Today is Saint Cecilia’s Feast Day on the Roman Catholic calendar. The third century martyr is venerated as the patron of music and musicians. According to legend, despite taking a vow of celibacy, she was forced by her parents to marry a pagan nobleman. She “sang in her heart to the Lord” on her wedding day, illustrating the divine, meditative, and transcendent power of music. Fortuitously, the English composer, Benjamin Britten, was …
The American composer, David Del Tredici, passed away on Saturday, November 18, following a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 86. Describing his early years as those of “an old child prodigy,” Del Tredici began studying the piano at the age of 12 and was concertizing by 17. He started composing during a summer session at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he came to the attention of composer-in-residence, Darius Milhaud. …
Gerald Finzi’s Elegy for Orchestra, Op. 20, The Fall of the Leaf, is music of the English landscape. It evokes the timelessness of serene pastures and meandering hedgerows. Beyond its lush beauty exists a lingering melancholy and nostalgia. Unsettling twilight shadows pervade this music. We encounter something similar in much of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who shared friendship and frequent correspondence with Finzi (1901-1956), and throughout the works of Edward Elgar. …
Once, while reflecting on his music, Antonín Dvořák commented, “I myself have gone to the simple, half-forgotten tunes of the Bohemian peasants for hints in my most serious works. Only in this way can a musician express the true sentiment of his people.” Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53 overflows with the spirited strains of the composer’s Czech homeland. Bending sonata form and liberating the traditional structure of the concerto, …
In September of 1840, Robert Schumann presented a collection of 26 songs, composed the previous spring, to his beloved Clara as a wedding gift. The cycle, Myrthen, Op. 25, contains intimate musical ciphers and codes which had personal meaning to the couple. Myrtle flowers, referenced in the title, are associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert, the opening song, Widmung (“Dedication”), begins with the lines, …
The music of Icelandic composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir (b. 1977), has been described as “an ecosystem of sounds, where materials continuously grow in and out of each other, often inspired in an important way by nature and its many qualities…” Primal sound structures form the building blocks of Thorvaldsdottir’s evocative tone poem, Metacosmos, composed in 2017 and premiered the following year by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the New York Philharmonic. Unfolding in a single …
The aria, Vallon sonore, which opens the fifth act of Hector Berlioz’ sprawling 1858 grand opera, Les Troyens, is a dreamy song of homesickness. It is sung by Hylas, a young Phrygian sailor who, having arrived in the harbor of Carthage, longs to return to his “native valley.” The aria’s serene, hypnotic underlying rhythm evokes the “gently rocking” waves on which Hylas could sail home. Only briefly is the tranquillity interrupted by …