Well, you’ll either love this or hate it. If you’re of a certain age like me you might also remember that happiness is a cigar called Hamlet but not remember who played the tune. This is, fact, Jacques Loussier and his trio doing their take on Johann Sebastian Bach. And before you get too sanctimonious and music-hysterical about this version, I’ll just add that it is well known that Bach enormously enjoyed improvisation. I have a sneaking feeling he would actually have quite liked this…
Archive for the Music Category
Air on the G string
Posted in Jazz, Music with tags Jacques Loussier, Johan Sebastian Bach on November 28, 2009 by telescoperPlanet Wave
Posted in Jazz, Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags Edwin Morgan, Planet Wave, Tommy Smith on November 17, 2009 by telescoperRegular readers of this blog (both of you) will know that from time to time I like to post little bits of poetry. The verses are usually related to astronomy (or science generally) and they’re usually things I come across pretty much by accident when I’m browsing through the books of poetry I occasionally buy. This evening I was leafing through a collection called A Book of Lives, by the popular and highly respected Scottish national poet Edwin Morgan. In the middle of this set is a long sequence of poems called Planet Wave, each of which is to do with a specific historical episode or important character, such as Copernicus or Darwin. The first poem in the cycle is about the Big Bang so I thought it would be a good choice.
However, regular readers will also know that I like to post bits of jazz on here too – although the blog statistics suggest that these are much less popular than the poetry! I read in the Book of Lives that the first half the sequence of poems making up Planet Wave was commissioned by the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival and set to music by the excellent Tommy Smith. The poetry and music combination was first performed in Cheltenham Town Hall on 4 April 1997.
Great, I thought. Here’s a chance to combine jazz and poetry (for what would only be the second time on here, the first being this post). Unfortunately, though, I’ve been unable to locate any recording of a performance of this work. I found an interview with Tommy Smith on the net which suggests a recording was made but never released. I’d certainly love to hear it and I hope that there might be a jazz fan out there somewhere who knows what happened to it.
Anyway, in the absence of the music here’s just the first verse of the first poem of the cycle. As you will see, Morgan’s style is very inventive, often extremely funny, and always extremely Scottish.
In the Beginning
(20 Billion BC)
Don’t ask me and don’t tell me. I was there.
It was a bang and it was big. I don’t know
what went before, I came out with it.
Think about that if you want my credentials.
Think about that, me, it, imagine it
as I recall it now, swinging in my spacetime hammock,
nibbling a moon or two, watching you.
What am I? You don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
I am the witness, I am not in the dock.
I love matter and I love anti-matter.
Listen to me, listen to my patter.
(Reproduced by kind permission of Carcanet Press.)
If you want to read the rest you’ll have to buy the book! And if anyone out there knows what happened to the recording of Planet Wave please let me know. I’d love to hear it!
Memphis Shake
Posted in Jazz with tags Dixieland Jug Blowers, Johnny Dodds on November 7, 2009 by telescoperToday has been a very busy day, so I haven’t had time to put finger to keyboard at all. I always feel I’m letting the side down if I don’t post every day, but I’ve only got a few minutes before going for dinner. Fortunately I’ve got a list of little fillers for such occasions so I thought I’d try this one on you. Experience suggests you will either love it or hate it!
I’ve blogged before about the pioneering clarinettist Johnny Dodds, who appeared on an astonishingly high fraction of the greatest recordings of the era of classic jazz. But although he was a jazz age superstar he remained until his death in 1940 a modest and self-effacing man who never tried to hog the limelight.
One day in December 1926, Johnny Dodds happened to be in the Chicago studios of the Victor record company. The band that happened to be recording at that time was an obscure folk group from Louisville (Kentucky)with the unpromising sounding name of The Dixieland Jug Blowers. After some discussion, Johnny Dodds agreed to sit in with them while they recorded a tune called Memphis Shake. They weren’t really a jazz band and didn’t use the usual jazz instruments. There is what sounds like an alto sax on this record, but there is also a fiddle, banjo and, of course, the “jug” (an earthenware whisky jar or some such item, played by blowing across the top to produce a whimsical kind of bass). The idea of a jugband probably sound very hokey now, but were in fact extremely popular in the pre-jazz era and well into the 1920s. Other than the fact that they were led by a chap called Earl Macdonald and the fiddle is played by Clifford Hayes, I really don’t know anything else about the personnel.
As you’ll hear, Johnny Dodds takes quite a back seat, but his presence on this record turned it into a little piece of jazz history and original 78s of this are much sought after among collectors. It is a bit of an oddity. It’s not really jazz and it’s not really folk, but what it is is one of the most joyously carefree pieces of music you will ever hear in your life. Even if it’s not your cup of tea, I hope it at least brings a smile to your face as it does to mine whenever I hear it.
The Monster Mash
Posted in Biographical, Music with tags Bobby "Boris" Picket and the Cryptkickers, Monster Mash on October 31, 2009 by telescoperI explained this time last year how I’m not really a big fan of Halloween and don’t tend to celebrate it. However, I decided to make an exception this year and post the following little video which seems to be appropriate for the occasion. It’s made of bits of old horror B-movies but the music – by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-kickers is actually the second single I ever bought, way back in 1973. I wonder if you can guess what the first one was?
Stomp!
Posted in Jazz with tags Come on and Stomp Stomp Stomp, Johnny Dodds on October 24, 2009 by telescoperI couldn’t resist a quick post about this old record, which was made in Chicago in 1928. The personnel line-up is very similar to that of the classic Hot Sevens, except that Louis Armstrong wasn’t there. Satchmo was, in fact, replaced for this number by two trumpeters, Natty Dominique and George Mitchell. John Thomas played trombone, Bud Scott was on banjo and Warren “Baby” Dodds played the drums.
The star of the show, however, is undoubtedly the great Johnny Dodds (the older brother of the drummer). He was a clarinettist of exceptional power, a fact that enabled him to cut through the limitations of the relatively crude recording technology of the time. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Louis Armstrong doesn’t make it easy for a clarinettist to be heard!
This is still a favourite tune for jazz bands all around the world, but I’ve never heard a version as good as this one. There are lots of little things that contribute to its brilliance, such as the thumping 2/4 rhythm (which also gives away its origins in the New Orleans tradition of marching bands). It’s a bit fast to actually march to, though; I suppose that’s what turns a march into a stomp. I like the little breaks too (such as Bud Scott’s banjo fill around 2:10 and, especially, the ensemble break at 2:45). But most of all it’s all about how they build up the momentum in such a controlled way, using little key changes to shift gear but holding back until the time Johnny Dodds joins in again (around 2:20). At that point the whole thing totally catches fire and the remaining 40 seconds or so are some of the “hottest” in all of jazz history.
Some time ago I heard Robert Parker’s digitally remastered version of this track, which revealed that Baby Dodds was pounding away on the bass drum all the way through it. He’s barely audible on the original but it was clearly him that drove the performance along. Anyway, despite the relatively poor sound quality I do hope you enjoy it. It’s a little bit of musical history, but also an enormous bit of fun.
Au Privave
Posted in Jazz with tags Au Privave, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Sonny Stitt on October 18, 2009 by telescoperAt the risk of becoming a complete bore on the subject of bebop I thought I’d follow up an earlier post on the joys of jazz with this brilliant performance of yet another Charlie Parker tune, not by the man himself, but by one of his disciples.
I was lucky enough to hear Sonny Stitt live a number of times and he was always brilliant; he died in 1982. He was criticised by some jazz buffs between numbers during one gig I was at with the words “You’re just playing like Charlie Parker!”, to which he replied by handing his alto saxophone to the twit in the audience and saying “Here then. YOU play like Charlie Parker.”
Anyway, in the late 1950s (after Charlie Parker had died) Sonny Stitt sat in as on alto saxophone with the Oscar Peterson trio of which Ray Brown (bass) and Ed Thigpen (drums) were the other two members. They made a classic album for the Verve label which features a number of Charlie Parker numbers. Oscar Peterson isn’t my absolute favourite jazz pianist but it has to be said that he and his sidemen build up a colossal head of steam on these records, especially the one I’ve picked which is called Au Privave.
I tried for ages to unravel this intricate little tune. It’s basically a twelve-bar blues, but it is built on much more complicated chords than the usual blues cycle. In its simplest form, the blues involves only three chords, the same three that most rock-and-roll tunes are built on. The foundation is a “tonic” chord (T) based on the root note of whatever key it’s played in, often a basic triad consisting of the first, third and five notes of a major scale starting on that note or including the dominant 7th. The next chord is the subdominant chord (S), shifting things up by a perfect fourth relative to the tonic, and then finally we have the dominant (D) which brings us up by a fifth from the original root note.
The basic twelve-bar blues has one chord per bar. The first four bars are accompanied by the tonic, then the subdominant S takes over for two bars followed by a return to the tonic for another two. The last four bars introduce the dominant (but only for one bar), followed by S for one and then back down to the root for the final two.
In a standard blues in F the sequence would thus be
| F| F| F |F | B♭| B♭| F| F | C| B♭| F| F|,
or possibly with F7 etc. The slow and relatively simple progression of chords gives these blues a rather statuesque form: the soloist has to be really good to keep the thing going without getting bogged down. When played by a master even the simplest blues can be immensely powerful, but they can also be very dull when played not so well. It may be simple, but it certainly isn’t easy.
Au Privave is in F but has considerably more complicated changes than the bog-standard F blues. Parker inserted several intermediate chords to keep the harmonies moving and dispensed with some of the conventional progressions. There are also more chords, usually two per bar rather than just one. The sequence here looks more like
| F| Gm7C7| F |Cm7F7| B♭| B♭| F7Gm7| Am7D7 | Gm7| C| FD7| G7C7|,
although I’m not sure I got them right as it tends to be played very fast! It’s a lot more to remember, but it’s also a much more dynamic setting to improvise in which is what people like Charlie Parker wanted to create. Instead of moving quasi-statically through perfect intervals each chorus, you run helter-skelter through a constantly shifting harmonic environment. Notice also that there’s no comfortable return to the tonic at measure 12, even. The appearance of a C7 chord here is called a turnaround. Complicated? Yes, I suppose it is. But whenever I hear it played by Sonny Stitt it’s always just four minutes of sheer exhilaration.
Oh, and there’s another thing. Listen to the chorus that starts about 2:58. Did he really play all twelve bars without breathing?
Classic Collection
Posted in Biographical, Music with tags Banarama, Dee-Lite, S'Express on October 16, 2009 by telescoperI’ve been told on more than one occasion that some people find all the stuff about opera and poetry and the like is a bit too highbrow for them. In an effort to make myself more commercially relevant I’ve therefore decided to include something a bit different from my usual line of music posts.
Twenty years ago, while I was still living in Brighton, I didn’t go to the Opera or to classical music concerts at all, but instead went out most nights to various nightclubs (most of which have now closed down). This was all before I became too old and decrepid to be anything but an embarrassment in such a context. I also had a habit of buying singles of the records I heard night after night in the clubs which I would play before going out to get me into the mood for a boogie. I like dancing, in case you hadn’t guessed.
In recently sorted through my old vinyl record collection and hunted through Youtube to find the corresponding videos. So here are three examples from my own classic collection which will hopefully prevent any further accusations that this blog is too erudite. It won’t do much for my street cred with the younger generation, though, as these records are all older than most students.
First one up is from the cheesy end of the spectrum. It’s the sublime Bananarama, doing a very camp cover version of the Supremes’ hit Nathan Jones. I want you to pay particularly close attention to the video as I expect you all to learn the moves. There’ll be a test. Right hand on right hip. Left arm extended. Ready? Go!
Number two in my hit parade belongs to the commercial wing of the Acid House movement that swept through dance clubs during the late 1980s. S’Express released Hey Music Lover in 1989 and it immediately became one of my favourite things to dance to. It’s nowhere near as effective watching it on a small screen, away from the thumping sounds and whirling psychedelic environment of a nightclub, but this one always used to make the blood rush to my head and it also seemed to get the best out of the best dancers. Note the sly references to Federico Fellini in the video.
Lastly but definitely not leastly is easily the best dance record of the classical period under consideration. It deserves to be in the collection because it still packs the dance floors twenty years on. Fabulously funky, tantalising trippy and devilishly danceable, this was a huge hit in 1990 for the fantastic Dee-Lite – here is a medley of their hit Groove is in the Heart.
And that’s enough of that.
Lux Aeterna
Posted in Music with tags 2001: A Space Odyssey, George Ligeti, Lux Aeterna on October 12, 2009 by telescoperSince my recent trip to see György Ligeti‘s extraordinary Opera Le Grande Macabre, I’ve been trying to find out a bit more about the composer. I’ve stumbled across a few of his works, including some very strange and difficult piano pieces which I might put up here sometime. However, I thought it would be nice to acknowledge probably his most famous work particularly because it came up in a previous post.
Lux Aeterna is a choral work for sixteen unaccompanied voices which was written in 1966. Along with excerpts from his Requiem (from the Kyrie and Dies Irae) and the orchestral piece Atmospheres (1961), this composition formed part of the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. What I didn’t know until reading about Lux Aeterna was that Kubrick didn’t bother to ask for permission to use Ligeti’s work in his film and it was only after heated discussions that he agreed to pay the composer a fee. Ligeti doesn’t seem to have minded that much, however, as he subsequently went on record saying that he admired Kubrick’s work enormously.
Lux Aeterna (“Eternal Light”) can be thought of as a kind of postscript to the Requiem and its text comes from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead (in Latin):
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternum dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Although the piece is officially dated later than Ligeti’s setting of the rest of the Requiem Mass, the compositional technique he used seems to be similar and its emotional feel seems also to belong with that longer work. It’s an uncompromisingly avant-garde work, exploiting a dense atonal polyphony to create a strange atmosphere that seems to combine agonised apprehension with a kind of bewildered exhilaration.
Here it is combined with images from the film and various bits of interesting information about Ligeti’s life and music.
I can only speak directly for myself, of course, but I suspect many will agree with me that it’s a remarkably effective piece on its own that has even greater impact in the context of the movie. However, I wonder how many would say that it is beautiful? I know I would.
Le Grand Macabre
Posted in Opera with tags English National Opera, Hieronymous Bosch, Le Grand Macabre, Peter Bruegel on October 4, 2009 by telescoperAccording to the programme notes, Le Grand Macabre is an anti-anti-Opera in that it is to some extent a reaction against an artistic movement (“anti-Opera“) that sought to avoid and/or subvert the conventions of Opera. Thinking as a physicist, on the basis that C2=1, you would be forced to call this work an Opera, but György Ligeti‘s extraordinary apocalyptic surrealist farce is unlike any Opera I’ve ever seen. The production now running at English National Opera (which I went to see last night, Saturday 3rd October 2009) is a fabulously over-the-top realization of this wonderfully quirky piece of musical theatre.
I’m not sure I can really describe the plot as there isn’t one as such. The Opera is split onto four scenes which are like comic sketches bearing only slight narrative relationship to each other. The result is a bit like Monty Python meets The Magic Flute. However, Mozart’s Opera managed to become an acknowledged masterpiece without its plot making any kind of sense, so in that respect this work is certainly in good company!
It probably suffices to explain that Le Grand Macabre is actually Death (in the Opera his real name is Nektrotzar and he’s played by Pavlo Hunka). He keeps appearing, complete with scythe, trumpet and egg-timer and warning of the forthcoming End of the World. Somehow, though, there’s always an excuse for it not arriving; just like the British railways. At one point, just as he seems to be getting it together to send everyone to their doom, two characters ply him with wine so he’s too sozzled to blow the Last Trump. The idea of getting Death too drunk to organize Armageddon is just one example of the bizarre sense of humour that courses throughout this piece.
Other principals include the lovers Amando and Amanda who are dressed in costumes of flayed skin, like refugees from the Bodyworlds exhibition. These two are at it like rabbits all the time, but also have lovely music to sing while they’re on the job. Apparently their names were originally supposed to be Spermando and Clitoris, but it was decided that was a bit too rude…
We also have the court astrologer (Astradamors; Frode Olsen)) and his dominatrix wife (Mescalina; Susan Bickley), the latter with fake comedy boobs, a full wardrobe of SM gear and an excessively hairy “spider” (nudge nudge). Prince Go-Go is the effete ruler who wears a gold suit and who blames the impending annihilation of his land on his ministers, a role brilliantly sung by counter-tenor Andrew Watts. I’ve never heard a male singer with such effortless control at the extreme end of his vocal range. And while we’re on about stratospheric singing, I have to mention Susanna Andersson who doubles as the goddess Venus (in a diaphonous suit that looked like it was made of pink candy-floss) and Gepopo, the chief of the secret police (in full modern body armour).
Le Grand Macabre is set in the imaginary Bruegelland, inspired by the paintings of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymous Bosch and this production borrows a great deal of imagery from their paintings. The critics have devoted a great deal of attention to the spectacular set, but reading about it doesn’t really prepare you for the real thing. After a short piece of film projected onto a giant screen, the curtain goes up to reveal a huge-scale torso of a naked woman that looms over the stage (see below). The head of this figure moves, clever projection effects give it facial expressions and change the appearance of its body into, e.g., a skeleton, its eyes sometimes glow red, and the whole thing also rotates so it can be viewed from different directions and used in different ways in different parts of the Opera. At various points characters emerge from the mouth, nipples, and other orifices. Yes, from there too!
All the action is carried out in front of, on top of, or inside this amazing structure. In one scene the figure has been cut in half exposing its insides, an image clearly originating in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights:
Soldiers first force their way on stage through huge wobbly intestines, then the empty body cavity becomes a nightclub in which amongst other things, the dancers do a hilarious skit on Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.
Making this whole thing work to such stunning dramatic effect is an amazing achievement, and this production is worth seeing just for that. At least part of the joy of Opera is the sense of spectacle and this is indeed spectacular.
But I think it’s also important not to let the scenery and staging overshadow the rest of the work too. Although its critical reception has been very mixed, I thought Le Grand Macabre was absolutely superb. My companions thought it was a blast too.
For a start, it is hilariously funny (although quite rude and sexually explicit). Part of the humour is crudely lavatorial: there’s a sequence where two characters have a obscene name-calling contest which would have schoolboys chuckling with glee, and the whole show abounds with knob jokes and scatological remarks. However, there’s another level to the humour that derives from references to other composers and operas. My musical vocabulary isn’t that wide, but I definitely spotted irreverent quotes from Monteverdi, Beethoven, and Wagner. The final scene of the opera – a kind of epilogue for which all the principals return to the stage and sing sanctimonious platitudes to the audience – just has to be a pisstake of the ending of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The designers of the Opera also took a cue from the nature of the music, to make lots of visual jokes on stage. I’ve already mentioned the Michael Jackson reference – which was great – but there’s also more than a nod in the direction of Ridley Scott.
Don’t get the impression that this is just a kind of pastiche. Ligeti does borrow ideas from elsewhere but there’s also a lot of his own uniquely quirky musical material in it too. From the Dress Circle we could see the orchestra pit filled with peculiar bits and pieces: sledge hammers, whistles, air raid sirens and the like. But there are passages with a fairly conventional orchestration that are just as innovative as those for which the funny instruments and special effects are needed. I didn’t know much about Ligeti’s music before this performance, but I’m definitely going to listen to more of his work in the future.
So there we are then. My second Opera in two days, and both of them were superb. Le Grande Macabre, played to a full house at the Coliseum, and Friday’s Wozzeck were greeted with enthusiastic applause. I’m heartened that it’s not only La Traviata that bring people to the Opera. However, that’s all the Opera I’ll be seeing and writing about until mid-November. Until then no doubt I’ll be returning to the real Bruegelland of UK science funding…
Wozzeck
Posted in Opera with tags Alban Berg, Welsh National Opera, Wozzeck on October 3, 2009 by telescoperIt was a late decision for me to go to see Welsh National Opera‘s production of Wozzeck last night (Friday 2nd October) at the Wales Milennium Centre. It has been a busy week and I’m travelling at the weekend too, so I wasn’t sure I could fit it in. In the end, I am really glad I did because it was by far the best of the three operas WNO are presenting in the current season; you can read about the other two here and here.
Stylistically, Wozzeck (composed by Alban Berg) is a far cry from Madam Butterfly and La Traviata but it is also a tragedy of some sort. The principal character – Wozzeck himself – is one of life’s losers. The Opera opens with him establishing his servile nature by shaving a character called the Captain in order to supplement his salary. The original story has a military setting, but in this production it is moved to a factory producing tins of baked beans.
Wozzeck has fathered a child out of wedlock with Marie and is doing everything he can to earn money for her and their son. Later on we find out that he is also trying to earn cash by helping another character, the Doctor, in a medical experiment the main element of which seems to involve eating a large quantity of the baked beans produced in the factory.
Perhaps caused by his peculiar diet as well as the stress of his personal situation, Wozzeck is clearly losing his marbles. He suffers from hallucinations. Then Marie has an affair with another character, the Drum Major – we know he’s a bad guy because he likes golf and wears nasty white shoes. The Doctor and the Captain see the Drum Major and Marie in flagrante delicto and subsequently taunt Wozzeck with his lover’s infidelity. Wozzeck goes berserk, challenges the Drum Major to a fight and gets himself badly beaten up for his trouble. He takes out his frustration on Marie, luring her outside and then killing her by cutting her throat with an opened baked bean tin. He doesn’t have the sense to wash the blood from his hands and when this is spotted he returns to the scene and tries to find the murder weapon. In the original story Wozzeck had thrown the weapon (a knife) into a lake: trying to get it back in order to hide it in a better place he falls in and drowns. In this production he had thrown the tin can into a huge hopper full of similar tins. He falls into this and dies among the rubbish. In the final scene, his young son is told of the death of his mother and father but it doesn’t really sink in. He sings a childish song and opens a tin of baked beans. Like father, like son.
The stark industrialised scenery and drably austere clothing serve to reinforce the steady dehumanisation of Wozzeck and accentuate his descent into madness. The subtext is about the exploitation of the poor and disadvantaged; the message is that those to whom evil is done, do evil in return. Wozzeck’s actions are not condoned, but we know from the start that he’s a man in trouble and if only someone had helped him rather than everyone tormenting him, things might have turned out for the better. Shades of Peter Grimes.
Peter Hoare was a creepily comical Captain and Cliver Bailey an appropriately ghoulish Doctor. Marie was sung beautifully by Wioletta Chodowicz. But even these were somewhat eclipsed by Christopher Purves’ wonderful and deeply moving performance as the tortured Wozzeck. His singing and acting raised the level of this to truly world-class. One of the best I’ve ever seen.
The real star of the show for me, though, was Berg’s amazing music, which managed to be both sumptious and edgy at the same time. This is an atonal piece, and I know some people are pretty much allergic to music that doesn’t rest on a tonal framework. But the orchestral colours Berg achieves have a remarkable effect in combination with the action on stage and some of the more lyrical passages are intensely beautiful.
Actually, it’s a remarkable opera altogether. For a start it’s exceptionally compact. Three Acts each of five Scenes but the overall running time is about 90 minutes (with no interval). The music for each act is constructed like a concert work. The three Acts are marked Five Character Pieces, Symphony in Five Movements and Six Inventions (five of the latter accompany the scenes, the sixth is an orchestral interlude before the final scene). There are leitmotifs, unusual vocal techniques such as Sprechgesang and Sprechstimme, innovative rhythmic explorations with strange uses of percussion, and so on. Berg packs so much into this work that it is definitely one to listen to over and over again.
I and the rest of the audience responded very enthusiastically both to the performers on stage and to the Orchestra of WNO who did full justice to a 20th Century masterpiece. Bravo!
