Happy Birthday to FAoL

November 18, 2016 at 10:30 am

As I mentioned yesterday, today is FAoL’s birthday.

It all began as a way to keep my mind fresh, to fight off the mid-life blahs and boredom: one post a day, 300 words maximum, for one year.

I’m under no illusions that I have more than a dozen or so readers, but that’s ok. If you’re reading this, please accept my humble thanks for taking time out of your life to read my ramblings, whether it was every day (thank you, my wonderful supportive wife) or only when Facebook was so miserably boring that you decided to click my daily spam. I do get the occasional note from a perfect stranger, thanking me for the blog, which is always uplifting.

At first, I wasn’t sure I could find 365 pieces worth writing about; ironically, I have a long list of pieces I still want to feature. Then I was concerned about finding something interesting to say; I’m proud of many posts, though certainly some are just “meh”. The future? I’ll be reposting stuff I’ve already written, and writing new content on occasion.

For FAoL’s half-birthday, I had a (musical) champagne toast. For its actual birthday, something more sincere and contemplative: Franz Schubert‘s setting of An die Musik. It’s one of Schubert’s 600+ art songs for solo voice and piano. For me, the spirit of the piece is better captured when sung by a choir – music is so much more glorious when it is shared!

Translation from Wikipedia:

You, noble Art, in how many grey hours,
When life’s mad tumult wraps around me,
Have you kindled my heart to warm love,
Have you transported me into a better world,
Transported into a better world!

Often has a sigh flowing out from your harp,
A sweet, divine harmony from you
Unlocked to me the heaven of better times,
You, noble Art, I thank you for it!!
You, noble Art, I thank you!

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Four hands are better than Two

September 24, 2016 at 10:00 am

This week, I wanted to listen to a certain piece of music on the way to work. I didn’t have it on CD, but I pulled it up on my phone … but my phone refused to connect to my car’s Bluetooth! I was furious … my desires weren’t instantly gratified. Poor me.

Before recorded music, there was only one way to hear music – either you made the music yourself, or you listened to a live performance. This also meant that if hearing the newest, hottest music meant a lot more than turning on a radio, TV, or computer. You had to get a score, then you had to get it performed. And often, that meant you heard the latest symphony played not by an orchestra, but by on a keyboard – very often, a piano-duet (often called “piano four hands”  – one piano, two players; not to be confused with two pianos, two players, popularly called “dueling pianos”).

Four-hand piano music makes a ton of sound, and can cover the many moving parts of a complex symphony. Besides getting new music heard, four-hand scores are often the first thing a composer writes when preparing a large-scale opera or symphony – this way s/he can hear the piece and make edits before s/he takes the time to write out all the orchestra parts (a long and laborious process.) However, four-hand music is more than just playing orchestral works – many composers have written pieces specifically for this genre. Franz Schubert wrote his Fantasia in F minor in his last year (he died at 31). It was a gift for his student, whom he loved; she didn’t love him back. The gravity, weight, and maturity of this piece is a regular part of Schubert’s late works (like Winterreise), as he was preparing himself for a death he knew was coming (he suffered from late-stage syphilis.)

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Happy (?) Fathers Day!

June 19, 2016 at 11:00 am

Though it’s not really his fault, the dad in this song isn’t exactly the model of good fatherhood: A boy and his father ride through the woods. The boy says that the “Erl-king” (evil-elf-king) is beckoning to him. The father tells his son that it’s just the wind, the mist, the trees. When the two reach home, the father looks down and finds that his son is dead.

While this is not a story of a particularly good father, I do think it’s a good “dad story” – the kind of story that a father tells his kids, giving them a chill, maybe a little scare, and ending with hugs and giggles. And Franz Schubert does a marvelous job at storytelling, dad-style. The piano’s driving octaves sets the scene of a horse racing through the woods. The music is written for only one singer, who has to portray three different characters: the father sings in a reassuring lower range; the son in an intense middle range; the Erl-king in a pianissimo, almost-falsetto high range (which makes him really creepy – a rational, twisted baddie, not just a wild monster).

Though Schubert did not have any children of his own, I’d like to imagine him at a friend’s house, scaring the living daylights out of the kids with music like this. Hmmm … I know what I’ll be doing for my children this Father’s Day!

Translation from The Poems of Goethe, tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring; Wildside Press: ISBN 9781434462480.
Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
 The father it is, with his infant so dear;
 He holdeth the boy tightly clasp’d in his arm,
 He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.
 “My son, wherefore seek’st thou thy face thus to hide?”
 “Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
 Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?”
 “My son, ’tis the mist rising over the plain.”
 “Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
 For many a game I will play there with thee;
 On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
 My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold.”
 “My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
 The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?”
 “Be calm, dearest child, ’tis thy fancy deceives;
 ‘Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves.”
 “Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
 My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care;
 My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
 They’ll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep.”
 “My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
 How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?”
 “My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
 ‘Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight.”
 “I love thee, I’m charm’d by thy beauty, dear boy!
 And if thou’rt unwilling, then force I’ll employ.”
 “My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
 For sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last.”
 The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
 He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
 He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread, –
 The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.
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