We are exploring musical themes and imagery at home during the pandemic. On the 18th of May, we began with the classic “Peter and the Wolf” by Prokofiev, who described a story of a bird, a duck, a cat, the young boy Peter and his grandfather, hunters and a big bad (hungry) wolf with the various instruments of the classical orchestra. The bird is the flute, with high quick notes of flight. The duck is the oboe, and we can almost see the green headed avian with colorful feathers that glance and dart through a stream of water, powered by webbed feet. The cat is the clarinet, slender with range, and an ability to jump from treetop to the ground. Peter has the volume of the strings because of his curiosity and youth. The grandfather is the bassoon, the deepest sounding wind instrument who lumbers to and fro deep notes, to me a more apt description of an anchor of experience in the story, erstwhile in the background yet audible with age. The hunters are percussion because they carry weapons of discrete force. The wolf is symbolized by the horns, a dynamic instrument rich with harmony to our own hearing experience as we hunger for meaning along the journeys of life. We listened to the 2006 Vanguard Classics with narrator Boris Karloff, conductor Mario Rossi and the Wiener Opernorchester.
On the 19th of May, (and over the next three days), we began with Vivaldi’s “Spring” rendition by Itzhak Perlman and the London Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras (The Four Seasons [1]). This is a Warner Classics Master Tape (1977/1982/1983) probably converted over in 1990. I wanted us to explore what it means to be spring, from considering melting snow and ice, to rivers beginning to flow again, farmers beginning to till the land, flower stems rising above the grass, birds calling forth the sunshine and animals repopulating a warming earth. Spring is also a time where youth and experience are eager to begin a new year, as the earth has returned to its point of orbit after 365 days (and 6 hours?), with approximately 23 degree tilt (from North). The Spring Equinox tends to occur around March 21st of most years, and this is a time when the days transition to become longer from the dreary dark winter days. We listened to RV 269 “Spring” Concerto No. 1 in E Major: Allegro, Largo and Allegro, 10 minutes 38 seconds. The pace of each movement in this concerto is beautifully done in this justaposition of Perlman’s violin with the orchestras. Over the next few days, we’ll finish listening to the other seasons [2] to develop how to think musically about transitions as the earth rotates the sun.
From Vivaldi’s classic work we continued to explore what spring means with music from Diana Krall playing “Fly Me to the Moon” from a “2002 Live in Paris” Verve album. Krall’s music aptly sparked our discussion about the earth’s position in the solar system, and from here we listened to George Benson and Al Jarreau jazzin’ “Breezin'” from a 2006 album “givin’ it up”. Krall plays the piano and sings melodically, in this case in a deep tone. Benson strums the acoustic guitar with Jarreau’s vocals, a song from the heart that to me evoked images of dirt uplifted by wind along a walk to fetch a pail of water. From Jazz we transitioned to Chinese language vocal songs, the first one by 汪峰 (Wang Feng) “春天里” from an album 生無所求2011演唱會 (Live) [3], and the second a song “夢裡水鄉 (Dreams of or from a Village by the Water)” from an album titled “春天歌曲集錦” [4] by an artist named 春天 (Spring). Both these songs were explorations into thoughts of spring from the sounds, scales and harmonies that are more often associated with Asian music. Finally, to cap off the morning music session, we listened to solos 江河水 by Chinese string instrument erhu (二胡) musician 劉雨聲 with the 華夏樂團. The sounds played from the erhu are continuous (what’s called a portamento slide or glissando for strings), a summing of various notes. -May 19, 2021-
On the 20th of May, we began to explore “Summer” with Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, RV 315, Allegro non molto, Adagio and Presto. The Allegro non molto can probably be translated as “fast not too much” or “fast however not too fast” and perhaps is Vivaldi’s approach to summer (exhilarating but don’t end too soon?). Adagio for me evoked the heat and lull of summer, an emotion of bearable-ness coupled with an unknown sensation of what might be next (no hope and strangely also no despair). Perhaps at this time of listening we haven’t yet approached the wanderings associated with “summer”. Presto sounded like a storm approaching, with thunderous rains, large droplets that beat upon the already grown stalks of corn, wheat or rice (you name it), and yet, most of these precious commodities not only didn’t wither, they weathered the storm to continue to rise above the muddied water.
From Vivaldi, we then took a random walk through songs, starting with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons performing “Sherry”, from the album The Very Best of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons (Rhino, 1963), then “Don’t Sweat it Baby (Remastered)” a Bacci Bros 50s Collect pop song from 2015, and finally “Walk Like a Man” from the Rhino album. “Sherry” didn’t mix as well following Vivaldi, though by the time we got to “Don’t Sweat It Baby” my kids were swaying to the pop-rock beat. The next song was “Lemonade (feat. NAV)” from 2020 Internet Money/ TenThousand Projects and is to my ears a softer hip-hop/rap song. We were trying to bring in vocals of what it means to be experiencing summer, something my younger child was trying to intuit. Somehow this approach made us think of the classic Gershwin song, “Rhapsody in Blue”; we listened to the masterful Herbie Hancock with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a classical 2016 performance. Hancock’s range was on display as we listened to “Autodrive”, a 1983 Song BMG Music Entertainment performance. This (should) make us realize the very mechanical aspect of the piano, as opposed to electronic music which can synthesize sounds and intensities beyond that of a piano felt and hammer. Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Opus 15 II. Adagio by Daniel Barenboim and Gustavo Dudamel with Staatskapelle Berlin from 2015 (Unitel, Deutsche Grammophon GmbH) was a wrap around back to classical music interpretation of summer. Not sure why we found this piece, however, the Adagio seems to be based on a simple phrase (ternary form?), that is not yet fully explored compared to the other phrases in the entire orchestral piece.
From Brahms we then re-approached vocalists with “Greensleeves” by Choir of New College Oxford & Edward Higginbottom and Cantata No. 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140: I. Chorus from a collection of “40 Most Beautiful Choral Classics” 2011 Warner Classics, Warner Music UK Ltd. The second song was written, aptly enough in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, in about or before August 1598 when the plague hit Unna, a Northern Rhine City.
We didn’t end summer on such a somber note. Instead, we listened to two performances of “夏天的風” loosely translated as “Winds of Summer” by Peng Fang from “純色角 2 (Beauty Duel)” 2006, and a single from Priscilla Abby, 2020. -May 20, 2021-
On May 21, 2021, we began to listen to “Autumn” themes in music, again starting with Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 3 in F Major, RV 293: Allegro, Adagio molto and Allegro. The Allegro is arguably one of Vivaldi’s most famous musical pieces with the entire strings beginning together in quick strokes, to signal the return of busy work following a summer break (perhaps). During Autumn the work of the earlier parts of the year reach high point, hopefully before the leaves fully mature and turn color. The waters in the river are full and flowing. The next set of songs were vocals and we started with a hip-hop/rap single “Still the Same” from a 2020 album “Autumn!”, followed by “Sunshine” from “My Last Day Without You: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” with Nicole Beharie and Various Artists (R&B/Soul 2013), “Leaves from the Vine” a New Age 2020 song from “Atinpiano”, another song from the “Autumn!” album “If It Means Anything!” and then a Book of Days (2003 SOCAN) piece “Autumn Leaves are Blue” by singer guitarist Susan Crowe. We went through these songs to get a range of experiences and feelings for autumn music, to find what resonated best in each piece of music.
Jazz from the Paolo Bernardi Jazz Trio, “Autumn Leaves” and “Memorino, Lucifero a Ali” from Sifare Edizioni 2011 “The Best of the Real Book, Vol. 1” provided a great endnote to the various vocal musics. While the human voice has range and beauty, interestingly we still do turn to musical instruments to achieve melodic and harmonious intensities. Perhaps because while our ears have a finite range, and while both the human voice and our musical instruments span that range, the sounds from musical instruments may not contain the same subliminal messages as notes from the human voice. “Fahrenhaidt” and Alice Merton 2016 (We Love Music, distributed by Electrola, a division of Universal Music GmbH) have a piece “Home Under the Sky” that was soothing and with a great cover image.
This whirlwind of music in Autumn reminded me of the exposures to music I had in younger days, and in particular the grand performances of play, story and music that can be found on Broadway’s shows. A famous musical TV performance we listened to next was “Honey, Honey” with Amanda Seyfried, Ashley Lilley and Rachel McDowall from “Mamma Mia! (The Movie Soundtrack feat. the Songs of ABBA)” by Littlestar Services Limited (exclusive license to Polydor Ltd.). Perhaps this transition to music with vocals not solely based in the English or Chinese language is important for native speakers to dissociate (or associate) new meanings with ingrained vocalizations and sounds. This raises an interesting question as to which sounds are associated with most meanings, specifically for example do vowels convey more than consonants? A search found us another hip-hop song for the 20’s of this century (as opposed to mid last century) written in 2012 “När solen går ner (feat. Kapten Röd)” a “UMG Recordings, Inc.”. After looking up the lyrics I would urge caution to repeat listenings of this song, especially for young children. “Tsukiyo no Nakimushi” a “TOHO Eurobeat Vol. 16 (Eiyashou)” dance song from 2017 followed, then “The World is Like a Handkerchief”, a Korean song from “Autumn Vacation” made in 2020. It was not immediately clear to me how all these were processed by our home audience, though I strongly believe that early formalized, exposure to diverse languages and intonations is beneficial.
To finish the morning music session, we looked to Brahms and Schubert. In the former, a piano trio, performed by Emanual Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, and then the Trout Quintet, Quintet in A Major, D. 667, “Trout” (Opus 114): Allegro Vivace, by Emanual Ax and the Guarneri Quartet. The lively and fast trout in the river makes such an impression as to nearly command the musician to record a piece.
The 22nd of May we listened to Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, RV 297 “Winter”: Allegro non molto, Largo, Allegro. This marks the wind-down in the year and the return of icy cold. The summer solstice and fall equinoxes have past, and the nights are already longer than the days. Winter (in the north) sees the beginning of snow falls, the formation of snowflakes and ice crystals that can be somewhat described with fractal sets. The freezing of ice is perhaps akin to the formation of crystals in supersaturated solution disturbed by a seed, and the cold freezes nearly everything, maybe lastly our eye fluid. Somehow this turned our music sessions towards soundtracks from the “Game of Thrones (Music From the HBO Series)” in particular the famous phrase from the story “Winter is Coming”. The cold harsh winters near the wall that separates mankind of the South from the white walkers of the far north were beautifully captured in the HBO series. We then listened to warmer music generated from air flow through pipe organs, specifically the enchanting Bach Organ works “Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 548” from a Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin 2005 compilation. I enjoy listening to the methodical repetitions from Bach, because it’s like ear training for notes. This particular piece is referred to as “The Wedge” for its chromatic scales, thusly termed from associations with tunings of the Greek lyre [Pythagoras – A Life [5]], and later likely also the (reddish) color associations for specific notes.
We followed Bach with Tsaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker: Scene XIV – Pas de Deux: Dance of the Prince & the Sugar-Plum Fairy” by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and David Maninov (2013 [6]). This work was important in numerous ways, one of which is usage of the “celeste”, a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. These notes tend to be subtle and soft. Following this we went back to listen to the “Main Title (From Game of Thrones: Season 4)” from the Season 4 album music by Ramin Djawadi. The opening music sequence is especially attractive and unforgettable, containing “so-do-mi-fa-so” in repetition that alerts any viewer that the show is about to start (see scores [7]).
To finish this exploration into musical themes, we turned to three Bing Crosby songs from about 1962, “Christmas Classics (Remastered)” 2006 Capitol Records Inc., in succession, “Winter Wonderland”, “O Holy Night” and “Frosty the Snowman”, and a song from “Deutsche Stars wünschen Frohe Weihnachten” with Peter Beil from 2013. These songs evoked the winter Christmas spirit, particularly well on display during the Christmas winter markets found throughout Germany, typically in November to December of each year. -May 21, 2021-
References
- https://www.discogs.com/Vivaldi-Itzhak-PerlmanLondon-Philharmonic-Orchestra-Israel-Philharmonic-Orchestra-Vivaldi-The-Four-S/release/11225483
- https://www.weather.gov/lmk/seasons
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CVC1239/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp
- https://www.amazon.com/春天音乐作品集，Vol-2-春天/dp/B07VYVC1CT
- https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/pythagoras-life/author/peter-gorman/
- https://www.discogs.com/Pyotr-Ilyich-Tchaikovsky-The-Royal-Philharmonic-Orchestra-David-Maninov-The-Nutcracker-Complete-Ball/release/12750162
- https://musescore.com/hub/game-of-thrones