FReeper Canteen ~ It's Halloween: Trick or Treat!! ~ 31 October 2013

Serving The Best Troops and Veterans In The World !! | The Canteen Crew

[Publius]

I am reminded of what Edith Wharton's mother said to prepare Edith for her wedding night.

"You have noticed that there are differences between male and female statues."

[MeekMom]

too funny!

[left that other site]

I just got to the tubular bells in the Berlioz piece...Man are they BRIGHT sounding. I am used to a much darker sounding Bell.
Of course, blended into the idee fixe is the actual liturgical music for the DIES IRAE. And the bells on top of that.

So cool!

[left that other site]

hee hee.

the best stories are the true ones!

[Publius]

Cesar Franck was topped in his writing for organ only by Bach. He led the French organ movement from his perch at the organ of the Church of Ste. Clothide in the Paris suburbs, and his pieces work best on organs built by Cavaille-Coll, the great French organ house.

Don’t listen to this piece in a darkened room! It’s an improvisational work that uses 3 sharps only as a key signature of convenience. Franck is all over the place and often dispenses with the concept of key entirely. You have a sense of floating and being unmoored from tonality. He spends much of his time in A minor and even ends it there. It’s a great piece to accompany a silent movie.

Franck: Fantasy in A (Vincent Dubois at the organ of the Soissons Cathedral)

[luvie]

David Sanborn~Spooky



Happy Halloween, y'all!!
created entirely on my iPad! :)

[MeekMom]

Happy Halloweenie Luvy!
Are u on the mend now?
How are u feeling?

((((hugs))))

[ConorMacNessa]

Uh - excuse me, Ma! It's cold out here and I'd like to come aboard! Please?

America demands Justice for the Fallen of Benghazi!

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[Kathy in Alaska]

Permission Granted!

[Publius]

Modest Mussorgsky’s original “Night on Bald Mountain” is rarely heard today. The original cannot be topped for sheer demonic power.

Mussorgsky: “Night on Bald Mountain” (Abbado conducting the Berlin Philharmonic

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov edited out the dissonances of the original and shortened it. Today, this is the best known version.

Mussorgsky: “Night on Bald Mountain” (arranged by Rimsky-Korsakov, Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic)

Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski used the Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement, but seriously shortened it in “Fantasia”.

Mussorgsky: “Night on Bald Mountain” (Stokowski conducting from “Fantasia”)

[Kathy in Alaska]

Good evening, smokingfrog....my goodness is that cute. I gotta save that.

[left that other site]

I think Moussorgsky put those dissonances there for a reason! :-)

[ConorMacNessa]

Thanks very much, Kathy!

***HUGS***



Sir Winston's Hallowe'en Costume



My Hallowe'en Costume

Coming aboard as we speak. Rendering Hand Salutes to our National Colors and to the Officer of the Deck!

"Riamh nár dhruid ó sbairn lann!"

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[DeFault User]

I used to always play “Night on Bald Mountain” for trick or treaters coming to the house.

Thanks for the reminder. I’ll do it again this year. :D

[Publius]

True. When Ravel orchestrated “Pictures at an Exhibition” from Moussorgsky’s piano score, he did the same thing. He ran Moussorgsky’s piece through an industrial sander and dipped it white paint.

[Kathy in Alaska]

Good evening, Sand...((HUGS))

[Publius]

In the German Romantic tradition of 200 years ago, death was a constant companion. It could be handled sentimentally, with horror, in the Greek Classical tradition, or with Christian imagery. German poets of the era each had their own take on the subject.

Franz Schubert received his musical training at the Vienna Choirboys School from the headmaster, Antonio Salieri. (Yes, that Salieri!) Old Tony ran a musical gym for young Frannie, giving him old opera libretti in Italian and having the teenager set the text to music. It was from Tony that Frannie received a thorough grounding in opera. It was in fact Schubert’s goal to be the next great opera composer after Mozart, a goal he was never to get anywhere near. His gift was song, and Tony taught him to graft the North German art song based on a poetic text to the Italian style.

Matthias Claudius was a German poet of the second rank, whose dates (1740-1815) put him contemporaneous with the English Classical period before Romanticism blew the cover off poetry. Yet his German poetry relates better to Shelley than to Alexander Pope or anyone else of his period. Schubert was only 20 when he set Claudius’ “Death and the Maiden” to music.

In Vienna of that period, Death always spoke in D minor, thanks to Mozart and the Commendatore in “Don Giovanni”. Frannie begins with a statement of the theme in that key as a prelude on the piano. The Maiden, perceiving the skeletal aspect of Death, sings the opening verse with horror and trepidation. Death answers by singing around the opening theme, which remains on the piano.

This video contains both German and English text upon expansion.

Schubert: “Death and the Maiden”, D. 531 (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau accompanied by Gerald Moore)

Frannie knew when he a great theme on his hands. Like Haydn, Schubert decided to write a set of variations on this song and place it in a string quartet. Thanks to the Sword of Damocles, in the form of syphilis, hanging over his head, Schubert’s music made a quantum leap in his last five years. It was a mixture of secondary syphilis and typhoid that finished him off at age 31, and he managed to avoid the tertiary phase that destroyed the minds of Baudelaire, Smetana and Scott Joplin before they died. (Being bisexual is dangerous to your health!) Schubert’s last three quartets are monuments to the genre, and the slow movement of his Quartet in D minor is a set of variations on “Death and the Maiden” in G minor.

He starts by stating the theme directly. You’ll remember it from the song.
At 2:10, Variation #1 has the first violin play around the theme.
At 4:14, Variation #2 gives the theme to the cello while everyone else plays around her.
At 6:33, Variation #3 breaks the theme into smaller fragments.
It was de rigeur that a variation be in the opposite mode, so Schubert at 8:29 writes Variation #4 in G Major. It’s sentimental, but not but too much so. In fact, it’s breathtaking.
At 10:37, Variation #5 returns to the minor with the second violin and viola taking the theme, with the cello playing a ground bass. It cascades into pure joy before settling down.
At 12:11, the theme returns, but with a trick. Schubert creates a small church organ effect with just four string instruments. It ends peacefully with a wan smile.

The quartet uses their laptops to display the score, rather than sheet music. Score one for modern technology!

Schubert: Quartet in D minor, D. 810, second movement (Borromeo Quartet)

[luvie]

Beautiful thread, Kathy!! Lots of hard work of love!

[Kathy in Alaska]

Good evening, laplata....will you be handing out treats where you live?

We will be lights out....just too many stairs.

Something to drink?

[ConorMacNessa]

Good evening, Maestro! An outstanding playlist this evening. The Danse Macabre is an old favorite and obligatory for this evening. A Night on Bald Mountain, another of my all-time favorites, is not played as often on Hallowe'en as the Saint-Saens, but is just as much a part of the festival as the former, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks very much for reprising us with these great works this evening.

America demands Justice for the Fallen of Benghazi!

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)