Category Archives: Music

Music

Dame Janet Baker performs Dido’s Lament, Glyndebourne (1966)

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Dido and Aeneas is a Baroque opera by Eng­lish com­pos­er Hen­ry Pur­cell, com­posed around 1688, and based on Book IV of the Aeneid, the Latin epic poem writ­ten by Vir­gil in the sec­ond decade BCE, that tells the leg­endary sto­ry of Aeneas, a Tro­jan who trav­elled to Italy to found a city and become the ances­tor of the Romans.

Book IV recounts how his ship, en route from Epirus to Sici­ly, is blown off course and lands on the shores of Carthage in North Africa, where Aeneas falls in love with their queen, Dido, and she with him. How­ev­er, Aeneas is remind­ed by the gods of his des­tiny and he must duti­ful­ly depart for Italy, leav­ing Dido in despair at her aban­don­ment.

The opera cul­mi­nates with its most famous aria, When I Am Laid In Earth, pop­u­lar­ly known as Dido’s Lament, where­in Dido slow­ly dies of a bro­ken heart.

Here, we will enjoy Dame Janet Bak­er per­form­ing the role of Dido at Glyn­de­bourne in 1966. It is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be one of the great­est expo­si­tions of tragedy in mod­ern oper­at­ic his­to­ry. The lament is divid­ed into two parts: the “recita­tive” which sets the scene, and the aria which fol­lows and leads us to Dido’s death. Here we will cut to the aria. Dido’s sis­ter, Belin­da, her face radi­at­ing a deeply-felt empa­thy, springs for­ward to sup­port Dido both moral­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. Now watch Dido begin her lament. Here’s the libret­to by Nahum Tate:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs cre­ate
No trou­ble, no trou­ble in thy breast;
Remem­ber me, remem­ber me, but ah! for­get my fate.
Remem­ber me, but ah! for­get my fate.

The music is in G Minor, the ulti­mate key for express­ing sad­ness and tragedy, and the bassline (pas­sacaglia) repeats as if in waves of despair, descend­ing, like Dido, toward the grave. Janet Bak­er has been quot­ed as say­ing: “if the Fates are with you, the mag­ic will descend”; they must have been with her here: her manip­u­la­tion of the vibra­to and lega­to, her bear­ing, the gen­uine pathos – the scene is mes­meris­ing.

With superb silent sup­port from Sheila Arm­strong as Belin­da, Bak­er’s immer­sion in the role is absolute and all-con­sum­ing. Take a look at 1:49 and again at 1:56, at the end of the words “Remem­ber me”, and note her head and throat momen­tar­i­ly sag with anguish. Her legs give way at 4:12 and the ladies-in-wait­ing, in uni­son, take a fear­ful step for­ward. The lament now descends chro­mat­i­cal­ly, semi­tone by semi­tone, as Dido descends inch by inch, dead, to the ground.

The repeat­ed phrase “Remem­ber me” is wring­ing with sen­ti­ment; it is no sur­prise to find Purcell’s music to the lament used at Remem­brance Day ser­vices around the coun­try, to poignant effect.

Dame Janet Bak­er in Dido’s Lament
Music

The John Barry Seven, James Bond Theme (1962)

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It’s inter­est­ing that James Bond theme songs are remark­ably recog­nis­able as such. They share cer­tain styl­is­tic ele­ments and motifs that clear­ly sig­nal their asso­ci­a­tion with the famous fran­chise, and it’s all thanks to the involve­ment of one son-of-York, John Bar­ry, who was by far the biggest con­trib­u­tor to Bond scores and theme songs. Of all the Bond themes, the first and most famous – and the one then reg­u­lar­ly used in sub­se­quent films — is that writ­ten for Dr No in 1962. The orig­i­nal score was actu­al­ly com­posed by Mon­ty Nor­man (though this was dis­put­ed by John Bar­ry) but most notably arranged and per­formed by John Bar­ry and his orches­tra.

The score was a mas­ter­piece of expres­sive film music and estab­lished a clear tem­plate for the quin­tes­sen­tial Bond theme: unnerv­ing orches­tral chords, raunchy brass, clash­ing cym­bals and of course that zesty surf rock gui­tar played by Vic Flick. Flick played his famous riff on a 1939 Clif­ford Essex Paragon Deluxe elec­tric gui­tar plugged into a Fend­er Vibrolux ampli­fi­er. Its inter­play with the orches­tral instru­men­ta­tion pro­duced a thrilling sound­track that man­aged to encom­pass and express the sin­is­ter world of the spy, just per­fect for the new film. The song ends just as thrilling­ly on that sin­gle Em/maj9 chord so famous it’s known as the “James Bond chord”. If you’re a gui­tarist, you might find it fun to repro­duce this final chord yourself…it’s this:

Bar­ry went on to score ten more Bond films, but this orig­i­nal score is the one that every­one instant­ly recog­nis­es as the Bond theme. Here’s the ver­sion record­ed for sin­gle release by the John Bar­ry Sev­en, reach­ing num­ber one on 1st Novem­ber 1962.

 

Music

Barbara Bonney sings Schubert’s Ave Maria (1994)

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A few years ago I was for­tu­nate enough to hear Schubert’s Ave Maria being rehearsed for a forth­com­ing wed­ding in the glo­ri­ous sur­round­ings of Ripon Cathe­dral. The lofti­ness of the cathedral’s Goth­ic archi­tec­ture pro­vid­ed a fit­ting acoustic res­o­nance to show­case such a lofty piece of music.

Franz Schu­bert com­posed the piece in 1825, and actu­al­ly it wasn’t tech­ni­cal­ly an Ave Maria at all (an “Ave Maria” being music writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly as a prayer to the Vir­gin Mary and for use in the litur­gy) but was called Ellens drit­ter Gesang (Ellen’s Song), and was part of his Opus 52, a series of set­tings based on Sir Wal­ter Scott’s epic poem The Lady of the Lake. It didn’t take long, how­ev­er, for the com­po­si­tion to devel­op into the “all-pur­pose” Catholic piece that’s so pop­u­lar today (although many con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics won’t play it at wed­dings or funer­als pre­cise­ly because it’s non-litur­gi­cal).

Any­way, it is pop­u­lar for good rea­son. It has a won­der­ful­ly lilt­ing refrain and offers the right singer an excel­lent vehi­cle with which to approach son­ic beau­ty. It’s been sung by every­one from Shirley Bassey to Bey­on­cé, but for real ful­fil­ment of its poten­tial, it calls out for a full, round and rich sopra­no voice. To that end, lis­ten to this ver­sion by Amer­i­can sopra­no, Bar­bara Bon­ney. Less of a house­hold name per­haps than Maria Callas, say, or Joan Suther­land, but nev­er­the­less Bar­bara Bon­ney exhibits an immac­u­late artistry on this record­ing of Ave Maria.

Bar­bara Bon­ney

 

 

Film, TV, and Theatre, Music

Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, as used in Brief Encounter (1945)

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Sergei Rachmaninoff’s sec­ond Piano Con­cer­to in C Minor stands on its own as a mas­ter­piece of the late Roman­tic peri­od, but what a great idea it turned out to be, to pair it with David Lean’s clas­sic love sto­ry of 1945, Brief Encounter.

It was Lean’s col­lab­o­ra­tor, pro­duc­er Noël Cow­ard, on whose one-act play the film was based, who insist­ed on the use of his favourite piece of music, despite there being a com­pos­er, Muir Math­ieson, wait­ing in the wings to write an orig­i­nal score. With all due respect to Math­ieson and how­ev­er his score might have turned out, the use of Rach­mani­noff, played by Aus­tralian pianist Eileen Joyce and the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, raised the film’s emo­tion­al lev­el sky-high.

The film is told in flash­back, as the lead char­ac­ter of Lau­ra (Celia John­son) sits in her liv­ing room with her hus­band, star­ing into space, lis­ten­ing to the Sec­ond Con­cer­to and think­ing about her time with anoth­er man, Alec (Trevor Howard). She remem­bers the day they met, at the café in the train sta­tion. When a piece of grit gets in her eye, Alec, a doc­tor, removes it, and a bond starts between them, quick­ly devel­op­ing into love as they  embark on a series of clan­des­tine assig­na­tions.

This love sto­ry is doomed, of course, as Lau­ra is a mar­ried moth­er and we are deep in the ter­ri­to­ry of 1940s mid­dle-class man­ners. Grant­ed, the strait-jack­et­ed morals and lin­guis­tic quirks of the times leave us in no doubt that the film is a peri­od piece, but it right­ly remains a huge­ly pop­u­lar British movie.

The devel­op­ment, and inevitable demise, of the rela­tion­ship is sub­tly under­pinned by the repeat­ing strains of Rach­mani­nof­f’s music. The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of his piece, mean­while, is demon­strat­ed by its con­sis­tent­ly top­ping the Clas­sic FM Hall of Fame, firm­ly secur­ing its sta­tus as Britain’s favourite piece of clas­si­cal music. Watch and lis­ten to a pleas­ing mon­tage of Brief Encounter to Rach­mani­nof­f’s music below:

Celia John­son and Trevor Howard
Music

Bob Dylan sings Mr Tambourine Man, Newport Folk Festival (1964)

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Era defin­ing. Voice of a gen­er­a­tion. Urban poet. Folk trou­ba­dour. No, not Justin Bieber; I’m refer­ring to Bob Dylan and in this post I’m look­ing at Dylan’s per­for­mance of Mr Tam­bourine Man at New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1964.

Dylan played the influ­en­tial and long-run­ning fes­ti­val for three con­sec­u­tive years from 1963 to 1965.

His first appear­ance in 1963 was as a guest of Joan Baez, and though lit­tle known out­side Green­wich Vil­lage, he was tak­en to heart by the folkies. That year saw the begin­nings of inter­na­tion­al suc­cess with Dylan’s break­through sec­ond album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, which he had com­plet­ed that May. Its com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al folk with a per­son­al and authen­tic edge and a social mes­sage, proved a hit with an ever-widen­ing demo­graph­ic of music fans.

Skip for­ward to 1965. His final year at New­port gave us the great Elec­tric Con­tro­ver­sy, when Dylan walked on stage clutch­ing a Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er gui­tar and backed by a full elec­tric band, shock­ing the folk purists in the audi­ence, and pro­vok­ing bewil­der­ment, con­ster­na­tion and an icon­ic place in musi­cal his­to­ry. Inci­den­tal­ly, that gui­tar sold at auc­tion a cou­ple of years back for just short of a mil­lion dol­lars!

But we return to the year of his sec­ond appear­ance at New­port, 1964, when the young Dylan was now estab­lished as a ful­ly-fledged “protest singer”, his ris­ing star in momen­tous upward tra­jec­to­ry and the new dar­ling of the fes­ti­val goers. Here, we watch some delight­ful­ly infor­mal and upfront footage of his ren­di­tion of Mr Tam­bourine Man, lis­tened to by a polite­ly enthralled audi­ence (and a bizarrely pok­er-faced guy, stage-left).

The song is gen­tle and dream-like, flow­ing repet­i­tive­ly through the same three major chords, so typ­i­cal of Dylan. Lyric-wise, it’s replete with anoth­er Dylan trait, the mul­ti­ple rhymes that some­how pull togeth­er coher­ent­ly despite what should be the increas­ing implau­si­bil­i­ty and dimin­ish­ing returns of string­ing so many rhymes togeth­er (take note, rap­pers of the world). What’s it about? Death, musi­cal inspi­ra­tion, drugs, weari­ness, doubts about the effi­ca­cy of the protest move­ment to change the world, a “tam­bourine man”…take your pick, or just let the music take you to a nice cor­ner of your mind! Here’s the boy from Duluth him­self, hav­ing been announced as the “boy who ran away from home sev­en­teen times and got brought back six­teen”…

 

Bob Dylan
Music

Lale Andersen sings Lili Marlene, 1939

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With­out any doubt the most pop­u­lar song of the Sec­ond World War was Lili Mar­lene. Record­ed by Dan­ish cabaret artiste Lale Ander­sen in 1939 under the title Das Mäd­chen unter der Lat­er­ne (“The Girl under the Lantern”), the song sold a mere 700 copies on release and fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty.

There it might have remained had not a sol­dier, work­ing for the Ger­man forces radio sta­tion in occu­pied Bel­grade, been sent to scour Vien­na for some records to broad­cast to Gen­er­al Rommel’s Afri­ka Korps. One of the records he found in Vien­na was Lale Andersen’s record­ing of Das Mäd­chen unter der Lat­er­ne, and it was first played over the air on 18th August 1941.

It became an instant favourite with Rom­mel’s men, and for the next three years Radio Bel­grade played it almost every night at 9.57pm, as the clos­ing record. It also became a huge hit through­out Nazi-occu­pied Europe and was soon picked up by the British Eighth Army in the desert. It also soon assumed its sim­ple alter­na­tive song title, Lili Marlene (some­times spelled Lili Mar­leen, Lil­li Mar­lene etc).

In his mem­oir, British sol­dier Fitzroy Maclean describes the song’s effect in the spring of 1942 dur­ing the West­ern Desert Cam­paign: “Husky, sen­su­ous, nos­tal­gic, sug­ar-sweet, her voice seemed to reach out to you, as she lin­gered over the catchy tune…”

The next year, Maclean was para­chut­ed into the Yugoslav guer­ril­la war, and the song once again played its part:

“Some­times at night, before going to sleep, we would turn on our receiv­ing set and lis­ten to Radio Bel­grade. For months now, the flower of the Afri­ka Korps had been lan­guish­ing behind the barbed wire of Allied prison camps. But still, punc­tu­al­ly at ten o’clock, came Lale Ander­sen singing their spe­cial song, with the same unvary­ing, heart-rend­ing sweet­ness that we knew so well from the desert…Belgrade was still remote but, now that we our­selves were in Yugoslavia, it had acquired a new sig­nif­i­cance for us. It had become our ulti­mate goal, which Lili Mar­lene and her nos­tal­gic lit­tle tune seemed some­how to sym­bol­ise. ‘When we get to Bel­grade…’ we would say. And then we would switch off the wire­less a lit­tle guilti­ly, for the Par­ti­sans, we knew, were shocked at the strange plea­sure we got from lis­ten­ing to the singing of the Ger­man woman (sic) who was queen­ing it in their cap­i­tal.”

It’s not hard to imag­ine the Tom­mies, and Jer­ries alike, crowd­ed round their “receiv­ing sets”, smok­ing fags and dream­ing of Lili Mar­lene…

Lale Ander­sen
Music

Canteloube’s Baïlèro, sung by Victoria de los Ángeles (1969)

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Chants d’Au­vergne (Eng­lish: Songs from the Auvergne) is a col­lec­tion of folk songs from the Auvergne region of France, arranged for sopra­no and orches­tra by French com­pos­er and musi­col­o­gist Joseph Can­teloube in the 1920s. The songs are in the local lan­guage, Occ­i­tan (also known as Langue d’Oc, hence the name of the for­mer province of south­ern France, Langue­doc). Canteloube’s fam­i­ly had deep roots in the Auvergne region, and his arrange­ments are a labour of love borne from an eager­ness to immor­talise the folk­lore and beau­ty of his home region.

The best-known of Canteloube’s col­lec­tion is Baïlèro, and this record­ing, by the Span­ish sopra­no, Vic­to­ria de los Ánge­les, is sure­ly the most beau­ti­ful­ly deliv­ered ver­sion of it.

The song is aching­ly wist­ful. It evokes a sense of long­ing, for what — home­land, lost love, lost youth? — it mat­ters not. Vic­to­ria de los Ánge­les speaks direct­ly to the heart of the lis­ten­er and per­haps her Cata­lan back­ground, con­nect­ed as it is with the peas­ant tra­di­tions of the wider area some­times known as Occ­i­ta­nia, lends itself to the rus­tic charm.

I heard it years ago on a com­pi­la­tion CD and fell for it instant­ly. I feel the sense of land­scape, of affin­i­ty with one’s roots, of being con­nect­ed to one’s envi­ron­ment, and at the same time the plain­tive feel­ing of sep­a­ra­tion and yearn­ing that per­vades the piece. It all adds up to a well­spring of emo­tion­al pow­er.

I only recent­ly looked up the Occ­i­tan words and their Eng­lish trans­la­tion; they are pas­toral in tone (unsur­pris­ing giv­en that they are peas­ant folk-songs), and fea­ture a call-and-response pat­tern between the singer and her shep­herd love.  Of course, it doesn’t mat­ter what the lyrics are; it is the feel of the music and the voice that count, but to some extent the sense of long­ing and sep­a­ra­tion is cor­rob­o­rat­ed by the lyric:

Pas­tré couci foraï,
En obal io lou bel riou
Dio lou baïlèro lèrô…

Shep­herd, the water divides us,
And I can­not cross it,
Sing baïlèro lèrô…

I am pre­sent­ing the music here with some imagery of the moun­tains, lakes and cas­cades of the Auvergne, but real­ly you are as well to lis­ten with eyes closed, feet up, in a qui­et, pleas­ant envi­ron­ment, and a large glass of wine in hand. Enjoy…