Who says the English have no sense of humor?  The food is an exquisite exercise in irony and their two most famous composers, Haydn and Handel are, well, German.  But then so is the Monarchy.

Yet if ever a composer could be said to be ‘The’ English Composer, it would probably be Edward Elgar.  If you graduated even from Beauty School in the last hundred or so years, you were shepherded into the ceremony to the Trio of March #1 in D– Land of Hope and Glory.

He was a product of late Victorian/Edwardian Nationalism and like many after World War I, came to question some of his previous assumptions.  By that time however he was already looked at as the Rudyard Kipling of English music and his reputation has suffered from it since.

It can’t be said he lacked a sense of humor, his first ‘famous’ piece, the Enigma Variations, was actually an extended satire of the various musical acquaintances he had made in 20 odd years as a professional performer.  But that’s not the joke, the joke is that the true ‘theme’ the variations were composed around is never played and was never disclosed and remains a subject of controversy to this day.

Elgar came to be seen as the successor to Arthur Sullivan and after an incredible surge of popularity between 1900 and 1912 he was Knighted and eventually appointed Master of the King’s Musick (where he eliminated the ‘k’, I told you he had a sense of humor).

After his wife’s death and post war loss of popularity he devoted himself to his ‘hobbies’, rooting for the Wolverhampton Wanderers and playing the ponies (“Get your ice cream.  Get your Tootsie Fruitsie ice cream.”).

He also recorded and was one of the very first people to use EMI’s famous Abbey Road Studios (yes, that one).  Of course it was March #1 in D, “Play this tune as though you’ve never heard it before.”

The Cello Concerto in E Minor (Op. 85) that I am featuring tonight is highly regarded by Elgarians, it has 4 Movements posted by markvogue in 5 parts.  This performance is by Jaqueline DuPre conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

So I was looking at Debussy (which I swear I’ll get to, but it’s really complicated) and shopping for YouTubes when I ran across 2 Piano Rolls of his.

What’s a Piano Roll?  Basically a Paper Tape to program your Player Piano which is one reason why aficionados like to call them ‘digital recordings’ (another would be a lame pun about fingers).

You see, your performer sits down at a Reproducing Piano, plays the piece, and punches holes in the tape.  Then you take your master tape to a duplicator and sooner than you can say ‘Bob’s your Uncle’ you can be selling them to every bar, honky tonk, saloon, or whatever too cheap to hire a piano player, but willing to spend big bucks on a hunk of obsolete equipment (capitalism, gotta love it).

The beauty part is the sound reproduction.

Instead of a scratchy unrecognizable mess like we heard from Brahms on Saturday, you get an exact duplicate of the tempo, duration, and pitch (assuming your piano is tuned) of each note.  It doesn’t do volume so well, or at least not in a standardized way.

Still it is a remarkable ‘voice of the pharohs’ device that has preseved the performances of such famous composers as Debussy (of course), but also Gershwin, Grieg, Joplin, Mahler, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin (well, that wiki lists, there are doubtless others).

Both pieces tonight are Debussy playing Debussy via Piano Roll.  The one on the left is Arabesque #2 posted by jero13595.  It has pretty pictures.  The one on the right is very static visually, but you’ll instantly recognize it (and perhaps be reminded of another Piano Roll composer).  The title is Golliwogg’s Cakewalk and it was posted by theoshow2.

Well I told you I wanted to get away from those depressing Russians and Germans so I went looking far across the Atlantic where I found a little place called Hennicker, New Hampshire and a composer named Amy Beach.

She was quite the prodigy and started composing at the age of 4.  In her whole life she only had one year of formal education in composition, when she was 14, although she did receive extensive training in performance.

At 16 she made her professional debut and was soon a soloist with the Boston Symphony Opera.  Two years later she married a surgeon 24 years older who requested that she perform only once a year.

So she devoted herself to composing and was soon considered one of the major American composers.  She composed a piece to open the Women’s Building at the Columbia Exposition in 1893.

When her husband died she toured Europe for several years and upon her return was particularly noted for teaching and mentoring young musicians.  She was the first President of the Society of American Women Composers and wrote a book laying out her mostly self-taught compositional principles- Ten Commandments for Young Composers.

Her best known works are her Mass in E Flat Major, the Gaelic Symphony, and her opera Cabildo.  This piece, Piano Concerto Op. 45, starts on the right and continues below the fold.  It was posted by deviantrake.

Sigh.

I promise to try and get away from the stranglehold of Middle Europeans and explore some more western composers, but I can’t help recalling that commercial for 100 famous classical music themes.

You know, the one that intones- “And who can forget Polovtsian Dance #17 (Stranger in Paradise) by Borodin?” as screen after screen of titles scrolls up.

Yeah, well, Borodin.

His day gig was as a chemist where he is justly famous for his research on aldehydes and unjustly famous for the Hunsdiecker reaction.

His ouvre as a composer reflects his amateur status, consisting of 2 Symphonies and an Opera, Prince Igor, that contains the Polovtsian Dances and was finished by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov after his death in 1887, as well as some Chamber Music.

He was a big proponent of absolute music as opposed to the programmatic music embraced by many of the popular composers of the time (for instance the Sibelius piece we looked at last night).

His most powerful statement of this philosophy is found in his 2 String Quartets.  His second one is more famous, but I have included both below the fold.  Each is perfomed by The Borodin Quartet which, since they are moderately famous and have recorded many composers, made my search… interesting.

The First Quartet (which starts on the left) was posted by novichok3, the Second by truecrypt.

Sibelius is frequently grouped with the ‘Romantic Nationalist’ composers (think Wagner or Tchaikovsky).  Certainly Finlandia is one of his best known works though contrary to some opinions it is not the National Anthem of Finland (that would be Maamme), but was used as the melody of the National Anthem of the short lived African country of Biafra (Land of the Rising Sun).

But rather than point you at the short (7 to 9 minutes) and cliche, I’d much rather bore you with the obscure and trivial.  The piece I have selected, Nightride and Sunrise, is a tone poem meant to evoke the emotions of an actual experience, in this case a night time ride and the rise of the sun (duh).

This recording is not the famous 1956 version by Boult and the London Philharmonic but the rather less famous undated performance of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra posted by billystewart4.

Sibelius lived quite a long time despite an early diagnosis of throat cancer.  He died in 1957 at the age of 91.  However after his 7th Symphony in 1926 his published output was very slight and in 1945 he destroyed many personal papers, presumably including the score of an unfinished 8th Symphony.

While he’s considered a national hero by the Finns, his music has received uneven reviews in other quarters with many critics calling it ‘conservative’ and ‘simplistic’ (among less kind opinions).

His reply?

“Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been put up to a critic.”

So I wanted to do something special for Mother’s Day and it turned into another research sinkhole.

I had it in my mind to do Schubert at some point (probably still will) and I recalled that somewhere in his wiki was a piece he had dedicated to hs mother.  Sure enough- an Octet for Winds (D. 72/72a) but try finding it on YouTube.

Ok, now Google is my friend and classical+music+mother turns up… a gagillion hits for Amazon’s Mozart Lullabies for Mothers.

And Brahms’ German Requiem.

But ek, you say, we just did Brahms and Requiems are so… morbid.

And lingering too I will add, this monstrosity is Brahms’ longest work consisting of 7 movements and clocking in at a whopping 65 to 80 minutes depending on the generosity of the conductor.  On the other hand the Octet is also a memorial for Schubert’s mom who died in 1813.

I had the good fortune to stumble across a complete collection of YouTubes posted by Nachtmarchen.  It’s split into 11 parts and features-

• The Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra
• The Leipzig Radio Choir
• Mari Anne Haggander
• Siegfried Lorenz

• Conducted by Herbert Kegel (that glowery looking guy in the thumbnail)

The video part is not at all expressive so I’ve shrunk it in the interests of space.  It’s not particularly loud, but it is all the same loudness so I hope you won’t have to fuss with your volume much between the pieces.

It is ALL 7 movements complete by the same artists.  They are ALL embeddable.

I hope those virtues compensate for whatever deficiencies the recording and performances have.