“You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?”
That’s how American composer John Adams describes his piece, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine“. Of note here is the wood block part – it plays a steady beat, like a metronome, in time with the orchestra, but not always on the same strong beat as the other instruments. Every once in a while, it skips a half-beat.
John Tavener is best known for his glorious religious choral music. For Mother’s Day, this is his “Hymn to the Mother of God”. It is a transcendental experience to listen to it; like many things in the spiritual realm, it is simultaneously simple and complex.
The piece is scored for two choirs of approximately ten voices each. It’s harmonically driven (the melody isn’t particularly prominent or memorable), yet the harmony itself is simple – a choral hymn which doesn’t stray far from the home key. There are really only three phrases in the whole piece, and the third phrase is identical to the first. So what makes it sound other-worldly? First, each ten-voice choir is singing in a huge range in thick chords; second, each choir sings the same music three beats apart. The second choir ends up sounding like an echo of the first. This causes lots of notes to momentarily clash in dissonance, but then resolve to form a powerful consonance.
Short, simple, but wow does it pack a punch!
If you are a mother or like a mother to someone, Happy Mother’s Day!
Antonín Dvořák wrote a sweet little song which is perfect for this day. “Songs My Mother Taught Me” describes the tender voice of the author’s mother singing songs with tears in her eyes – and now the teary-eyed author is singing those same songs to her child.
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