Author: mrsfostermusic

Clara Schumann (1819 – 1896) was a German pianist, composer and piano teacher from the Romantic period of music.

Although she was not widely recognised as a composer for many years after her death, she made a lasting impression. She was one of the first pianists to perform from memory, making it the standard for concerts ever since. She also promoted the works of her husband, Robert Schumann, tirelessly throughout her life.

A concerto is a piece for a solo instrumentalist and orchestra. This concerto was written for piano solo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, timpani, violins, violas, cellos, and basses. This orchestration was typical of early Romantic music. It was first performed in 1835 in Leipzig, Germany.

Isata Kanneh-Mason, the soloist in today’s extract said this about Clara:

“The more I read about Clara, the more inspiring she was to me. I like to think of her as the Beyoncé of her day: a successful artist, capable of balancing motherhood with touring, married to a fellow musician and a truly independent woman! What I found most astonishing was her strength … Clara’s music is for everyone and I hope it continues to be played by men and woman alike. She is a towering figure in classical music history and deserves to be heard more”.

Learn more about Clara’s extraordinary life here.

We first heard the music of Sibelius on the blog back in April. You can remind yourself of it here. Today’s extract comes from a longer piece called Karelia Music which was written for a student group at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki, Finland, and premiered in 1893. Sibelius was passionate about the importance of the Karelia region of Finland as it was said to be the home of the oldest and most respected aspects of Finnish culture.

The Karelia Suite is one of his most popular works, and has its roots in folk music. Today’s extract is from the Intermezzo movement. It has been described as ‘a jaunty movement intended to depict the procession of Karelian workers paying taxes to Duke Narimont of Lithuania’. Listen out for the march-like theme which reflects this.

Elena Kats-Chernin (born 1957) is a Soviet-born Australian pianist and composer. She was born in Tashkent (now the capital of independent Uzbekistan, but then part of the Soviet Union) and migrated to Australia in 1975.

She has written operas, ballets, vocal music, orchestral scores and film scores. Today’s piece is her musical meditation on the unsent love letters of the avant-garde French composer Erik Satie. When Erik Satie died, friends found dozens of unsent love letters in his Paris apartment.

You may have already heard Kats-Chernin’s music on TV and at the cinema with the long-running Lloyds TSB advertising campaign ‘For the journey…’ which uses the Eliza Aria from her ballet Wild Swans.

As the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent, there is much more to African music than just African drumming. Gnawa, also known as Ethno-Pop or Gnawi Blues, comes from the Sahara Desert and is one example from Africa’s diverse musical styles. Gnawa is based around a north African repertoire of ancient African spiritual religious songs and rhythms. Its well-preserved heritage combines ritual poetry with traditional music and dance. Gnawa is a music style that spread from West Africa, the Sudan, and the Southern Sahara through centuries of migration until it reached Morocco.

Hassan Hakmoun  (born 1963) is a New York City-based Moroccan musician. He specialises in the Gnawa style. Hassan’s music is rooted in his playing of the sintir. The sintir is a three stringed skin-covered bass plucked lute used by the Gnawa people. It is approximately the size of a guitar, with a body carved from a log and covered on the playing side with camel skin. The neck is a simple stick with one short and two long goat strings that produce a percussive sound similar to a double bass.

This is our second visit this week to Mozart’s comic opera, The Marriage of Figaro. The aria “Non so più cosa son” (I don’t know anymore what I am) is sung by Cherubino, Count Almaviva’s young male page. In this aria, Cherubino confesses his blossoming interest in all things feminine and particularly for his “beautiful godmother” – the Countess. Traditionally, the role of Cherubino is played by a female singer dressed as a man. In opera this is known as a ‘trouser role‘ which is a theatrical term used to denote a role which is portrayed by a performer of the opposite sex.

Cherubino is perhaps the best known trouser (travesti) role in opera, and is a prominent role in Mozart‘s The Marriage of Figaro. Although titled as ‘Count Almaviva’s page’, in his first appearance, Cherubino bursts into the room, enlisting the Countess’s maid Susanna to help him to be reinstated to the role (the Count had discovered him with the gardener’s daughter and dismissed him). Despite being sent to Seville in the Count’s army regiment, Cherubino remains, leading to farcical situations hiding from Count Almaviva. The page has a reputation for falling in love with every woman he comes across (including the Countess, leading to more outrage from the Count), leading to increasingly ridiculous situations – dressing as Susanna in an attempt to trick the Count (a case of a woman portraying a man portraying a woman).

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 –1912) was an English composer and conductor of mixed race; his mother was an English woman and his father was a physician descended from the Sierra Leone Creole people, an ethnic group in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African American, West Indian, and Liberated African slaves As well as being a composer Coleridge-Taylor was also a political activist who fought against racial prejudice with his compositions.

Conscious of his African descent, Coleridge-Taylor’s classical compositions were heavily influenced by traditional African music and this made him one of the most progressive writers of his time. He also became well-known for his use of poetry. His greatest success was undoubtedly his vocal composition Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which was widely performed by choral groups in England during his lifetime and in the decades after his death.

“Deep River” is an anonymous spiritual of African-American origin. Spirituals are a genre of songs originating in the United States and created by African Americans. He arranged Deep River for solo piano in 1904.

The Chineke! Foundation was created in 2015 to provide career opportunities to established and up-and-coming Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) classical musicians in the UK and Europe. Chineke!’s motto is: ‘Championing change and celebrating diversity in classical music’. The organisation aims to be a catalyst for change, realising existing diversity targets within the industry by increasing the representation of BME musicians in British and European orchestras.

Following on from last Thursday’s blog post, today we have another of Morricone’s best-known compositions. “Man with a Harmonica” is from the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West, a 1968 western film of the same name that was released in 1972. The film score sold about 10 million copies worldwide.

The soundtrack features leitmotifs that relate to each of the main characters of the movie as well as to the spirit of the American West. Film music composers often use leitmotifs to help build a sense of continuity. A leitmotif is a recurring musical idea (e.g. a melody, chord sequence, rhythm) which is associated with a particular idea, character or place. The composer often develops the leitmotifs during the film to match the action and mood of a scene. They could be altered by:

• changing the rhythm or pitch
• changing the instrumentation or accompaniment
• adding new material
• developing fragments of the idea

The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. It is played by using the lips and tongue to direct air into or out of one (or more) holes along a mouthpiece.

Listen out for the piece opening with a harmonica solo, followed by a menancing leitmotif played on electric guitar. A broken chord melodic ostinato accompanies, played by the horns and then violins.

“Sull’aria… che soave zeffiretto” (On the breeze…What a gentle little Zephyr) is a short duet, from act 3 of the opera The Marriage of Figaro. A duet is a musical composition for two performers in which the performers have equal importance to the piece. The Marriage of Figaro is a comic opera composed in 1786 by Mozart, with an Italian libretto (text) written by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

The opera tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. In today’s extract, Countess Almaviva is dictating to Susanna an invitation addressed to the countess’ husband in a plot to expose his infidelity.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) is widely recognised as one of the greatest composers in the history of classical music. He was a child prodigy, playing keyboard and violin and composing from the age of five. He went on to compose more than 600 works during his short lifetime.

Mozart’s most popular compositions have often been used in films. One that we have already heard is the Clarinet Concerto in A Major which has featured in several films including ‘The King’s Speech’ and ‘Out of Africa’. Today’s extract from The Marriage of Figaro was used in a famous scene in the 1994 drama film, The Shawshank Redemption (age rating 15).

Johannes Brahms’s “Wiegenlied” (“Lullaby” or “Cradle Song“), Opus 49, No. 4, is a song originally written for voice and piano which was first published in 1868 during the Romantic period of music.

Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) was a German composer, pianist and conductor. “Wiegenlied” became one of the his most popular and most recognisable songs.

“Africa” is a song recorded by the American rock band Toto and released in 1982. The song was popular upon its release, hitting number one in the American charts, and it has continued to be a soft-rock classic ever since. It was one of the most streamed songs in 2017 and has over 500 million views on YouTube.

The initial idea and lyrics for the song came from band member David Paich. He was trying out his new keyboard and found the brassy sound that became the opening riff. A riff is a short, repeated melodic pattern, often forming the background to a solo or vocal line.

In recent years, the song has grown in popularity thanks to its use in various TV shows, movies, video games, adverts, memes and YouTube covers. It has popped up in everything from Scrubs, South Park, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Family Guy and Stranger Things.

To listen to a brilliant podcast which talks through exactly how this song is put together, go to Strong Songs.

Listen to this unique arrangement of the song by the Angel City Chorale, a choir based in Los Angeles, USA.