Every Friday, there’s a special hour in my house. We call it “gin o’clock.”
Gin o’clock is a special time, and calls for special music. Nothing too serious, nothing too loud, too fast, too slow, too anything. I think today’s gin o’clock song du jour will be Leroy Anderson‘s swanky Serenata.
Anderson’s name isn’t huge in music textbooks, which tend to favor the progressive and experimental composers of the 20th century. He wrote for many genres, but is best known for his short, light orchestral pieces which are truly all-purpose – they work as background music, you can dance to them, drink to them, or just listen. How about a little more respect for one of America’s greatest?
We’ve all done it – you wake up in the middle of the night with the greatest idea to have ever been had by anyone ever. You write it down on a scrap of paper, and go back to sleep. The next morning, you wake up, ready to start on your great idea. But first, some coffee. And you know, a good cup of coffee is best washed down with a cheese danish. After breakfast, well, you need to have a shower to really be awake. Then you sit down at your computer to start planning your project. Check your emails. Facebook. Watch some cat videos to get you in the mood. Your mother calls (interrupting your favorite video, no less!) Now it’s time for lunch.
You get the idea.
Modest Mussorgsky completed only one opera, Boris Godunov. However, he is best known for his Pictures at an Exhibition, and his musical nightmare A Night on Bald Mountain. It is likely you’ve heard these two great pieces, but here’s the thing: the version you know wasn’t actually written by Mussorgsky. Both were originally piano compositions that were later orchestrated by Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov respectively. And it doesn’t end there. When Mussorgsky died, left no fewer than NINE unfinished opera projects. Thankfully, his friends (a group of composers, known as the Mighty Handful, who were forging a distinct Russian musical style) completed some of the works he left undone. One of those is Khovanshchina, an opera which was finished again by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Mussorgsky’s marvelous sound is crafted from eastern European folk songs and scales against a rich modal accompaniment. It’s also important to remember that much of the magic of his music comes from having great orchestrators who finished the job for him.
35 years ago today, MTV was born. The first music video played was, of course, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It’s a good song, and the video is a great collage of old footage. If you don’t know it, it’s worth the 3 minutes it takes to watch:
It’s fun, and typical of 80’s New Wave rock; I like it with or without the accompanying video. Looking (er, listening?) only to the music (IE ignoring the words), it’s upbeat and catchy, repetitive and shallow. Add the words, and there’s more to latch onto – it’s your standard critique of technology, the pros and cons that come with any new innovation. “Video killed the radio star, pictures came and broke your heart.” Is it about how beautiful the music sounds, or how sexy the artist looks?
Art Music has struggled to deal with the recent rapid changes in technology (and I’m talking about since the late 19th century here). The invention of recorded music and radio revolutionized the musical landscape – before, you either had to play music yourself or go to where someone else was making music. Then came video …
But I’ll venture to say that NO, video didn’t kill the radio star. Maybe the radio star had to change to adapt to a video world, but there was no murder here. The Art Music world is no different. With cameras and video technology, we can now see a LIVE opera performance thousands of miles away from the opera house, and see intimately close images of the singers’ faces. It’s quite moving, actually, and a different but equally enjoyable experience from actually sitting in the opera house, seeing the action from afar. It’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing.
Art Music recordings and publicity images have also recently adapted in a somewhat desperate attempt to win the attention of Gen-X and Millenials. Formal photos have been replaced by eye-catching shots that give us a taste of the performers’ personalities.
Here’s a video of Charles Gounod‘s Romeo and Juliet; the composer probably never imagined his audiences would ever experience opera in this way – on a computer, sitting by ourselves, looking at the singer from better-than-a-front-row-seat. Video didn’t kill the radio star – it is making worthy things to become immortal.
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