The Portrait of Love in Classical Music

It has already entered into tradition to dedicate an annual post to the day of celebration of Love – St. Valentine’s. This time is no exception – Happy St. Valentine’s, guys, all those who are lucky to celebrate it truly! Have a very special cosy day with your Valentine.

And to help make it more special there are always some great tracks to shape the right atmosphere. Pop music bulks in love songs today and it wouldn't be hard to pick some. If you want some deeper lyrics with you’d rather opt for some rock ballads. Or, if you just need a nice background, light jazz or chill-out would be the best alternative. But what about classical music? Which repertoire is better to convey the ‘love’ message?

Definitely, some of the classical masterpieces like Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Carmen are obviously filled with love making it the central object. But there are many more classical music works that make this subject not so evident but still convey it perfectly. Let’s name some of them.

Bach. St Matthew Passion. Erbarme Dich, mein Gott. Despite being a sacred work, this is a very emotional and powerful expression of composer’s love for his wife Anna Magdalena.

Berlioz. Symphonie Fantastique. Composer’s love for an Irish actress Harriet Smithson acted as a driving force for writing this symphony. He met her at the Shakespeare’s Hamlet performance in Paris (Harriet played Ophelia) and fell in love. The symphony was dedicated and sent to her but Harriet listened to it only in 5 years. Well, the good thing is that they did get married in the end.

Mahler. 5th Symphony. Adagietto. Expression of love for Mahler’s wife Alma Schindler. This part was actually written before the symphony itself and served as a love-song based on a small poem Mahler dedicated to his wife.

Brahms. Rhapsody for Alto. To-be-kept-in-secret composer’s love for Schumman’s daughter who was to marry another man. That’s a very personal work, intense and powerful. No wonder that at first composer didn’t want it to be published anywhere.

Janáček. String Quartets 1 and 2. Very illicit expression of passion in both quartets. No.1 was inspired by Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata (theme of jealousy) and No.2 inspired by author’s attraction to and correspondence with a very young woman.

There is another interesting observation that I stumbled upon. It is believed that the thematic tilt is somehow predefined by the music key of the piece. Thus, the B minor is said to be the best one to express romantic or sad or melancholic or even grieving feelings. It was usually a certain means of tender complaint but at the same time a sign of accepting the destiny. These were the conclusions made by the theorist Christian Schubart. Just some food for thought.

Classical Winter Music Pieces

It’s freezing. Oh yea it is, like all over, all the way down through to your bones. But I’m still trying to find the charm about the lady in white, lady Winter. Everyone’s got their own ways of keeping warm in winter, warm clothes, hugs, hot tea, and so on. I have my ways too, and in addition to the above mentioned I love to just get wrapped in granny’s woolen hand-made cover with a huge mug of lemon tea and turn on my collection of “winter pieces”. I’d like to share some with you if one day you may find yourself willing to use the same method.

I’ll start with probably one of my favourites – Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Daydreams” (Symphony No.1). The symphony that almost drove the famous composer out of his mind (literally!) – so much effort he put in its composing. Doctors were insisting he have a rest and some sleep. But the obsession seemed to take over him. Despite that much labor contributed, the work wasn’t met with much of a welcome by either music critics or composer’s teachers and friends (Rubinstein, Zaremba). Edited, partially recomposed and renewed, with time the symphony gained its acknowledgement and was named the first of composer’s early notable music works. For a person not digging too deep in history to learn about the author’s sufferings over this work, “Winter Dreams” is a wonderful vigorous piece with a folk motive of the amazing Russian winter scenery.

The most ‘winter’ winter would go to Vivaldi’s “Winter” from “Four Seasons”. So recognizable and memorable this violin concerto has already become. Like the previous concertos (presumably), the 4th one is based on a sonnet (again presumably) written by Vivaldi himself. The good thing about program music like that is that it is meant to evoke the extra-musical in our perception – close your eyes, take a listen and you will hear the beautiful snowblasts howling out there.

Next comes Chopin’s “Winter Wind” (Etude No.11). That is actually not an entertaining piece but a music study for solo piano. It is aimed at training a musician’s left hand flexibility and right hand dexterity, to make brain hemispheres work neatly together. But to a common listener it’s a very easy-listening  soft music piece. A bit gloomy but mesmerizing.

I was also planning to talk a bit about Schubert’s “Winterreise” (ger. ‘winter journey’), a song cycle on the basis of Muller’s poems, but decided to skip it and rather focus on a contemporary music work that is on my list of winter music. I’m referring to the “Winter Etude” for classical guitar by a Russian composer Kirill Voljanin. I ran across his video on YouTube where the author is performing the piece himself:

Maybe that’s because of the successful combination of the soothing ‘warm’ melody and the beautiful visuals (I love sand art!) that made me stick to the screen for a few minutes and grab my mug firmer.

Stay warm!

We Three Kings Carol

Back, inspired and renewed – a happy Hi and the first opening post of 2014! What I love this winter time for is the great amount of holidays it’s filled with – so many festivities during the winter period – Christmas, New Year’s, St. Valentine’s, and so on and so forth – and all within only two months – you can hardly close one holiday when the next one is already at the door – the lovely winter!

Comparing the fun secular holidays with religious ones, I’ve always found the latter more mysterious. Probably because they have a longer, memory-embedded tradition behind and are always charming to re-discover every year. Right now we are at the threshold of one of such holidays that is called Epiphany and falls for Jan 6 this year. If Epiphany doesn’t sound too familiar to someone, the other popular name for it is Three Kings.

Three Kings

The Bible puts it that after the birth of Jesus three mighty kings – Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar – saw the Star of Bethlehem and came to visit the great king bringing him presents of myrrh, frankincense and gold.

The most successful carol featuring this story was written in 1857 by John Henry Hopkins Jr and is called “We Three Kings” (“Three Kings of Orient” originally). Hopkins used to work as a journalist, lawyer, rector at church and a music teacher. Back at his time it was quite uncommon for a composer to write both music and lyrics for a carol, but Hopkins did both. He actually composed this song only for himself and his family and friends to enjoy. But everyone liked it so much that they ‘forced’ him to publish the work and it soon reached people far out of the Unites States (first of all to the UK) and became one the most popular Christmas Carols.  

The original carol’s melody takes you back to the Middle Ages, sounding sad and wistful. But as it often happens with songs as popular as that, it brought about lots of curious arrangements, sometime quite unexpected instrument- and genre-wise. You may even hear music arrangements in the style of hip-hop (which, I must admit, sound unexpectedly good).

Lang Lang and His Piano Story

As the year is quickly approaching its end, it’s about time to look back at what it brought us and what footprint it will leave for the next years to come. It’s always curious to watch how new talents are born and developed as you realize that that’s one of the magic parts of the humanity – the process art is transferred from one generation to another.

A lot has happened in music this year and there’s no easy way to enumerate all the happenings or to draw a certain conclusion to it. So I gave up this idea and instead decided to focus on some outstanding gifted people who made music and world a better place this year, in a way. Let me finish this year’s blogging with a post about a very talented pianist Lang Lang.

The funny thing is that most of the great-to-be musicians had been  professionally rejected at some point in their careers. And only those who had hope and true devotion to their passion managed to overcome the rejection and become what they wanted to be. Lang Lang admits to have been inspired for playing piano by Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 that he saw in the popular Disney cartoon “Tom & Jerry”. But the aspiring kid was told that he lacked talent and was expelled from a piano studio. Lang Lang didn’t give up though, and continued on his way. By the age of 13, he won a few competitions and could already play most advanced pieces by classical composers. And the adventure began.

His career proceeded in Berlin and Vienna Philarmonic, he was featured in such magazines as The Times, The New Yorker, Gramaphone, Esquire, Vogue, People. By now, Lang Lang has performed at all possible honorable events, including BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, Philadelphia Orchestra 100th Anniversary, The YouTube Symphony, White House State Dinner, numerous dignitaries with world’s leading presidents, Nobel Prize ceremonies, 2008 Summer Olympics, Grammy Awards and many more.

Lang Lang travelled the whole world with his music and is said to have a very powerful charisma. He is one of those who easily promote classical music by just performing it in a very charming manner. This year became a real milestone for the musician – Ban Ki-moon announced him a United Nations Messenger of Peace. This role, according to Lang Lang himself, is way more important and noble than just being a first-class performer.

Danse Macabre

This month will end in a holiday that is full of mystery and darkness. The famous Halloween that came from the United States is now celebrated far beyond the borders of this country. It has already created certain associations for us in terms of dressing, atmosphere and, of course, music.

But some music pieces have earned the title of ‘most Halloween’ ones. Danse Macabre composed by the great French composed Camille Saint-Saens is definitely one of the Halloween’s main themes. What can be more related to this holiday than the “Dance of Death”? The score was created by the great composer in 1874 and was based on the popular French superstition according to which the last walk to other world was a special ceremony equal for everyone, no matter whether you were rich or poor, or what your status had been. The art genre that was born from it typically looked like a long dance to the grave with people from different social layer, popes, emperors, common people – to prove the vain of human glories.

The piece first started as an art song and was later expanded to a tone poem. The motif somewhat reminds of composer’s “The Carnival of Animals” and each instrument has its theater role – xylophone for bones’ rattling, oboes for crows, etc. Though not received well from the very beginning, Danse Macabre soon became pretty popular. Especially its arranged versions like Liszt’s and Horowitz’ piano arrangements, Lemare’s arrangement for pipe organ and others.