I just learned the composer Christopher Gunning has died. I have a few of his concertos and symphonies in my own collection, but fans of David Suchet’s Poirot will certainly recognize this:
Here’s a video of Gunning at home, talking about some of his symphonies:
And a substantial teaser for his Violin Concerto:
Gunning was 78 years-old. R.I.P.
Like any myth worth its salt, the disturbing fairy story of Duke Bluebeard embeds itself in the recesses of the unconscious, only to color and confirm subterranean anxieties or perceived truths about the wider world.
The best-known version of the story is the one by Charles Perrault, set down in the 17th century. Perrault’s popular retellings of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots served to codify these timeless folk tales for the modern age.
Bluebeard as an archetype informs the characterizations of so many of the tortured antiheroes of the Gothic novel – the mysterious and brooding nobleman who lives in a dank castle of many chambers that surely contain their share of skeletons, be they literal or figurative.
Sometimes Bluebeard really is the menace of Perrault, the volatile madman who lives in a house full of corpses. At others (as in “Jane Eyre”), he is a tragic hero who harbors a guilty secret that cuts him off from all happiness, love, and normalcy. Only gradually do the heavy doors grind open on rusty hinges to reveal their truths. The chambers are like the dark corners of his psyche, vulnerabilities he holds close, to the point of near-destruction or even beyond. Only understanding and acceptance have the power to alter his world.
That said, sometimes Bluebeard really is a murderous creep who’s all about control and over-the-top cruelty.
And what about his bride, named Judith in Béla Bartók’s opera, “Bluebeard’s Castle?” Is her curiosity a liberating force or a destructive one? The parable of fatal curiosity extends back through the Biblical stories of Lot’s wife and Eve and the Classical myths of Pandora, Eurydice, and Psyche.
The tale positively drips with allegory. If there is anything that is clear about the Bluebeard story, it’s that it would take two very special people to make this unusual relationship work. There’s no way any outside observer would ever, ever, EVER understand.
On Béla Bartók’s birthday, I stumbled across this 1988 film of “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.” It’s not sung in the original Hungarian. English-speaking viewers may find that a plus; anyone else, I think, will find compensation in its atmosphere and insight.
In whatever language, the music is still terrific. Happy birthday, Béla Bartók!
This week on “Picture Perfect,” March goes out like a lion… and a bear… and a baby elephant… and the tiger Shere Khan!
We’ll hear selections from John Barry’s music for “Born Free” (1966), based on Joy Adamson’s memoir about the raising of Elsa, an orphaned lion cub who grows to adulthood and is eventually released into the Kenyan wilderness. The music proved a double Academy Award winner for Barry, who was recognized for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
Jerome Moross, best known for his music to “The Big Country,” had such a strong personality that his immediately recognizable sound extended even to his work on the National Geographic special, “Grizzly!” (1967), a documentary about a pair of ecologists studying North American bears. “Grizzly!” sports an energetic Americana score that is very much cut from the same cloth.
The Korda Brothers’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” (1942) stars the charismatic Indian actor Sabu, as Mowgli, raised by wolves, who yearns to reconnect with his human roots. (For the record, Kipling pronounced “Mowgli” so that the first syllable rhymes with “cow.”) Miklós Rózsa wrote the enchanting score.
And we can’t get through the hour without hearing Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk,” from “Hatari!” (1962). So many exclamation points in these wilderness titles! The film was directed by Howard Hawks and starred John Wayne. In case you’re wondering, “Hatari!” is Swahili for “Danger!”
Take a walk on the wild side, with a spring in your step, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Haydn Wood was born on this date in 1882. Although his name is pronounced “Hayden,” his parents, both musicians, indeed named him for Franz Joseph Haydn. Wood composed larger works for the concert hall, including concertos for piano and violin, and there was once a symphony, now lost, but his reputation rests on his light music and songs. He composed over 200 ballads.
This was one of his biggest hits, one of the great tear-jerkers of the First World War. Wood was riding atop a double-decker bus when the melody came to him. He hopped off and jotted it down onto an envelope by lamplight. The text was added by Frederick Weatherly.
During the war, the song sold 50,000 copies of sheet music. Its singing was used in the rehabilitation of shell-shocked soldiers, who had lost the ability to speak. It was recorded many, many times.
These days, it’s often employed to add flavor to period dramas. Of the earliest recordings, John McCormack’s rendition was notably popular.
Happy birthday, Haydn Wood!
It’s been a bad week for the British Broadcasting Corporation, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in grand, self-congratulatory fashion, beating its drum and trumpeting its accomplishments, with PR pennons hoisted high all through 2022. In the meantime, it has been doing its underhanded best in recent years to build its gallows high, dumbing down its programming, chasing the lowest common denominator, and instituting cuts across the board.
Most flabbergasting was the recent announcement that it would disband the BBC Singers, the only full-time professional choir in the UK and one of the most respected ensembles of its kind. The outrage with which this decision was met, from musicians, listening public, and politicians alike, miraculously has caused the BBC (the organization, not the choir) to issue a reprieve, if not a mea culpa.
Press releases issued by the organization have been disingenuous, ladling on the upbeat spin in an attempt to convince that all its boneheaded decisions are in the name of creating a more robust musical environment with greater educational opportunities. But this kind of talk fools no one. People aren’t buying it, and rightly so.
In truth, the BBC has strayed so far from its founding principles to inform, educate, and entertain at this point that it will never be what it once was. Kind of like American PBS or any of our classical music stations. There’s very little integrity left in arts and educational media anywhere, it seems, which, like everything else, at the end of the day, is all about the $$$.
Even now, the jobs of one-fifth of all musicians in BBC-managed orchestras remain on the chopping block. “Tough decisions” can be blamed on funding, of course. Even so, as is too often the case, most of those entrusted with steering the organization have no classical music background.
The BBC Singers, founded in 1924, has worked with many of the great conductors and composers of the past century, has given notable premieres, and has recorded prolifically. A stay of execution for the ensemble is a battle won, but the war continues. The issue will be revisited in the coming years.
The latest BBC annual report states that, within the last financial year, £25m was spent on orchestras and performing groups. If I’m not mistaken, that’s about $30.5m US. The average annual salary of a football player in the UK is £3m, more than $3.5m US. So the yearly budget of one of BBC’s live performance groups is less than the combined salaries of eight of England’s star football players. That’s infuriating.
Aside from the hope and enrichment the arts bring to our existence in an increasingly bleak and unstable world, they also bring hope and enrichment to local economies, as people who attend performances and exhibitions tend to spend money. They eat out, they shop, they make it a day.
Yet the income generated is frequently overlooked in favor of the flashier, often-televised gladiatorial thrills of sport. The roaring crowds may pack the stadiums, but those stadiums are self-sufficient organisms, largely segregated from area businesses. Revenue from sporting goods and broadcast are not doing the hometown all that much good.
BBC orchestras, on the other hand, enrich the community on multiple levels, without the rioting and vomit in the streets.
My love of English music is well known. I salute the BBC for its past efforts that have cultivated such a proud history and a rich literature. But really, I have very little faith in its current management.
As cellist Julian Lloyd Webber (brother of composer Andrew) stated in an article that appeared this week in Radio Times, “The dereliction of its core principles has happened stealthily, over many years and with a lack of transparency that has eroded trust both inside and outside the organisation.”
Be that as it may, let us enjoy the current victory. To conclude on a positive note: Vivat the BBC Singers!
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