LET'S HAVE SOME MUSIC!

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.” - Ray Charles
 
A bit of a heads for tomorrow! June 21 has been designated as World Music Day, an occasion when the whole world can celebrate the wondrous gift of music. The commemorative day originated in France when, in 1976, American musician Joel Cohen, proposed an all-night music celebration to mark the beginning of the summer solstice and since then, it has become a worldwide phenomenon with over 32 countries worldwide joining in with their own celebrations regardless of the season.
 
It is a day of free music, where musicians - local and amateur - are allowed and encouraged to perform their music in public spaces without any restriction. It is an important opportunity to actively celebrate the spirit of music in all its forms.
 
Music is the art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. Something like the simple folk song or the highly complex electronic composition belong to the same activity, and can be classified as music. Both are humanly engineered; both are conceptual and auditory, and these factors have been present in music of all styles and in all periods of history, Eastern and Western.
 
Music in one form or another, is part of every human society and one could argue that it is satisfies an innate human need. Modern music is heard in a bewildering array of styles, many of them contemporary, others engendered in past eras. Music is a protean art, lending itself easily to alliances with words, as in song, and with physical movement, as in dance. Throughout history, music has been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion.
 
Popular culture has consistently exploited the inherent possibilities of music, most conspicuously today by means of radio, film, television, and the musical theatre. The implications of the uses of music in psychotherapy, geriatrics, and advertising testify to a faith in its power to affect human behaviour. Publications and recordings have effectively internationalised music in its most significant, as well as its most trivial, manifestations. Beyond all this, the teaching of music in primary and secondary schools has now attained virtually worldwide acceptance.
 
Celebrate World Music Day tomorrow by listening to, playing, performing or composing some music! Here is Franz Schubert’s (1797-1828) Unfinished Symphony in B minor, No.8, D.759, performed by the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (conductor) in 1967

SCHUBERT FOR SATURDAY

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

For Music Saturday a really beautiful chamber music piece by Schubert. This is his String Quintet in C major D956 op posth. 163, played by the Villa Musica Ensemble. This quintet was composed in the summer of 1828, just two months before Schubert’s death. Its first performance was on 17 November 1850 at the Musikverein in Vienna. It was not published till 1853. The work is considered by some to be one of the greatest compositions in all chamber music. 

The work is the only full-fledged string quintet in Schubert's oeuvre. It consists of four movements:
 
1) Allegro ma non troppo;
2) Adagio;
3) Scherzo. Presto – Trio. Andante sostenuto;
4) Allegretto.
 
It stands out for its somewhat unconventional instrumentation, employing two cellos instead of the customary two violas, the example set by Mozart. Schubert, like Luigi Boccherini before him, replaced the second viola with a second cello for richness in the lower register. However, Schubert’s use of the second cello is very different from Boccherini’s, who uses the additional cello to create an additional viola line.
 
The violinist Joseph Saunders had the second theme of the first movement carved on his tombstone. Arthur Rubinstein’s wish was to have the second movement played at his funeral. For John Reed the work appears to anticipate Schubert’s death mere months after its composition, ending as it does with D-flat followed by C, both in unison and octaves. As Browning’s Abt Vogler put it: “Hark, I have dared and done, for my resting place is found, The C major of this life; so, and now I will try to sleep.”

SATURDAY WITH SCHUBERT

“To love beauty is to see light.” - Victor Hugo
 
A Schubert symphony for Music Saturday. Amongst the classical composers, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is one of my favourites in terms of his tuneful melodies, lovely harmonies and wonderful musicality. Besides his amazing lieder, there is a treasure trove to be discovered in his orchestral works.
 
The fifth of Schubert's nine numbered symphonies was written in 1816 and was performed in October, a month after its composition, at the house of Otto Hatwig, a violinist in the Burgtheater orchestra. The musicians concerned were otherwise amateurs from the group that had been accustomed to meet at the house of Schubert’s father.
 
The music is in the tradition of what Schubert in his diary that year described as the magic sound of Mozart, the immortal. It is scored for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, with strings, while the Unfinished Symphony was to make use of a larger orchestra that included clarinets, trombones, trumpets and drums.
 
The first movement leads us through the charm of its principal melodic material to an excursion into stranger keys, until a recapitulation that opens with the first theme in the key of E fiat, before the original key of the movement is restored. There follows a slow movement that is in that essentially Viennese operatic idiom of which Mozart was the greatest exponent, succeeded by a lively Minuet and Trio in the keys of G minor and G major respectively. The symphony ends with a finale that contains all the dramatic contrasts that the customary form encourages.
 
Here are Les Musiciens du Louvre, conducted by Mark Minkowski playing this bright and beautiful symphony.
Enjoy!
 

A PERIWINKLE FOR SCHUBERT

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” - Robert Frost
 
Today is the anniversary of the birth of:
Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of NSW (1762);
Franz (Peter) Schubert, composer (1797);
Zane Grey, writer (1875);
Irving Langmuir, scientist (1881);
Anna Pavlova, ballerina (1882);
Eddie Cantor (Edward Israel Iskowitz), Broadway entertainer (1892);
Freya Stark, traveller/writer (1893);
Tallulah Bankhead, actress (1903);
Lord (Donald) Soper, Methodist minister/pacifist (1903);
John Henry O’ Hara, writer (1905);
(Elaine) Carol channing, actress (1921);
Mario Lanza (Alfredo Arnold Cocozza), singer (1921);
Norman Mailer, US writer (1923);
Jean Simmons, actress (1929);
Christopher Chataway, athlete (1931);
Philip Glass, US composer (1937);
Suzanne Pleshette, actress (1937);
Beatrix, Dutch queen (1938);
Phil Collins, singer (1951).
 
Catharanthus roseus (Vinca major), the white periwinkle is the birthday flower for today. It symbolises tender recollections and pleasant memories. Astrologically, the plant is ruled by Venus.  The vinca has yielded two important cancer-fighting drugs, vincristine and vinblastine, that are useful in many forms of cancer chemotherapy.
 
St John Bosco (1815-1888) is the patron saint of young boys, apprentices and editors. St John  Bosco was only two years old when his father died. His early life was full of poverty and it was at the age of 16 when he was able to enter the seminary in Turin to become a priest. Early in his career he established a boarding house for 40 neglected boys in Turin, with workshops in tailoring and shoemaking. In 1859 he established the Salesian Order which specialised in education and pastoral work.
 
Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian romantic composer. German lieder reached their greatest expression in his beautiful lyrical songs, especially in the great cycles Die Schöne Müllerin [Fair Maid of the Mill] (1823) and Die Winterreise [The Winter’s Journey] (1827). His symphonies are the final flowering of the classical sonata forms, and the Fifth (1816), Eighth (the Unfinished, 1822), and Ninth (1828) rank with the best orchestral music. His chamber works include the well-loved Quartet in D Minor (Death and the Maiden, 1824) and the Quintet in A Major (The Trout, 1819). Schubert also wrote stage music, choral music, Masses, and much piano music.

Here is Franz Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Falsen”, D965 (The Shepherd On The Rock) with Helen Donath, soprano, Dieter Kloecker, clarinet and Klaus Donath, piano.

SCHUBERT FOR SATURDAY

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” - Epicurus
 
We had a typical Melbourne autumn day today, starting out grey, misty and overcast with a cool bite to the air. However, as the day progressed, the clouds parted and a yellow sun appeared that blossomed into the most wonderful afternoon – mellow, warm, sweet like a ripe fragrant melon. It was a day that lent itself to some gardening efforts and at autumn there many things to tidy up in the garden. The weather helped, of course.

Then a very nice evening celebrating a special anniversary, with a wonderful dinner and then dessert… A contented day, one that makes me grateful for being alive, for all the bounties that I enjoy, for the people around me that I love and love me.

Here is the Adagio of the Grand Quintet in C, opus 163 D956, by Franz Schubert. It is scored for two violins, viola, and two violoncellos. It is played by the Festetics Ensemble, comprising Wieland Kuijken, Istavan Kertesz, Erika Petöfi, Péter Ligeti, Rezsö Pertorini.

SCHUBERT SERENITY

“And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.” - Kahlil Gibran

A quiet, relaxing day today with household shopping in the morning and then some chores at home. A brief lunch, and some relaxation. Out to dinner tonight and thoughts of serenity. Feelings of gratefulness for this ability to enjoy simple pleasures amidst a world where not much can be taken for granted any more. How many people around the world could say they had a day of serenity today? I doubt if it were the majority…

This post is part of the Saturday Sareenity meme.

A beautiful piece by Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) tonight. His Notturno D 897 played by the Rubinstein Trio (A.Wesolowska, A. Kostecki, S.Firlej). This substantial but relatively neglected piece has affinities with the slow movements of both the String Quintet in C major D. 956, and the Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat, D 898. Completed in the Autumn of 1827, it is possibly a rejected slow movement of the Piano Trio No. 1. It has the sublime slowness of the string quintet movement, together with a similar use of pizzicato at various points, and with the same paradoxical effect: the pizzicato decorations of the main tune seem to enhance the underlying tragedy of the music, rather than lightening it. The main thematic idea has a characteristic common to a number of Schubert’s most celebrated melodic ideas, including the second subjects of both the C major string quintet’s first movement and the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No. 8's first movement: that of ‘not going anywhere’, pitch-wise, but seeming to revolve round a single note (the third note of the scale in this case).