Classic Ross Amico

Tag: May Day

May Day Madrigals on the Lost Chord

Now is the month of maying!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” at the end of a lusty day of reveling around the maypole and “playing barley-break,” unwind with three 20th century instrumental and orchestral works inspired by Renaissance madrigals.

Tune in for Igor Stravinsky’s “Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa,” Bohuslav Martinu’s “Three Madrigals” for violin and viola, and Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto Madrigal,” a piece for two guitars and orchestra.

Fie then! why sit we musing, youth’s sweet delight refusing? Celebrate May Day with “Unsung Madrigals,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Throwback to Merrie England

Maypole dance from “La Fille mal gardée”

Suite from Howard Hanson’s “Merry Mount” (after Hawthorne’s “The Maypole of Merry Mount”)

A toast to Merrymount’s Thomas Morton

https://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/tag/thomas-morton/

Shakespeare, the May Pole and the Hobby Horse

https://silibrary1.wordpress.com/tag/maypole/

Welcoming the sun with a good old-fashioned morris dance

May Day is for capering around the May Pole. Beltane is for embarrassing your parents.

The May Day Fish-Slapping Dance and the Gavotte of the Long John Silvers

“Now is the month of maying” on crumhorns

Deer Man

Fa la la la la la la la la, fa la la la la la la!

May 1, 2022
Happy May Day Celebrate Merrie England Traditions

HAPPY MAY DAY!!

Celebrate the First of May with a May Day miscellany:

Throwback to Merrie England

Maypole dance from “La Fille mal gardée”

Suite from Howard Hanson’s “Merry Mount” (after Hawthorne’s “The Maypole of Merry Mount”)

A toast to Merrymount’s Thomas Morton

https://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/thomas-morton-of-merrymount/?fbclid=IwAR3qWqVP2BtLql4i1yKl4vtZI_YNWn3rdGonNQW4XF24uTUp6siZ-oQnFks

Shakespeare, the May Pole and the Hobby Horse

https://silibrary1.wordpress.com/tag/maypole/

Welcoming the sun with a good old-fashioned morris dance

May Day is for capering around the May Pole. Beltane is for embarrassing your parents.

The May Day Fish-Slapping Dance and the Gavotte of the Long John Silvers

“Now is the month of maying” on crumhorns

Deer Man

May 1, 2021
Happy May Day Music Crumhorns and Fife

Happy May Day!

“Now is the Month of Maying”

On crumhorns, multitracked

Barney Fife

May 1, 2020
May Day Music Sullivan Bax on WWFM

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” with the First of May right around the corner, we don our May Day finery and caper about the Maypole, to a couple of works by English composers.

The first is by Sir Arthur Sullivan – he of Gilbert & Sullivan fame – who, in 1897, set to music a “Jubilee Hymn,” as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations surrounding the reign of Queen Victoria, which were held in May of that year.

Concurrently, he was commissioned to write a ballet to mark sixty years of the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. The result was “Victoria and Merrie England,” which was made up of nationalistic tableaux celebrating the history, legends, and royalty of Great Britain.

We’ll listen to Scenes II & III from the ballet, together titled “May Day in Queen Elizabeth’s Time” (this alluding, of course, to the reign of Elizabeth I). The suite includes colorful descriptive subsections like “Procession of the Mummers and the Revelers,” “Knights and Rose Maidens,” “Friar Tuck and the Dragon” and “Maypole Dance.”

Then we’ll turn to one of the earliest programmatic works by Arnold Bax (later SIR Arnold Bax). “Spring Fire,” composed in 1913 and 1914, is meant to suggest the awakening of mythological beings in early spring.

The subject matter was an attempt to cash in on the fashionable “paganism craze” sparked by the Ballets Russes and its composers. Bax’s affection for the writings of Algernon Swinburne had recently yielded the symphonic poem “Nympholept.” Quotations from Swinburne also adorn portions of the score to “Spring Fire.”

The piece was scheduled for performance several times, but repeatedly cancelled, first because of the outbreak of war, then because of the work’s difficulty. Ultimately, it would never be performed during Bax’s lifetime. The manuscript was consumed in a fire in 1964, and all hope of ever hearing the score vanished. Fortunately, a copy was discovered, and the piece was finally recorded in 1986.

The work is meant to evoke a woodland sunrise in early spring, as ancient denizens of the forest shrug off their winter sleep. They skip with mad antics down the glades. Forest lovers loll in their ecstatic dreams, until they are rudely awakened by a turbulent rout of satyrs and maenads. Sounds like spring to me.

I hope you’ll join me for “Spring into May Day,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

April 28, 2019
May Day German Lieder & Early Music NYC

Happy May Day!

After a vigorous morning of dancing around the maypole, why not catch your breath and enjoy another Noontime Concert on The Classical Network – a recital of German lieder featuring Amy Bartram. Bartram is a soprano with local connections. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in vocal pedagogy at Westminster Choir College. Bartram will perform works by Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert. At the fortepiano will be Dongsok Shin, a longtime member of Rebel: Ensemble for Baroque Music.

The concert comes our way courtesy of Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS). The program was presented on October 26, 2017 at St. Bartholomew’s Church, 50th Street and Park Avenue, in Midtown Manhattan, where free concerts are held every Thursday at 1:15 p.m. This Thursday, The Franklin Quartet will present “Northern Lights,” a program of rarely-heard music by Scandinavian composers, including Joseph Martin Kraus, sometimes referred to as “the Swedish Mozart,” and Johan Wikmanson, admired by Haydn. To see a complete schedule of lunchtime performances, look online at midtownconcerts.org.

GEMS also hosts evening concerts. On Thursday at 8 p.m., the Choir of St. Luke in the Fields will perform “The Glorious Mysteries: Music of Biber and Lassus,” at the Church of St. Luke-in-the-Fields, 487 Hudson Street (just south of Christopher Street) in Manhattan. The Repast Baroque Ensemble will present “Bohemian Fantasy,” music by Bohemian virtuosi, including Biber and Schmelzer, on Friday at 8 p.m., at McKinney Chapel, First Unitarian Church, 116 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights, and on Saturday at 8 p.m, at Advent Lutheran Church, 2504 Broadway at 93rd Street in Manhattan. Amor Artis Chorus will perform Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610” at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, West 82nd Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue) in Manhattan, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. On Sunday at 4 p.m., Parthenia Viol Consort will explore “Purcell’s Roots: Jacobean Fantasies for Six Viols,” at the Church of St. Luke-in-the-Fields (at the address above).

Gotham Early Music Scene is a non-profit corporation that supports and promotes artists and organizations in New York City devoted to early music – music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, and early Classical periods. For more information and GEMS’ events calendar, look online at gemsny.org.

Then, after the concert, around 1 p.m., it’s back to celebrating the summer to come. Get ready for an afternoon of Morris Dancers, Jack in the Green, Hobby Horse, Jill-All-Alone, Robin and Marian, and Queen of the May. Now is the month of maying! We’ll be festooned in bells and ribbons, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 1, 2018

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