classical music

symphony

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Ok, so it’s been about half a year with no blog post, so maybe it’s time for an update? A lot of catching up to do, but also not really.

What I actually want to write about is the symphony assignment I’ve given myself. At the tail end of December, D read an article about more creative new year resolutions — not “creative” in the sense that you pick up an arts & crafts hobby, but in the sense that they’re not the typical “eat healthier, exercise more” type of resolutions. One of the examples was actually quitting your gym membership (particularly if you don’t go very often). Another was to stop weighing/measuring yourself.

These were all suggestions from different people who implemented these with great success in the past. Another suggestion was to select a different symphony every week, and listen to it over and over again in that week. Since some of the other suggestions weren’t really of any relevance to me (never joined a gym before, don’t measure myself frequently enough for that to be an issue), this was the one that interested me the most.

Anyway, the point of this exercise is to discover things about symphonies that you might know but not really know. The person who suggested it said that when they did it, they noticed something new with each listen. It was really painted as some marvellous process of discovery and appreciation.

For me, with minimal music background (by which I’m referring to music theory and training), I expected it to be a bit more difficult, so I’m allowing myself several weeks with each symphony. I’m also not expecting that I’ll notice that much about each one, but hoping to at least glean something from the experience. 

And since I was quite excited to get started, I didn’t wait until January to begin. 

But I also had to figure out how I was going to access all the symphonies I was going to listen to. In the last several years, I’ve only listened to the radio (ABC Classic) and not used any streaming services or bought albums (except maybe one from The Script). I couldn’t possibly rely on the radio for this assignment, and I was unsure about buying each album, so that left streaming. After a bit of research, D found a site called Presto that has an extensive range of classical music that you can stream and purchase. You get a free one-month trial, so I thought I’d give it a go.

The really good thing about using Presto is that they really emphasise “paying rights holders per second of listening”, so that your money actually goes to the creators of the music you’re listening to, and it’s calculated fairly. More info here.

So, anyway, the next thing to do was choose which symphony to listen to first. I figured I should start with something I know I will enjoy, because that would probably increase my chances of continuing this through 2025 and beyond. In the end, the decision was actually reasonably easy: Camille Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 (also known as the Organ Symphony)

I have no doubt this was the best choice. From listening to the radio, I was already quite familiar with the last movement, but they never seem to play any other part of the symphony. Now, after about four weeks of repeated listening (although admittedly not very frequent listening — maybe once or twice a day, but not necessarily every day) of different renditions by various orchestras, I finally know the symphony in its entirety.

To me, the Organ Symphony is joyously triumphant and triumphantly joyous. In the accompanying booklet from one of the albums I listened to, it was said that Saint-Saëns believed this was his greatest work, and he could not possibly compose a better symphony. The booklet also pointed out that the symphony uses all parts of the orchestra quite extensively, which is something I really enjoyed about listening to it. It will be interesting to see how other symphonies compare in this regard.

experience

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It’s the last day of Spring, announced the radio presenter, and then immediately, cheekily, she played Vivaldi’s Summer. The raging storm that was forecast last night but never arrived, arrived this morning instead in musical form.

But the sky is clear today — a large expanse of blue to carry the heat of the sun across the city. 

One more month until the end of the year. It’s been a year where, every month, colleagues are heard saying, “Where did that month go?” And “How did we suddenly reach the end of this month?”

Or maybe that was last year. Or both.

Such sameness. But always a bit different.

Adventuring, exploring, discovering; but also retreating into the comforts of repetitions.

Choose your own adventure, as long as it’s within the given parameters. 

The most well-thought-out plans might still fall through. You cannot clear the fog-of-war until you enter the next cavern. The hidden grick will not reveal itself until you’re within tentacle’s reach.

Grounded, back in reality, it’s time to learn. So much learning to do, such limited capacity. Over-encumbered and slowed.

Perhaps I can blame the heat?

An old friend asked recently what books I most like to read. Without hesitation, I replied, “classics”. In the back of my mind Ulysses is still poking around, as is the recent article about the book club that spent 28 years reading and deciphering Finnegans Wake. 

Now Midnight’s Children is on the table, and I’m considering that it’s not necessarily “classics” that I’m drawn to, but to what is perhaps a sub-genre of historical fiction — novels that have some fantastical or absurd element, yet are irrefutably grounded in historical facts. Novels so poetic they must surely exist only in imagination, yet by their very magic are brought to life.

Earlier this morning, before Vivaldi, in the waking hour, the radio played Ludovico Einaudi’s Experience, played by Anna Lapwood on the organ (her own transcription). What a powerful piece to wake up to!

My younger self probably only ever associated the organ with that scene in The Simpsons in which Bart has replaced the church’s hymn music with a reinterpretation of Iron Butterfly’s In-a-Gadda-da-Vida, and the church organist (Helen Feesh is her name, apparently) does a 17-minute organ solo, and collapses at the end.

More recently, the organ invariably makes me think of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, and how he was a bit strange (he wrote The Carnival of the Animals because of certain other interests), and how Saint-Saëns probably would be ok with his Organ Symphony being used as the theme for a movie about a talking pig (Babe).

And now there is Experience.

string quintet no.5

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One morning, at home, preparing breakfast and coffee, I started humming a tune. I had no idea where it was from or who the composer was, but it was jolly and cheerful and I liked it. I must’ve heard it on the radio one day, and it found a home in my head.

Another morning, cycling to work, I realised I was humming this same tune out loud. Not really loud but if someone had been next to me, they might’ve heard it. Being as it was, that I was in motion, cycling, at the time, there was probably no one close enough to hear it. No one, that is, except my conscious mind, who didn’t realise that my subconscious mind was producing this sound (if the two minds can be considered separate entities).

Yet another, separate, different morning, I was listening to the radio at home while getting out of bed, getting ready for the day ahead, and along comes this familiar but until then completely anonymous tune. Such joy to finally find out what it is, and who composed it. And now I can listen to it as much as I want without wondering if I’m actually remembering it correctly. And you can too.

Luigi Boccherini (yes, the same one who defied the King of Spain)

Minuet from String Quintet No.5 in E Major

I think it’s used a lot in TV and movies. Perhaps you’ll recognise it?

And while you listen, just a brief, unrelated thought about Ulysses, which I’m still making my way through, as I’ve been making my way through for about an entire year now, and am at last approaching the end (expect a wrap-up post of that in the near future). The peculiar thing about Ulysses is that it is the singularly most peculiarly written book I’ve ever endeavoured to read, written with such exorbitance of expression that it probably could be cut to a tenth of its full length (currently almost 1000 pages) and still tell the same sequence of events. But to do so would be to turn it into trash. 

Yes, it would lose all of its charm and character — all of its disjointed, tangential, nonsensical charm and character. But more on this another time.

captivated

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Well, ok, so it’s been a few months since I was last here. That was not planned. Not even this post was planned. Not really, anyway.

I was going to write about the Queensland Symphony Orchestra performance I attended a couple of weeks ago, but then I realised that I hadn’t blogged since March, so I was thinking that maybe some kind of “more general recap” was in order.

But first, the QSO.

Continue reading →

renown

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This week, on ABC Classic, they have been featuring the works of Luigi Boccherini because it’s his birthday on Saturday. When I heard this, I thought, “Imagine being dead for over 200 years, and people are still celebrating your birthday…”

Well, of course, you wouldn’t know that people are celebrating your birthday if you’re dead, but you might have descendants, and I wonder how they would feel. And what if they have no interest in whatever you’re famous for?

Back in 2020, ABC Classic spent the whole year celebrating the life of Ludwig van Beethoven because it was his (theoretical) 250th birthday — 250 years since he was born. To be fair, he was a particularly prolific composer, so it’s kind of understandable that they wanted to stretch the celebrations over a whole year so that they could still play other music in between all the Beethoven.

Anyway, as I drove home from work, listening to the radio presenter talk about how it’s Boccherini’s birthday, I started thinking about how someone gets to this level of renown — how do you get so famous that people will continue to celebrate your birthday for generations to come? Is this what it really means to be a “legend”, or how you know this or that is a “classic”?

But I guess no one really thinks that far into the future when they’re writing an opera or composing a symphony or whatever. More likely they’re thinking of their present audience. Resonate with your present audience first, and there’s a chance your work could resonate through the years ahead.

And then I started thinking about us common folk, who don’t aspire to be legends. A similar principle still applies, doesn’t it? Do good by the people around you (your audience of sorts), and be well-received and well-remembered by them, even if only fleetingly. Is it ok to try less or do less just because your audience is smaller or their memories are more fickle?

merry Monday

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Well, as merry as a Monday can be, I suppose.

Today I had this joyful piece playing over and over in my head:

I find it quite merry and jolly, despite how fast and frantic it sounds. It quite matched the tempo of my Monday morning, anyway. One can be busy and in good spirits!

I’m quite chuffed that I now get classical music stuck in my head instead of run-of-the-mill pop songs. It’s certainly less irritating.

I’m also chuffed that I recognised this as something composed by Mozart. I guess they must play it on the radio quite a bit, but Mozart has composed so much that I thought my chances of hearing any singular piece enough times to recognise it as Mozart was quite slim.

Anyway, I think this Rondo Alla Turca has probably been used in TV and movies and whatnot, so maybe it might sound at least vaguely familiar to a lot of people, even if you aren’t a regular classical music fan.