Sanford made certain he was the star of the proceedings, engaging the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the College Choir, the Glee Club, the music faculty members, and New York musicians to perform two parts from Elgar’s oratorio The Light of Life and, as the graduates and officials marched out, “Pomp and Circumstance” March No. 1. Elgar repaid the compliment by dedicating his Introduction and Allegro to Sanford later that year.[7] The tune soon became de rigueur at American graduations, used primarily as a processional at the opening of the ceremony.[8]
or if you like a more formal setting…
March No. 1 opens with an introduction marked Allegro, con molto fuoco.[9][10] The introduction leads to a new theme: strong pairs of beats alternating with short notes, and a bass which persistently clashes with the tune. The bass tuba and full brass is held back until the section is repeated by the full orchestra. A little rhythmic pattern is played by the strings, then repeated high and low in the orchestra before the section is concluded by a chromatic upward scale from the woodwind. The whole of this lively march section is repeated. The bridging section between this and the well-known Trio has rhythmic chords from the brass punctuating high held notes from the wind and strings, before a fanfare from trumpets and trombones leads into the theme with which the march started. There are a few single notes that quieten, ending with a single quiet tap from side drum and cymbal accompanied by all the bassoons.[11] The famous, lyrical “Land of Hope and Glory” trio follows (in the subdominant key of G), played softly (by the first violins, four horns and two clarinets) and repeated by the full orchestra including two harps. What follows is a repetition of what has been heard before, including a fuller statement of the Trio (this time in the ‘home’ key of D) in which the orchestra is joined by organ as well as the two harps. The march ends, not with the big tune, but with a short section containing a brief reminder of the brisk opening march.
You know what is hard? Playing a song from memory. What’s harder? Singing along with your playing. This is the first song that I can do both on. Full disclosure, the Vocal part still needs work as my fingers want to sing along with the melody instead of accompanying me during some parts. Nevertheless, a start has been made. :)
Of course, we must remember here in North America it is also May Day a celebration of organized labour. Let’s get down with Pete Seeger and remember what people working and standing together can do.
I have not listened to Tori Amos in awhile. I shouldn’t have stopped, she’s still great.
Amos wrote “Spark” after suffering a miscarriage. She discussed the song in an article from Q magazine in May 1998.
“Y’know, once you’ve felt life in your body, you can’t go back to having been a woman that’s never carried life. The other thing is feeling something dying inside you and you’re still alive. Obviously when it was happening, it was already over, but in my mind, you don’t know that it’s over yet. You’re doing anything, thinking, ‘Oh God, maybe if I put a cork up myself, maybe it’ll keep this little life in.’ That’s why in ‘Spark’, I say, ‘She’s convinced she could hold back a glacier/But she couldn’t keep baby alive.’ You just start going insane. There’s nothing you can do, so so you surrender and then… start again.
You don’t really know what’s going to happen to her, but that’s not the point. She’s trusting her instincts in a way she never has before, she’s finding something in herself she never knew even existed. The man who’s trying to find me, probably is the driver. You don’t really know too much about him, but you know she’s got to get away from him. The water shot – it was about an hour and a half. It was 5:30 at night, and the sun was going down. [switches to up-close shot where she wriggles from the blindfold] Here, right here, I’m in a different water tank, and they had me swimming around for a while trying to get close-up shots. [About the overhead shot where we see Amos running along the banks of the river directly after the water sequence] Well, that was my double, right there. She was walking in a forest while I was shooting all this, because it took hours to get those two seconds. I had changes of clothes – I had wet clothes and dry clothes, and in the middle of the forest the girls would stand around me in their parkas and I’m putting the wet clothes on and putting on the muddy clothes to get the right outfit at the right time. “Here [the car at the end], these two are brother and sister, and they’re in the album artwork, where they look like angels in the artwork, although here they’re very much like the Village of the Damned. You don’t know what’s going to happen to this girl, but she has a will to live.
I enjoy many musical modes of expression – this isn’t one of them – but performing good music despite technical limitations is a worthy undertaking.
And really, the V is only a few steps away from the trombone… :)
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…