17982. (William Byrd) Dileges Dominum
17983. (William Byrd) Ad Dominum cum tribulater 
17984. (William Byrd) Mass for 5 Voic­es [ver­sion with Pros­pers (4) for the Feast of All Saints]
. . . . . [see reg­u­lar ver­sion [2060]
(Armen Grig­o­ryan, douduk, with ensem­ble) Douduk, the Sound of Armenia:
. . . . 17985. (Anon.) Gyoum­r­va Parer
. . . . 17986. (Say­at Nova) Es Me Gharib Blbu­li Pes
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We don’t know much about the life of the Neapoli­tan com­poser Rinal­do di Capua, who was born some­where around 1710 and died, in pover­ty and obscu­rity, in 1780. But, briefly, he achieved some fame as a com­poser of opera, and made one of the key inno­va­tions in the trans­for­ma­tion of the sym­phony from a mere suite of vignettes, which could be shuf­fled or sub­sti­tuted like a deck of cards, to its lat­er form as a coher­ent whole, the “sym­pho­ny-sonata” form that makes, say, a Beethoven sym­phony appear as nar­ra­tive as a play, and saw it’s ulti­mate degree of log­i­cal devel­op­ment in Sibelius’ Sev­enth. Accord­ing to the diary of Charles Bur­ney, a musi­cian trav­el­ing in Italy in 1770, di Capua had the same ten­dency to solid­ify the opera buf­fa into some­thing more resem­bling our idea of a dra­matic opera. Bur­ney relates that, after a peri­od of celebri­ty for many operas (all but one of which are lost), he found him “liv­ing, or rather starv­ing in 1770 at Rome, the chief scene of his for­mer glo­ry! This com­poser, whose pro­duc­tions were, dur­ing many years, the delight of all Europe, was reduced at Rome to the utmost indi­gence. Dio­genes the Cyn­ic was nev­er more mean­ly clad through choice, than Rinal­do through neces­sity: a patched coat, and stock­ings that want­ed to be patched or darned.” Bur­ney reports that the old man was par­tic­u­larly bit­ter because he had hoped to pro­vide for his old age by pub­lish­ing his col­lected works, only to dis­cover that his son had burned all his man­u­s­cipts! Hence, we know lit­tle about a fair­ly impor­tant com­poser of the Roco­co peri­od. Toron­to Pub­lic Library’s huge col­lec­tion con­tains noth­ing by him, though the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto’s Thomas Fish­er Rare Book Library [one of the lit­tle-known trea­sures of the city, by the way], has a libret­to of one of his operas, and else­where the Uni­ver­sity has some scraps of sheet music. But one, ran­dom exam­ple of his operas sur­vives, appar­ently a minor ear­ly work. It is La Zin­gara, an Inter­mezo in Two Parts. This was lat­er reworked into some­thing more uni­fied opera, but what sur­vives is in the orig­i­nal opera buf­fa form. It was per­formed by the Mainz Cham­ber Orches­tra, with Annelies Moke­witz (sopra­no), Rodol­fo Malacarne (tenor) and Laerte Malaguti (bass). The per­for­mance exists on a Turn­about record­ing which I obtained in a yard sale in my neigh­bor­hood, where yard sales can turn up any­thing. If this one, minor work is any hint, di Capua was a tal­ented man. The melodies are fine, the ritor­nel­los are dra­mat­i­cally effec­tive. I don’t urge any­one to run out and lis­ten, because their chances of find­ing the piece are remote.

After lis­ten­ing to Nana Mouskouri’s Nou­velles chan­sons de la Vieille France (1978), I dug up the album that pre­ceded it, Vieilles chan­sons de France (1973). Both albums, cov­er­ing a wide vari­ety of tra­di­tional French melodies, some dat­ing from the mid­dle ages, act­ed as a use­ful reminder that Cana­dian folk music owes some­thing to France. The Cana­dian folk tra­di­tion is so sat­u­rated with Celtic ele­ments — one musi­col­o­gist clas­si­fied the whole coun­try as a “Celtic out-island” — that one for­gets that many of the old­est songs do come from France. Lis­ten­ing to these two albums, I found it easy to guess what part of France a song came from. If the song sound­ed vague­ly famil­iar and had a “Cana­dian feel­ing” to it, it turned out to have come from Bri­tanny, Nor­mandy, or the Low­er Loire. These are, of course, the places where the bulk of the first set­tlers in Cana­da orig­i­nated, the mar­itime vil­lages of the west coast of France. Many of these set­tlers did not even speak French, but were Bre­tons, whose Celtic lan­guage is clos­est to Welsh, so the ear­li­est Cana­di­an music already start­ed out on a qua­si-Celtic foot­ing. Sub­se­quently, wave after wave of Scot­tish and Irish music deeply Celti­cized the folk music of all of Cana­da, whether it was sung in French, Eng­lish, Gael­ic, or abo­rig­i­nal lan­guages. But in many cas­es, the orig­i­nal melody does come from France, and occa­sion­ally has sur­vived in both coun­tries. It’s inter­est­ing to hear them sung by a Euro­pean singer, though I sup­pose my own her­itage will ensure that the Celti­cized Cana­dian ver­sions will always feel “the right way” to me.

Mousk­ouri has been called “the the best sell­ing female singer of all time” (though I sus­pect Lata Mangeshkar has a bet­ter claim to that title). A Greek, born at Cha­nia, on Crete, she is still going strong, per­form­ing many con­certs year­ly at the age of 74. She sings in many lan­guages, but she is best known for her work in French, and also Amer­i­can Jazz. Both these albums are delightful.

I’ve writ­ten before about Ali Far­ka Touré, the sub­lime gui­tarist and song writer Tim­buk­tu [in blog entry Think­ing of Tim­buk­tu]. In the Heart of the Moon was the sec­ond last album he released before his death in March of 2006. Here, he is teamed up with mas­ter kora play­er Toumani Dia­baté, in a spon­ta­neous jam ses­sion, with­out rehearsal. A few over­dubs (some by Ry Cood­er) were lat­er added, but these are dis­creet, and not intru­sive to the effort­less flow of the ses­sion. All twelve tracks are superb. It is also more tra­di­tion­al, hark­ing back to the pre-elec­tric days of the gri­ot per­form­ers of clas­si­cal Malian music, and mix­ing both Song­hai and Bam­bara strains. The cumu­la­tive mood is hyp­not­i­cal­ly plea­sur­able. There is no hint of rival­ry in the duets. The kora is built from a cal­abash gourd cut in half and cov­ered with cow skin, with a notched bridge, putting it rough­ly in the man­dolin fam­i­ly. But it’s played some­what like a fla­men­co gui­tar, and the strings give a dis­tinct­ly harp-like sound. Dia­baté is per­haps the finest inter­preter of this instru­ment. Touré, as the more famous musi­cian, doesn’t hog the show. He lets the Diabaté’s kora shine in the lime­light for most of the songs. The sub­tle­ty of their col­lab­o­ra­tion hits the lis­ten­er only as one gets well into the album. If you are going to buy three albums to intro­duce your­self to the glo­ries of the Malian Renais­sance (for that is what is going on in that coun­try), then I rec­om­mend this album, Touré’s The Source, and Amadou et Mariam’s Dimanche à Bamako.

17809. (Chris­tos Hatzis) Constantinople
17810. (DJ Assas­sin) The Stalk­er EP
17811. (Out­Kast) Big Boi and Dre Present….OutKast
17812. (Souad Mas­si) Mesk elil
17813. (Asia) Asia
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I’ve just acquired Zim­babwe: Tra­di­tions of the Shona Peo­ple ― The Soul of Mbi­ra. Most eth­no­log­i­cal record­ings are of lim­ited inter­est to non-spe­cial­ists, but the sound of the African instru­ment known as the mbi­ra or kalim­ba is so delight­ful that a broad audi­ence can enjoy this album. The album con­sists of record­ings made in Zim­babwe by eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist Paul F. Berlin­er. Berlin­er is the acknowl­edged author­ity on mbi­ra music, and author of The Soul of Mbi­ra, pub­lished in 1993 by Uni­ver­sity of Chica­go Press. The mbi­ra con­sists of a wood­en sound­ing board, on which tuned iron keys are mount­ed. The keys are played by the thumbs. The music of the mbi­ra, as it is played by the Shona peo­ple of Zim­babwe, is com­plex and polyrhyth­mic, often giv­ing the impres­sion of sev­eral instru­ments played at once. The form of mbi­ra pieces, usu­ally accom­pa­nied by a drum called the hosho, vague­ly resem­bles the works of Philip Glass, in that com­plex repeat­ing pat­terns slow­ly mutate over a long time. The mbi­ra is doc­u­mented in African cul­ture as ear­ly as 1589, and is prob­a­bly much old­er. It may be close­ly asso­ci­ated with the tech­nol­ogy of iron smelt­ing, which in turn is asso­ci­ated with the expan­sion of the Ban­tu-speak­ing peo­ples of Africa. There was very good qual­ity iron smelt­ing in the Muta­pa Empire of the 13th to 17th centuries.

While the mbi­ra has not spread out of Africa in the same way that the ban­jul (ban­jo) did, it has some affi­ciana­dos in the rest of the world. Earth, Wind and Fire, the eclec­tic Chica­go-based band of the 1970s, fea­tured the kalim­ba. This is a vari­ant of the mbi­ra, tuned dia­ton­i­cally in the key of G, with the keys placed in a non-tra­di­tion­al man­ner (adja­cent notes on the scale sit­ting on oppo­site sides). It was invent­ed in the 1950’s and was an “export” ver­sion of the instru­ment, orig­i­nally mar­keted by a New Jer­sey firm as a toy! Earth, Wind and Fire’s band­leader, Mau­rice White, became quite pro­fi­cient on the instru­ment, and his per­for­mances helped res­cue the instru­ment from its “toy” status.

For my eigh­teen-thou­sandth first lis­ten­ing, I want­ed to pick some­thing at least a lit­tle spe­cial, so I chose Chris­tos Hatzis’ 90-minute work for sopra­no, mid­dle-east­ern vocal­ist, piano trio, and dig­i­tal audio. When I lis­tened to it, my reac­tion was “wow” ― not a word that comes up very often, con­sid­er­ing my jad­ed lis­ten­ing experience.

About five (maybe six) years ago, I heard a frag­ment of music over the radio that struck me as very beau­ti­ful. It was clear­ly a mod­ern piece, but unlike most of the mild­ly inter­est­ing, but blood­less items ground out by the con­ser­va­to­ry crowd, it was suf­fused with intense emo­tion. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it could have been by any of the eclec­tic com­posers of today, but emo­tion­al­ly, it could have been by Rach­mani­nov! What­ev­er it was, it was pro­found­ly mov­ing. But I was inter­rupt­ed, and didn’t learn what it was or who com­posed it. Two years ago, I heard anoth­er piece, very sim­i­lar, per­formed by the Gryphon Trio. It was labeled “Old Pho­tographs”, by the Toron­to com­pos­er Chris­tos Hatzis. I liked this almost as much as the first, and it was clear­ly con­nect­ed to the mys­tery piece I had heard before, part of a suite or some­thing. I sub­se­quent­ly found a num­ber of his choral pieces, all of them enjoy­able. Read more »

17668. (Albert Rous­sel) Sym­pho­ny #2, Op.23
17669. (Albert Rous­sel) Sym­pho­ny #4, Op.53
Rough Guide to the Music of Thailand:
. . . . 17670. (Man Motor­gai) “Hae Nang Maew”
. . . . 17671. (Namoiy Tham­malang­ka) “Lam Yai Lam Poon”
. . . . 17672. (Surasak Don­chai) “Phin Solo ‘Tran­scen­den­tal Technique’ ”
. . . . 17673. (Mike Piromporn) “Lerk Dai Lerm Bor Dai”
. . . . 17674. (Siri­porn Aumpiapong) “Rang Jai Rai Wan”
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It took me a long time to get into Oscar Peter­son. His com­po­si­tions seem, at first, to be casu­al lit­tle puffs, dashed off effort­lessly. This is an illu­sion. As you let them sink in, you real­ize what incred­i­ble pre­ci­sion, con­trol, and sub­tlety they have. Peter­son is as cool as a plate of sliced cucum­bers served on a bed of fresh­ly fall­en snow, but there is an emo­tional pow­er behind it. The pre­ci­sion itself becomes an emo­tional state­ment: this is exact­ly how things should be, this is where this note belongs, this is the pre­cise one hun­dredth of a sec­ond it should be struck.… see! Not for every­one, but for those who feel it, it’s ambrosia.

Peter­son is with­out con­test Canada’s jazz giant, the man who speaks for us. Duke Elling­ton is just as deeply Amer­i­can. Their jazz pan­theon is so huge that he can’t claim unchal­lenged pri­macy, but sure­ly he’s among the great­est Amer­i­can jazzmen. Like Peter­son, Elling­ton was a per­fec­tion­ist, a man who planned every note, a clas­si­cist at heart. He didn’t much resem­ble the trou­bled, errat­ic genius­es that peo­ple asso­ciate with jazz. His bril­liance was so obvi­ous that noth­ing could keep his com­po­si­tions out of the sym­phonic reper­toire, even in the 1920s. Elling­ton had a stronger, loud­er voice than you hear in Peterson’s del­i­cate, con­tem­pla­tive com­po­si­tions. So is there a con­flict? Hard­ly. Play­ing Elling­ton seems to have allowed Peter­son to cut loose. You hear anoth­er Peter­son, sassier than when he played his own stuff. I love this record.

Tanya Gillis Tagak is a young singer from Ikaluk­tuu­tiak (Cam­bridge Bay), in Nunavut. She learned tra­di­tional Innu­it throat singing at the age of fif­teen, but quick­ly moved to devel­op an “avant-guarde” style of solo throat singing. Com­ments that she is the Björk of the Arc­tic are well deserved. She col­lab­o­rated with Björk on the 2004 album Medúl­la, and toured with her. The duet from that album, “Ances­tors”, appears on Sinaa (2005), her first com­plete stu­dio album. It had a tremen­dous impact in Canada’s abo­rig­i­nal cirl­ces. She has per­formed with the Kro­nos Quar­tet and the eclec­tic Scot­tish band Shooglenifty. Like Björk, Tagaq is relent­lessly exper­i­men­tal. The casu­al lis­tener, how­ever, who hasn’t been raised with Innu­it throat singing may not be able to dis­tin­guish what is tra­di­tional from what is innovation.