Respighi’s “The Birds”: A Technicolor Homage to the Baroque

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From Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, composers have been drawn to the idyllic sounds of bird calls echoing in the forest. These sounds are celebrated in shimmering sonic technicolor in Ottorino Respighi’s 1928 suite for small orchestra, The Birds (Gli uccelli). In the five-movement suite, Respighi transcribed four distinct bird songs into musical notation, and simultaneously paid homage to existing music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The intimate classical orchestra is augmented by …

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Adventures in Fourths: Music of Debussy, Bartók, and Gershwin

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The Greek name for the interval of the perfect fourth was diatessaron. Translating as “across four,” it is a word which brings to mind Pythagorean harmonic ratios. Wide open sonorities that suggest neither major nor minor, perfect fourths and fifths became prevalent in the early medieval polyphony of composers such as Léonin and Pérotin. In the piano pieces below, we hear twentieth century composers exploiting the perfect fourth for purely expressive reasons. Here are three …

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Orlando Gibbons’ Three Royal Fantasies for Viols: Sit Fast

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The music of the English composer, Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), bridges the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Based in Cambridge and then at the Chapel Royal for much of his life, Gibbons became organist at Westminster Abbey in 1623. He enjoyed the patronage of King James I and his successor, Prince Charles. In addition to writing liturgical music and keyboard pieces, Gibbons developed the late English madrigal, creating such famous works as The …

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Ligeti’s “Lontano”: Harmonic Alchemy

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In Italian, Lontano means, “in the distance.” This is the title of a haunting orchestral dreamscape, written by the avant-garde Hungarian-Austrian composer, György Ligeti, in 1967. The piece unfolds in vast sonic waves. Tone clusters form and dissipate in a gradually shifting kaleidoscope of color. Terrifying dream images emerge and dissolve. Ligeti drew parallels between Lontano and parts of Bruckner’s majestically unfolding Eighth Symphony. In his program notes, he offered a technical description of the work’s …

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Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony: An Expression of Nature’s Divine Logic

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Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major begins with the breadth and majesty of a vast, unfolding Nordic landscape. A mystical horn call rises and falls in an expansive arc, which opens the door to all that follows. Picked up by the woodwinds, the motif begins to fragment, spin, and develop with a sense of self-organizing inevitability. In his famous meeting with Gustav Mahler, Sibelius expressed admiration for the symphony’s “style and …

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Bach’s Partita No. 5 in G Major, BWV 829: An Exercise in Spiritual Delight

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J.S. Bach’s Six Partitas, BWV 825-830 were conceived as exercises for the body, mind, and spirit. Composed between 1725 and 1731, these were the last of Bach’s keyboard suites. Yet, they were published by the Leipzig-employed composer as “opus 1,” and offered “to music lovers in order to refresh their spirits.” This collection of Partitas (richly contrasting Baroque dances) fuses technical advancement with spiritual delight. They influenced later composers, from Brahms to Bartók. Bach’s earliest biographer, …

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Pēteris Vasks’ “The Fruit Of Silence”: VOCES8

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The Latvian composer, Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946), began as “a young, angry and avant-garde” modernist. Over time, his music evolved to embrace consonance, simplicity, spirituality, Latvian folk influences, and “echoes of bird songs.” Composed in 2013, Vasks’ The Fruit of Silence is a choral setting of a prayer by Mother Teresa: The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is …

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