What’s in a name?

Who will ever be able to forget the small time criminal Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop? Or perhaps the overly-long names of composers such as César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck or Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. Clearly, Exceptional people often are given exceptional names.

Enter Joseph Balogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, also known as “The Black Mozart.” Born in the Antilles to a plantation owner and a slave, Bologne became and expert fencer and violinist (because of course, those two disciplines go hand in hand) among many other things. John Adams himself wrote of Saint-Georges: “He is the most accomplished Man in Europe in Riding, Running, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Musick. He will hit the Button, any Button on the Coat or Waistcoat of the greatest Masters. He will hit a Crown Piece in the Air with a Pistoll Ball.”

He lived a life worthy of the protagonist of a Rafael Sabatini novel – political revolutions, military service, scandals, with strings quartets and operas to accompany. There is even speculation that the German Mozart and the Black Mozart had a little tiff which ended with the German creating an evil opera character based on Saint-Georges. Whether or not that is true, it is impossible to ignore Saint-Georges was a musical force to be reckoned with. He might have been adept at “Riding, Running, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing,” but it is for his Musick that we remember him.

I was daydreaming through some of my favorite musical memories and “stumbled” (if you will) on a piece which has a special place in my heart.

I envy Benjamin Britten because he has written a lot of church music that sounds very un-churchy. I too have written music for use in church, and usually anything that pushes any boundary gets panned (or banned) as too weird to be used or downright ugly. Somehow he was able to be creative in his composition, and still got played. When his cantata St. Nicholas was first performed, it was hailed as “pious frivolity”. And it is indeed both pious and frivolous – and also creative while fitting the tight-fitting form of church music.

First of all, this ain’t no Santy Claus musical. This is about the legendary St. Nicholas of Myra who punched heretics at the first council of Nicaea. And like so many saints of the church, the stories about him are utterly ridiculous – so wacky they wouldn’t even make it into a SpongeBob episode. So from the getgo, it’s hard to take this too seriously. But at the same time, there’s a sort of reverence in the work that elevates a historical figure that time and legend have blurred into a superhero. There’s even a chorus that directly asks what the heck are we modern people supposed to make of these looney stories? We learn what we can from them, dismiss what is outrageous, and try to make sense of our own looney times.

So what’s so looney? My favorite number is “The Pickled Boys”. Yes, you read that correctly. During a famine, a butcher killed three boys and pickled their bodies to sell as pork (side note – many suggest that some religions forbid pork because it is supposedly similar in taste to human flesh. Barf.) Nicholas calls out the butcher on his sins, and then proceeds to call the boys forth – which of course they do. Their bodies reassemble in the pickle barrel, and the boys respond by singing Alleluias.

Well that’s good and fun, but now let me tell you about my personal experience performing this work. I was conducting this – full choirs and orchestra – on a hot June day in a church with no air conditioning. We were dripping in sweat. We finally began the closing chorus of the cantata – first a Nunc Dimittis while Nicholas breathes his last, followed by an awkwardly angular anglican hymn (London New, for those who care).

The organ finally opens up to fortissimo during the final verse: “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.” At the moment of “clouds … shall break blessings” the skies opened up and utterly drenched the church in cool rain. Right after the final cadence (organ thundering along with the actual thunder), my choristers ran outside afterwards and stood in the rain, soaking themselves. It was about as hilariously joyful as a church cantata could be. The whole place was full of pious frivolity.

Dreams have fascinated us for thousands of years. They can give us inspiration, true horror, or clarity on a real-life situation; they make us laugh or cry; sometimes they seem to warn us about something, predict the future, or reinvent the past.

Not surprisingly, the very human act of dreaming has inspired all kinds of art and music. Rather than explain the science behind dreams (of which I know very little), let’s dive into a few musical interpretations of dreams.

First of all, a confession – the main reason for this post is that I wanted to include a piece I wrote called Fantasmagoria. It’s three movements long and for flute & organ. The movements document: 1) Fantasmagoria – a calm, pleasant dream that corrupts into a hideous nightmare 2) Oneironautics – the act of being in control of one’s dream 3) Deja Vu – the feeling that you’ve experienced this before (in this case, an unchaning single-note pulse).

If we look at the body of art music, I think we can boil down dream-music into two categories: 1) sweet, gentle, calming works 2) wilder, fantastical visions.

Starting with category 1 – sweet, gentle, calming works. Common characteristics of these pieces include simpler, more predictable harmonies, a consistent, slower rhythmic pulse, and hummable melodies. They are more often written for solo instrument, or for two players. They appeal to our musically conservative side, hinting at music we already know – perhaps lullabies or songs of tenderness. They put our minds in safe places and make us feel love and warmth.

Reverie was one of Claude Debussy earlier works, and captures a delightful, pleasant daydream of sorts.

Francisco Tárrega wrote this gentle dream for solo guitar.

Franz Liszt was known for writing-impossible-to-play piano music, but his Liebestraum is almost manageable. On top of that, its supremely cheesy melody and sentimental mood make it a regular encore at piano concerts or romantic piano CDs.

And speaking of cheese, the master of all sentimental cheese was Robert Schumann. He was so cheesy that Brahms tried to out-cheese him, but failed. So Brahms decided to go after his wife instead.

Let’s just stay in cheese zone for another moment and move on to Gabriel Fauré‘s haunting “Après un rêve” (after a dream).

Alexander Scriabin was a true nut job, and that is historical fact, not opinion. Even so, his music is pretty amazing, and strongly influenced by his interest in philosophy and theosophy.

This first category of dream music is mostly romantic schlock – but there are some modern pieces that fit here, including George Crumb‘s Dream Sequence, which uses a glass harmonica (invented by Benjamin Franklin, no less!)

Now, the second category of dream-music: wilder, fantastical visions. These works are more likely to challenge our musical expectations a bit, perhaps with sudden changes of harmony or meter, broader dynamic range, and lack that singable melody. Like a wild dream, they don’t go where we expect them to go – sometimes making us dizzy, filling us with a sense of dread, or even frightening us into waking up.

Going right back to Debussy – Reverie might have been a child’s innocent daydream, but his later dreams turn much more erotic. Besides the dreamy harmonies and short, gesture-based melodies, the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is based on a poem in which a faun gets aroused by nymphs before falling asleep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzF21CFJFE

Engelbert Humperdinck might win the award for composer with the funniest name (an old-school Butterscotch Cabbagepatch?) In his most famous opera, Hansel and Gretel, there is a lovely bedtime prayer which is sung, followed by a dream sequence based on the prayer’s hymn-like tune.

Tōru Takemitsu wrote many pieces with “dream” in the title, and most of them paint an impressionistic and atonal dreamscape.

If that was a little too modern for you, the next piece is by the tried-and-true Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. His First Symphony bears the title “Winter Dreams”, and really is more of a typical symphony than a dream-piece, but hey, there must be some dreaming in there somewhere.

Bedřich Smetana wrote a series of solo piano works on dreams. They’re a little more involved than the earlier solo piano works, with a broad range of emotion, which is why I think they belong in the category of wild, fantastical dream music.

Sergei Prokofiev wrote a symphonic poem on dreams – it’s also fairly conservative, but too dramatic to be in the first category.

And of course, no music collection based on dreams would be complete without Hector Berlioz‘s bad opium trip, where he dreams of witches and an orgy around his dead body.

Next up: if you listen to one of these pieces while falling asleep, does it affect your dreams? Happy dreaming!