Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

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Dvorak Symphony No. 8 Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

Bucolic. Sunny. Cheerful. Joyous. Folksy. Ebullient. Thrilling. These are all words that I found while researching Dvorak's 8th symphony. Dvorak's gift for writing the most gorgeous of melodies is on full display in his 8th symphony, a piece that has been charming listeners ever since its very first performances. It is, on its surface, an uncomplicated piece, bursting at the seams with melody after melody after melody, almost mirroring one of Brahms' greatest one-liners, where he referred to his summer country home as a place where melodies were so heavily present thatt one had to be careful to avoid tripping on them! The overriding characteristic of this 8th symphony is joy, from its childlike key of G Major, to its raucous use of folk music, and even its smiling through tears slow movement.

Very often on this show I try to take pieces that are quite complicated and break them down for you to show you how to follow their twists and turns despite their complexities. But today, I'm going to do the opposite. Today, I'm going to take a piece that is, on its surface, quite simple, and I'm going to show you how this symphony is not quite as simple as it seems. It is a piece full of invention and of the scintillating energy of trying out new ideas. As Dvorak said, he would try to make this symphony "different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way." So today on the show we're going to talk about how this symphony is different from other symphonies, and also how Dvorak constructs his chains of melodies that add up to the joyful whole of this piece, though tinged with the melancholy that is almost always present with Dvorak. Join us!

Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4, "Italian" Jun 23, 2022

Show notes

How does a composer capture the spirit of a country, especially if it's not his native land? Mendelssohn, in his Italian Symphony, gives us one of the best examples of someone doing just that, giving us a tightly integrated, yet highly independent set of 4 snapshots from his travels all over Italy. And yet, despite the piece being called the Italian Symphony and being indelibly associated with the country, the symphony remains a relatively traditional 4 movement German classical symphony. What we hear then is a brilliant amalgamation of a symphony and a tone poem that is among the first of its kind. The symphony tells no story, has no narrative, and yet, when we finish the breathless Tarantella that ends the piece, we feel like we've been flicking through a photo album of Felix's vacation, smiling (mostly) all along the way. Today we'll talk all about how Mendelssohn builds this symphony and how each movement captures such a distinctive character, while remaining Mendelssohnian to its core - kind, warm-hearted, and full of bubbling energy. Join us!

Brahms Piano Quartet in G Minor (+Schoenberg!) Jun 16, 2022

Show notes

Today I'm going to be talking about one piece, but in two different ways. I'm going to start today with an in-depth look at Brahms' Piano Quartet in G Minor, an early piece of his that reveals an incredible sense of drama, drive, and creativity. This is very different music than I've talked about before with Brahms as this is decidedly the work of a young composer, without all the burnished maturity of Brahms' later music. This is also a great opportunity to revisit the bedrock of the Classical and Early Romantic eras, Sonata Form, a form that makes so many pieces from those eras intelligible and clear. But I'm also going to be talking about another piece. Well, it's the same piece, but to some people, it sounds so completely different that it constitutes a completely new piece entirely. To some others, myself included, it almost constitutes an entirely new Brahms symphony. What I'm talking about is the composer Arnold Schoenberg's arrangement of Brahms's Piano Quartet for a massive orchestra, filling the stage with instruments that Brahms never would have even conceived of! You don't often think of Schoenberg and Brahms in the same breath, but Schoenberg was a devotee of Brahms' music, and often defended him against those who called him a crusty old conservative composer. But Schoenberg was still Schoenberg, and this arraangement of the quartet reflects that in a lot of ways. So along with an exploration of Sonata Form, I'll save a look at the Schoenberg arrangement for the end of th show, since this is a great chance to look at orchestration and how a composer takes a piece written for 4 people and transforms it into a piece for 100. So today we'll dive into this vast and complex piece, and along they way we'll visit Schoenberg's fascinating and sometimes downright wacky arrangement. Join us!

Berio Folk Songs Jun 09, 2022

Show notes

In 1964, the popular 20th century composer Luciano Berio was commissioned by Mills College in California to write a piece for voice and chamber orchestra. What Berio came up with is one of his most remarkably creative works, which is really saying something considering the innovative and constantly evolving way that he wrote music. Berio once said: "My links with folk music are often of an emotional character. When I work with that music I am always caught by the thrill of discovery… I return again and again to folk music because I try to establish contact between that and my own ideas about music. I have a utopian dream, though I know it cannot be realized: I would like to create a unity between folk music and our music — a real, perceptible, understandable conduit between ancient, popular music-making which is so close to everyday work and music."

The words "thrill of discovery" are at the core of what makes the Folk Songs so wonderful and easy to listen to. They combine a modernist classical aesthetic with songs that are of such beauty that it is hard not be overwhelmed by them. Berio took 11 folk songs from 5 different regions of the world, from places as far away as the United States and Azerbaijan, and transformed them. He wrote: "I have given the songs a new rhythmic and harmonic interpretation: in a way, I have recomposed them. The instrumental part has an important function: it is meant to underline and comment on the expressive and cultural roots of each song. Such roots signify not only the ethnic origins of the songs but also the history of the authentic uses that have been made of them." Today on the show I'm going to take you through these 11 songs, going on a historical expedition to find some of their roots and to get as close to the original songs as I can, and then looking at how Berio re-worked these songs into this cycle that consistently stuns people with its beauty and creativity. If you've never heard these pieces before, get ready, because Berio will take you on a remarkable journey. Join us!

Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

It's very easy to compare Sergei Prokofiev to Dmitri Shostakovich. They are the two most famous representatives of Soviet and Russian music of the 20th century, they lived around the same time, and their music even has some similarities, but at their core, you almost couldn't find more different people than Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Shostakovich was neurotic, nervous, and timid. Prokofiev was confident and cool. Shostakovich was tortured by the Soviet government, and while Prokofiev certainly had his runins with Stalin and his crones , his life wasn't so inextricably linked to the Soviet Union, besides the fact that he had the bad luck to die on the same day as Joseph Stalin, which made it so that there were no flowers available for his funeral. Prokofiev was able to travel, and see the world, generally without nearly as much interference as Shostakovich faced. These two lives are reflected in two very different musical approaches. Shostakovich's wartime symphonies are full of terror and violence, whlie Prokofiev wrote that his 5th symphony was a hymn to the human spirit. We don't know how much that reflects his true feelings, but its undeniable that there is a certain "optimism" to this symphony that both thrills and unsettles listeners to this day. It is also filled with traademark Prokofiev cynicism and sarcasm, and so we are left, as always, with a contradiction. What did Prokofiev mean with this symphony? Join us as we try to find out!

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 May 26, 2022

Show notes

Imagine writing a concerto that prompted Beethoven to remark to a friend: "we'll never be able to write anything like that. Or a piece that prompted Brahms to call it: "a masterpiece of art, full of inspiration and ideas." Or had scholars and musicologists raving, saying things like: "not only the most sublime of the whole series but also one of the greatest pianoforte concertos ever composed" or "whatever value we put upon any single movement from the Mozart concertos, we shall find no work greater as a concerto than this K. 491, for Mozart never wrote a work whose parts were so surely those of 'one stupendous whole'." I could go on and on, but the simple end to this story is that Mozart's C Minor Piano Concerto has been considered one of the great achievements of humanity ever since it was premiered on either April 3rd of April 7th of 1786, performed by Mozart himself. While we don't know exactly how long it took Mozart to complete this concerto, it could not have taken more than a few months, and it came amidst him writing his 22nd and 23rd piano concerti, both masterpieces in their own right, and it was written just as Mozart was putting the finishing touches on his comic magnum opus, The Marriage of Figaro. It's almost a cliche at this point, but its one of those rare cliche's that really deserves to be repeated: If Mozart had written just one of those 4 pieces, his name would have been etched in history. Instead he was working on all 4 at the same time! Today, we're going to be talking about the astonishing harmonic language of the piece, it's skeletal manuscript, and how performers deal with the contradictions and quite frankly, missing pieces of this concerto. Join us!

The Life and Music of Florence Price May 19, 2022

Show notes

Today I've got a pretty special show for you. It's set up in two parts, with the first part featuring an interview, and the second part will be a more typical Sticky Notes analysis of a specific piece. Why did I set up the show this way this week? Well, I had the opportunity a few months ago to work with an extraordinary scholar and musician, Dr. Samantha Ege, who is the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and is also one of the foremost scholars on the music of Florence Price.

Florence Price is a composer who has been receiving a lot of attention over the last 5-7 years. As the first African American woman to have a major piece performed an orchestra, her first symphony was performed in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony, Price has become one of the most prominent figures in the revival of music written by Black composers as orchestras and performers not only in the US but all over the world attempt to diversify their programming. Price is part of a group of composers from the early twentieth century who were the first nationally successful Black composers. This group included luminaries such as William Grant Stiill, William Levi Dawson, and Nathaniel Dett, among others, and all of these composers have had their works rediscovered during this period, a truly exciting development that has brought a lot of neglected music back onto the concert stage. I've wanted to do a show devoted to Florence Price for a while, but when I got the chance to perform Florence Price's Piano Concerto in One Movement with Dr. Ege, I knew I had to ask her to come on the show to tell the incredible story of this wonderful American composer. So the first part of the show is devoted to an interview with Dr. Ege going through Price's background and talking about her writing style and approach to music. This was such a fun interview - Dr. Ege is a great teacher and I learned a ton about Price that I didn't know about beforehand. The second part of the show will be an analysis of one of Price's most rarely played, but in my opinion, one of her best, orchestral works, Ethiopia's Shadow in America. Join us!

Mahler Symphony No. 9, Part 4 May 12, 2022

Show notes

Mahler once said this to Bruno Walter, his protege and great advocate of Mahler's works: "What one makes music from is still the whole—that is the feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering, human being" You could almost just stop there with the last movement of Mahler 9. This is music so full of feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering, but also of also acceptance and consolation, that words fail to describe its emotional impact. But as always with Mahler, this isn't merely an emotional outpouring, a dumping of his innermost feelings onto the audience. It is a superbly paced, beautifully written movement, and despite its 25 minute length, and very stable and slow tempo, the movement does the seemingly impossible and feels both endless and compact at the same time. So today, while of course we'll talk about the emotional content of the music, I want to focus a bit more on how Mahler writes this music to make it so effective, and how he finds a way to reach the peaks of expression and the epitome of using silence as music. And finally, we'll explore how and to whom Mahler says goodbye to at the end of this symphony, as everything fades away. Join us!

Mahler Symphony No. 9, Part 3 May 05, 2022

Show notes

It's easy to forget that Mahler, for all of his ubiquitous success nowadays, was much better known as a conductor during his life than as a composer. He had basically one major success in his compositional career: a performance of his 8th symphony in Munich in 1910 that finally seemed to give him the approval he craved from the audience. But for much of his compositional life, Mahler was misunderstood. His symphonies were either too long, too dense, too confusing, too esoteric, too vulgar, too banal, lacking in sophistication, or had too MUCH sophistication - the list goes on and on. Mahler famously said in regards to his music that "my time will come" and it certainly has come, with regular performances of his music all around the world. But as we discuss the third movement of Mahler's 9th symphony today, I want to keep reminding you that Mahler was really not a popular man. Even as a conductor, he had bitter enemies that drove him out of his position as the Director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1907. As a person, he could charitably be described as difficult, with moments of kindness followed by bouts of stony silence or fierce rages. Mahler was a complicated man, and it's perhaps in this third movement that we can learn so much about this side of Mahler that doesn't get talked about as much - that bitter, sarcastic, nasty side of him that many choose to ignore, preferring to focus on the love and warmth that he instills into much of his music. In the third movement of his 9th symphony, Mahler seems to be letting out some of his rage and anger at the Viennese public, concerned in his mind only with intrigue and gossip, and those critics who trafficked in open Anti-Semitism in order to bring him down from his lofty perch. But amidst all of this, Mahler continually grasps for order throughout the movement, only to find it ripped away from him. This is the shortest movement of Mahler's 9th symphony, but it is also the most dense. So today, we'll talk about that bitter pill that is this movement, a movement that is nevertheless relentless in its search for beauty, form, and order. Join us!

Mahler Symphony No. 9, Part 2 Apr 28, 2022

Show notes

Remember where we ended in the first movement of Mahler's 9th symphony? After a 27 minute farewell which touched on the two poles of rage and acceptance, while filling in every conceivable emotion in between, we ended in total peace, calm, and acceptance .

There is a lot about this symphony that is traditional - it has four movements, it's tonal(for the most part), it uses(mostly) traditional forms, but there is one thing about the symphony which is extremely unusual: the fact that it is bookended by two slow movements. A traditional symphony takes the form of a moderately fast first movement, either a slow movement or a fast dance movement for the second movement, the same for the third(almost always the opposite of whatever the second movement was), and a fast last movement to send the crowd home happy. Mahler, using a form that he never used before, and would never be used again by any composer, writes a slow first movement, then 2 fast dance movements, followed by a slow final movement. It's a fascinating formal design, but one that presents a lot of problems to solve; how do you contrast the two middle dance movements? How do you create a sense of excitement when you've just finished a 27 minute slow movement which could easily be its own piece? And perhaps most importantly, how do you conceive of the arc of a 16 minute dance movement, one that seems almost shockingly simplistic in its basic harmony and melody. Well, Mahler finds a way through a combination of genuine joy, sarcasm, bitterness, and irony, emotions we will certainly be talking about as we take apart this second movement.

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