Twentieth Century

The Cohen Variations

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The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. -Leonard Cohen Pianist Simone Dinnerstein describes The Cohen Variations, written in 2009 by New York composer Daniel Felsenfeld, as a nocturne- music which evokes the atmosphere of the night and suggests the wildly adventurous harmonies of Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturnes. (For a particularly magical example, listen to the Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27). The Cohen Variations are based on Leonard Cohen’s song, Suzanne. The …

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Angela Hewitt Plays Ravel

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Many of Maurice Ravel’s shimmeringly colorful orchestral compositions were written originally for solo piano. One example is Le Tombeau de Couperin, which we explored in an earlier post. This six-movement suite, written between 1914 and 1917, pays homage to the elegant, dance-like keyboard music of François Couperin (1668–1733) and other baroque composers. Ravel dedicated each movement to the memory of a friend or relative who died fighting the First World War. But the music doesn’t …

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Rachmaninov the Melodist

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I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. -Sergei Rachmaninov Sergei Rachmaninov was a composer who was out of step with the times. As twentieth-century music became increasingly atonal, complex, and in some cases …

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Max Richter: November

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November is the ninth track on Max Richter’s 2002 debut album, Memoryhouse. Words like “neoclassical” and “post-minimalist” have been used to describe the German-born British composer’s music. It blends elements of contemporary classical music (Richter studied with the Italian experimentalist Luciano Berio) with electronic and pop influences. The result is a slowly-developing ambient sound world which draws on the diverse sounds of the twenty-first century. Richter has produced numerous film and television scores. Here is a contemplative excerpt …

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Five Spine-Chilling Bernard Herrmann Scores

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Consider your favorite classic Alfred Hitchcock films- psychological thrillers such as Vertigo and Psycho. Many elements add up to make these films enduring works of art, including the innovative framing of shots and voyeuristic camera angles which mimic the viewer’s gaze. Perhaps equally important is the music of Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975). As Matt Williams writes in this 1999 article, Herrmann’s music was groundbreaking, delving into the dark inner psychology of the character more deeply than had ever been done …

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Debussy’s Estampes: Three Exotic Soundscapes

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The music I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams. -Claude Debussy I’ve always loved Claude Debussy’s descriptive titles. They often seem as if they could be interchangeable with the simple, poetic titles of the great French Impressionist paintings- hazy, intangible dreamscapes of color and light which seem to open the door to a parallel world lurking just beneath …

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Can You Hear Coldplay in Steve Reich?

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Recently, as I was listening to the thrilling final four minutes of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, I began to hear subtle echoes of Viva la Vida by the British alternative rock band, Coldplay. Take a moment and compare the pulsating rhythm and harmonic progressions in both examples and see if you agree. Interestingly, both pieces appear to have been written around the same time. (Viva la Vida was released on June 13, 2008 while the Double Sextet, written in …

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