Hayes Music blog

This song, With Cat Like Tread, is from the comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance, first performed in 1879. The music was composted by Arthur Sullivan and the libretto (the text) was by W. S. Gilbert. Gilbert and Sullivan refers to their theatrical partnership and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which The Pirates of Penzance is one of their best known. Generally, Gilbert and Sullivan plots, while farcical, are satires on Victorian society, and make fun of human foibles. 

A comic opera is a musical play with some spoken dialogue and a light or amusing plot. This story follows Frederic, a pirate’s apprentice, who falls head-over-heels in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley. Frederic is due to be released from his apprenticeship on his 21st birthday, but there’s a snag. Born on 29 February, Frederic discovers that he is technically still a youngster. His contract specifies that he remain apprenticed to the pirates until his “twenty-first birthday”, meaning that he must serve for another 63 years!

In the clip above, the pirates (who are only pretending to be scary) are coming to take revenge on the Major-General for lying to them about being an orphan – he had done this to stop the pirates attacking him and taking all of his daughters as their wives. The police (who are completely incompetent) are lying in wait for them, but are too frightened to come out. 

Here is a photo from another production of The Pirates of Penzance. Do any of you recognise Mabel?

This lovely song is called Malka Moma and is sung here by The Philip Koutev Choir. Malka Moma (translation – A Young Girl) is a Bulgarian song written in folk style. The words were written by Neli Andreeva and the music was written by Neli Andreeva and Georgi Genov. 

Bulgaria’s ancient style of singing is associated with haunting and expressive vocals, interesting harmonies and unexpected rhythms. The singers use a technique where the vocal folds are closed while the throat is open. This results in a rich and powerful sound.

The Bulgarian people have long known that the human voice is much more expressive in song than in conversation. 

Itzhak Perlman (born 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist, conductor, and music teacher. He first fell in love with the violin at the age of three. He battled the polio disease to become a virtuoso of the violin and one of the world’s leading players.

Based on Sholom Aleichem’s stories,  Fiddler on the Roof  is the tale of the small, tradition-steeped town of Anatevka in Russia. The story focuses on the main character, Tevye and his attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon his family and their lives. Fiddler on the Roof became the longest-running musical in American history, a title it maintained for almost ten years.

Klezmer is a style of folk music that draws upon the traditions of Ashkenazi Judaism and Eastern European folk traditions. The music from Fiddler on the Roof combines traditional show tunes with Klezmer scales and melodies.

Klezmer music has featured on two previous blog posts:

https://hayesmusic.blog/2020/04/03/daily-listening-friday-3rd-april/

https://hayesmusic.blog/2020/04/26/daily-listening-sunday-26th-april/

The Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was composed during 1888 placing the piece in the Romantic period of music.

The horn is a brass instrument made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. It is often called the French Horn and is thought by many to be the most beautifully sounding instrument in an orchestra.

The horn’s mellow sound can turn a simple tune into something that both soothes and lifts the spirit. Horns can also be tremendously powerful and when the whole section plays loudly the sound will break through any orchestral texture. Today’s piece contains perhaps the biggest horn solo in orchestral horn repertoire and demonstrates the above description perfectly. The horn solo (see below) is marked ‘dolce con molto express.‘ which is Italian for sweetly with much expression. Listen out for how the soloist interprets this and how he also adds much expression through the use of crescendos and diminuendos.

Bedřich Smetana (1824 – 1884) was a Czech composer who has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music.

Vltava, also known by its English title The Moldau was composed in 1874 during the Romantic period. It is about 13 minutes long, and is in the key of E minor.

In this piece, Smetana uses tone painting to portray the sounds of one of Bohemia’s great rivers, The Vltava. Tone painting is the musical technique of composing music that reflects the literal meaning of a song’s music/lyrics. For example, ascending (rising) scales would accompany music/lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany music/lyrics about death.

In his own words:

The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer’s wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the night’s moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St John’s Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe (or Elbe, in German).

In today’s extract, you will hear Smetana’s most famous tune. Listen out at the start of the extract for the main melody (below) moving in steps:

“If Ye Love Me” was written by the English composer Thomas Tallis in 1565 as a setting of a passage from the Gospel of John. It was composed for an a cappella choir of four voice parts. A cappella refers to vocal performances without instrumental accompaniment.

Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 1585) is considered one of England’s greatest composers. He composed throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, who broke away from Rome and created the Church of England; Edward VI; Mary I, who was a Catholic; and Elizabeth I, who was a Protestant. He therefore had to be adaptable to such turbulent times and skillfully composed Catholic church music in Latin, then Anglican church music in Latin and then in English. Today’s piece was written at a time when it was mandated that church services must be sung in English and must give ‘to each syllable a plain and distinct note‘.

Typically for Anglican compositions of this period, the structure of this piece is written in an ABB form, consisting of two main sections with the second section repeated.

This piece starts with a homophonic texture but soon gives way to imitative counterpoint. Imitation can be found in a lot of sacred choral music from the Renaissance period. Imitation is where one musical part copies another.

The Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings; singer and drummer Karen (born 1950) and musician, record producer, songwriter, and music arranger Richard Carpenter (born 1946). The combination of Richard’s arranging and composing skills, together with Karen’s smooth, expressive contralto vocals lead them to become one of the biggest-selling American musical acts of all time.

A contralto is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type. Karen received much praise and admiration for her 3-octave contralto vocal range, and was listed among the American Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 greatest singers of all time.

“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” is a jazz song written by Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas in the 1960s. Jazz is a style of music which emerged in America around the turn of the 20th century. The music can be characterised by improvisations, syncopations and swing rhythms.

Billy Taylor (1921 – 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was passionate about jazz and spent much of his career as a jazz activist, successfully introducing a much wider audience to the jazz genre. He appeared on hundreds of albums and composed more than 300 songs during his career, which spanned over six decades. Today’s song is his most famous and achieved popularity with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. 

The trio is one of the common choice of line ups by jazz performers. It consists of the:

• piano
• bass
• drums

There are many different recordings of this song, the most famous perhaps being that of Nina Simone’s cover version from her 1967 album Silk & Soul.

Alexander Borodin (1833 – 1887) was a Russian chemist and musical composer from the Romantic era. He wrote this string quartet during 1881. A string quartet is a musical ensemble consisting of four string players – two violin players, a viola player and a cellist. A viola is a string instrument, larger than a violin and with a thicker and darker tone.

Today’s piece is the 3rd movement of the string quartet and is called Notturno (Nocturne). A nocturne is a musical composition that reflects the moods and feelings of night time.

Stevie Wonder (born 1950) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. He is regarded as one of the most successful songwriters and musicians in the history of popular music. He has been a pioneer and influence to musicians of various genres of music including pop, rhythm and blues, soul, funk and rock.

Stevie Wonder began playing instruments at an early age, including piano, harmonica, and drums. Despite being blind from a very young age due to complications with being born prematurely, he has said in interviews that he never thought of being blind as a disadvantage. He was a child prodigy known as Little Stevie Wonder, and was first signed to a record label at the age of 11. He has since sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Stevie Wonder is also known for his work as an activist for political causes.

Things to listen out for:

• The bass guitar and keyboard playing a unison walking bass line from the start of the intro and throughout the song.
• Use of syncopation. Syncopation is a rhythmic device involving a mixture of on and off beats.
• Call and response between Stevie’s vocals and the horn section (saxophones and trumpets).
• Use of a synthesiser, first heard in the intro. The synth line plays a descending then ascending minor scale in the pre-chorus. See if you can hear it.

Find out more about this song on this excellent podcast: (scroll down to Dec 2018)

https://strongsongspodcast.com/website