When I get an email from a problem student, in which they call me by my first name…only it’s not even my actual correct first name

mikrokosmos:

Saint-Saëns – Septet in Eb Major, op. 65 (1880)

For piano, trumpet, string quartet, and bass. This is an unusual combination of instruments, because Saint-Saëns wrote it for his friend Émile Lemoine. He and Lemoine were part of a small chamber music society, which Saint-Saëns founded, and by default they had a piano and string instruments ready. Lemoine urged Saint-Saëns to write something for the ensemble that could include a trumpet part. As a Christmas gift, he wrote the first movement, and pleased with the results, promised to write more movements for a complete work. What resulted was this neoclassical piece, using baroque dance forms, and it has a lighthearted and charming feel to it while also being musically complex and sophisticated. We rush into a flurry of notes in unison, before the trumpet comes in with with a pronouncement. The instruments color around each other, the piano especially has virtuosic and glittering moments. A few dramatic chords carry us into a grand intro to a short fugato on a simple stately theme. It doesn’t follow strict fugue writing expectations, instead it’s like a mix of fantasia and fugue. Then we get a slower section that focuses on a mis-step rhythm. More piano flourishes bring us back to the fugue theme. It ends with a grand coda, the piano giving extra color with fast shimmering scales. The menuet has a quasi-regal melody, making me think of palace gardens. Again, “neo-classical”, that is a sense of the “old” out of an original context. The B section is somewhat ponderous. Later the same textures are used for a more uplifting trio, noble and dignified. The intermezzo is more solemn, bringing back the ‘mis-step’ rhythm of the first movement. It grows into a louder cry, then takes a step back. We repeat, and the end includes a trumpet passage that stands in front of the rest. The last movement is a gavotte and finale. The gavotte opens with a fun delicate melody in the piano as the strings play staccato chords. Later the repeat is crazy. The piano is given hectic semiquavers in its melody, jittering around, still staying quiet but it’s like a caffeine rush. After the repeat, the lower strings and piano introduce another fugato, on a carefree melody that becomes more rousing as the voices layer over each other. They work together to make a grand ending, that includes some “silly” scales with unexpected accents. An underrated masterpiece.

Movements:

1. Préambule

2. Menuet

3. Intermède

4. Gavotte et Final

mikrokosmos:

mikrokosmos:

Stravinsky – Septet

There’s a horror type channel on YouTube called “Petscop”, about a guy who finds the demo for some old video game, but it’s full of secrets and is slowly unraveling some kind of mystery. It’s interesting in that it’s like one of those old creepypastas only in video format. Anyway the mystery is kind of vague, I’m struggling to put together exactly what the story behind the game is, and all the theories I can think of are very dark and horrible. To my shock, in the most recent episode, a dialogue box came up referencing the second movement of this chamber work in reference to another character. The clue is cryptic, but even so I’m glad to see more “obscure” classical music show up in pop culture. The work is set for clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano, violin, viola, and cello. And though it is inspired by Schoenberg’s 12 tone system, it doesn’t follow those rules strictly. This was the shift away from Stravinsky’s “neo-classical” period into the “serialist” period of the end of his life. The shift was unexpected, and people were shocked at the premiere at how different this was. Contrapuntally dense, lacking the clarity and simplicity of the neo-classical works, and in these dense textures we are exploring every key possible. The opening movement is more reminiscent of the Dumbarton Oaks concerto [this work was also premiered at the same estate], however the second movement, the passacaglia, is where we shift into the unexpected and shadowed atmosphere. This makes sense, considering it is the same kind of atmosphere the Petscop videos create. The tone row is used as the bass line and canonic variations are played overhead, and are also put in retrograde, following Schoenberg’s example. The concluding gigue is actually a double fugue, and it’s rhythmically upbeat and fun, but each instrument sounds as if they are playing the right patterns in the wrong keys, and the work is brought to a dizzy and abrupt end on an ambiguous chord.

Movements:

1. [Quarter Note = 88]

2. Passacaglia

3. Gigue

Funny that I was introduced to this piece by a role-playing horror youtube channel. Growing up, I’d always hear Beethoven, Mozart, or Tchaikovsky referenced in pop culture. More and more I’ve noticed that 20th century music is getting attention. I think there needs to be a full century gap before the “weird” “new” music can touch the mainstream.