“The Two of You”: Early Sondheim

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Sunday marks the 96th anniversary of the birth of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021). In 1952, long before musicals such as West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods brought him fame, the 22-year-old Sondheim submitted a song to Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a popular television show involving puppets. Broadcast from Chicago between 1947 and 1957, the show was created for children, but it gained an even larger adult audience. …

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Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel”: Excerpts from a Dark Fairytale Opera

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Completed in 1907, The Golden Cockerel was the last opera of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Based on an 1834 poem by Alexander Pushkin, its fairytale plot unfolds over three acts, bookended by a prologue and epilogue. The story involves the bumbling Tsar Dodon. “Advised by an Astrologer, Dodon uses a magical cockerel (a young male rooster) to warn of threats, but his incompetence leads to his sons’ deaths and his infatuation with the treacherous …

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Remembering Hjálmar Helgi Ragnarsson

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Icelandic composer Hjálmar Helgi Ragnarsson passed away last Friday, March 13. He was 73. Ragnarsson left behind a wide range of music including symphonic works, operas, incidental music, songs, and film scores. He was a respected music theorist, and served as president of the Federation of Icelandic Artists, and rector of the Iceland University of the Arts. Composed in 1985, Ragnarsson’s Ave Maria for a cappella mixed choir is music from a …

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Vaughan Williams’ “Rest”: A Choral Setting of Christina Rossetti

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Christina Rossetti’s sonnet, Rest, presents death as a serene eternal sleep which provides relief from earthly pain. It is part of her collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in 1862. In 1902, Ralph Vaughan Williams set the poem for a cappella chorus. It unfolds in a gentle, flowing 3/4 time. At the poem’s midpoint, the word “paradise” is accompanied by a radiant turn to D major. From this climax, the music …

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Barber’s Violin Concerto: Aaron Rosand’s 1960 New York Philharmonic Debut

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“Romanticism on the violin had a rebirth last night in Carnegie Hall,” wrote New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg in 1970, following a recital by American violinist Aaron Rosand (1927-2019). A decade earlier, in October of 1960, Rosand made his New York Philharmonic debut, performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Leonard Bernstein was on the podium, and Barber was in attendance. Bernstein and Rosand had agreed to record the Concerto, but the …

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Barber’s “Excursions”: A Celebration of American Musical Vernacular

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Completed in 1944, Excursions, Op. 20 was Samuel Barber’s first published work for solo piano. Using traditional compositional forms such as the rondo and theme and variations, its four brief movements venture deep into American musical vernacular. Barber referred to the collection as “nothing but bagatelles.” He wrote, These are ‘Excursions’ in small classical forms into regional American idioms. Their rhythmic characteristics, as well as their source in folk material and their …

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Aulis Sallinen’s “Winter Was Hard”: Ode to a Bleak Finnish Landscape

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Humor, stoicism, and Scandinavian winter gloom emerge in the brief song, Winter Was Hard, Op. 20 (Vintern var Hård) by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935). Composed in 1969, the song became the title track of a 1988 album by the Kronos Quartet. Their version, featuring the San Francisco Girls Chorus, includes a pump organ: Here is another version featuring the Tapiola Choir: A translation of the text: There wasn’t much for the ducks. …

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