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Music Challenge Day 3 - Only the Living

Day 3 of my spontaneous music challenge was focused on living composers. If you're familiar with my blogging or my social media-ing at all, you know that I'm a big proponent of living composers. Here are a couple of my picks from that day of listening.



I started out my day with Lera Auerbach's Cetera desunt, "Sonnet for String Quartet No. 3." I really enjoy Auerbach's work in general, but the feminist part of me especially likes it because she's a quite successful young female composer. Not yet forty, she's been cranking out lovely work that teeters between tonality and atonality for years. Her work gets paired with Shostakovich often on records, and not without reason. There's some of that same forcefulness in her writing, some of that bow-breaking intensity, some of the endlessly building tension.
C71104





The new music movement (or alt-classical or indie chamber, or whatever you want to call it) is a thing I really like, despite many of the pretensions assumed to surround it. In the end a lot of it is just good music. Newspeak is one of those prestigious New York new music ensembles that perform the compositions of all those hot young New York composers. They're under the direction of David T. Little, a percussionist and composer of my favorite work on this disc--the title track, sweet light crude. This piece wends its way through light and simple loveliness into angular modern beauty, then groove territory and frenetic chamber rock and minimalist breakdown in what I would call the B section, and back to a lovely, sad denouement. The composer notes that this is "about love and addiction; about misery; about the perversity of loving your captor. It’s a love song to oil."
All the works here are worth a listen, but the title track really stood out to me as exceptionally composed and performed.
NWAM026



To be entirely frank, I think a lot of the doom and gloom surrounding the classical music scene would dissipate if people would recognize living composers as what they are--the Bachs and Beethovens and Brahmses of today. Sure, it doesn't look exactly the same. But would you really want it to?


Pro musica,
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Music Challenge Day 2 - All New Stuff

Music Challenge Day 2 - All New Stuff

This challenge was intended to get listeners going on different things. In point of fact, the mandate was to "not listen to a single work you've heard before."

Now, I listen to music as part of my job. I do it when I'm doing still other parts of my job. And I'm passionate about music discovery. So I listen to a lot of new music.
But I normally sprinkle in favored composers and works, mix eras, genres, and styles, fold in some outside listening (a little punk, a little hip-hop, a little folk). With this project I vowed to listen only to works I had never heard for the entire day, and (since I also listen to lots of living composers) I tried to focus on historic or non-living composers that I had somehow missed.

I started out with some Taneyev String Quartets on new label Northern Flowers. What lovely work! I couldn't believe how much I had missed out on with Taneyev, especially the very sensitive viola and cello writing. Some people just totally ignore the lower voices in string quartets, making them fill out chords mechanically. Not the case here.
NF9933







Then I moved on to Morton Gould's Saint Lawrence Suite. Woefully, I'm a singer and former pretend-string player who always wanted to be a percussionist, so I listen to very little wind band music. But this work may have started a sea change in me. All the rich, bright timbre of the University of Kansas Wind Ensemble was put to good work here. There are some sweet bluesy, jazzy elements to the suite that play nicely with the quick, light, Copland-esque moments that occur from time to time. This is also the only original work for wind band ever nominated for a Grammy for composition.
8.572629



I also discovered M.K. Čiurlionis for myself in this project. Among my other listening, this last stood out. Perhaps it was the opening, in dark Eastern European style writing that called to mind Borodin's quartets, or perhaps that the composer seemed mutable, even a tad volatile. This Lithuanian composer was also a painter, something I felt I could hear in the compositions before I saw the work. I listened to the String Quartet in C minor and the Theme and Variations, both of which could have tended toward the measly or graceless without the correct force of playing. I have to say, the Vilnius String Quartet brought it on that point.
NF9987


What did you listen to?

Pro musica,
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Music Challenge Day 1- Listen to a Composer You Hate

This week I challenged our social media buddies and myself to get outside of their usual comfortable realm of listening. Four days of boundary pushing (some light lifting, some not so light). Here are my thoughts from each day.


DAY 1: Listen to a Composer You Hate

Confession time, Internet.

I hate Mozart.
It's not personal. It's musical.



And here we go.
Anyone: But he was a child genius!
Me: I know.
A: But he revolutionized the world of music in both performance and composition!
M: I know.
A: But he WAS the classical era!
M: I know.
A: But you like opera. He wrote some great operas. Lots of them!
M: "Great" is a relative term. If you mean too long to be justified by the content, then...yes.
A: Not even Nozze?
M: Nope. I can stand it, but just barely.
A: Cosi?
M: Ugh.
A: What about the choral music?
M: Meh. Some of it is okay.
A: Everyone likes the Requiem!
M: It's all right, I guess.
A: And Amadeus! Did you see Amadeus?!
M: Yep.
A: Didn't you like it?
M: Nope.
A: ...was it the powdered wigs?
M: Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. That's the reason behind my ire for the entire output of an absurdly prolific composer.

So that's how it usually goes. I'm not known for writing composers off in such a manner. I'm not trying to be snarky. In point of fact, I always say that I'll listen to just about anything to make my ears smarter. And I will, even with Mozart. ONCE.
It doesn't change the fact that I basically dislike his music. True, it's genius composition. True, it's unparalleled in it's classical-ness. True, I could never compose anything an nth as impressive or lasting. I'm just not a fan.

So today I listened to Mozart. All day, marathon listening. Piano trios, symphonies, operas, string quartets, choral works, everything. I put aside my historical disdain and opened up my ears. It was at once harrowing and humbling.

Because I still dislike Mozart. I wanted to come out of this loving his music, feeling freshly washed and clean, wrapped in beauty and classical symmetry. But it didn't happen that way. At the end of my listening project I just wanted to hear something that wasn't balanced and proper. I wanted to hear something that could make me weep at my desk with flayed emotion, something that confused my ear or beat it into submission. Something that said something. Maybe if I wanted better results I should have not started with My Number One Big Issue. You live and learn.

The only thing I can really say for the experience is "I tried again." At least I didn't just write off the composer because of my leftover feelings about his work. I checked my old opinions against new experience, so it's not just an untested, ridiculous prejudice. But I recognize the gifts that he had and the beauty he gave to the world. It's just not my cup of tea.

Jedem Tierchen sein Pläsirchen.



Pro musica (all of it!),
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

NML App for Android--Now on Amazon Appstore

I know what you're thinking. You need another place to get our apps, right? RIGHT?

Now you can get the NML app on Amazon's Appstore for Android! Click the giant logo to go!


Don't forget that all of you institutional users will need to take an extra step to generate an app login. Sign up for a free Student/Member Playlist Account through your institution's NML page. The login for that account is also your app login.

Here's to options!



Pro musica,

Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Where My Girls At? Pt. II

As a woman and as a musician I stand fully behind Women's History Month. First, women fought to be taught music. Once music was considered a worthwhile pursuit for well-off ladies (in the parlour only, of course), they had to fight to perform, fight for the stage in the opera and the concert hall. And you would hope or maybe even expect that women would be much more welcomed as composers in this day and age. While there are many more being performed (especially in the new music/alt-classical/contemporary classical movement), the reality remains that female composers still fight for exposure, performance, and Aretha's most coveted commodity: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Furthermore, it's amazing how many people, classical music devotees included, can't name a female composer other than perhaps Joan Tower.

So here are a few of my favorite living composers who happen to be women (and their works). Movers, shakers, wave-makers, iconoclasts, creators. Listen up.


(I'm getting a little minimalist on you here--just names and music. I don't want to color your expectations too much. I hope all with rococo tendencies can forgive me.)

Sofia Gubaidulina - Bassoon Concerto - CHAN9717

Emma Lou Diemer - Piano Quartet - LAN0328

Joan Tower - Wild Purple - 8.559215

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich - Fantasy for Harpsichord - TROY457

Tania Leon - Bailarin - BCD9239

Hilary Tann - Gardens of Anna Maria Lusia de'Medici - PH05019

Libby Larsen - Black Birds, Red Hills - INNOVA512

Julia Wolfe - Cruel Sister - CA-21069

Jennifer Higdon - On a Wire - ASO1001

Gabriela Ortiz - Altar de Neon - DOR-90245

Liza Lim - Weaver-of-Fictions - ABC4766439

Gabriela Lena Frank - HILOS - 8.559645

Lera Auerbach - Ballet for a Lonely Violinist - BIS-CD-1592

Augusta Read Thomas - Silhouettes - TROY855



Pro musica,

Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com

Where My Girls At? Pt. I

We all know that the big winner for March is Women's History Month*. Some folks get in a twist about Women's History Month (as though the advances of the last 90 years mean that women no longer need our own history month) to which I say "Pshaw!"

Most people know about those big-name musical foremothers like Hildegaard von Bingen, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, and Clara Wieck-Schumann, but what about the others? Here's your freshman Intro to Music History, Lady-Style.

Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre
Like many women in music, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was hailed as a virtuosic performer before she came to light as a composer. While she composed in most of the forms of the day, her most well known works remain those she wrote for her own instrument--the keyboard.


Found it on the NML: Harpsichord Suites Nos. 1-4, HCD31729





Barbara Strozzi
Barbara Strozzi was a noted Venetian woman, the adopted daughter of playwright Giulio Strozzi. The surviving body of her work is vocal in nature, both solo and ensemble, ranging from madrigals to arias. The heavily vocal nature and similar pitching corroborates the view that much of her work was written for her own performance in her home.

Found it on the NML: Il primo libro de madrigali, Op. 1, CTH2441-2

Alma Mahler-Werfel
Wife of Gustav Mahler. Alma Mahler was another woman composer whose work was largely suppressed by male influence--though not in such a benign way. Gustav Mahler thought it "unseemly" not only for women to compose, but for both members of a couple to compose. It is believed that he actively forbade her to compose, under the auspice of removing any barriers to her wifely duties. She resumed composition after Mahler's death.

Found it on the NML: 5 Lieder, 999018-2




Liza Lehmann
The English soprano Liza Lehmann actually composed little before her marriage and the end of her performing career. She had a respectable career as a singer, but when struck by Bell's palsy she lost fine control of her vocal folds. At that time she turned back to composition, for which she had shown an aptitude when young but never pursued seriously. She enjoyed a fair amount of popularity in her lifetime with song cycles such as Daisy Chain, Cherry Ripe, and In a Persian Garden, and often accompanied her own compositions at the piano.

Found it on the NML: Daisy Chain, 8.557118

Amy Beach
Amy Beach is particularly notable as the first American woman to experience large-scale success as a composer. As a young girl, Amy Cheney was, like many other females, to begin her career as a well-known performer. Once she married, becoming Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, her husband decided that she would compose rather than perform. She composed 300 works in her lifetime, nearly all of which were commercially published. This widespread success made her a giant among women in music.

Found it on the NML: String Quartet, Op. 89, CHAN10162



Johanna Beyer
Johanna Beyer worked in relative obscurity in her lifetime, largely ignored as a composer even by the experimental music community. She continued to study with teachers like Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford Seeger, whose influence can be heard in her harmonic and contrapuntal language. The work has been explored further posthumously and Beyer is beginning to gain posthumous respect as an experimental composer.

Found it on the NML: Clarinet Suite No. 2 in Bb major, INNOVA589

Nadia Boulanger
The elder Boulanger sister composed much less prolifically than did the younger. It is believed that Nadia thought Lili to be much more gifted than she herself was, which likely led to her halt in composition. Nadia proceeded to have an extremely active international career as an organist, composer, conductor, and educator. She championed the music of her pupils at every turn, among whom were counted Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, Carter, and Copland.

Found it on the NML: Pieces for Cello and Piano, 8.223636




Lili Boulanger
Lili Boulanger was the possessor of another nascent performing career cut short by illness. She relied solely on private instruction for her musical education, as her frailty precluded a full conservatory education. Remarkably, she became the first woman to ever win the Prix de Rome with her work Faust et Helene in 1913. The broad use of orchestral color in her compositions was considered quite imaginative, as was her later exploration of polytonalality.

Found it on the NML: Faust et Helene, CHAN9745



Pro (women's) musica,
Mo
nmlhelp@naxosusa.com




*Other March things that I deem "pretty awesome" include International Women's Day, International Book Day, National Grammar Day, and March Madness. I'm just saying.