CLASSICAL OPUS no.6

Claude Debussy: “Clair de lune”

クロード・ドビュッシー：「月光」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 6 minutes

A spacious, viscerally delicate, almost effete anthem to unexpected, voiceless tenderness.  Debussy vanquishes the pinnacle of impressionistic sensuality in the most poetic of musical forms.  Two versions are included here.  Seong-Jin Cho’s take on the lunar theme is more immediate in silences that he actively lays down, almost with John Cage-ian dexterity.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_bergamasque#%22Clair_de_lune%22

 

A REFLECTION

 

Unhappy perhaps the man, but happy the artist torn by desire!

Eager to paint the one that has appeared to me so rarely and that has fled so quickly,

 like a beautiful sad thing left by the traveler carried away into the night.

How long now has he been gone!

 

Charles Baudelaire: “The Desire to Paint”

 

Published in: on December 25, 2018 at 1:59 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.7

Erik Satie: “Gnossienne et Gymnopedies”

エリック・サティ：「グノシエンヌ と ジムノペディ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 65 minutes

Hypnotic use of unresolved dissonances remains the mark of this ultimate bard of solo keyboard Dadaism.  His wobbly tales of vulnerability are often hailed as psychoactive and having power to mesmerize an attentive listener.  This particular recording starts with three sarabandes, but their presence is not too intrusive.  I recommend the Turkish slant on the theme in the second video, if only for several minutes.

 

MUSIC

 

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnossiennes

 

A REFLECTION

A tap of your finger on the drum releases all sounds and initiates the new harmony.

A step of yours is the conscription of the new men and their marching orders.

 

Arthur Rimbaud: “To a Reason”

Published in: on December 24, 2018 at 3:36 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.16

Erik Satie: “Airs à faire fuire”

エリック・サティー：「逃走する空気」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

Mysteriously ascetic and speculative, this short form is also astonishingly resilient in repeated mood resets.  Less plaintive than Satie’s other compositions, it oscillates along the gravitational structure of louder passages, only to explore the netherland of quieter introspections.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi%C3%A8ces_froides

 

A REFLECTION

And yet whiteness

can be best described by greyness

a bird by a stone

sunflowers

in December

 

Tadeusz Ròzewicz: “A Sketch for a Modern Love Poem”

 

Published in: on December 15, 2018 at 3:58 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.19

Olivier Messiaen: “Turangalila Symphonie”

オリヴィエ・メシアン：「トゥランガラの交響曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 79 minutes

This glorious epitome of asymmetry is intimidating and, at first hearing, rather undecipherable.  And hence, highly rewarding.  The archivist of avian sound departed here to explore revolutionary use of reverb, percussive exoticism and Ondes Martenot.  Some modernism has lost nothing beyond its -ism.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turangal%C3%AEla-Symphonie

 

A REFLECTION

Get ready for the action of the geyser of our blood

-submarine formation of transchromatic aeroplanes,

cellular metals numbered in

the flight of images.

 

Tristan Tzara: “Proclamation without Pretension”

Published in: on December 12, 2018 at 5:15 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.23

Gabriel Fauré: “La Sicilienne op.78”

ガブリエル・フォーレ：「シチリアオペラ78」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

This introspective and inconsolable lullaby adsorbs layer by layer as a carefully balanced, subliminal chamber piece.  The asymmetric dialogue places a crooning cello in piano’s collateral embrace.  The result is perennially subtle, creaky and slow, just as the means of transportation were in the composer’s era.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilienne_(Faur%C3%A9)

 

A REFLECTION

Eyes, are you not aware,

When eager to admire

Her face so soft and fair,

You are as wax in fire,

As snow in sun? Unless you have a care

Certes you’ll melt away.

 

Ludovico Ariosto: “Madrigal 1”

Published in: on December 8, 2018 at 4:40 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.25

Claude Debussy: “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune”

クロード・ドビュッシー：「動物の午後への前奏曲」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 12 minutes

The poem is instinctively Homeric, spiced with transoceanic unfamiliarity with which we quickly develop sensual intimacy.  The impressionistic savior of tonality infused it with such a wealth of exotic, almost visual harmonies that, once rediscovered, it exerted profound influence on 20th century’s film music.  Here, the Aegean perspectives are deployed by none other than Leonard Bernstein.  Note the suave flute treatment throughout.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9lude_%C3%A0_l%27apr%C3%A8s-midi_d%27un_faune

 

A REFLECTION

These nymphs I would perpetuate.

So clear

Their light carnation, that it floats in the air

Heavy with tufted slumbers.

Was it a dream I loved?

My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing

In many a subtle branch, which, left the true

Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave

Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.

Stephane Mallarmé: “The Afternoon of a Faun”

Published in: on December 6, 2018 at 4:53 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.28

Camille Saint-Saëns: “Danse macabre”

カミーユサン=サーンス: 「死のダンス」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 7 minutes

A circular, robotic waltz grinds forward with unobtrusively hoarse, fine-grained violas juxtaposed against an ecstatically soaring theme.  It was transcribed by Liszt for piano, but the nightmarish tonal range of the orchestral version conjures up more potent, Draculean, lugubrious visions.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/the-purest-halloween-music-ever-written/382119/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_macabre_(Saint-Sa%C3%ABns)

 

A REFLECTION

I missed his funeral,

Those quiet walkers

And sideways talkers

Shoaling out of his lane

To the respectable

Purring of the hearse…

 

Seamus Heaney: “Casualty”

Published in: on December 3, 2018 at 4:02 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.36

 

Maurice Ravel: “Pavane pour une enfante défunte”

モーリス・ラヴェル：「死んだ子供のためのパヴァネ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 7 minutes

Nostalgic, artful and deceptively brittle, this poem nebulously envelops theme-less daydreams with pastel mirages and insistent rêveries.  But the forlorn bouquet offered by the brooding, patient orchestra is not laid on a funeral stone.  Rather, the composition was prompted by Velazquez’s canvas that still haunts us in one of El Prado’s most celebrated halls.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane_pour_une_infante_d%C3%A9funte

 

A REFLECTION

No worst, there is none.  Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —

Then lull, then leave off.  Fury had shrieked ‘No lingering!

Let me be fell: force I must be brief.

 

Gerald Manley Hopkins: ”No worst, there is none.  Pitched past pitch of grief”

Published in: on November 25, 2018 at 2:29 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.38

Guillaume de Machaut – “Kyrie from Messe de Notre Dame”

ウィリアム・マカウト – 「キリスト・オブ・ア・レディー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 7 minutes

This otherworldly and metaphysically desconsolate tapestry of plaintive themes gently bathes us in spiritual introspection.  What was the first polyphonic setting to a complete mass cycle emerges here masterfully intertwined in seductive isorhythms.  Timeless.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messe_de_Nostre_Dame

 

A REFLECTION

O let your mind and tongue

dwell among divine phrases

For God has given this reward for the

effort, a little light

even to see some hidden thing, or, best,

to be spurred on by the pure God’s

awesome commands.

 

Gregory de Nazianzus – “Poems on the genuine books of divinely inspired Scripture”

Published in: on November 23, 2018 at 2:43 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.39

Camille Saint-Saëns: “Carnival of Animals”

カミーユサン=サーンス 「動物のカーニバル」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 27 minutes

This dreamy, meditative collection wafts almost hushed in its soothing quality.  Two parts engross us in particular: ‘Aquarium’ (at 10:50 mark) and ‘The Swan’ (22:23), with its sailing quality of aquatic expanses.  In this corner, Debussy was Saint-Saëns’ only competitor.  I enclosed two different ensemble versions.  Note the second video with Martha Argerich accompanied by an all-star crew in Japan.

Finally, for those still in search for lysergic nostalgia, there’s Clara Rockmore’s theremin version of ‘the Swan’.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals

 

A REFLECTION

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate;

he who loves

finds the gate open.

 

Rabindranath Tagore – “Stray birds”

Published in: on November 22, 2018 at 2:46 pm  Leave a Comment  
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