Riley’s music may not be everyone’s cup of “tea” (or cannabis, as the case may be), but there’s no denying his influence on the development of Minimalism, progressive rock, and the avant-garde.
Riley himself has acknowledged his debt to Indian singer Pran Nath. The composer made a number of trips to India to study with and accompany Nath. He returned to share his experiences, teaching Indian classical music at Mills College. Riley has also cited the influence of John Cage and contemporary jazz artists, such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Bill Evans.
Already in the 1950s, Riley began experimenting with looped tape and time-lag techniques. He also composed using just intonation and microtones. His electronic album “A Rainbow in Curved Air” (released in 1969) became something of a landmark, attracting musicians from across a variety of genres.
Riley’s best-known work is probably “In C,” often credited as the first widely-acknowledged Minimalist composition. The piece was given its premiere at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1964, by an ensemble that included Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, and Morton Subotnick, among others.
Much ink has been spilled – and acid dropped – over Riley’s music.
In Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” the narrator, Deems Taylor, sets the film’s childhood-scarring climax on Walpurgis Night. Deems Taylor was wrong!
It’s actually tonight, St. John’s Eve, that the Slavic demon Chernobog emerges from the “Bare Mountain” (the translation preferred by Leopold Stokowski). For sure, there should be plenty of nudity on a good old-fashioned St. John’s Eve. And Disney obliges with bare-breasted harpies!
St. John’s Day holds a place on the Christian calendar akin to that of Christmas, in that it coincides, roughly (thanks to miscalculation by the Romans), with solstice time. For the pagan North, summer began on May Day. Midsummer was originally a pagan festival, which was co-opted by the Church into the observance of the birth of John the Baptist, which St. Luke implies took place six months before that of Jesus.
So while the actual summer solstice might occur anytime between June 20 and June 22, depending on the year, June 24 was designated the Feast Day of St. John.
St. John’s Eve is a time for leaping over bonfires. Doing so was believed to ensure prosperity and good luck. The bigger the fire, the further at bay were kept evil spirits. The further the evil spirits, the better the guarantee of a good harvest. If you didn’t light a bonfire… well, it was as good as tempting fate to burn your house down. It’s a time when dragons roam the earth, as the sun again pursues a southerly course. And it’s a time when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as Chernobog.
The idea for Modest Mussorgsky’s famous musical picture “A Night on Bald Mountain” haunted him for his entire creative life. In 1858, while still in his teens, he planned to write an opera on the subject of Nikolai Gogol’s short story, “St. John’s Eve.” A couple of years later, in 1860, he toyed with another projected opera called “The Witch.” Not long after, according to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, he wrote a diabolical piece for piano and orchestra under the influence of Franz Liszt’s “Totentanz.” If it was so, it has not survived.
It wasn’t until 1867 that Mussorgsky reconfigured the idea as an orchestral piece, “St. John’s Eve on Bald Mountain.” He began to compose it on June 12. He finished it on June 23 – ACTUALLY ON ST. JOHN’S EVE. Mussorgsky was ecstatic finally to have completed it. Then he showed it to his mentor, Mily Balakirev, who savaged it. The composer, no doubt ashamed, put it aside. This version of “A Night on Bald Mountain” would not be published until 1968.
Mussorgsky may have been cowed by Balakirev, but he was not done with his dream of a witches’ sabbath. In 1872, he revised and recast the material for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, as part of Act III of the opera-ballet “Mlada,” a collaborative effort undertaken with his “Mighty Handful” fellows, Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, and César Cui. In this new version the music was to form the basis of the “Night on Mount Triglav” scene. Mussorgsky now referred to the piece as “Glorification of Chernobog.”
Unfortunately, the “Mlada” project foundered, and again “Bald Mountain” sank into oblivion. “Glorification of Chernobog” was never published or performed and this version is now lost.
Mussorgsky took one more crack at it, as “Dream Vision of the Peasant Lad,” designed to serve as an intermezzo in his opera “Sorochyntsi Fair,” begun in 1874. He went back to the short story “St. John’s Eve,” from Gogol’s book “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.” The collection, steeped in Ukrainian lore, also proved to be a fount of inspiration for Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. If you can find an edition coupled with Gogol’s “Mirgorod” (which includes “Taras Bulba” and “Vij”), all the better.
Alas, the opera was left incomplete when Mussorgsky drank himself to death in 1881. There are at least five performing editions of the work, completed by other hands. Sadly, Mussorgsky NEVER HEARD “A Night on Bald Mountain,” in any of its versions, in his lifetime. How’s that for a sucker punch?
I’ve got the Sorochyntsi incarnation all cued up to the relevant passage at the link. If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the opera, you can drag the audio bar back to the beginning with your cursor.
For many years, this was the standard version, edited and orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Disney is notoriously vigilant about guarding its content, but you can view the “Fantasia” segment here, the video posted for educational purposes. In the film, Mussorgsky’s music is heard in Stokowski’s orchestration.
With heat index values around here projected to push 110 through Wednesday, the idea of dancing around a bonfire is not exactly at the top of my list. On the other hand, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about catching a chill on the Bare Mountain.
Yesterday, I was all set to post something fun for a Sunday morning, but now everything feels rather ominous. I’m hoping that’s thunder I’m hearing on this grim, overcast morning. How many times do we have to adjust to just how horrible everything is, only for it to get worse?
But life goes on, at least for the time being. And there’s something to be said for escapism. What is art, after all (or at least the art I choose to embrace), but the pursuit of beauty, order, and affirmation of the better parts of ourselves.
In preparation for yesterday’s broadcast of one of my radio shows, “Sweetness and Light,” I constructed a playlist around the theme of summer reading. One of the candidates, which would have been a shoe-in, was this recording, by Florence Smithson, of Sophie’s Waltz Song (“For Tonight”) from Edward German’s operetta after Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.” I fell totally in love with it and was crestfallen not to be able to locate it anywhere as a digital download. The few recordings I could find all left me cold – Joan Sutherland may have been a fabulous singer, but her version lacks the charm, personality, and diction Smithson conveys in her recording, made all the way back in 1912. Since the few modern recordings I could find all paled in comparison, I had to settle for an orchestral arrangement by Ernest Tomlinson.
This is not the first time I’ve fallen in love with a recording, only to discover it never made it to CD. So much is lost every time we change formats. Let this be a lesson to you, folks. Hang on to your physical media!
Celebrate Midsummer with music for St. John’s Eve.
The Feast Day of St. John the Baptist (June 24) is like Christmas, in that it coincides with solstice time. But St. John’s Eve is more like Halloween. It’s a time for the lighting of bonfires against evil spirits – when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as the demon Chernobog, who emerges from the Bald Mountain – as the sun again pursues a southerly course.
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll surrender to Midsummer madness, with Modest Mussorgsky’s “St. John’s Night” from his opera “Sorochinsky Fair,” Alfred Schnittke’s puckish “(K)ein Sommernachtsdraum” (“NOT a Midsummer Night’s Dream”), and selections from Gunnar de Frumerie’s ballet “St. John’s Eve.”
Leaping over a bonfire at this time is seen as a surety of prosperity and good luck. Tuning in to “The Lost Chord” doubly so. Keep an ear out for “Midsummer Night’s Fiends,” 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
Now that it’s summer, it’s time to catch up on our reading! Whether it’s a beach book or a timeless literary classic, reading for pleasure is its own reward. This week on “Sweetness and Light,” imagine yourself in a lawn chair, under a good shade tree, perhaps with a beverage at your side, and enjoy an hour of music, hand-picked to get you in the spirit.
It will be a veritable lending library of compositions for concert hall, opera house, musical theater, salon, and film, with works inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” Peter Benchley’s “Jaws,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”
Celebrate two of life’s great pleasures – music and books! Set aside your cares. They’ll still be here when you get back. Get yourself in the mindset to unplug and enjoy some quiet time. Prime yourself for a carefree summer of reading, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
