A new recording has been premiered on the Facebook page under the title "A Waltz in Winter". A slightly uncharacteristic piece not only in being a waltz but in that much of the piece is spent in major keys while the thematic material is explored.
The piece is also somewhat experimental in that the melody is an extrapolation from a textual source, a treatment of text-as-music, using the words of a certain proposal as inspiration.
Hope you'll enjoy my final work of 2010.
A small piece this time round, barely three minutes of playtime. It began as a simple piano melody that came to mind one evening earlier in the week, but shaped by the week's events and some dream-time inspiration it has emerged as a small work for violin with piano accompaniment, primarily in E minor, with small diversions into G major and C minor along the way. The title, I think suitable enough, comes from a line in the Mayrhofer poem "Einsamkeit" which Schubert once set to music.
The work may be heard here at Last.FM.
Last fall I found myself lamenting my lack of a Muse, fumbling around with this or that, doing arrangements or covers—just to keep in practice—of some other artist's work for want of my own inspiration. Those of you who've followed my pre-release blogs may recall the grumbling. Yet with the previous post, I had thought—had hoped—perhaps that phase had passed, as new work began once more to trickle out.
I should have been more wary of optimism, perhaps, but so it goes.
And yet, as fate's mysterious ways are wont to unfurl, it turns out that further inspiration was even then making itself known, entering life from unexpected quarters. In the months since, this muse has proved inspiring in myriad ways, but most significantly for this blog, she has brought me round again to music, having so far inspired several new works.
In gratitude, I here dedicate this latest to her, with all my thanks and all my love, which she has also re-awakened.
You may hear it at Last.FM, here: Su melodía oculta (A Song for Catherine).
The title comes from the reported ancient practice of setting aside a stone for every day of life: white, if a good or fortunate day; black, if not. At the close of day, or of life, the stones are counted, and the day, or the life, considered fortunate or not depending on which color predominates. (See here, for example.) As moods and experiences fluctuate through my own life, I am not certain which color so far describes my course; nor, perhaps, am I even sure which is predominant in my music, as I slip from major to minor modes and round again. The title is inspired by that consideration. And the tabulation of counting stones? What more fitting day for such a name than today, the Election.
For those of you who have followed my work, you may have noticed that for a while now the bulk of my releases have consisted of arrangements—Bach, Mozart, Salieri, Beethoven (or here or here), Grieg, et al. That changes with this post, as here, at last, is a return to original work. The credit, inspiration, and ultimately, the dedication for this goes to Ekaterina, to whom, all my thanks.
You may hear the track here
Edvard Grieg wrote a number of lyrical pieces for solo piano, sixty or more if memory serves. I cannot speak for all of them, having not yet heard the lot, but many are quite good. Interestingly, we actually have a few recordings, from 1903 or so, of the composer himself playing his own works, including, or at least a part of, the piece which has taken my interest most recently, the relatively well-known "Bryllupsdag på Troldhaugen"—"the wedding day at the troll-house", which was the name of the composer's own home. Unfortunately, that recording is rather noisy due to the distortion of age, and since, as above, it's but a fragment, I suggest instead, for comparison here if you are not familiar with the original piece, a recording from 1929 of a performance by Arthur de Greef, who was not only a pupil of the great Liszt through the 1870s and '80s but was an intimate of Grieg for some three decades and the composer's favorite performer and interpreter of Griegs' piano works. I link to de Greef's performance below to reveal what the original sounds like when played as the composer intended.
But comparison to what, you may be asking. Well, to what the piece has become under my own "corrupting" influence, having had my way with it. I finished this arrangement a couple of days ago and have today finished a recording of the same. It's actually still for piano, but if you listen to the two, perhaps you can hear the difference?
Granted, my recording hasn't the grace of de Greef or the Grieg recording, but perhaps it's still not entirely without some merit or interest of its own.
Recently, as an exercise, I made a new arrangement of the allegretto grazioso, third movement, of Mozart's piano sonata in B♭ major, K. 333, in which I chose to change the key but more to the point the modality, shifting the piece to a minor mode, and slowing it somewhat to better accommodate the minor. Getting that to the point that I was at least relatively satisfied with it, I chose to arrange the work for string quintet instead of solo piano. For the curious, the result can be heard here.
By contrast, here is Horowitz interpretation of the original:
For the purpose of this post, however, those are really neither here nor there but as impetus for what came after. Thinking about the situation, reminded by a reference to the play "Amadeus", I thought it a shame and unfair that old Salieri's works remain so widely unknown today, despite that, at least in my opinion, many of them are quite good. So I found myself thinking I ought to give him a little exposure as well to counterbalance the Mozart piece.
My available scores for his works are rather small, and recordings of any even more so, thus my options were few, but I settled on what I thought would be a workable option: I would do the two small movements, the Kyrie and Sanctus, from his Mass no. 1 in D major. The only score I have of it, however, is only that for SATB choir and organ, so that is the source I worked from (I'm aware there is a volume available that includes an orchestra accompaniment for this work, but I do not have access to it, so it does not inform the works which follow below).
As with the Mozart, I chose to change the modality to minor—B♭ minor in this case. Only minor modifications were needed for it, outside of the change of mode, but I reworked the organ for piano, and arranged the vocal lines for strings.
Once finished, I found I kept returning to the idea of the rest of the mass to the point that I began working on another piece, and then another, and so on until I had finished the whole work. I may yet tweak a phrase here or there, but for the nonce, here is a (possibly preliminary) recording of the new Mass in B♭ minor.
Or maybe not so chipper. This little ostinato is a revisiting and a revision of a somewhat somber little number from 2005. The quality of the recording and sound quality are much better this time around, and some of the progression and voicing have changed. It's a fairly simple affair, but perhaps someone will enjoy it.
Greetings of the Saturnalia,
Daniel
If you're interested, you can hear it here.
For the curious, should there be any: the revisions stem from a contemplation of Mandel'shtam's 1918 poem "Tristia", which opens:
Я изучил науку расставанья
В простоволосых жалобах ночных.
Жуют волы, и длится ожиданье,
Последний час вигилий городских;
И чту обряд той петушиной ночи,
Когда, подняв дорожной скорби груз,
Глядели в даль заплаканные очи
И женский плач мешался с пеньем муз.
And, relatedly, lines from an untitled work of 1920,
За то, что я руки твои не сумел удержать,
За то, что я предал соленые нежные губы,
Я должен рассвета в дремучем акрополе ждать.Как мог я подумать, что ты возвратишься, как смел!
Зачем преждевременно я от тебя оторвался!
Еще не рассеялся мрак и петух не пропел, [...]
The piece has been rechristened "The Science of Departures" after the first line of "Tristia", "Я изучил науку расставанья", "I have studied the science of departures...".
One that would still "ascend | The brightest heaven of invention," in any event.
(Félix-François Georges Philibert) Ziem (the painter) was dining with two friends at the house of Paul Chevandier de Valdrôme at No. 39 Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne in Paris. The host, somewhat of an eccentric, kept a skeleton in one of his closets and displayed it to Ziem. When the latter met Chopin he told him about the skeleton and Chopin, becoming morbidly impressed with the story, asked Ziem to let him see it. A dinner party was arranged at Valdrôme's house and during the dessert, Ziem mentioned Chopin's desire. The skeleton was fetched by the servant and placed near the piano in the drawing room.
Ziem describes the scene that followed:
Chopin, his face pale and his eyes opened to their extent, had enveloped himself in a long winding sheet, and pressed against his throbbing breast he held the ghastly skeleton. The silence of the salon was all at once broken by the sound of music—slow, sad, profound, splendid music, music such as none of us had ever heard before. Immeasurably amazed we were as the beautiful sounds succeeded each other and were gradually fashioned into the world-renowned Funeral March. On to the end played Chopin, still grasping the skeleton, and so spellbound were we that not until the last note was struck did we really recover our senses. Then we hastened to congratulate the shroud-robed musician, and reached his side just as he was on the point of fainting.
So... anyone know where I can get a Muse like that?
Well, I mean, it needn't actually be a corpse or anything; just something profoundly affecting enough to generate music of such quality. I haven't been doing too terribly much in the way of new music lately, though of what I've done it's certainly been terrible. Thus the search for a Muse.
Tonight, I have revisited a couple of older pieces, one original, one a sort of collage of other works, and made new, and I hope better quality, recordings of the same. If there's interest, I will offer one here for any whose ears will endure it. That one, the original score, is the result of an evening spent with one of my own ghosts on the night of her birthday, three years on from her death. It is called "Nevroză", after the poem of Bacovia that always brings her to mind.
Neurosis | Nevroză |
Outside, it's snowing horribly; My lover's playing a funeral march, She weeps and she falls on the keys, And I lament, and, trembling, | Afară ninge prăpădind, Iubita cântă-un mars funebru, Ea plânge si-a cazut pe clape, Si plâng si eu si tremurând |
You can hear the work here.
In this post, I'll be making the premiere of the first and second movements of my three-part (book of) Job inspired piece, "רחין", that title being the initials of the first of the three lines of text that inspired the piece and its movements:
רוחִי חֻבָּלָה יָמַי נִזְעָכו
(אֶל־אֱלוֺהַ דָּלפָה עֵינִי)
קְבָרִם לִי
The whole score of Opus 89 can be heard here; in a different recording, the second movement ("אֶל־אֱלוֺהַ דָּלפָה עֵינִי") can be heard in solo here, and the third ("קְבָרִם לִי") can found on this blog here.
Tired, sick, feverish and frustrated one night, I turned to the keys as an outlet, and what resulted was a small piano work, named for the feverish mind that created it. Not completely satisfied with it in that form, the work gradually mutated into a work for strings, which can be heard here.
Wrote a new piece for a friend. Piano quartet, with a primary theme in A maj, and a midsection modulation into F#m, with some experimentation with intentional dissonance near the end of the latter before remodulating back to A maj.
You may listen to it here.
Nothing especially clever tonight, alas, just an idle bit of time wasting. You could think of this as what happens when you mix together varying amounts of sleep deprivation, recovering-from-illness, Erik Satie, Chopin and myself—or, "Raindropédienne", perhaps, for short (a combination of Chopin's 15th prelude, the "Raindrop" prelude, with Satie's first Gymnopédie and Gnossienne). It's a small piano work with an ABA structure; in A—a liberal treatment of Am—the left hand is a simple motion similar to the bass of the Gnossienne, while the melody is almost a verbatim transposition of the opening melody of the prelude. In B, we briefly modulate to Cm, and a tiny microcosmic ABA form of its own, where in Ba the bass is a slight variant on the initial bass of the Cm modulation in the prelude, while the right hand takes on a transposed variation on the Gnossienne melody; in Bb, the bass continues to follow the prelude but becomes a transposition of the material from the left hand of the molto tenuto movement of that work, and the melody becomes a Lydian transposition of the right hand theme of the Gymnopédie.
Other than doing the transpositions, stitching the disparate parts together and touching up a note here or there where the original themes didn't quite mesh, there's so little of myself in this piece I hardly feel right putting my name on it. As a result, I won't be adding this piece to my formal catalogue of works, naturally, but it was a fairly pleasant exercise and not quite the hand-mangler Für Elise on the bass proved to be, so I thought I'd tip up a copy here for any who might be interested.
Evening, or morning perhaps, depending on your location. Have just finished a second revision and recording of an arrangement I've been working on, the passacaglia of H.I.F. von Biber's Rosenkranz Sonaten; originally for a solo violin, I've reworked the piece as a quintet for two violins, viola, violoncello and contrabass (also transposing, in the process, to Cm), working from Tufvesson's transcription of the original from the unique manuscript (Mus. MS 4123, c. 1670s) in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. I think, if I can find the time, I will subject the work to at least one more revision/recording, as there are a few places where the 'cello is more subdued than I would like it, but beyond that I think it's very near its final form at this stage.
Should anyone wish to hear it, a preview recording may be found here.
It's about six seconds shy of 8 minutes in length. Comments on the work, good or ill, welcome and appreciated.
A new piano score, Luctus; C# minor with a brief modulation in G#m. Play time of around 7'38". Comments welcome, as ever.
A recording is available here.
Another exercise in arranging. This time, the source is the second, prestissimo, movement of Beethoven's 30th piano sonata, and the target is orchestral. Inspired by hearing the performance of pianist Muriel Chemin.
Enchanted by Camille Saint-Saëns’s work for solo piano, “Carillon”, I recently decided to have a go at arranging the work for different instrumentations, resulting in both an orchestral arrangement and an arrangment for string quintet (2vn, va, vc, cb). In the end I think each, these as well as the piano original, has a certain charm of its own, though perhaps I’m biased: what do you think?
Carillon, Op. 72, no. 2 (for string quintet) and Carillon, Op. 72, no. 2 (for orchestra).
A third addition, I have also arranged Saint-Saëns' Toccata, Op. 72, no. 3 for string quintet.
A piece for solo piano, just over three minutes' playtime, recorded today, written during a recent bout of illness while in Minnesota. It's named for Pessoa's Education of the Stoic
A Educação do Estóico can be heard on Last.fm here.
Details as to the piece, for any curious: it’s a score for string orchestra (violins, violas, cellos and contrabasses) and piano, with ad lib harp. It’s an exploration of the C minor chord and the æolian mode on C. Charpentier’s Regles de Composition (c. 1682) referred to Cm as “obscure and sad”, Schubart (in the work cited a few posts back) claimed it was both a “declaration of love” and “at the same time, the lament of unhappy love,” containing “all languishing, longing” & “sighing of the love-sick soul”, etc. Parts of that may be appropriate—at least in terms of inspiration, regardless of whether the music itself captures or expresses those things.
If anyone chooses to listen—it may be heard here—comments are welcome.
A score in G minor, which Schubart (Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst, 1806) claimed to represent "[d]iscontent, uneasiness" among other things, and which in Bach’s system seemed to represent generalized pathos. Don’t know that this piece reflects that so much (if any piece in equal temperament reflects historical modes and their significance, for that matter), but the mood is somewhat somber, the music sparse. It takes inspiration from Pärt’s style in “Für Alina,” and like that piece it's for solo piano, but whereas his score, as usual in the case of tintinnabuli, focuses on only one chord and a single mode over that (B minor, and B æolian in that particular piece), "Cold" works its way across a particular set of chords in its key.
This work can be heard here.
This piece is named for the line in Job 17:1, and, hopefully, reflects the feel of the passage as well. It is written for string orchestra and oboe, and as the third movement concludes the larger work, "Rachin" (Op. 89).
It can be heard here; for the full score, or the second movement, see this post.
