CLASSICAL OPUS no.15

Domenico Scarlatti – “Sonata in D Minor k141”

ドメニコ・スカラッティ – 「ソナタのDマイナーk141」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 3 minutes

This intense rococo carousel of swirling torrents leaves a trail of stubborn aftershocks.  And yet, we crave for more.  Luckily this is only one of this composer’s 555 keyboard sonatas.  Just imagine his lightning harpsichord speed competition with Haendel, the other eminent expatriate of that era.  But while Haendel peddled his fare to England, Scarlatti departed for Portugal.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://www.e-musicmaestro.com/members/resources/view/97

 

A REFLECTION

The startling reality of things

Is my discovery every single day

Everything is what it is

And it’s hard to explain to anyone how much this delights me

And suffices me

 

Fernando Pessoa: “The Startling Reality”

 

Published in: on December 16, 2018 at 5:00 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.45

Giuseppe Verdi: “Dies Irae”

ジュゼッペ・ヴェルディ：「ディラ・イレーエ」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

This wrathful, fiery and demoniac chant explodes with paroxysms of thunderous detonations.  Verdi subverted operatic conventions with his groundbreaking use of choruses and unprecedented vigor.  The toolkit was used, to great effect, in this memorial mass.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_(Verdi)

 

A REFLECTION

This solitary hill has always been dear to me

And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of the endless horizon

But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts

Endless spaces beyond the hedge

 

Giacomo Leopardi: “The Infinite”

Published in: on November 15, 2018 at 9:03 am  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.53

Claudio Monteverdi: “Lettera amorosa”

クラウディオ・モンテヴェルディ：「ラブレター」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 4 minutes

We owe to him the introduction to contrasts in music – texture, timbre and (later) tempo – all with a dose of healthy unpredictability.  While essentially maintaining the structure of a song, the composer sought a wider range of emotional expression, mining the potential of color in vocal rendition.  After all, doesn’t human voice possess more intrinsic emotional quality than any man-made instrument?  Some results may have been inconclusive, others sound ultramodern even today.  Regardless of the final verdict, Monteverdi left behind many resplendent, hallucinatory canticles.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://cappellamediterranea.com/fr/productions/22-monteverdi-a-voce-sola

 

A REFLECTION

I choose to love you in silence

For in silence I find no rejection

I choose to love you in loneliness

For in loneliness

No one owns you but me

 

Rumi: “I Chose to Love You in Silence”

Published in: on November 7, 2018 at 5:51 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.61

Antonio Vivaldi: “Winter”

アントニオ・ヴィヴァルディ：「冬 – 協奏曲第4番 イン・マイ・マイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 10 minutes

The fourth ‘Season’ sparkles with filigrane, intoxicating dose of virtuosity, yet manages to remain both cohesive and lustrous.  It is suffused with onomatopoeic elements – the  rapidity of spine chills competes with the grind of crackly ice.  You have to give the composer credit for making this piece so deceptively free-flowing, despite it being boxed in the ‘slow-fast-slow’ straightjacket of baroque concertos.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Seasons_(Vivaldi)

 

A REFLECTION

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways

Six o’clock

The burnt-out ends of smoky days

And now the gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

 

T.S. Eliot: “Preludes”

Published in: on October 30, 2018 at 4:55 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.63

Francesco Landini – “Ecco la primavera”

フランチェスコ・ランディニ – 「ここは春」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 2 minutes

The cheerfully organic, multi-vocal pithiness rings seasonally vibrant and rebellious.  With gemstone-like precision of his syncopated ballate, this 14th century’s musical giant never fails to enchant with sharp instrumental simplicity, here equipped with recorders, a lute, bells, a shawm and the climactic tabor thuds.  Alas, for most of us in the northern hemisphere, we are months away from such celebrations…

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Though in a foreign land I dwell afar,

I taste in dreams the endless joys of heaven.

Fain would I fly beyond the farthest star,

And see the wonders to the ransomed given!

 

St Thérèse de Lisieux: “My Hope”

Published in: on October 28, 2018 at 4:45 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.70

Tomaso Albinoni (?): “Adagio in G Minor”

トマソ・アルビノーニ：「アダリオ・イン・G  マイナー」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 9 minutes

This dramatized, almost illogically poignant passage exudes deep sorrow only to hug us with its tuneful consolation.  Albinoni bequeathed a three-movement, fast-slow-fast concerto structure and is also considered the Godfather of oboe concertos.  But this professionally unattached Venetian dilettante may have never seen this Adagio as we know it today.  The score was allegedly reconstructed from Dresden’s ruins by Remo Giazotto.  Hopefully for fraud lovers, this is closer to an okapi than to a unicorn.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Don’t worry about watering the flowers—

In fact, don’t plant them.

You will have gone back home before they bloom,

And who will want them?

 

Bertold Brecht: “On the Term of Exile”

Published in: on October 21, 2018 at 3:24 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.84

Gioachino Rossini: “La gazza ladra”

ジョアキーノ・ロッシーニ – 「カサ泥棒」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 9 minutes

The plumpish bard of lower classes painted in stark, fauvist hues of opera buffa.  The indefatigable creator of ludic songs preferred tunes that were anthemic, but also zestful and danceable, playfully evoking bygone minuets.  I added here a second version, despite the tinny recording quality.  After all, it’s conducted by maestro Toscanini.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

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

 

A REFLECTION

Each of us bears the imprint

Of a friend met along the way;

In each the trace of each.

For good or evil

In wisdom or in folly

 

Primo Levi: “To My Friends”

 

Published in: on October 7, 2018 at 1:41 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no.94

Giovanni Batista Pergolesi: “Stabat mater”

ジョバンニ・バティスタ・ペルゴレシ：「スタバット・マター」

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 42 minutes

Ornate, magniloquent and exalted, this Marian hymn initially misleads with its prototypically laudatory majesty.  By the time we reach its 10th part (on the 28th minute mark), the unusual phrase structures begin to confuse the temporal organization.  It is hard to believe that this was penned by the same composer who shocked the late baroque mores with the levity of his opera buffa.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabat_Mater_(Pergolesi)

 

A REFLECTION

Love, that art Charity,

Why has Thou hurt me so?

My heart is smote in two,

And burns with ardent love,

 

Jacopone da Todi: “The Soul’s Over-ardent Love”

Published in: on September 27, 2018 at 6:00 pm  Leave a Comment  

CLASSICAL OPUS no. 100

Antonio Vivaldi – “Vedro con il mio diletto” from Il Giustino

アントニオ・ヴィヴァルディ – 「イル・ジュスティーノ」オペラ の 「愛する人と共に見る」というアリア

 

TIME COMMITMENT: 5 minutes

 

A forgivingly narcisstic counter-tenor piece of seductive, accretive proximity that few baroque arias afford.  The singer astounds with his superb control of intensity and infallible command of pacing.  Note the zero glottal attack, as if his timbral silk slithered stealthily into our ears.  And the visuals?  I cannot promise that future posts here will quench similarly oxymoronic desires.

 

MUSIC

 

INFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giustino_(Vivaldi)

 

A REFLECTION

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops – at all

 

Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers”

Published in: on September 21, 2018 at 6:09 am  Leave a Comment