Category Archives: Music

Music

Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 21, Elvira Madigan (1785)

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In the course of lunch recent­ly, my good friend and sub­scriber to this blog, Jason, sug­gest­ed that I do a piece on one of his favourite pieces of music, Mozart’s Piano Con­cer­to no. 21, the “Elvi­ra Madi­gan” con­cer­to. “You’ll know it” he said, when I con­ced­ed that I couldn’t bring it to mind from its name. Upon lis­ten­ing to it lat­er, I nodded…of course, yes, I know this alright, and yes, it cer­tain­ly does qual­i­fy for an “occa­sion­al glimpse”!

The con­cer­to is in three move­ments, but it is the sec­ond move­ment, the Andante in F major, that is the well-known part we’ll high­light here. Mozart wrote the con­cer­to in 1785, in the mid­dle of a pro­lif­ic cre­ative burst in Vien­na in which he wrote no few­er than eleven mas­ter­pieces in a 24-month peri­od. It was writ­ten for one of his so-called “sub­scrip­tion con­certs”; he would hire a venue, engage some musi­cians, take all the pro­ceeds from the con­cert and hope­ful­ly make a prof­it.

I was intrigued to learn how the con­cer­to came by its nick­name, “Elvi­ra Madi­gan”. What a sto­ry it turned out to be! It is a rel­a­tive­ly recent nick­name, as it is named after the 1967 film Elvi­ra Madi­gan made by Swedish direc­tor Bo Wider­berg in which the andante was promi­nent­ly fea­tured. The film is based on the true and trag­ic love sto­ry of Dan­ish tightrope walk­er, Elvi­ra Madi­gan (the stage name of one Hed­wig Jensen) and Swedish noble­man and cav­al­ry offi­cer, Lieu­tenant Six­ten Sparre of the Scan­ian Dra­goon Reg­i­ment.

While per­form­ing in Swe­den with her step­fa­ther’s cir­cus in 1887, Elvi­ra Madi­gan met Six­ten Sparre and the two fell in love. How­ev­er, since he was a mar­ried man and from a dif­fer­ent, high­er social class, their love was doomed. After two years of exchang­ing love let­ters, they abscond­ed and holed up in a hotel in Svend­borg in Den­mark for a month. From there, 21-year old Elvi­ra and 34-year old Six­ten took the fer­ry to the near­by island of Tåsinge and stayed at a lit­tle pen­sion in the fish­ing vil­lage of Troense. When Sixten’s fam­i­ly with­held finan­cial help, the couple’s last hopes fad­ed. They went out to the for­est, had a last meal…and then com­mit­ted sui­cide with Six­ten’s ser­vice revolver.

They are buried togeth­er on Tåsinge and to this day their graves are still vis­it­ed by tourists and roman­tics from all over the world. Mozart’s emo­tion­al and dream­like melody fits their trag­ic sto­ry per­fect­ly. Take a qui­et time to expe­ri­ence the music. If you remain unmoved, you may want to just check your pulse…

 

Elvi­ra and Six­ten
Music

Elvis Presley appears on the Milton Berle Show (1956)

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The cul­tur­al impact of Elvis Pres­ley is hard to over­state; when he explod­ed on the scene, the whole phe­nom­e­non of youth enter­tain­ment explod­ed with him. John Lennon said: “before Elvis, there was noth­ing”. Now, whilst this might be an over-egged point, giv­en that even in the ‘40s Frank Sina­tra was inspir­ing devo­tion from teenage “Bob­by sox­ers”, nonethe­less there’s no doubt­ing the cul­tur­al par­a­digm shift that Elvis launched. His records, his look, his moves, his duck­tail quiff, his clothing…these all became embod­i­ments of the new rock ‘n’ roll style, and, with eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty putting more mon­ey into Amer­i­can teenagers’ pock­ets, it spread like wild­fire.

This sen­sa­tion did­n’t occur overnight, how­ev­er. By the end of 1955, Elvis had already record­ed two dozen sin­gles, but these were only hits on the Coun­try and West­ern charts, not the main Bill­board charts. That changed with his debut sin­gle for his new label, RCA Vic­tor – Heart­break Hotel. This time, Elvis did shoot to the top of the pop charts and stayed there for sev­en weeks, turn­ing him into the dar­ling of radio and record stores up and down the coun­try. It was, how­ev­er, tele­vi­sion that tru­ly made him the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and if any one appear­ance might be called his coro­na­tion, it was this appear­ance on the Mil­ton Berle Show on 5th June 1956, when he set his gui­tar aside and put his whole being into a scorch­ing and scan­dalous per­for­mance of Hound Dog.

Pre­vi­ous tele­vi­sion appear­ances had fea­tured Elvis either in close-up, singing a slow bal­lad, or of his full body but with his move­ments some­what restrict­ed by the acoustic gui­tar he was play­ing. But here, for the first time, the 21-year-old Elvis Pres­ley was seen from head to toe, gyrat­ing his soon-to-be-famous (or infa­mous) pelvis.

You can bet that the reac­tion to Elvis’ per­for­mance in the main­stream media was almost uni­form­ly neg­a­tive. The New York Dai­ly News described Presley’s per­for­mance as marked by “the kind of ani­mal­ism that should be con­fined to dives and bor­del­los”. The Jour­nal-Amer­i­can said that Elvis “can’t sing a lick and makes up for vocal short­com­ings with the weird­est sug­ges­tive ani­ma­tion short of an aborigine’s mat­ing dance”. The Catholic week­ly peri­od­i­cal, Amer­i­ca, got right to the point, mean­while, with its head­line: “Beware of Elvis Pres­ley”.

The com­plaints and con­cerns of these reac­tionar­ies, how­ev­er, was pret­ty much drowned out by the screams of young girls, and by the end of 1956, when the Wall Street Jour­nal was already com­ment­ing that “Elvis Pres­ley is today a busi­ness”, they had to accept that the times had changed.

Elvis on the Mil­ton Berle Show (1956)
Music

Luciano Pavarotti sings Nessun Dorma (1994)

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To opera buffs, Nes­sun Dor­ma has always been one of the great arias, but my, how the song’s pro­file was raised by its use as the theme song to the 1990 World Cup. That new audi­ence, num­ber­ing in the scores of mil­lions, asso­ci­at­ed the piece inex­tri­ca­bly with the one voice, that of Ital­ian tenor, Luciano Pavarot­ti. Many artists have record­ed their own ver­sions of the song – before and since — but it’s Pavarot­ti who is gen­er­al­ly cred­it­ed with per­form­ing the ulti­mate ver­sion of this song. The per­for­mance I embed below, from a show in Paris in 1994, shows exact­ly why it’s a jus­ti­fied claim. Pavarot­ti deliv­ers an emo­tion­al­ly charged and haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful piece of musi­cal the­atre. Check out the emo­tion on his face at around the 2.40 to 2.50 mark.

Inci­den­tal­ly, for me, Nes­sun Dor­ma does not ben­e­fit from an Eng­lish trans­la­tion or an under­stand­ing of the song’s con­tex­tu­al mean­ing in Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Turan­dot (though it con­cerns a prince, Calaf, and his attempts to win the hand of Princess Turan­dot), so I pre­fer to pre­serve its enig­mat­ic majesty by ignor­ing its mean­ing and just let­ting it be. It’s tru­ly pow­er­ful on its own.

Back in 2009, a few days after my mum’s funer­al, my fam­i­ly and I, after a vis­it up to Blyth and on our way back, called into Durham Cathe­dral, sig­nif­i­cant for my mum’s stone­ma­son dad hav­ing worked on this fine build­ing. It turned out that it hap­pened to be the day before Bob­by Robson’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice, and they were rehears­ing for it as we arrived. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Nes­sun Dor­ma had been cho­sen to be a part of the memo­r­i­al ser­vice (per­formed I believe, by vocal trio, Tenors Unlim­it­ed). Thus, in one of the world’s great cathe­drals, and still raw from my bereave­ment, I heard the resound­ing strains of Nes­sun Dor­ma. An unfor­get­table moment.

Nes­sun dor­ma! Nes­sun dor­ma!
Tu pure, oh Principes­sa
Nel­la tua fred­da stan­za
Guar­di le stelle che tre­mano
D’amore e di sper­an­za

Ma il mio mis­tero è chiu­so in me
Il nome mio nes­sun saprà
No, no, sul­la tua boc­ca lo dirò
Quan­do la luce splen­derà
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
Il silen­zio che ti fa mia

(ll nome suo nes­sun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir)

Dilegua, oh notte!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
All’al­ba vin­cerò!
Vin­cerà!
Vin­cerò!

Luciano Pavarot­ti 2000
Dance, Music

Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan (1886)

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Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and raised by his wid­owed moth­er and his great-aunt, who intro­duced the young Camille to the piano and gave him his first lessons. The boy was a real prodi­gy, demon­strat­ing per­fect pitch at the age of two and giv­ing his first pub­lic con­cert at five. Over the course of his long life Saint-Saëns was incred­i­bly pro­lif­ic: after writ­ing his first sym­pho­ny at 16 he went on to write four more, along with five piano con­cer­tos, three vio­lin con­cer­tos, two cel­lo con­cer­tos and some 20 con­cer­tante works.

Nor were his tal­ents lim­it­ed to music. He was pro­found­ly knowl­edge­able about geol­o­gy, botany, lep­i­dopterol­o­gy, and maths, and his celebri­ty allowed him to enjoy dis­cus­sions with Europe’s finest sci­en­tists.

Of all Saint-Saëns’ aston­ish­ing out­put, though, the most famous is undoubt­ed­ly The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, com­posed in 1886. He hadn’t con­sid­ered it a seri­ous piece at all and in fact wor­ried that it might dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion. He needn’t have wor­ried. The 13th and penul­ti­mate move­ment of The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, The Swan (Le Cygne), became acclaimed world­wide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when it was chore­o­graphed for leg­endary bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, who per­formed it about 4,000 times.

The leg­end of the “swan song” grew from the pop­u­lar belief among the ancient Greeks that the mute swan is silent until its final moments of life, at which point it sings the most beau­ti­ful of all bird­songs. Saint-Saëns cap­tures this idea in the music. Beau­ti­ful.

 

Music

Andrea Bocelli sings Con Te Partirò at Sanremo Music Festival (1995)

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Most peo­ple are famil­iar with the 1996 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Andrea Bocel­li and Sarah Bright­man, Time to Say Good­bye, since it was a world­wide smash, sell­ing over 12 mil­lion copies and mak­ing it one of the best-sell­ing sin­gles of all time. How­ev­er, it was the year before, in 1995, that Andrea Bocel­li first per­formed this sump­tu­ous neo-clas­si­cal song in its orig­i­nal Ital­ian form, as a solo piece: Con Te Par­tirò.

The song was writ­ten spe­cial­ly for Bocel­li by Francesco Sar­tori and Lucio Quar­an­tot­to, and appeared on his sec­ond album. Bocel­li had already had his big break a few years ear­li­er in 1992 when Luciano Pavarot­ti heard a demo tape of Bocel­li singing Mis­erere, a song intend­ed for Pavarot­ti (and co-writ­ten by U2’s Bono of all peo­ple). Pavarot­ti was impressed and in the end, he and Bocel­li record­ed it togeth­er. That song became a world­wide hit and cat­a­pult­ed Bocel­li into the lime­light. At Italy’s San­re­mo Music Fes­ti­val in 1994 he won hon­ours in the new­com­ers’ cat­e­go­ry, and suc­cess was cement­ed.

In the fol­low­ing year, Bocel­li appeared at San­re­mo again per­form­ing his sig­na­ture piece, Con Te Par­tirò. His hon­eyed voice and dis­tinc­tive tim­bre, togeth­er with the beau­ti­ful melody and rich orches­tra­tion, pro­duced a mas­ter­piece of emo­tion­al strength.

Andrea Bocel­li

 

Music

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl play Fairytale of New York (1987)

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Fairy­tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty Mac­Coll is an Irish folk-style bal­lad and Christ­mas song, writ­ten by Jem Fin­er and Shane Mac­Gowan. It was released in Novem­ber 1987 after two years in the mak­ing and – although it nev­er quite made the num­ber one slot in the UK Sin­gles Chart (it was kept off it by the Pet Shop Boys’ Always on my Mind) – has proved endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar, con­sis­tent­ly top­ping polls of the “nation’s all-time favourite” Christ­mas songs.

The open­ing lines make it evi­dent that this is no typ­i­cal Christ­mas song: it’s Christ­mas Eve in a New York City drunk tank, with an Irish immi­grant in ine­bri­at­ed rever­ie about the song’s female char­ac­ter, and their hopes and dreams, des­tined to be crushed by alco­hol, drugs and cir­cum­stance. No bells jin­gling and chil­dren play­ing here.

The famous call-and-response duel between Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty MaColl is doubt­less the ele­ment that stamps its mark on the listener’s con­scious­ness, with its amus­ing tirade of abuse in words only just on the right side of the radio cen­sor (in fact, Radio 1 did ban the words “slut” and “fag­got” on 18th Decem­ber 2007, only to reverse the ban lat­er in the same day due to crit­i­cism from lis­ten­ers, the band, and Kirsty MacColl’s moth­er!). I might add, inci­den­tal­ly, that “fag­got” is Irish slang for a lazy, no-good per­son, so need not be con­fused with the pejo­ra­tive word for “gay”.

The melo­di­ous voice of Mac­Coll fits in per­fect­ly with MacGowan’s rough drawl, though the involve­ment of Mac­Coll only came about due to a fall­out between the band and the orig­i­nal choice for the female voice, bass play­er Cait O’Riordan. When O’Riordan left the band in Octo­ber 1986, pro­duc­er Steve Lily­white sug­gest­ed let­ting his wife (Mac­Coll) lay down a new guide vocal for the song, sim­ply with a view to help­ing future audi­tions. When they heard it, the band of course loved it and realised that this was the voice for the song. As Mac­Gowan was quot­ed lat­er: “Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it”.

Backed by the con­sum­mate musi­cian­ship of the Pogues, the song’s vocals and lyri­cism add up to a very round­ed, mean­ing­ful and bit­ter­sweet piece of music that has unar­guably cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of a nation. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

It was Christ­mas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see anoth­er one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Moun­tain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eigh­teen to one
I’ve got a feel­ing
This year’s for me and you
So hap­py Christ­mas
I love you baby
I can see a bet­ter time
When all our dreams come true

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christ­mas Eve
You promised me
Broad­way was wait­ing for me

You were hand­some
You were pret­ty
Queen of New York City
When the band fin­ished play­ing
They howled out for more
Sina­tra was swing­ing,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a cor­ner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scum­bag, you mag­got
You cheap lousy fag­got
Hap­py Christ­mas your arse
I pray God it’s our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

I could have been some­one
Well so could any­one
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells are ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

Kirsty Mac­Coll and Shane Mac­Gowan
Music

Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)

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Some music is made for play­ing whilst cruis­ing down the high­way or get­ting ready to go out on the town. And some music is made for play­ing whilst wear­ing slip­pers, sip­ping cof­fee and glanc­ing at the Sun­day papers. Spiegel im Spiegel is most def­i­nite­ly in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry.

Writ­ten by Arvo Pärt in 1978, in his native Esto­nia, Spiegel im Spiegel is a min­i­mal­ist piece in the so-called tintinnab­u­lar style of com­po­si­tion (a term coined by Pärt him­self, from the Latin tintinnab­u­lum, “bell”), where­in a melod­ic voice oper­at­ing over dia­ton­ic scales, and a tintinnab­u­lar voice, oper­at­ing with­in a tri­ad on the ton­ic, accom­pa­ny each oth­er. The effect is calm­ing and med­i­ta­tive.

The piece was writ­ten for a sin­gle piano and vio­lin, and here is a beau­ti­ful ver­sion fea­tur­ing Nico­la Benedet­ti on vio­lin and Alex­ei Grynyuk on piano. The piano plays ris­ing crotch­et tri­ads and the vio­lin plays slow, sus­tained notes, alter­nate­ly ris­ing and falling, and of increas­ing length.

Inci­den­tal­ly, Spiegel im Spiegel in Ger­man lit­er­al­ly means “mir­ror in the mir­ror”, rep­re­sent­ing, I sup­pose, the idea of an infin­i­ty of images reflect­ed by par­al­lel plane mir­rors: the ton­ic tri­ads are end­less­ly repeat­ed with small vari­a­tions, as if reflect­ed back and forth. In any event, if, like me, you cher­ish an occa­sion­al calm and still envi­ron­ment in a hec­tic world, this is for you. I rec­om­mend just putting the piece on at a qui­et time and, rather than con­cen­trat­ing on it, sim­ply let it fill the room with its serene qual­i­ty whilst you do some­thing else. You will be spir­i­tu­al­ly refreshed with­out even real­is­ing it!

 

Arvo Part
Music

Charles Trenet sings La Mer (1946)

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I first prop­er­ly heard this clas­sic exam­ple of chan­son française at the funer­al of a friend’s dad, who had evi­dent­ly loved the song and elect­ed to mark his cross­ing with it: La Mer by French singer, Charles Trenet. The song pos­i­tive­ly drips with gal­lic non­cha­lance and romance. Leg­end has it that Trenet wrote a first ver­sion of the song when he was just 16, but La Mer as we know it was born in 1943, dur­ing a train trip in the South of France. Trenet, along with singer Roland Ger­beau and pianist Léo Chau­li­ac, was trav­el­ling from Mont­pel­li­er to Per­pig­nan, along the beau­ti­ful French coast. Inspired by the scenery, Trenet wrote La Mer before the jour­ney was over, and he and Chau­li­ac per­formed the song that very evening.

At first, Trenet didn’t like the final ver­sion of La Mer, for some rea­son, so in fact it was Roland Ger­beau who first record­ed it, in 1945. But a year lat­er, Trenet’s record com­pa­ny boss con­vinced Trenet to have a go at the song as well. The music was rearranged and the song began its jour­ney prop­er to chan­son clas­sic, becom­ing a huge suc­cess and a jazz stan­dard.

By the time of Trenet’s death in 2001, over 70 mil­lion copies of La Mer had been sold and 4000 dif­fer­ent ver­sions record­ed. The song has been trans­lat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly into mul­ti­ple lan­guages (hence Beyond the Sea, Il Mare, De Zee, Das Meer etc), and cov­ered by a mul­ti­tude of artists, of whom I think Rod Stew­art does a par­tic­u­lar­ly good ver­sion. But it is Trenet’s charm­ing­ly pol­ished orig­i­nal in the French that irre­sistibly cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion.

La mer
Qu’on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d’ar­gent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie

La mer
Au ciel d’été con­fond
Ses blancs mou­tons
Avec les anges si purs
La mer bergère d’azur
Infinie

Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouil­lés
Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouil­lées

La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d’une chan­son d’amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie

Charles Trenet
Music

The Beatles play I Want To Hold Your Hand (1964)

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Of course the Bea­t­les had to make an appear­ance in this blog. Unde­ni­ably the most influ­en­tial bands of the rock era, they took the musi­cal world by storm, hav­ing grad­u­al­ly built their rep­u­ta­tion over three years from their for­ma­tion in 1960. They hold a rock-sol­id place in the hearts of most peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion and of many peo­ple since. But which song to choose from a canon so replete with the sub­lime?

I have gone with a song so utter­ly exem­plary of the Bea­t­les sound and feel, from their ear­ly hey­day, and pos­i­tive­ly drip­ping with their youth­ful exu­ber­ance and melod­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty. Writ­ten by Lennon and McCart­ney in the base­ment of Jane Ash­er’s par­ents’ house in Wim­pole Street, Lon­don; record­ed at Abbey Road’s stu­dio two; and released in the UK on 29th Novem­ber 1963, it’s I Want To Hold Your Hand. It sold more than a mil­lion copies on advanced orders alone, on the back of the suc­cess of She Loves You, and became the group’s first US num­ber one, kick-start­ing the British Inva­sion of Amer­i­ca.

Of all the tele­vised ver­sions of the song (notably on the Ed Sul­li­van Show, with the famous intro­duc­tion “Here they are…the Bea­t­les!”), I love the ver­sion from the More­cambe and Wise Show in 1964. Played live, it’s absolute­ly bril­liant. Lennon’s and McCart­ney’s voic­es are con­stant­ly switch­ing between uni­son and har­mo­ny, and there is a won­der­ful inter­play between Lennon’s riffs and George Harrison’s sub­tle gui­tar fills. And through­out, of course, they just look so damn good togeth­er; it’s a delight to watch.

The Bea­t­les 1964
Dance, Music

Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet (1935)

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Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights, also known as The Mon­tagues and Capulets, comes from his bal­let, Romeo and Juli­et. It’s an emo­tion­al­ly charged piece of music, with strong horns and wood­winds lay­er­ing over a pow­er­ful melod­ic line played by the strings. Prokofiev’s dark and brood­ing pas­sages send chills up the spine and cre­ate a won­der­ful­ly dark atmos­phere, pre­sum­ably to express the ten­sion between the rival fam­i­lies of the Mon­tagues and Capulets. No won­der it’s used in film and tele­vi­sion so often; not least, of course, in the BBC’s The Appren­tice.

Like the orig­i­nal play Romeo and Juli­et, the sto­ry of Sergei Prokofiev and his famous bal­let with the same title is filled with betray­al, strug­gle and untime­ly death. After the Rev­o­lu­tion, Prokofiev had left Rus­sia with the offi­cial bless­ing of the author­i­ties, and resided in the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Paris, respec­tive­ly, mak­ing his liv­ing as a com­pos­er, pianist and con­duc­tor. He was lured back to the Sovi­et Union in 1936 with promis­es of lucra­tive com­mis­sions, but the bureau­crat who com­mis­sioned Romeo and Juli­et was exe­cut­ed, as was the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee flunky who approved the bal­let’s orig­i­nal hap­py end­ing (Prokofiev had orig­i­nal­ly changed Shake­speare’s trag­ic end­ing but this evi­dent­ly did not go down well with the Russ­ian author­i­ties!). The author­i­ties then exiled Prokofiev’s first wife to the Gulag, and in 1938 con­fis­cat­ed Prokofiev’s pass­port, deter­min­ing that he need­ed “ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ing” from too much West­ern influ­ence.

Despite all this inter­fer­ence, how­ev­er, what comes down to us today is an icon­ic piece of musi­cal dra­ma, with Dance of the Knights being the stand­out piece.

Sergei Prokofiev