Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

English Documentary Scores by Great Composers

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have an hour of English documentary scores.

In England, unlike in the United States, there is no delineation between “film composer” and “concert composer.” What is often regarded here as “hack work,” there is seen as just another aspect of what it means to be a working artist. There is no disgrace in a composer earning a living, and some of the nation’s greatest musicians – including those in the employ of the Royal Family – have contributed finely-crafted works to its body of cinema.

We’ll hear music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, from “The People’s Land,” Benjamin Britten, from “The King’s Stamp,” William Alwyn, from “The Green Girdle,” and Sir Arthur Bliss, from “The Royal Palaces of Britain.” All four films are patriotic utterances on distinctly English themes.

You may not have seen any of the movies, but the music is beautiful. I hope you’ll join me for selections from English documentaries, this Friday evening at 6 ET, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later, at your convenience, as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

The complete documentary short, “The Green Girdle,” is posted on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWQDeD4J0As

As is “The King’s Stamp”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gSsJHlLFg4

Thank you, Internet!

PHOTO: It’s not about what you think

December 4, 2014
Yule Goat Christmas Tradition Advent Calendar

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 4

December 3. Have you started constructing your Yule Goat yet?

One of Northern Europe’s wackier Christmas traditions (no doubt with pagan roots), the Yule Goat may have derived from the worship of Thor. The God of Thunder’s chariot was drawn by two goats. The Christmas version is led about by Saint Nicholas, possibly as a symbol of the subjugation of evil.

Whatever the goat’s function, it goes way back. For hundreds of years, rowdy young men in costumes would go door to door enacting plays and demanding gifts. One of these, naturally, was the ornery Yule Goat. Scandinavians sometimes refer to the practice of wassailing as “going Yule Goat.”

In the 19th century, the Goat’s role was transformed into a giver of gifts. Though the Goat has since been replaced by a humanoid Father Christmas, in Finland he is still referred to by the name Joulupukki (you guessed it, Yule Goat).

Nowadays, the goat is mostly seen in its incarnation as a miniature tree ornament, made of straw and bound by red ribbon. A notable exception is the Gävle Goat, a 40-foot version of the traditional Swedish Yule Goat. The Gävle Goat is constructed over a period of two days in time for Advent.

Then begins an unsanctioned game of cat-and-mouse, with the authorities attempting to guard the Goat, while everyone else attempts to light it off. Yes, you read that correctly. If the Goat is burnt to the ground before December 13 (the feast day of St. Lucy), it is rebuilt.

For more information and a complete history of the Goat’s destruction, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat

Excellent time-lapse burning of the Goat here:

Yule Got Your Goat

I can’t get enough of these Old World traditions. Keep looking, and you’re bound to find Christopher Lee locking someone inside a Wicker Man.

Here’s a Christmas song by Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén:

Coincidentally, Turner Classic Movies: TCM will be showing Igmar Bergman movies tonight, beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

December 4, 2014
Advent Calendar Day 3 Robert Moran Angel

ADVENT CALENDAR – DAY 3

Here’s “Da entstünde ein Engel” (“There Appeared an Angel”) by the unpredictable Robert Moran. You may recall that I featured Bob’s most recent recording, which highlights his arrangement of the medieval mystery play, “Game of the Antichrist,” a few weeks back on “The Lost Chord.”

This one is taken from a text by Meister Eckhart. It’s performed by Munich’s Chrismos Ensemble.

December 3, 2014
Irving Fine: Celebrating the Neglected Composer

Today is the 100th birthday of Irving Fine. Who? Well, if you’ve sung in a chorus for any length of time, you may already know. Among Fine’s best-known works are arrangements of Copland’s “Old American Songs” and settings of texts from “Alice in Wonderland.”

He also wrote a woodwind quintet that gets recorded from time to time and certainly deserves more exposure. His “Serious Song,” for string orchestra, is another among his most frequently recorded works.

He was an American composer of the “Stravinsky school,” one of the so-called “Boston Six” (which also included Arthur Berger, Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss and Harold Shapero).

In some of his later works he experimented with serial techniques, though he never wholly abandoned tonality. On the other hand, in his early pieces he never shied away from dissonance. His was a tart brand of graceful neo-classicism that occasionally bubbled over into romanticism, as in the “Serious Song” and his “Notturno for Strings and Harp.” No matter what language he embraced, he was always an elegant and attractive composer.

Fine died of heart disease in 1962. He was only 47 years-old.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll offer a slightly belated salute to this unjustly neglected figure. The program, titled “Everything’s Fine,” will air at 10 ET, with a repeat next Wednesday at 6. You can listen to it at http://www.wwfm.org. I’ll post more about it over the weekend.

In the meantime, here’s a listing of Fine celebrations around the country:

http://www.irvingfinesoc.org/#!events/c9a0

And Fine’s “Notturno for Strings and Harp”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aDTULoEJQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmtpyqGT8IE

PHOTO: Irving Fine (second from right) with (left to right) Claudio Spies, Lukas Foss, Harold Shapero, Esther Geller, Verna Fine and Leonard Bernstein, Tanglewood, 1946

December 3, 2014
Harry T. Burleigh Spirituals & Dvořák

Harry T. Burleigh is one of the great unsung figures in American music – which is ironic, since it was his singing that changed the course of history.

Burleigh was a student at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, where he studied with, among others, Rubin Goldmark, the conservative pedagogue who later gave lessons to Copland and Gershwin. It just so happens that his attendance there coincided with the tenure of Antonin Dvořák as the conservatory’s director. Dvořák overheard young Burleigh singing African American spirituals and was transfixed. Burleigh frequently sang spirituals for Dvořák and worked for him as a copyist beginning in 1893.

Spirituals, of course, became an important part of the “New World” Symphony’s DNA. Since Dvořák’s masterwork was intended, in part, as instructional, leading American composers by example to a distinctively national sound, the significance of Burleigh’s influence becomes inescapable.

Burleigh also served as a double-bassist and timpanist in the school’s orchestra, which Dvořák conducted. He was born in Stamford, CT, on this date in 1866.

More about Burleigh:

Goin’ Home:

Wade in de Water:

Happy Birthday, Harry!

December 2, 2014

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