Tuesday, December 8, 2009

After a wonderful 8th grade performance last week, we are starting from scratch once again. I enjoyed reading your responses in the Personal Performance Reviews -- I've even found some to be pleasantly surprising :) I will do my best to keep your preferences and concerns in mind as I introduce music for our next concert. Furthermore, I hope you all enjoyed seeing excerpts from Music From the Inside Out. I find it to be a fascinating and inspiring documentary for musicians of all ages and abilities.

We sight-read 3 new pieces during orchestra yesterday. All three of them were arrangements of other works in very different styles. The first of the three was Ashokan Farewell, a piece written originally for guitar and fiddle at a camp in Ashokan, NY. Ashokan Farewell features the first violin section, with gentle chords in the 2nd violins, violas, and cellos.


If you weren't so busy worrying about all those darn accidentals in our second piece, Round Dance, you may have recognized its melody from Disney's Fantasia 2000. The Firebird (or, L'Oiseau de feu for those of you looking for recordings) was written by Igor Stravinsky in 1910. The ballet is based on Russian folklore. In the ballet, Prince Ivan enters the magical realm of an immortal giant, Kashchei. Prince Ivan does not know that this giant is evil (he captures women and turns men to stone), and so he wanders into his forest oblivious to the dangers. While in the forest, Prince Ivan sees the Firebird, a beautiful creature, and takes one of its feathers.
Now, in many fairy tales there is one prince and one princess (sometimes a good prince, an evil prince, and a princess)...but in Stravinsky's tale there are 13 princesses! Luckily, Prince Ivan falls in love with only one of them. Unfortunately for Ivan, the giant has imprisoned all the princesses. Next comes a series of events involving magic, capture, monsters, the Firebird's feather, and perhaps a happy ending. But you can read all about that another time...


The last piece of the day was Brandenburg 5, movement 1. I have heard that you enjoyed playing Brandenburg 3 last year, and that's what prompted me to take this one out of the music library. The Brandenburg Concertos were written by J.S. Bach and presented as a sort of job application to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721. Bach didn't get the job, but the concertos (more appropriately, concerto grossi) have remained popular since their rediscovery 150 years later. Today, we think of chamber music as trios, quartets, and quintets, but chambers must have been a bit bigger in Bach's day. His Brandenburg concerti are considered chamber works though they are often scored with more than a handful of instruments. The 3rd Concerto has 10 string parts and a harpsichord, and this 5th Concerto is scored for solo harpsichord, flute, violin, and ripieno strings. Of the 6 Brandenburg concerti, the 5th Concerto was probably written last. Check out some videos of these concerti:

Brandenburg Concerto 1 - Note the period instruments: Baroque-style bows (much harder to control!), no chin rests on the upper strings, natural horns (no valves on these French horns), and oboes that more closely resemble their shawm predecessors. No conductors for these large ensembles either -- they move with the music to cue and maintain tempo.

Brandenburg Concerto 2 - The same ensemble.

Brandenburg Concerto 3 - Cellists, notice anything unusual? Why are their cellos almost perpendicular with the floor, and why aren't they sitting like "good" musicians with their feet flat on the floor? Because they don't have endpins... Cellos of this time resembled viola da gambas, instruments held with the knees. Here's that 2nd movement I talked to some of you about. It creates what we call a Phrygian Cadence (movement from the submediant to the dominant in minor). This is the 3rd movement.

Brandenburg Concerto 4

Brandenburg Concerto 5 (the movement we looked at in class). The second movement might be familiar to some as well. And the third...

Brandenburg Concerto 6 - No violins!



More sight-reading to come!