It’s the first week of 2015, my first outing with three pieces vying for my attention. The first selection is always a major decision, and ends up representing the year, in a way. It is first on a playlist, which although ever-growing, tends to result in a lot of airtime for the earlier pieces, throughout the year.
In 2012, my true symphonic journey began, and I can’t quite recall why Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D made it to the top of the heap. It was something that I had very little familiarity with, and certainly with which I had no real association. It was that first week which I reference in my post on learning to be still, as being featured in a moment when I realized I was truly onto something that would “stick”.
The following year, Elgar’s Cello Concerto grabbed my attention immediately. It was featured in the movie Hilary and Jackie, which my wife and I went to on our first date, back in 1999. My source recording does not include the best performance of the piece, and I spent the following months trying to sample others from the library and on Spotify, hoping to be utterly dumbstruck by passion. The closest I might have come was in buying a used box set of Jacqueline du Pré’s greatest hits at a library sale that summer. Only to come home to find that the Elgar CD was missing. I guess the previous owner must have really liked it.
2014’s opening selection was a bit of a bust. I chose Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, in anticipation of the figure skating season I looked forward to that would culminate at the Sochi Olympics. Well, that piece proved to be one of the only times in the complete SSS cycle, in which I chosen a piece which it turned out I really did know quite well. Worse yet, I found it repetitive, and not gripping. It wasn’t until Pines of Rome and Firebird showed up that I realized the year of program music, tone poems, overtures, dance suites, and the like, would possibly be the most amazing yet.
Week One: January 2
And so, I would’ve had difficulty enough trying to select repertoire for the opening week, based solely on this introduction, but I also had the added trouble of dealing with finding not one, but three pieces which may end up becoming emotionally important to me, as the leaders of their respective playlists. What a tough holiday week I had!
The first choice I made with outright confidence was for the choral side of things. Bach’s six motets, BWV 225-230, are undoubtedly respected as a set of the greatest, most important choral pieces ever written. A statement I would’ve long attested to as well, but which I must admit would’ve been slightly disingenuous, given my lack of experience with the pieces. Somehow in all these years of listening to and making music, I have managed to avoid any formal exposure to these pieces. I have never conducted one, sang one, or even seen a live performance. Simply amazing. They just might revoke my master’s degree upon reading that! But, that’s one of the beauties of my music exposure program. I don’t find shame in that fact, because I am trying to do something about it. Sure, it’s funny that I haven’t known these motets, but now I do. And that is the beauty of the program. Much like visiting a new city, the moment I hit play on my new Monteverdi Choir recording, any preconceived impressions of the piece vaporized, as I developed concrete knowledge and associations. I have listened to the complete set at least four times in the last three days. Fabulous music.
Next up, I settled on my first opera. It’s tough, because I’ve been a casual listener for many years, and beginning to develop more appreciation in the last few seasons of enjoying the live broadcasts and archived performances on SiriusXM’s Metropolitan Opera channel. As such, there are quite a few operas which I have had fairly significant exposure to in the last few months, making me wonder how deep I wish to dive into the catalog. If I started right now doing a rigorous job on operas that were completely new to me, I’m afraid I would leave many of the most regarded operas left incomplete, or worse yet, unvisited entirely. So, I think I plan to study operas which are very popular, allowing me to hit the “deep tracks” much later on. With those criteria in mind, what better starting point than Puccini’s La Bohème? Widely regarded both as the “perfect” opera and the most overplayed opera, everyone has some opinion on the piece. In choosing this opera, whatever side of the argument I land on, I will be able to say that I know a piece that a lot of people know. I had a recording already, and it takes place in winter. There really aren’t many more reasons to state!
Finally, I had to choose some piece that “scratched me where I itch”. I thought it would be great if I could tackle a piece which hadn’t fit into the boxes I’d drawn in the past three years. And thus was chosen Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók, a work which I wanted to consider in Year Two, but which didn’t really feel like a proper concerto, and which I wanted to consider in Year Three, but which didn’t really feel free enough, due to the word “concerto”. But, in Year Four, where whim is the order of the day, it works perfectly for me. I just gave it my first listen over my lunch break, with iPad score in hand. I loved it. I think I must have had it on a music listening list, probably in Music Theory IV, because some themes were familiar, but with newer, older eyes, I see so much value to the piece that I know my 20-year old self would never have accepted. I’ve learned over time that pieces don’t have to sound like Mozart, my first love, in order to be worthy. The “night music” movements make my hair stand on end. I wouldn’t be able to analyze them with a set of Roman numerals, for certain, but nowadays, that doesn’t bother me. Sometimes, effect is all that’s needed, even at the expense of western-sounding melody or conventional I-IV-V harmonic progressions.
Here’s to a fabulous year of learning ahead!
Week Two: January 9
I’m still not quite sure how to catalog all these pieces, since I’m working off of three lists this year, and they all replenish at differing intervals. For now, at least, I suppose I’ll make one post that encompasses all the music I experienced for three weeks. We’ll see how that works.
For my second free-form week, I chose Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a piece whose movements I have heard from time to time, but would never have been able to place specifically. I’ve listened each morning, and find that pleasant to listen to, but I’ve never really been able to get engrossed in solo piano music. Maybe that will change over time. I have a lot of respect for them, though! My goodness, the intricacies of the movements, the overarching architecture of their placement. It’s mind-boggling how Bach was able to accomplish such things.
Week Three: January 16
On the third week of each tri-week period, I’ll be adding to my lists one free-form piece and one choral piece.
This will be my first time studying a chamber piece. I guess you could sort of say that Appalachian Spring, last November, was a chamber piece, since I specifically chose its original scoring, but here’s a truer first-entry. Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A, Op. 81. At this point, I know nothing about it, except its name, and that I own a copy of it. We’ll see what comes of it!
And, choral-wise, it’s time to look at Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610. I’ve been aware of this piece for decades now, and have long thought there couldn’t be anything much more exciting then its opening trumpet fanfare, blaring through an HIP orchestra, but alas, until now, I’ve never sat down with the score, or listened with a critical ear. Time to get down to business.