Twentieth Century

Puccini’s “Tosca”: Four Key Excerpts

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Giacomo Puccini’s three-act opera, Tosca, blends “intrigue, love, lust, politics, and religion.” (James Conlon) Set in Rome in June of 1800, amid the turbulence of the Napoleonic wars, the action takes place over a breakneck sixteen hours. The story centers around three principal characters: Floria Tosca (soprano), a star opera singer, her lover Mario Cavaradossi (tenor), a painter and republican, and the corrupt and sadistic chief of police, Baron Scarpia (baritone), a …

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Esa-Pekka Salonen’s L.A. Variations: A “Dionysian Hymn to the Orchestra”

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Esa-Pekka Salonen has said that composing and conducting are “two sides of the same coin.” The Finnish maestro, who has been music director of the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, follows in a long tradition of composer-conductors which includes: Mendelssohn, Weber, Wagner, Mahler, Strauss, Bernstein, and Boulez. For some, the two equally demanding roles have led to conflict, and to the …

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Ravel’s Vocalise-Étude en forme de Habanera: A “Haunting Andalusian Cantilena”

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Maurice Ravel’s Vocalise-étude en forme de Habanera is a magically evocative technical study for mezzo-soprano voice. The dreamy, ephemeral song without words has been described as a “nostalgic and haunting Andalusian cantilena.” (Vladimir Jankélévitch) Ravel composed this music in March of 1907 during the time he was working on Rapsodie espagnole. It was commissioned by Amédée-Louis Hettich, a voice professor at the Paris Conservatory who approached numerous prominent composers, asking each to …

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Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole: Color, Atmosphere, and Dance

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Maurice Ravel, the quintessential French musical impressionist, was the son of a Swiss engineer-inventor father and a mother of Basque-Spanish heritage. The Basque influence can be heard throughout Ravel’s music. Nowhere is it more vibrantly on display than in Rapsodie espagnole, completed in 1908. Manuel de Falla praised the four-movement orchestral suite as “surprising one by its Spanish character, achieved through the free use of the modal rhythms and melodies and ornamental …

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John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine”: An Ecstatic Fanfare

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What better way to ring in the new year than with a fanfare? Composed in 1986, John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a fanfare for an age of streamlined sports cars and space travel. It is an ecstatic musical joyride which, in the words of the composer, evokes a combination of “excitement and thrill, just on the edge of anxiety or terror.” The inspiration came from Adams’ memory of a harrowing …

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Busoni’s “Nuit de Noël”: An Atmospheric Sketch

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Nuit de Noël (“Christmas Night”) is a six-page sketch for solo piano, written in 1908 by the Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924). An Impressionistic tone painting of Christmas night, it is music filled with mysticism and atmosphere. Gently floating fourths and fifths evoke the magic of falling snowflakes. The rhythm takes the lilting form of a siciliana. A quotation emerges of the Sicilian carol, O sanctissima, known in German-speaking countries as …

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Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Greensleeves: Celebrating a 400-Year-Old English Folk Song

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In 16th century England, Greensleeves was already such a popular melody that William Shakespeare referenced it in his 1597 comedy, The Merry Wives of Windsor with Falstaff’s exclamation, Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’! The English folk song was first registered in September of 1580 under the title, “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves.” According to myth, the melody was written by Henry VIII. …

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