Aaron Copland(Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900; died in North Tarrytown, New York in 1990) Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra (with Harp and Piano)1. Slowly and Expressively– Cadenza2. Rather Fast– Coda During the 1930’s America’s taste in popular music was all about “Swing” music (as Jazz was called then) played on the radio, […]
Happy Unknown Birthday, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina!(c. 1525 – February 2, 1594) Once upon a time, music history books taught that Italian composer Pierluigi (born in Palestrina, near Rome), was the “Savior of Church music.” It’s a long story, but not particularly accurate. But Palestrina is as great a composer as any to be the […]
The Art of the Fugue may well be Bach’s seminal work and contains 14 fugues and four canons, all in D-minor, and arranged in increasing difficulty. … Instead of calling them “counterpoint(s),” Bach preferred the Latin word “Contrapunctus.” Number IX (9) is a study of turning that simple subject into a new derivation and into a double fugue (two themes treated as a fugue at the interval of a twelfth, thus the subtitle “alla duodecima”)…
Among his many talents, Mendelssohn was one of the early admirers and scholars of “early” music. Indeed, were it not for Mendelssohn’s (and some of his friends, such as Schumann and Brahms) efforts, some of Bach’s great works may have been lost to the ages. The musical craft of those great masters who came before him clearly informed Mendelssohn’s work – although certainly capable of Romantic bombast, Mendelssohn preferred the intellectual styles of Mozart and Bach. A splendid organist and renowned as an early music scholar, Mendelssohn was commissioned in 1844 to write a series of Voluntaries (such as we heard earlier from English composer John Stanley). Mendelssohn, instead, wrote six full multi-movement organ sonatas….
Concerto No. 5 was written in 1735 for the revival of Deborah and is one of the great works of its time. The opening Larghetto is a soft and gentle thing of beauty, mostly played by solo organ. The and crisp Allegro is followed by the “Alla siciliana” which is surely one of Handel’s most poignant musical moments. …
Vincent Lübeck (Born in Padingbüttel, Germany in 1654; died in Hamburg, Germany in 1740) Prelude and Fugue in E Major By the 18th Century, long after the organ’s first appearance as the hydraulis, the pipe organ was well established with its wind bellows and distinctive-sounding pipes that have continued as the modern organ, and organ […]
Margaret Bonds (1913 – 1972) was a virtuoso pianist and composer, and one of the very few Blacks to attend the Chicago University and the Julliard School… not to mention achieve post-graduate degrees in music. She was a gifted Classical composer, but also cherished the value of Spirituals as important musical expressions. She also had an uncanny talent for arranging, and thereby arranged a fair number of the great spirituals for voice and Orchestra to bring this powerful genre to even wider audiences: …
Black singer and composer Harry T. Burleigh (1866 – 1949) knew Czech Nationalist composer Dvořák well. In fact, Burleigh was one of the first Black students to attend the newly created National Conservatory of Music in New York which was headed by Dvořák. It was Burleigh who introduced him to Spirituals, and, as the story goes, elements of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony were inspired by those Spirituals that Burleigh sang to the rapt composer.
Those beautiful and emotionally-charged Spirituals that today are considered something between folksong and worship songs were created by black slaves of the American South. They captured the slaves’ devotion to Jesus, their Savior, and often described, in veiled terms, their agonies and hopes for a new life – not only in Heaven but for freedom now.
In 1708, the 23-year old Bach was already well known as an extraordinary organist, as well as an organ tester, and at that point he began a seven-year post as the organist at the ducal court in Weimar. Bach was also a bit of a fire-brand and enjoyed showing off. This great Prelude and Fugue was most likely written in that year, and was meant not only to show off Bach’s virtuosic talents but also, most likely, to “test the lungs” of the Weimar court’s organ. The Prelude and Fugue in G Major is a motorific powerhouse of a piece…