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The Varied God

~ On the Human Experience of the Seasons.

The Varied God

Category Archives: Classical Music

Second Movements

23 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by Tom Cooper in Antonin Dvorak, Classical Music, Franz Josef Haydn, Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel, Seasons, Sergei Prokofiev

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Classical Music, Second Movements

I am sitting this morning drinking coffee and listening to Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto on the radio. This is one of my favorite pieces of music. All three movements are very good, but I like the second movement the most. It is a lovely slow movement with a rhythmic feel, full of wistful happiness, the sort of movement that makes you want to close your eyes and breathe deep while you listen. At the end of the movement, the solo violin picks out the simple theme pizzicato while the low strings sing along behind it, and the theme resolves as simply as an old folk song. To my mind, perfect music.

Thinking about this, it comes to me how often the second movement of a work is the one I like most. Even in Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony, I like the second movement more than the very recognizable first. But there are many examples. Ravel’s String Quartet, with its lilting juxtaposition of pizzicato and bowed expressions of the theme, which sounds fiendishly difficult to execute, is just the same very pleasing to listen to. Dvorak’s ‘American’ String Quartet, whose second movement pulses with a melancholy, simple tune: if he wrote any music using Native American themes, as some critics speculate he did, this is the finest example.

All these examples share the traits of beautiful tunes and a quiet meditation. Which reminds me of something that happened many years ago, when I had my first library job in the Music Department of St. Louis Public Library. A young man I’ll leave nameless came to work for the department. To this day, I’ve never known anyone with a broader knowledge of popular music. He was useful for that, but he had no interest in classical music. ‘It’s all too bombastic,’ he said, ‘Sometimes I need music I can relax to.’ It was kind of embarrassing. One hears this often from people who have only heard a little of a genre of music, it’s the old ‘it all sounds alike to me’ criticism, which says more about your lack of experience that it says about the music. I should have compiled for him a recording of my favorite second movements.

A woman I once dated told me about working in an office where the boss played classical music all the time. ‘That angry music,’ she called it, and I wondered, is that really all you hear? Anger? Bombast? Sure, there is bombast in huge movements of the great romantic symphonies and concertos, but it is rarely meant to express anger, and frequently settles into more peaceful slow movements.

Second movements are often the ones with recognizable tunes. The second movement of Haydn’s String Quartet No. 62, the ‘Emperor Quartet’ holds the tune that became the German national anthem. Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, his ‘New World,’ gave us a second movement which is frequently excerpted as a stand-alone tune; in the symphonic rendition, this theme is played by a solo English horn, as beautiful and restful a piece of work as you’ll find in all of music. Bach’s famous ‘Air on the G-string’ is actually the second movement to his Third Orchestral Suite.

The Prokofiev piece on the radio ended a half hour ago, and I have been sitting here playing the pieces I’m writing about. The combined effect is that I am completely relaxed and do not feel like getting up and doing anything on this lovely, sunny Sunday morning—despite too much coffee. My advice to anyone is, when you hear a new piece of music and don’t like it, please wait until the second movement, it may convince you otherwise.

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony

09 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by Tom Cooper in Classical Music, Seasons, Spring

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Classical Music, Impatience, Spring

I have listened to classical music my whole life. Even in high school and college, when we were all listening to rock music, I also found time to play the occasional classical recording. I credit this taste to a few early teachers and also to my older brother, who likewise has long enjoyed classical music. I have a distinct memory of being at a party at his house when he was in college, and late in the evening a Led Zeppelin album coming off the turntable to be replaced by a recording of the William Tell Overture.

People will occasionally ask me for listening recommendations, often with the added clarification that they want to start learning about classical music. It’s a big order. How do you ‘start to learn?’ My first suggestion is usually not to recommend ten or twelve pieces people should be familiar with, because once you start down that road, where does it end? I always recommend that you become familiar with the various forms of classical music, and see which ones you prefer. Are you drawn to violin concertos? How about string quartets? Piano sonatas are often beautiful and restful, as are most sonatas. What about larger chamber pieces, like serenades for strings, or sextets or octets? Most composers who have written a lot of music have composed pieces in most, if not all of these forms. I think it is a more productive way to learn about music than to say, ‘Listen to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos or Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.’

But when I am recommending this course of action, the last form I suggest listening to is symphonies. I know this sounds strange. Symphonies are what comes to mind when anyone says classical music. Beethoven’s Fifth: dadadadaaaa . . . . But symphonies are long, complex, and often intimidating. As with any style of music you’re not familiar with, it all begins to run together in a kind of sonic sameness. Starting a person off on symphonies is like handing someone unfamiliar with great literature a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses, or Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Just too much there. And indeed, you can listen to classical music all day every day and never hear a symphony. Of course symphonies are wonderful. It’s just a matter of developing the taste, the understanding, the appreciation of them. And Americans are notoriously short of the kind of patience that requires.

My patience has been severely tried the past several weeks while waiting for spring. The weather has been variable and unpredictable, unseasonably warm then dangerously cold. And once things started to warm up we had many days back to back of rainfall. One day last week we set the record rainfall amount for that day. Gloomy days, I’ll say. But yesterday and today have begun to feel very much like spring has arrived. You can delay the blessed season, but you can’t stop it. While we may know this, we become impatient with waiting. This is why there are so many springtime rituals in human culture—one of which we’ll be celebrating next weekend, though that one has gotten somewhat unmoored from its roots.

Spring has arrived. Perhaps that’s why, as I sat down this morning to think about what I might write, I was happy when the announcer on the radio said the next piece would be Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in E minor. This is a large, grand classical-romantic symphony, full of joy and bombast and one exquisite Brahmsian theme after another, and I was calm and happy and ready to hear it all. Yay, spring!

And in case you think I am being facile in moving this little essay from a discussion of symphonies to the beginning of spring, get this: Today is the birthday of famed conductor Antal Dorati. It was him conducting the Brahms piece, and when it ended a few minutes ago, they started another piece conducted by Dorati: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Can you say synchronicity?

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