Such interesting and informative stuff about music over on the Bar thread. Is it appropriate to start a completely new thread about this - the importance of music in the presentation of history? Is that too imprecise - distressingly woolly - a thread title? Just talk about music please!

I have been watching - for the third time (pathetic, I know) - the superb Netflix presentation, The Crown, so far three seasons covering the reign of Elizabeth II. Three more seasons are promised us: I hope I live to view them all.

The music that has been woven into the drama is an excellent mix of ancient and modern, classical and popular. I absolutely loved this, taken, I think, from A Requiem For My Friend, by a composer new to me, Zbigniew Preisner. The piece is is Dies Irae - the Day of Wrath. I think it is magnificent. Can anyone tell me about the composer - and his friend, for whom the Requiem was written? Odd it was chosen to end the episode which dealt with yet another disastrous royal marriage: that of HRH Princess Margaret to Anthony Armstrong-Jones.  

The original dates from the thirteenth century. Here is the complete hymn in Latin, with translation.

Oscar Wilde wrote a sonnet: 'On Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine Chapel':

Nay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring,
Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove,
Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love
Than terrors of red flame and thundering.
The empurpled vines dear memories of Thee bring:
A bird at evening flying to its nest,
Tells me of One who had no place of rest:
I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing.

Come rather on some autumn afternoon,
When red and brown are burnished on the leaves,
And the fields echo to the gleaner's song.
Come when the splendid fulness of the moon
Looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves,
And reap Thy harvest: we have waited long.

Mozart of course wrote music to the Dies irae as part of his Requiem, and detailed drafts in Mozart's hand show that he composed the dies irae in its entirety, rather than it being completed after his death by Süssmayr, as is claimed for some other parts of the requiem:

Thanks MM and Temperance for the songs and the music.

MM's youtube says "content not available" I found this as "ersatz"



Kind regards, Paul.

I never thought Mozart could be bettered; but you know, I prefer the Zbigniew Preisner version. There is something agonising and pleading - heartbroken - "supplicante" - about it that is exactly what Wilde conveys in his words. That tolling of the bell - barely audible at the start - and, strangely, the pauses...

Gulp.

Meles meles wrote:

Oscar Wilde wrote:

Come rather on some autumn afternoon,
When red and brown are burnished on the leaves

It reminds me of a classic production of Richard III from the mid-1980s (the RSC at the Barbican) in which some black-habited monks haunted the background of various scenes like a spectral chorus. There they were at the beginning of the play accompanying the coffin of Edward of Westminster while Lady Anne mourned and also at the end taking Richard’s dead body off the battlefield and at other pertinent points in between such as when Buckingham presented Richard to the mayor and citizens of London ‘between two clergymen’ etc. Memorably there was the scene featuring Buckingham’s execution at Salisbury:

'Buckingham: This is All-Souls’ day, fellows, is it not?

Sheriff: It is my lord.

Buckingham: Why then All-Souls’ day is my body’s doomsday...'

This dialogue was prompted by, and spoken over, our aforementioned Benedictine friends giving a gentle rendition of Dies Irae in Gregorian plainchant. The director and sound engineer did very fine acoustic work there as the effect was simply spine-tingling.

Vizzer wrote:

 The director and sound engineer did very fine acoustic work there as the effect was simply spine-tingling.

That I can well imagine!

The spine-tingling effect is so important. The British monarchy was very fortunate when Mr Handel decided to settle in London. His Zadok the Priest anthem has been sung at every coronation since 1727 - really spine-tingling stuff. Apparently, though, at the coronation of George II on 11 October 1727, there was a terrible mess-up: the choir of Westminster Abbey nearly ruined everything by singing Mr Handel's wonderful new anthem in the wrong part of the service; they had earlier entirely forgotten to sing one anthem, and another ended "in total confusion". Good job there were no TV cameras around in the Abbey back then!

From Wiki:

The text of Zadok the Priest is derived from the biblical account of the anointing of Solomon by Zadok and Nathan and the people's rejoicing at this event. These words have been used in every English coronation since that of King Edgar at Bath Abbey in 973, and Handel's setting has been used at every British coronation since 1727.[2] It is traditionally performed during the sovereign's anointing and its text is after 1 Kings (1:38–40). Its duration is just over five minutes. It is written in D major for: two sopranos, two altos, tenor, two basses, choir, and orchestra (two oboes, two bassoons, three trumpets, timpani, strings, and continuo). The music prepares a surprise in its orchestral introduction via the use of static layering of soft string textures, followed by a sudden rousing forte tutti entrance, augmented by three trumpets.

The middle section "And all the people rejoic'd, and said" is an imitative dance in 3/4 time, mainly with the choir singing in a homophonic texture and a dotted rhythm in the strings.

The final section "God save the King, ..." is a return to common time (4/4), with the "God save the King" section in homophony, interspersed with the "Amens" incorporating long semiquaver runs which are taken in turn through the six voice parts (SAATBB) with the other parts singing quaver chords accompanying it. The chorus ends with a largo plagal cadence on "Allelujah".


I read this 2000 article from the Guardian with interest: I had no idea Wagner was a  "banned" composer. Perhaps this piece is relevant in the present cultural climate?

Can We Forgive Wagner?

Hmm. Well, the choir  and the orchestra made a pig's ear of "Zadok" for Brenda's coronation - the sub-conductors (one for cantoris, one for decanae) were linked to the main one by field telephones, and the delay between the musicians (drawn from the best orchestras in London so they had no rapport with each other) and the voices was obvious. The Radio 4 series "Soul Music" has this available on BBC Sounds - take a listen if you can.

Temperance, may I add some dramatic music...?

For me, the music that sticks in my mind and also the philosphy behind...my first before all...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna
https://amara.org/en/videos/fivbTiGP5il8/en/37520/




And also something that I don't forget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_of_St._John_Chrysostom_(Tchaikovsky)





Also worth a mentioning in my opinion...



Kind regards from Paul.

I'm pleased to learn that Handel's 'Zadok the Priest' has a well-established history of pig's ear performances. We played it for my school's 'Queen's Silver Jubilee Concert' in the summer of 1977 and I'm proud to say we followed tradition and precedent. I was then, aged 17, the lead trumpet, and to me, together with my two fellow first trumpeteers, fell the task of doing the splendid counter-point trumpet descant above the rest of the orchestra and choir. It should have been one of the high points of my trumpeting career, but I'm afraid we three trumpeters fluffed it.

The trumpet part is high, going up to a high C, repeatedly, that's two octaves above middle C (as written, this sounds as a high B♭ in concert pitch), which for a B♭ trumpet is almost the upper limit of the instrument (unless you are a particularly gifted jazz trumper with lips of kevlar). The pitch of a trumpet, or indeed any brass instrument, relies on the player creating the required harmonic of the air vibrating in the instrument, and this is done solely by the embouchure of their lips, It is therefore much more physically demanding as you go higher up the register than just needing to place a finger in the correct place on, say, a violin of guitar string. And I say that as one who was always technically a better violin player than I ever was a trumpet player. It's just that when you're a teenage boy, being a trumpet player and in a brass band was far more sexy than playing in a string quartet. (Although of course, being in the football or rugby teams was what every true red-blooded boy should really have aspired to). I played trumpet in the school orchestra and brass band, and it was fun ... but at the same time I continued to have private, almost secret, lessons in the violin, right up until I was eighteen and went away to university.

Anyway, back to the school hall in 1977 ... having already been playing/singing various patriotic or royally-connected musical numbers for about an hour or so, we then all launched into Handel's 'Zadok the Priest'. The trumpets don't have anything to do for the long opening gradual crescendo as that's basically just for the strings - other of course than count the bars and increasingly suffer panicky nerves - until their (hopefully) brilliant and dazzling descant fanfare. Which when the time came, we fluffed. We were mostly unable to hitf the high Cs (and if you fail to hit it, the trumpet just blasts out at a lower harmonic, perhaps a few tones lower). My personal trick, given the extremis of the situation, was to just play all the other notes of the fanfare, the Fs, Gs, As and Bs, but omit the impossible high Cs - but I'm sure nobody was fooled. Luckily though we then only had to conclude with a rousing finale of 'Men of Sussex' followed by 'Land of Hope and Glory' and 'Rule Britannia', so with any luck our bum playing got largely forgotten, although frankly I doubt it.

Of course when Handel wrote 'Zadok the Priest' he scored it for natural trumpets keyed in D, which would in itself have made it slightly easier to hit the highest notes. Moreover in his day all trumpets, with a few limited exceptions, were restricted to playing just the natural harmonics, and so couldn't play a fully chromatic scale (ie all the tones and semitones in an octave) unless they were playing in the highest register, where the harmonics are naturally closer together. Accordingly trumpets of the time were specifically designed - and so then by design very restricted - to little more than an octave, and just to these higher registers where the natural harmonics are closer together and so they could play, more-or-less, melodically (for example in Bach's 'Brandenburg Concerto' No. 2). If you look at the accompanying music, note how that when the trumpet is playing in the octave directly above middle C it is essentially limited to the natural harmonics: midddle C; the E a third above that; G a fifth above; then the octave C ... but then going yet higher, in the second octave the harmonics are closer and so as it approaches the second C above middle C the trumpet can actually play notes that are just a tone apart, and so (look at the music) as the trumpet approaches the second C above middle C, it can then play, albeit with probably some lip-modification to keep in tune with the rest of the orchestra, all the notes: F, G, A, B♭, C, D, E.



Slides (sliding sections of tube which can be used to extend the effective length of the instrument, as in a trombone or swannee whistle) were sometimes used to increase the number of notes obtainable in the middle and lower registers (and trombones, or sackbutts as they were then known, had existed since the sixteenth century). Slide trumpets did exist, playing in higher registers, but with the technology available at the time there was the ever-present risk of the slide suddenly jamming and the player knocking his teeth out, plus these slide trumpets rarely sounded as brilliant as a natural trumpet.

The first real fully chromatic trumpet was the 5-keyed trumpet, able to play all the semitones over two octaves or so, which was designed over several years but largely perfected by 1793, by the Austrian trumpet virtuoso Anton Weidinger. This was a conically-bored brass trumpet, with five holes in the bore that could be covered by mechanical keys operated by the player's fingers, to obtain all the semi-tones between the natural harmonic frequencies in much the same way as a clarinet or oboe operates.



Weidinger, as a trumpeter in the Imperial court orchestra in Vienna, was a long-time friend of the composer Joseph Haydn, who was then Kapellmeister to the immensely wealthy Esterházy family. To introduce Weidinger's revolutionary instrument and show off all its new features, Haydn wrote his famous trumpet concerto in 1796. The first public performance of the concerto, with Weidinger playing his new keyed-trumpet, was a benefit performance held in Vienna in 1800.



However while it does wonderfully showcase the potential of the new trumpet, I personally find Haydn's concerto somewhat pedestrian or rather old-fashioned in style. Far more musically sophisticated, I think, is the trumpet concerto written by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel, who at Haydn's suggestion had recently taken over his plum Kapellmeister job on Haydn's retirement, again specifically wrote his trumpet concerto for Weidinger's new instrument. The first public performance, again with Weidinger playing the solo part, was at a court concert on New Year's Day 1804.

Hummel's concerto was written just half a dozen years at most after Haydn's, but Haydn was then in the last year's of his life (after a long and productive career, he died in 1809, aged 77) and I think Hummel's concerto is much more sophisticated and firmly 'modern', in a 19th century way, and so more in the style of Beethoven, Liszt, Rossini and Franz Schubert ... while Haydn's concerto (very popular as it still is) is much more redolent of the late 18th century, dominated as it was by the likes of Weber, Handel, Telleman, Bach, Salieri, Haydn himself of course ... but also Mozart, although he was something different again: a harbinger of things to come, perhaps. (Note also that between the ages of 8 and 10, Hummel, who had been a musical protegé, was accommodated free of charge in Mozart's house in Vienna, where he was given music lessons and trained in musical composition).


You'll need to click "watch on youtube" and note that while this is with full orchestra, the music shown is just an arrangement for trumpet and accompanying piano only. It's probably exactly the same arrangement that my trumpet tutor used to teach me, and then repeatedly practice the piece, over and over again, back in 1978. It is of course impossible to continually practice accompanied by a full 30-piece orchestra ... hence the popularity of simplified piano arrangements to stand in for the full orchestra.

However I might be biased. A year after disasterously fluffing the performance of Handel's 'Zadok the Priest', I am proud to say that I performed the second slow movement (the Andante) of Hummel's trumpet concerto (albeit playing a modern 3-valve B♭ trumpet) in the school's summer concert (1978), and with full orchestral accompaniment. I had wanted to play the whole concerto or at least the last two movements: the slow second movement (which starts at 9:40 in the above) then followed by the fast third movement (the rondo allegro, starting at 14:25 in the youtube) because frankly the second, but more especially the third movement is the concerto's real bravado show-off piece. The third movement with it's chromatic ascending trills, turns and appoggiatura, a dramatic shift to a minor key then back to the major, as well as sporadic, surprising, almost atonal interval shifts to show off the instrument's entire two-and-a-half octave range, plus of course some fancy double- and triple-tongueing ... the whole lot indeed ... and it even hits a high C, my particular bête noir from 'Zadok the Priest', although mercifully just the once (Haydn's concerto never dares go above an top A) and all taken at a cracking pace ... was very deliberately written in this way expressly to show just what Weidinger's marvellous new trumpet was capable of.

But in 1978 my school's head of music - probably very wisely - thought the slower 2nd movement on its own, would be better suited for all concerned: me, him as conductor, the orchestra, the time and style constraints of the programme ... and probably the concerns of the audience too if it all didn't quite go as it should. So in the end I performed just the second movement ... almost, but not quite, faultlessly. Nevertheless honour was restored.

I've been on something of a binge listening to various versions of Canteloube's 'Cants d'Auvergne' recently.  Pardon my being something of an ignoramus but I've only just discovered that Canteloube made 'recuiels' from other provinces of France besides the Auvergne.  I could only find a recording of some of the 'Chants du Pays Basque' among his other collections. Here is Itziar Lesaka (her voice she doesn't appear in the video) singing some at least of the songs from the Pays Basque collected by Canteloube.  Under the video she is described as a soprano.  I couldn't find a biography of  of this singer though I managed to find a list of her planned performances for this year (though I suppose they have been changed with coronovirus rampaging).  She is described in this list as a mezzo.  https://www.operabase.com/artists/itziar-lesaka-7517/en

I wonder why the collection of songs from the Auvergne made by Canteloube seem to have surpassed his other collections in popularity.  He was from the Auvergne himself so maybe he had a natural affinity with those songs.

I really enjoyed your message above, MM - I know nothing about music, but your post was really interesting and informative (as ever). I wish you could upload a video of you playing a bit of Handel for us.

I also enjoyed that post and following the scores of both pieces  was a joy- I sent a PM to MM  because i did not want to block the thread too soon so that others could enjoy it likewise. ..... Regards, MM from P.

Thanks for your comments and I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was essentially what I should have written for some school homework on 'the historical development of brass instruments'. However my thirteen-year old self hadn't bothered to read up enough about it all and accordingly I didn't get a very good mark.

Incidentally the scores for both the Haydn and Hummel concertos indicate a cadenza towards the end of the first movement. A cadenza in a concerto is when the orchestra comes to a complete stop, allowing the solo player to do an unaccompanied, free-form performance to show-off their talent. Sometimes the cadenza is written into the score by the composer (and sometimes composers have written cadenzas to be performed in the works of others), but often whether to play a cadenza is optional and what to play is left to the individual solo performer to improvise. In the above Haydn concerto youtube the solo performer does play a cadenza (presumably of their own invention as I've never heard this one before) which starts at 5:10 and ends when the orchestra rejoins at 6:55 just before the end of the movement.

In neither the Haydn or Hummel concerti is the cadenza written down by the composer. However given that they were both specifically written for the trumpet virtuoso, Anton Weidinger, playing his revolutionary keyed trumpet, I feel sure he would have played a wonderfully innovative cadenza to further wow his audience. But whatever he played was probably just in his head, never got written down and so sadly is unknown. But you can bet it would have been dazzlingly good.

And talking about cadenzas in concerti, the entire second movement of Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto consists of just two chords, which together make up what is called a 'Phrygian half cadence' (a cadence being two consecutive chords, the most familiar cadence being the so-called 'plagal cadence' which is the common setting to the text 'Amen' in hymns). There is nothing to actually suggest that Bach did not intend the entire second movement to comprise just these two chords and so to last no more than about ten seconds. However it is likely that these chords were meant to surround or follow a cadenza improvised around that cadence by a harpsichord or violin player, in the way that the first movement of his fifth Brandenburg Concerto features an extensive written cadenza for harpsichord.

The cadenza alone:


...or the entire concerto:

I watched Southern Comfort last night, about a squad of Louisiana National Guardsmen who find themselves in trouble in the bayous. Ry Cooder wrote the soundtrack but it also features some traditional Cajun music:

Today, 25 October, is the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian (or Crispian as Shakespeare calls him) and so it's the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

                           Henry V Act IV Scene iii

Here's the Agincourt Carol which was written in the first part of the 15th century and so not many years after the events it describes. Two primary copies exist, one is recorded in the Trinity Carol Roll held in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge; the other, with some differences in the words and music, is the contemporaneous Selden Carol Book held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford.



If you want to sing along, here are lyrics from the Bodleian version whilst I think the words being sung above are from the Trinity version:

Owre Kynge went forth to Normandy
With grace and myght of chyvalry
Ther God for hym wrought mervelusly;
Wherefore Englonde may call and cry:

Chorus
Deo gratias! Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!
[Give thanks, England, to God for victory!]

He sette sege, forsothe to say,
To Harflu towne with ryal aray;
That toune he wan and made afray
That Fraunce shal rewe tyl domesday.

Chorus

Then went hym forth, owre king comely,
In Agincourt feld he faught manly;
Throw grace of God most marvelsuly,
He had both feld and victory.

Chorus

Ther lordys, erles and barone
Were slayne and taken and that full soon,
Ans summe were broght into Lundone
With joye and blisse and gret renone.

Chorus

Almighty God he keep owre kynge,
His people, and alle his well-wyllynge,
And give them grace wythoute endyng;
Then may we call and savely syng:

Chorus

That is quite a gutsy version (incidentally that's David Munrow and Christopher Hogwood, who we've mentioned before, on the shawm and drum): a rather more refined and sedate, though only a slightly slower-paced interpretation, is the following one. Which is the more 'authentic' probably depends on whether it is to be performed in church as a hymn of thanksgiving for the preservation of the King, or in a tavern amongst fellow old soldiers and others of that "band of brothers ... that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day."



But if you fancy something less triumphant and more humble then there's also the following. Shakespeare in 'Henry V' has the king, in humility, proclaim the singing of both the Non nobis and the Te Deum after the victory at Agincourt, to give due thanks to God as per the original words of Psalm 113: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam (KJV: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give the glory"). For Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film adaption of the play Patrick Doyle composed (and sang/appeared as the first voice) a new and suitably somber setting (given the carnage) of the Non nobis, which I rather like too:

Away from the battle, the brothers have a tenuous connection with Faversham. Not sure of the origin of the tradition, as they were martyred in Gaul as far as I know, but the story goes that prior to that they made boots in the town's market street. It could be true as tanning is a long-established trade in the area due to the soft water (rare for southern England). More significantly (from my point of view) the water is also crucial for the brewing of Kentish ale.

This plaque is visible on the front of the town's old Swan Inn:



Recalling schooldays, the tune for the hymn Jesu, Thy Blood and Righteousness is called St Crispin although from memory it's quite slow and a bit of a Victorian dirge.

Indeed, Viz ... and regarding the saintly shoe-making brothers of Faversham, see also Dish of the Day - page 3 for 25 October 2015, which was all about those two saints; their personal connection with footwear; the difference between cordwainers and cobblers; and to boot(!), with some suggested recipes for either 'shoes' or 'cobblers'.

That's a great entry Meles. Did you ever find out why the recipe is called 'Shoes'? Autumn is just the season, though, to start to be thinking about making a cobbler. But just let's be thankful that there isn't a recipe called 'boots'. Or maybe there is!

Here's the St Crispin tune played on a reed organ:

Vizzer wrote:

But just let's be thankful that there isn't a recipe called 'boots'. Or maybe there is!

Well there is beef Wellington.

This being the more serious sort of thread.. if you accept MM's offering then what about 'loafers'..... and before I quickly leave, there's always choux pastry... 

Chapeau, P      ... and choux is a most excellent pun as it opens a whole host of foody possibilities, not just by way of fancy pastries but plenty more besides, since choux, the pastry, takes its name from un chou, ie a cabbage, on account of all the tightly-enclosed layers. I wish I had thought of it ... but I might still borrow it for future use.

Meles meles wrote:

Chapeau, P      ... and choux is a most excellent pun as it opens a whole host of foody possibilities, not just by way of fancy pastries but plenty more besides, since choux, the pastry, takes its name from un chou, ie a cabbage, on account of all the tightly-enclosed layers. I wish I had thought of it ... but I might still borrow it for future use.

Et mon cher MM..."mon choux"...and you can say it both to your girl friend and to your boy friend ...
https://www.allesfrans.com/spip/spip.php?article4290
And now as Priscilla quickly leaving...
Kind regards as usual from Paul.

Boots - surely a sandwich? A Polish one - a buty?

"Scaramouche, Scaramouche will you do the Fandango".

We've all sung it, in the shower or in the bath, waiting at a bus stop or sitting on a train. Released this day in 1975.

Video has in excess of 1 billion views:

Hurrian Hymn No 6, found in the city of Ugarit in modern day Syria:

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I've been on something of a binge listening to various versions of Canteloube's 'Cants d'Auvergne' recently. 

They came up when I was on Brain of Britain (or as the afficionados know it "Brian of Britain"). Robert Robinson asked "What part of France odoes the following song come from? Without waiting for the music, I replied "The Auvergne. It's either Canteloube's "vailero" or I won't know it anyway". Jeedless to say that was edited, but at least the question setter (Ian Gillies, the earliest Brain of Brains. RR always referred to him as "Mycroft" appreciated the quip. The producer didn't)

Triceratops wrote:

Hurrian Hymn No 6, found in the city of Ugarit in modern day Syria:

That finger-position stuff is known as "tablature" or "entablature", and is the commonest method of writing pop guitar. However, the tuning is, thankfully, spelled out if not the standard E A D G B E tuning. Similar tabs are used for ukulele etc, but since I play baritone uke in G (DGBE), tenor and concert in C (GCEA) and occasionally soprano in D (ADF#B) I find "the dots" (muso speak for conventional stave notation) less confusing.