Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on October 12, 1872. Since he happens to be one of my favorite composers, we’ll get a jump on the celebrations this week on “Sweetness and Light,” with what I guarantee will be a lovingly-curated Vaughan Williams miscellany.
This will not be the usual collection of greatest hits (although we’ll enjoy one or two of those, as well). Among the rarer works will be the “Bucolic Suite” of 1900, when the composer was still feeling his way toward his mature style; also the “Stratford Suite,” made up of incidental music RVW provided for a number of the Shakespeare plays during the brief period he was music director at Stratford-on-Avon (1912-13). If you’re a Vaughan Williams fanatic, I’m sure you’ll recognize some of the melodies, derived from early music and folk song, many of which the composer employed in other, better-known works. The “Stratford Suite” appears on “Royal Throne of Kings,” released on Albion Records, the recording branch of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.
Some of the music will be dreamy and luminous and some of it will be boisterous and earthy. You’re always safe with Uncle “Rafe.”
Pour yourself a cuppa and join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
It’s very hard to believe, but the eternally youthful Yo-Yo Ma turned 70 on Tuesday. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we honor one of the most famous classical musicians in the world with music from three of his film projects.
Ma played cello solos in two scores by John Williams – those for “Seven Years in Tibet” (1997) and “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005). Of course, Williams being Williams, both scores were nominated for Academy Awards.
But it was Ma’s contribution to Tan Dun’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) that struck Oscar gold. Dun’s music contributed to what might be termed “The Year of the Dragon,” as Ang Lee’s film received 10 Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. “Crouching Tiger” would slink away with awards for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and of course Best Original Score.
In addition, Ma recorded a very popular album in 2004 of arrangements for cello and orchestra of film music by Ennio Morricone, with the composer conducting. We’ll round out the hour with one of these, from Morricone’s beloved score to “The Mission” (1986).
I hope you’ll join me, as we salute Yo-Yo Ma at 70, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
I don’t care how stealthily one creeps through the graveyard at midnight. You won’t get through the Halloween season without encountering Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre.”
Saint-Saëns, born on this date in 1835, originally set Henri Cazalis’ poem – about the personification of Death summoning the departed from their graves to cut a rug until cockcrow – as a chanson, or art song, for voice and piano in 1872. Two years later, he expanded it, putting some flesh on its bones and crafting it into the beloved symphonic poem, which has been a staple of Halloween programs ever since.
Someone married the classic 1937 cartoon short “Skeleton Frolic” – pretty well, I think – to the orchestral version.
It’s also used effectively in this modern trailer for the 1922 silent classic “Häxan.”
And featured prominently in this scene from Jean Renoir’s 1939 film “Rules of the Game.”
Here it is, in its original version. José Van Dam sings it, with Jean-Philippe Collard at the piano.
Here’s a translation of the text, by Henri Cazalis:
Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence
Striking a tomb with his heel
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune
Zig, zig, zag, on his violin
The winter wind blows, and the night is dark;
Moans are heard in the linden trees
White skeletons pass through the gloom
Running and leaping in their shrouds
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking
You can hear the cracking of the bones of the dancers
A lustful couple sits on the moss
So as to taste long lost delights
Zig zig, zig, Death continues
The unending scraping on his instrument
A veil has fallen! The dancer is naked
Her partner grasps her amorously
The lady, it’s said, is a marchioness or baroness
And her green gallant, a poor cartwright
Horror! Look how she gives herself to him
Like the rustic was a baron
Zig, zig, zig. What a saraband!
They all hold hands and dance in circles
Zig, zig, zag. You can see in the crowd
The king dancing among the peasants
But hist! All of a sudden, they leave the dance
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed
Oh what a beautiful night for the poor world!
Long live death and equality!
These “grave” thoughts a little lurid for your taste? Try this autumnal Clarinet Sonata, one of three woodwind sonatas written by the composer during the last year of his life, 1921, when he was 85 years old.
Happy birthday – and happy Halloween – Saint-Saëns!
Igor Stravinsky’s late, serial masterwork, “Requiem Canticles,” was given its first performance at McCarter Theatre in Princeton on this date in 1966. It would be the composer’s last major work. (Only his setting of Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” followed.) Stravinsky described the 15-minute, six-movement piece, which is sung in Latin, as his “pocket requiem.” The work would be performed at the composer’s funeral in 1971. It was also played at the funeral of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who attended the premiere.
I wrote about its first performance in 2016, its 50th anniversary, for an article for the Trenton Times, somewhat limited by word count and by the fact that I was tying it in with two Stravinsky concerts to be held at Princeton University – neither of which, disappointingly, included “Requiem Canticles” – but I did get some interesting information from my interview subjects, both eyewitnesses who were working at McCarter in 1966.
There’s conflicting information as to who exactly conducted “Requiem Canticles” on that occasion, the composer or his assistant, Robert Craft. My sources maintain that it was Stravinsky himself.
If you’re interested, you can find the article archived here:
The years, they do fly by. How can Yo-Yo Ma be 70? It seems only yesterday we were celebrating his 60th birthday.
Arguably the most visible and charismatic cellist of his generation, Ma was born on October 7, 1955. He’s recorded more than 90 albums and been recognized with 19 Grammy Awards. In addition, among innumerable other honors, he has been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As recently as 2020, he was included in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.”
Ma began playing cello at the age of 4. That’s when he “put away childish things” – that is to say, a juvenile pursuit of the violin, viola, and piano! At 5, he began performing in public, and at 7, played for Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. At 8, he was introduced to American television audiences courtesy of Leonard Bernstein. The next year, Isaac Stern brought him along to “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.”
This was all before Ma attended Juilliard, where he studied with Leonard Rose. He dropped out of Columbia – only to attend Harvard. He spent four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he played under the direction of legendary cellist and conductor Pablo Casals. He’s been friends with Emanuel Ax, a regular chamber music partner, since their student days.
Ma has long been acclaimed for his interpretations of the Bach Cello Suites, chamber music by Beethoven and Brahms, and most of the major concertos for cello and orchestra. However, his first commercial recording, believe it or not, was of the Cello Concerto by English composer Gerald Finzi. Ma recorded the piece while in his early 20s, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley.
Later, having conquered the classical concert hall and established his mastery of the standard repertoire, Ma proved increasingly restless and exploratory, with forays into Baroque music on period instruments, American bluegrass, Argentinean tango, improvisatory duets with Bobby McFerrin, and several musical journeys along the Silk Road.
He’s also been active in film, contributing to the soundtracks of “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” for John Williams and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (the recipient of an Academy Award for Best Original Score) for Tan Dun. And of course his album of arrangements of Ennio Morricone themes sold faster than a tray full of cannoli.
Ma’s friendship with Williams also yielded a cello concerto, which they first recorded together in 1994. My most recent Ma acquisition is his recording of the concerto in its revised version, released on Sony Classical in 2022, and of course it’s wonderful. However, the earlier release has an alluring bonus in Williams’ “Elegy,” reworked from material originally conceived for “Seven Years in Tibet” – six transporting minutes of unalloyed loveliness.
Ma is one of classical music’s last media celebrities, whether introducing kids to the cello on PBS’ “Arthur,” “Sesame Street,” or “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” or playing Bach in support of dancer Misty Copeland and sitting in with the band on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
I’ve been privileged to see him in concert several times. Last season, he was in Princeton at McCarter Theatre for a conversation with PBS NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown. His love for music is such that it is not unusual for him to return after intermission, following a star turn in a big concerto, to modestly sit in with the rest of the cello section and play as a rank-and-file musician on the concert’s second half.
All in all, I suspect he’s a really good guy. In fact, I’m sure he is. Happy birthday, and thanks for everything, Yo-Yo Ma!
John Williams’ “Elegy”
On Colbert with Misty Copeland
At the age of 7, presented by Leonard Bernstein
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”
Ma with saxophonist Joshua Redman, playing “Crazy Bus” on “Arthur”
