Since I found a set of scores for Haydn’s first fifty sym­phonies (pub­lished in Ger­many, and appar­ent­ly with­drawn from the Mannes Col­lege of Music in New York City some­time in the 1960s), it behooves me to lis­ten to them with score in hand. I’m not sure why the first two are not num­bered, but labeled “A” and “B”, but I pre­sume it’s because their attri­bu­tion is doubt­ful. “B” cer­tain­ly sounds like Haydn. “A” is plod­ding and mechan­i­cal, and could have been com­posed by any­body. The role of the com­pos­er in the first half of the 18th cen­tu­ry was rather like that of a rave dj. He was expect­ed to “spin” what­ev­er was at hand, and much mate­r­i­al was recy­cled from his own (or oth­ers’) out­put. Nobody kept track of who com­posed what, except as an after-thought. Com­posers where con­stant­ly fired and rehired by patrons, and hop­ping from one prince­ly court to anoth­er cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for pur­loin­ing works, or rehash­ing one’s own. When nec­es­sary, baroque music could be man­u­fac­tured in min­utes, by assem­bling cook­ie-cut­ter pat­terns. Some baroque com­posers, like Giuseppe Torel­li, seem to have “com­posed” more music than could be played end-to-end over their life­times. Some­one used to the mod­ern idea of a “sym­pho­ny” would bare­ly rec­og­nize these pieces as such. Lat­er on, Haydn him­self, and the young Mozart, would cre­ate the com­plex form of that name, by expand­ing the orches­tra­tion and cre­at­ing struc­tur­al uni­ty beyond the mere lump­ing togeth­er of vague­ly sim­i­lar pieces. The sym­phonies of this peri­od were what we would call “suites” today. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be intel­li­gent and entertaining.

18962. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny “A” in B‑flat [1762]
18963. (Franz Josef Haydn) Sym­pho­ny “B” in B‑flat [1765]
(Ruth Gold­en, sopra­no) Silent Noon: Songs of Ralph Vaugh­an Williams
. . . . 18964. (Ralph Vaugh­an Williams) House of Life, Six Songs to Poems of Dante Gabriel 
. . . . . . . . Ros­set­ti for Bari­tone and Piano [arr. for sopra­no and piano] [see orig­i­nal at 16063] 
. . . . 18965. (Ralph Vaugh­an Williams) Four Last Songs to Poems of Ursu­la Vaugh­an Williams
. . . . 18966. (Ralph Vaugh­an Williams) “Lin­den Lea”, song for voice & orches­tra (“In Lin­den Lea”;
. . . . . . . . “A Dorset Song”) [arr. voice & piano]
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When it comes to for­mal com­po­si­tion in Cana­da, before 1860, I know of noth­ing that was com­posed out­side of Québec, the only part of the coun­try with any­thing resem­bling an urban cul­ture. There was, of course, plen­ty of folk fid­dling, folk singing, tav­ern bal­lads, and hymn singing going on in Ontario, the West, and Atlantic Cana­da, but only Mon­tréal and Québec City could sup­port pro­fes­sional com­posers. Most of their work is unob­tain­able, but a sam­pling has been put togeth­er by l’Ensemble du Nou­veau Québec under the title Antholo­gie de la musique his­torique du Québec, vol.1 ― l’époque de Julie Pap­ineau, 1795–1862. As you might guess, it is pret­ty tame, provin­cial stuff, polkas, mazurkas and art songs of mod­est ambi­tion. The most ambi­tious piece seems to have been Joseph Quesnel’s com­ic opera Lucas et Cécile (c. 1808), of which only the vocal parts sur­vive. The two excerpts on the album dis­play some panache, but they would have been old-fash­ioned in style at the time of their com­po­si­tion. All the works, by Ques­nel, Frédéric Glack­e­meyer, Théodore Molt, Charles Sabati­er, Ernest Gagnon, Célestin Lav­igueur, and Antoine Dessane have the charm of small draw­ing-room com­po­si­tions in a back­woods envi­ron­ment. They are most vig­or­ous when they draw on folk mate­r­ial and local themes. How­ever, the envi­ron­ment wasn’t entire­ly unso­phis­ti­cated: Dessane made a set­ting of Alphonse Lamar­tine, at the time an avant-guarde poet. Noth­ing on the album, how­ever, comes close to the impact of its best track: Antoine Gérin-Lajoie’s “Un Cana­dien Errant”. Strict­ly speak­ing, Gérin-Lajoie mere­ly wrote evoca­tive (and, at the time, polit­i­cally charged) lyrics for a tra­di­tional folk song, but these lyrics are so per­fect ― an exiled patri­ot, after the Rebel­lion of 1837, wan­ders the world, shed­ding tears of home­sick­ness ― that ear­li­er folk ver­sions were entire­ly sup­plant­ed. The song has been per­formed by an aston­ish­ing vari­ety of artists, rang­ing from Nana Mousk­ouri to Paul Robe­son, as well as vir­tu­al­ly every Cana­di­an folksinger.

18926. (Nic­colò Pagani­ni) 24 Caprices for Solo Vio­lin, Op.1
(Toron­to Con­sort) Las­so: Chan­sons & Madrigals:
. . . . 18927. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Un jour l’ament
. . . . 18928. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Gal­lans qui par terre
. . . . 18929. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Ardant amour à 4
. . . . 18930. (Orlan­do di Las­so) Ardant amour à 5
. . . . 18931. (Orlan­do di Las­so) J’ay de vous voir
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If you’re going to own one plains pow-wow cd, this is the one you should choose. Over the last decade, Young­bird, a pow­er­house Pawnee band from Okla­homa, has loomed large in the pow-wow cir­cuit in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, with its South­ern Style songs. But even more ven­er­a­ble are Canada’s North­ern Cree Singers, from Sad­dle Lake, Alber­ta. They’ve been per­form­ing since 1980, and have 23 albums under their belts. North­ern Cree are known for the sheer pow­er of their singing, as well as well-craft­ed song­writ­ing. They’ve long been the favourite among com­pet­i­tive dancers, since they par­tic­u­lar­ly excel at “sec­ond songs”, the ones with vari­able rhythm and sud­den, short stops, which show off a dancer’s moves. Well ground­ed in the North­ern Style, they skill­ful­ly play off the South­ern Style Young­birds in this dyna­mite album record­ed live at the annu­al Ermine Skin Band Pow-Wow, Hobbe­ma, Alber­ta. Out­sand­ing songs include Young­bird’s “Deal With It” and “Baby Dolls II”, and North­ern Cree’s “Free Fly­in’ ” and “Nike Town”.

The mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Pani­agua fam­ily of Madrid (one of them is also an archi­tect) have been cre­at­ing, recon­struct­ing and per­form­ing medieval Span­ish music since they were teenagers. They are the acknowl­edged mas­ters. All of Spain’s ear­ly musi­cal tra­di­tions fall under their gaze, and among them is the genre known as “arabo-andalouse”, which flour­ished under Mus­lim rule in Spain, among Mus­lim, Chris­t­ian, and Jew­ish musi­cians alike. Atri­um Musi­cae de Madrid, one of the family’s ensem­bles, has pro­duced a fine intro­duc­tion to the instru­men­tal side of the this tra­di­tion in their album Musique Arabo-Andalouse. Read more »

18672. (Mod­est Mous­sorgs­ki) Boris Godunov [orch. by Rim­sky-Kor­sakov] [opera highlights;
. . . . . d. Kara­jan; w. Vish­nevskaya, Spiess, Maslen­nikov, Talvela]
18673. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Art of the Fugue, Vol­ume 1, Groups 1–3, bwv.1080
. . . . . [orches­tral ver­sion arr. by Mar­cel Bitsch & Claude Pascal]
(Geraint Jones, organ) Por­tu­gali­ae Musi­ca, vol. 4 — Musique Por­tu­gaise pour orgue:
. . . . 18674. (Anto­nio Car­reira) Fantasie
. . . . 18675. (Manuel Rodrigues Coel­ho) Five Ver­sets on Ave Maris Stella
. . . . 18676. (Car­los Seixas) Fugue in A Minor
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Through­out my life, Sibelius has remained unchal­lenged as my favourite com­poser. As much as I might love Mozart, or Dvo­rak, or Vaugh­an Williams, and take delight in even their minor com­po­si­tions, none has the place in my heart, and sub­con­scious, that Sibelius has. The first work of the gran­ite Finn that I ever heard was En Saga, Op.9. It has usu­ally been con­sid­ered no more than a rous­ing show­piece, but I think it offers some depths to explore. Read more »

Mozart com­posed his first sym­phony at the age of eight, and what’s remark­able is not only that it is a per­fectly com­pe­tent work, which could be played to good effect at any con­cert, but that it already shows many dis­tinctly Mozart­ian fea­tures. It already has the sense of play­ful inven­tion, of twisty-turny, peek­a­boo sur­prise that Mozart pre­served in even his most seri­ous works until the end of his life. It was com­posed on a vis­it to Lon­don, and it shows the dis­tinct influ­ence of Johann Chris­t­ian Bach, who was also in Lon­don at the time. Influ­ence, not mere copy­ing, all the more remark­able because it was only his six­teenth work. It is not, as some assumed, the work of Mozart’s con­trol­ling and ambi­tious father, Leopold, passed off as the boy’s. While this sev­en minute sym­phony is no mas­ter­piece, it’s impos­si­ble to lis­ten to it with­out won­der­ing how the hell this stuff could be in the mind of an eight-year-old.