There are people who, through some flaw or other in their personality, acquire a bad reputation, a reputation which then proceeds to dog them throughout history to the detriment of several other sterling qualities: one such is poor Anatoly Lyadov. He wasn’t poor, not in the pecuniary sense, anyway. A scion of a well-to-do St.Petersburg […]
No, it’s not procrastination I’m thinking of, it’s Rachmaninoff. Tempo rubato translates as ‘robbed or stolen time’ and is the performance practice of slowing down or speeding up a phrase in music, mostly without any indication from the composer that such tempo alterations are required. For the classically minded it’s known (pejoratively) as ‘pulling the […]
At the age of 76 Fauré composed his final essay in the subtle art of lieder mélodie writing. The work was a cycle of just four poems, entitled L’horizon chimérique (translations here). He chose to set the work of a poet – Jean de La Ville de Mirmont – who, like so many young men of […]
Can you think of a famous late nineteenth/early twentieth century French piano sonata? If you drew a blank, don’t worry, it’s not all that surprising – the list of composers who didn’t write one reads like a Who’s-Who of French music of the fin de siècle: Gounod, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, Fauré, Chausson, Debussy, Satie, Ravel […]
Moonlight. Verlaine’s poetry translated by Fauré & Debussy …Au calme clair de lune triste et beau, Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau, Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres. Paul Verlaine: Clair de lune from Fêtes galantes […In the calm moonbeams, sad and beautiful, Which make […]
Music for children: French composers have provided some of the most famous. There’s Bizet’s Jeux d’enfants, Debussy’s Children’s Corner, Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye and, of course, Fauré’s Dolly Suite. Some were written for children to listen to, and some for – albeit pretty musically gifted – children to play. Judging from the photo above (Fauré […]
If you’ve ever heard or sung in Thomas Morley’s madrigal Now is the month of maying, you may well have wondered –see the last verse – what on earth a ‘barley break’ is. The lyric tells us you play it, so that, I suppose, limits it to either a musical instrument or a game; and, given […]
Sir Toby Belch: What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight? Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Faith, I can cut a caper. (Shakespeare: Twelfth Night) In this painting […]
Stockhausen? Cage?? No, the first(?) composer to employ eight separate sound sources (octophonics) did it somewhere around 1570! In his 40 part motet Spem in alium Thomas Tallis divides the voices into eight choirs of five singers each (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass); his writing – the passing of material from chorus to chorus –would […]
From the Slav Khorovod through to Ring a Ring o’ Roses, the round dance has been part of countless cultures since – it would seem – the famous dawn of civilisation (sorry about my clichés!). For terpsichorially inclined Elizabethans one of the more popular numbers in this line seems to have been called Sellenger’s Round (who or […]
