Hayes Music blog

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.

“Strange Fruit” is a song originally recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, based on a poem by Abel Meeropol. The song was a protest song about American racism and in particular, the lynching of black Americans. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the southern United States at the turn of the century and the song’s lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a tree’s fruit with lynching victims. You can read more about the background to the song’s lyrics here.

The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Nina Simone (whose version was sampled in Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves”), UB40, Jeff Buckley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Wyatt, and Dee Dee Bridgewater.  On the 31st December 1999, Time magazine named “Strange Fruit” as the “Best Song of the Century”.

Eleanora Fagan (1915 – 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz singer who had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. 

Despite being written in the 1930s, the message of the lyrics is sadly still relevant today.

“Gabriel’s Oboe” is the main theme for the 1986 film The Mission. The theme was composed by Ennio Morricone.

Ennio Morricone (born 1928) is an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player, writing in a wide range of musical styles. He has sold over 70 million records worldwide.

Today’s extract is one of Morricone’s best-known compositions and his score for the film, The Mission is considered by many to be one of the greatest film scores of all time. The oboe’s main theme heard in today’s extract has been described as “unforgettable” and a “celebrated oboe melody”.

The oboe is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. The bassoons that you heard playing the ticking rhythm in yesterday’s post are also double reed instruments. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed at a sufficient air pressure, causing it to vibrate with the air column. A double reed features two pieces of cane vibrating against each other. A musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist.

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809) was an Austrian composer from the Classical period of music:

Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 in the key of D major is the ninth of his twelve London symphonies. It is popularly known as The Clock because of the “ticking” rhythm throughout the second movement which you can hear in today’s extract.

Compared to the Baroque period (see yesterday’s daily listening piece), orchestras in the Classical period were a little larger. The key features of music had changed too. Music from the Classical period tended to be mainly homophonic in texture. The phrasing was more balanced with question and answer phrases. Melodies were often clear and simple, and the dynamic ranges of the orchestra increased, with crescendos (becoming louder) and diminuendos (becoming softer) appearing.

Listen out for:

• The use of dynamic changes and a change to the minor key. At this point the brass and percussion sections play for the first time. When all instruments play together like this, it is called the tutti section
• The regular beat – this movement has two beats to a bar
• Constant tempo (speed)
• The bassoons providing the ‘ticking’ rhythm and playing in a staccato style (short, detached notes)