Staying Grounded in Henry Purcell

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What does music of seventeenth-century English composer Henry Purcell have in common with a contemporary pop song like U2’s With Or Without You? Both are built on a repeating ostinato bass line, called a ground bass. Early traces of the ground bass emerged in thirteenth-century French vocal motets and fifteenth-century European dance music. By the time Purcell used it, it was a relatively old technique. Purcell’s Fantasia, Three Parts On a Ground was written in the early 1680s. …

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Tchaikovsky’s Rhythmic Games

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For all of its perceived bombast and emotional excess, a unique kind of elegance, lightness, and motion lies at the heart of much of Tchaikovsky’s music. Even when Tchaikovsky was not writing for the ballet, ballet music, with its eternal sense of motion, seemed to be coming out. Tchaikovsky was obsessed with the music of Mozart, perhaps the epitome of classical elegance. He said Mozart’s works were “the highest, most perfect culmination ever …

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Zaha Hadid’s Frozen Music

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Zaha Hadid, the visionary and sometimes controversial Iraqi-born British architect, passed away suddenly on Thursday. She was 65. Her uncompromising, sculptural designs unequivocally embraced the ethos of “architecture as art” in a way reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright. Fellow architect Rem Koolhaas called her “a planet in her own inimitable orbit.” There’s a geological quality to Hadid’s Wanjing Soho towers in Beijing, completed in 2014. They rise on the landscape like three giant pebbles. Horizontal …

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Every Concert Artist’s Worst Nightmare?

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Years ago, during a lesson, I remember my teacher Oleh Krysa telling a remarkable and amusing story about his teacher, the legendary violinist David Oistrakh. Oistrakh, who had a busy concert schedule, had arrived late and had not had time to rehearse with the orchestra. At the concert, he walked out on stage, bowed, and prepared for the long orchestral introduction which opens the Brahms Violin Concerto. Suddenly, the orchestra began playing …

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The Pastoral Sounds of Brahms’ Second

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When it came to the symphony, Johannes Brahms was haunted by a ghost. Approaching the age of 40, Brahms declared, “I shall never write a symphony! You can’t have any idea what it’s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!” That giant was Beethoven, who elevated the symphony to new, and previously unimaginable, dramatic heights. As a result, it took Brahms fifteen years to complete his First Symphony. Set in the …

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A Preview of Rachel Barton Pine’s New Solo Bach Recording

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Friday marks the official release of violinist Rachel Barton Pine’s newest recording: Testament: Complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by J.S. Bach. Pine talks about the recording and her relationship with Bach’s music in this interview with Richmond Public Radio’s Mike Goldberg. She performs with a baroque bow, finding that it leads to greater ease in playing chords and captures both “sweetness and vitality“ in the music. We also hear her 1742 Guarneri. (Pine made …

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3 Musical Allusions to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”

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And He shall reign forever and ever… It’s one of the most recognizable passages in all of music…ten downward-stepping pitches which somehow evoke the ultimate sense of joy and triumph. The Hallelujah Chorus closes Part II of Messiah, Handel’s most famous oratorio, with a burst of D major combined with trumpets and drums. George II was so moved when he heard the opening introduction that he rose to his feet and remained standing for the …

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