Composer
Kalevi Aho. (Photo/BR-Klassik)
Many thousands of years
ago, when the world was a much younger place and even before the first human
languages had emerged, someone probably banged two stones together and found
that the sound was pleasing. Or perhaps it was two sticks. We’ll never know,
but it was the earliest beginnings of what we now call percussion
instruments, claimed to be the oldest family of musical instruments in the
world.
The raw elemental power
of drums, bells and cymbals has ceremonial, sacred, or symbolic associations
for many societies. The first drum appeared after someone decided to place a
dried animal hide over a frame and then pull it tight so that it vibrated
when struck. Perhaps it was invented by accident. They’ve been around since
6000 BC and were sometimes used for signaling. In Medieval and Renaissance
Europe drums were often associated with military music. Some types of drum
were used in the infantry to send coded instructions to the soldiers.
During the early years
of the seventeenth century, the German composer and theorist Michael
Praetorius published his magisterial Syntagma Musicum which among
other things described the musical instruments of the day. The book includes
pictures of many percussion instruments including the triangle, bells,
hand-held drums and large kettle drums. However, at the time percussion
instruments were largely confined to dance music.
Percussion instruments
were slow to enter the developing orchestra of the eighteenth century. The
timpani were the first, usually in the form of a pair of tuned drums to
reinforce the sound at climatic moments. Haydn’s Symphony No 100 dates from
the 1790s and unusually uses triangle, cymbals and bass drum, reflecting the
current vogue for Turkish music. Not surprisingly, the symphony earned the
nickname The Military. By the end of the nineteenth century, most
orchestral works included parts not only for timpani, but also for snare
drum, triangle, tambourine, bass drum or cymbals.
The twentieth century
saw the rise of orchestral percussion as never before and composers
frequently called for a massive battery of instruments as well as a high
level of skill to play them, creating the climate for the Concerto for
Percussion.
Incidentally,
percussion instruments are usually classified roughly into two groups: tuned
and untuned. Tuned percussion includes instruments that can literally play a
tune, such as the xylophone, the glockenspiel, the marimba, vibraphone or
the tubular bells. Untuned percussion includes almost everything else.
Joseph Schwantner (b. 1943): Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra.
Thomas Burritt (perc), Texas Festival Orchestra cond. Vladimir Kulenovic
(Duration: 30:56; Video: 1080p HD)
Joseph Schwantner is a
prolific American composer and academic who draws on many different musical
traditions such as impressionism, jazz, serialism, African drumming and
minimalism. The Concerto for Percussion dates from 1994 and was
commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. The soloist uses two groups of
percussion, one placed behind the orchestra and used during the first and
third movements and another group placed in front of the orchestra for the
second. Not only that, but there’s also orchestral percussion and timpani
along with piano and harp.
The work relies very
much on repetitive minimalist approaches with contrasting timbres and
textures and uses a wide variety of percussion instruments and playing
techniques.
Kalevi Aho (b. 1949): Sieidi - Concerto for Percussion and
Orchestra.
Martin Grubinger (perc), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra cond. Gustavo
Gimeno (Duration: 35:46;
Video: 720p HD)
There’s a large sign in
South Pattaya advertising something-or-other which reads “prepare to be
amazed.” I am not sure how one prepares for amazement, but if you happen to
know the secret, prepare to be amazed at this dazzling work. It’s by someone
who’s been described as Finland’s “most significant living symphonic
composer”. Kalevi Aho is hugely productive and draws on a wide range of
musical genres to create his own soundscapes. He is known especially for his
large scale works which include seventeen symphonies, thirty concertos, five
operas and a great deal of chamber music.
This concerto dates
from 2010 and uses a wide range of percussion instruments and unusual
playing techniques. Watch out for the appearance of a vibraphone (at 14:30),
a large xylophone-like instrument with aluminium bars and motor-driven
rotating disks at the top end of its resonator tubes, producing a tremolo
effect. The concerto is performed by the Austrian percussionist Martin
Grubinger who provides a virtuosic display which is nothing short of
thrilling. It’s an incredible feat of musical memory too.
Towards the end of the
concerto the thunderous sounds begin to die away and the work ends in almost
total silence with the sound of a rain-stick, a South American folk
instrument made from a cactus. When held upright, it creates the sound of
gently falling water.
Composer and
teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
INow then, here’s a
question for you. What do the following names have in common? They are
Pinta, Niña and Santa María. I admit that it’s not a very
difficult question, but it’s the end of the week and I don’t want to tax
your intellect too much. No doubt you’ll recall that they are the names of
the three ships that left the mainland of Spain on 3rd August
1492 under the overall command of the Genoese navigator and explorer,
Christopher Columbus. Like many others, he believed that it would be
possible to reach the lucrative markets of eastern Asia by heading west, as
an alternative to the increasingly dangerous overland route. The three
little ships were at sea for over two months before land was sighted. As we
all now know, it wasn’t the land that Columbus hoped to find, but instead a
small island in the present-day Bahamas.
The sea has always
fascinated poets, writers and artists. John Masefield’s sea poems
immediately spring to mind as do the superb visionary seascapes of the
brilliant but slightly dotty J. M. Turner, who was nonetheless artistically
years ahead of his time. The French impressionists also found that the sea
was a rich source of inspiration, especially Claude Monet, best known for
his many marine paintings. Then there’s the Russian Ivan Aivazovsky, one of
the great masters of marine art whose luminous canvases really seem to catch
the sea in all its moods.
Unlike poets and
painters, few composers seem to have found inspiration from the sea, despite
the fact that it covers most of the world’s surface. Mendelssohn wrote a
concert overture called Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and Delius
wrote a lovely orchestral piece called Sea Drift. Britten and Elgar
used sea themes; Vaughan Williams wrote a Sea Symphony and the
lesser-known Granville Bantock composed a Hebridean Symphony. But
these are works inspired by the sea rather than ships. Wagner’s The
Flying Dutchman is the name of a ghostly ship and the British film music
composer Ron Goodwin wrote a suite for band called The Tall Ships.
Otherwise, music inspired by ships is about as rare as music inspired by
railway trains.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 –1908): The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship.
Yale Symphony Orchestra, cond. Toshiyuki Shimada (Duration: 10:12; Video:
1080p HD)
This must be the most
well-known piece inspired by a ship, albeit a fictional one. The Sea and
Sinbad’s Ship is the first movement of Scheherazade, a symphonic
suite composed by Rimsky-Korsakov in the summer of 1887. It’s based on
pictures from One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle
Eastern folk tales compiled during the so-called Islamic Golden Age.
Scheherazade
has become the composer’s most popular work, characterized by memorable
tunes and dazzling orchestration. It’s one of several of his works based on
oriental themes and reflects the then current fad in Imperial Russia for all
things Oriental. The work is cast in four movements and if you have YouTube
configured appropriately, it should play the remaining movements in
succession.
Incidentally,
Rimsky-Korsakov had an enormous influence on Russian music. During his
thirty-five years at Saint Petersburg Conservatoire he taught over 250
students including such famous names as Glazunov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and
Respighi. He was a brilliant orchestrator and his book Principles of
Orchestration is still in print and essential reading for all serious
students of arranging and composition.
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Une barque sur l’océan.
Gürzenich-Orchester Köln cond. François-Xavier Roth (Duration: 07.24; Video:
720p HD)
During the 1920s and
1930s Ravel was considered France’s leading composer. Strangely enough he
wrote no symphonies but a great deal of music for the piano, some of which
is exceptionally difficult to play. He made many orchestral transcriptions
of his piano compositions and this is one of them. Une Barque sur l’océan
is the third movement of the technically-challenging five-movement
Miroirs, a suite for solo piano that he completed in 1905. The title of
course means “a boat on the ocean” and it’s typical Ravel, with sweeping
musical gestures and rich colourful harmonies. Like his older contemporary
Claude Debussy, Ravel was greatly attracted to the sea and in the music has
captured the sense of the movement of sea breeze and the rolling ocean
waves.
As a bonus, you also
get a superb performance of one of the finest French works inspired by the
sea, Debussy’s three-movement suite entitled Le Mer. It’s played
immediately after the Ravel almost without a break. This is an interesting
approach which seems to work as a performance strategy, for a burst of wild
applause between these two serene movements would hardly be less
appropriate.
