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Sculthorpe at 85 A Musical Celebration

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Ross Amico

April 29, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

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Today marks the 85th birthday of Australia’s foremost living composer, Peter Sculthorpe, a link to whose “Earth Cry” I posted on April 22. I mentioned at that time (it being Earth Day) Sculthorpe’s concern for the environment, which informs much of his music.

Prolific filmmaker Tony Palmer is attempting to raise funds to make a documentary about the composer. He’s been making films for 40 years, with subjects ranging from the Beatles to Frank Zappa to Richard Wagner to Benjamin Britten to Richard Burton to John Osborne and Athol Fugard. His melancholy portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams, “O Thou Transcendent,” is excellent. The Sculthorpe project seems like a worthy endeavor. If you’re interested in contributing, here’s more information:

http://www.documentaryaustralia.com.au/films/details/1765/earth-cry-a-profile-of-peter-sculthorpe

In the meantime, here’s Sculthorpe’s “Kakadu.” According to the composer:

“The work takes its name from the Kakadu National Park in northern Australia. This enormous wilderness area stretches from coastal tidal plains to rugged mountain plateaux, and in it may be found the living culture of its Aboriginal inhabitants, dating back for fifty thousand years. Sadly, today there are only a few remaining speakers of kakadu or gagadju. The work, then, is concerned with my feelings about this place, its landscape, its change of seasons, its dry season and its wet, its cycle of life and death. In three parts, the outer sections are dance-like and energetic, sharing similar musical ideas. The central section is somewhat introspective, and is dominated by a cor anglais solo. … Apart from this solo, the melodic material in Kakadu, as in much of my recent music, was suggested by the contours and rhythms of Aboriginal chant.”

Happy birthday, Peter Sculthorpe.
Hilarious Music Theory You’ll Actually Enjoy

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Ross Amico

April 28, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

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I realize this is an investment of your time, but it’s actually worth it. Even if you only watch the first few minutes, and you care nothing at all for twelve-tone music, you will find it witty and informative. It’s a brilliant blend of music theory, philosophy and pure hilarity. (“Also, he was a horse-faced fascist!”). This is one talented YouTuber. If you’re not careful, you might just learn something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niz8TfY794
Viktor Ullmann Music from Terezin

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Ross Amico

April 27, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

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Tonight on “The Lost Chord,” to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day, we present music of Viktor Ullmann. Ullmann was one of the best-known composers to be interned in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the “model camp” set up by the Nazis to deceive the foreign press and the International Red Cross.

There, concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles were formed. Operas were staged, and the Verdi Requiem was mounted no less than fourteen times. At Terezin, composers continued to create, until deportation to Auschwitz.

Ullmann wrote in 1944, “…that musically I have been challenged not hindered by Theriesenstadt, that we did not just sit by Babylon’s rivers bewailing our fate, and that our will to create culture was as strong as our will to live.”

We’ll be listening to a cross-section of Ullmann’s music written in the camp, including a piano sonata (performed by Terezin survivor Edith Kraus, who died last year at the age of 100), a concert overture and a song cycle; also, a piano concerto written shortly before his arrest, a period of hardship for the composer, as he began to be stripped of his rights and his options to make a living. He never heard the concerto performed in his lifetime. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.

Ironically, most of his unpublished works dating from before his internment are lost. It is his music written at Terezin, for the most part, which survives. The music written during his confinement, then, becomes a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the artist.

The composer lives on through his works, on “Ullmann Victorious.” You can hear it tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Thursday night at 11, or listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

To enhance your appreciation of Ullmann’s “Der Mensch und sein Tag” (“Man and His Day”), I am posting English translations of the aphoristic texts below, so that they may be read while listening to the music.

Of perhaps related interest, WWFM will rebroadcast “Vera’s Story,” Vera Goodkind’s first-hand account of her rescue from the Nazis by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Her remarks are augmented by music of composers who were caught up in the Holocaust. The program was produced by Rachel Katz and is narrated by Bill Zagorski. “Vera’s Story” will air Monday at 5 p.m. ET.

“DER MENSCH UND SEIN TAG” (MAN AND HIS DAY), Op. 47
12 Portraits by Hans-Günter Adler
1. WALK INTO MORNING
  Sight. Hands in front of eyebrows
  and maternal light. Meadowland.
  A blade of grass. A step. Dew on the flowers.
2. SONG
  So much. So much and still more.
  A great ocean, surging and pounding –
  flutes lightly, horns heavily.
3. HOME
  In the ground, the cool ground. So colourful.
  Billowing fields and meadows around.
  In the ground – hidden heart and mouth.
4. TO THE BELOVED
  With you, in smiles and tears.
  Nearness of hand and mouth. Longing
  fades. With you no blind fancy.
5. FLOWERS
  Inward, buried deep and warm.
  Breath – singing to life.
  Bright goblets, lips, tongues.
6. IN THE PARLOUR
  Tightly pressed to one another.
  Planted with care and trouble.
  Animate and inanimate. Mute and loud.
7. THE NEIGHBOUR
  Help is good. Hand in hand.
  Door to door and wall to wall:
  quite united. Bond and band.
8. PRAYERS
  Scattered in the chalice of piety
  ripe corn offered
  to the gladdened protector and creator.
9. IN THE FOREST
  Dappled, close and far and scent.
  The sun dreams, the air slumbers.
  Crepitation. Calcification. Trees. Scent.
10. FADE
  Down, down. The bell tolls.
  Clouds glow. Evening glimmers.
  Down, down. The moon-breath shimmers.
11. NIGHT
  Come, gentle sleep! Come, sweet night!
  The ground relaxes in muted glory.
  Lone thoughts sink to earth.
12. SILENCE
  Stillness. Silence. Looking and watching.
  Tranquil in blessed reflection.
  Sleep before the divine.
Beauty and the Beast The Best Fairy Tale Movie?

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Ross Amico

April 26, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

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The best fairy tale movie of all time? Off the top of my head, I think so.

Turner Classic Movies: TCM is showing Jean Cocteau’s ineffably lovely “La Belle et la Bête” (“Beauty and the Beast”) on “The Essentials” tonight at 8:00 ET. Though the film was made in 1946, it certainly has enough tricks in its imaginative quiver to teach a thing or two to the CGI-crazed directors of today.

Moody, atmospheric, dreamy, clever, hypnotic, funny and romantic, with production design like something Gustav Doré might have conceived while smoking Dutch Masters, Cocteau’s masterpiece stars Jean Marais and Josette Day.

The alternately mysterious and majestic score is by Les Six veteran Georges Auric. Cocteau, you’ll recall, was the publicity machine that propelled Auric, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre and Louis Durey to fame in Paris circa 1920.

If you only know the Disney version, you’re in for a real treat. A completely disarming film. It’s a good night to stay in and pop popcorn. Don’t miss this one.
Shakespeare Film Scores Olivier vs Branagh

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Ross Amico

April 24, 2014

in Daily Dispatch

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We continue our celebration of the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare on “Picture Perfect” this week, with music from film adaptations made by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh. The two overlapped on a handful of the Shakespeare plays, including “Henry V” and “Hamlet.” William Walton was Olivier’s house composer, and Patrick Doyle provides the scores for Branagh.

Walton and Olivier collaborated on three big projects, with Olivier as actor, director and usually producer – “Henry V” (1944), “Hamlet” (1948) and “Richard III” (1955). Earlier, in 1936, Walton scored a film version of “As You Like It.” Olivier didn’t direct this one, but rather appeared in one of the leads as the lovesick Orlando. In the role of Rosalind was the more unconventional choice of Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner, who had played the role on stage. Her husband, Paul Czinner, directed. The film exudes great charm, and Walton’s music is as close to springtime as it gets.

Branagh is today’s foremost popularizer of the Bard. His turn as actor and director in “Henry V” (1989) boldly placed him toe-to-toe with Olivier. Amazingly – and deservedly – comparisons were not unfavorable. Branagh’s performance was nominated for an Academy Award. (Olivier, too, had been nominated, and received a special award for his “Outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing ‘Henry V’ to the screen”). However, by the time Branagh came to direct his version of “As You Like It” (2006), a number of factors had changed.

Following “Henry V,” things continued promisingly with a crowd-pleasing romp, “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993). But then Branagh mounted an unabridged, four-hour film adaptation of “Hamlet” (1996), laden with crazy cameos from Jack Lemmon (bad) to Charlton Heston (amazingly good), followed by a headscratch-inducing, American Songbook-laden “Love’s Labours Lost” (2000), which was universally panned. It certainly didn’t help Shakespeare’s clout in the eyes of distributors.

“As You Like It” received theatrical showings overseas, but was shown in America only on HBO. In Branagh’s version, the forest of Arden is transferred to 19th century Japan. There, English traders encounter ample kimonos, kabuki theatre, ninjas and a sumo wrestler. As always, Doyle provides a score that is lyrical and lovely.

It’s instructive to view the two directors’ takes on “Henry V” in the context of the times in which they were filmed. When Olivier brought Harry the King to the big screen, England was in throes of the Second World War and his “Henry” bubbles over with patriotic zeal.

Branagh, on the other hand, offers a darker, post-Vietnam “Henry,” with his charismatic, ambitious king plunging his country into a war that is both costly and messy. Fortunately, as history tells us, the long-bow saves the day, and Branagh’s Henry makes us forget his cold rejection of old friendships with a hair-raising rendition of the St. Crispin’s Day speech that makes anyone who hears it want to fight the French, consequences be damned.

Join me Friday evening at 6 ET for “Picture Perfect: Music for the Movies,” or catch the show later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

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