Listen, If You Dare!

I am not a fan of scary movies. They, well, scare me. Actually, I don't mind watching scary movies as long as I can watch them on mute while reading the closed captions. When I turn the sound on my stomach starts to knot up. It's the mood music that does me in every time. A lot of times we don't really notice the background music in film but it's always there manipulating our emotions. The only film I know of that didn't use any music is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which has it's own very eerie background noise.

I do like to listen to scary music on occasion, though, when I'm not watching a movie, so in preparation for Halloween I thought I'd put together a list of my favorite spooky pieces.

Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, (especially March to the Scaffold.)
Funeral March of a Marionette by Gounod (This was the theme to Hitchcock's television show.)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas
Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky
Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach
Psycho: A Suite for Strings by Bernard Herrmann
Black Angels for String Quartet by George Crumb
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bela Bartok (this music was in Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining.)
Requiem in D Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (especially the Dies Irae)
Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi (especially the Dies Irae)

The Music of Nature

The Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University collects animal sounds from all over the world to study animal communication as well as monitor the health of certain populations. They boast the world's largest archive of animal sounds and they have made them available on their website. You can hear recordings of the American Toad, Harbor Seals, and even a yellow-tailed wooly monkey from Peru.

Happy browsing!

Classical Movies

I'm not a big movie watcher, but somehow the middle of summer always seems like a good time to curl up with a few good films. Maybe it's the heat? Anyhow, here is a list of movies and documentaries that center around classical music. It is by no means a comprehensive list, and if you know of a movie / documentary I missed feel free to leave a comment and I will add it to the list.

Movies

Hilary and Jackie (cellist Jaqueline DuPre)
Immortal Beloved (Beethoven)
Amadeus (Mozart)
Shine (pianist David Helfgott)
The Piano
The Pianist (pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman)
The Red Violin
Impromptu (Chopin)
Copying Beethoven (Beethoven)
Tchaikovsky (a BBC mini series about, well, Tchaikovsky)

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Documentaries

Solti: Orchestra! This was first aired in the US on PBS. It is an introduction to all the different sections of the orchestra, narrated by Sir Georg Solti and Dudley Moore. I saw it for the first time when I was starting to get serious about studying music and it was a huge influence on me. I highly recommend this for anyone who would like to better understand the inner workings of an orchestra.

Music From the Inside Out is a film that follows members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Through stories and interviews they try to explain why they play and what music means to them.

Keeping Score: MTT on Music. This film follows Michael Tilson Thomas (aka MTT), music director of the San Fransisco Symphony and the symphony members through the rehearsal and performance process of a Tchaikovsky symphony.

Of course, there are hundreds of operas, ballets, and symphony concerts available on DVD. I recently saw Doctor Atomic and have Wagner's Ring Cycle on my must-see list. Nothing beats the heat quite like a Wagner marathon.

Pandora

I finally discovered Pandora. I expect I'm one of the final hold-outs who haven't tried this free online radio program. I'll tell you about it anyway because if you haven't tried it, you should. It's really neat. I've only been using it for a day or so and am already hooked.

The goal of Pandora is "to play only music you'll love." It is part of the music genome project where music theorists are constantly analyzing pieces and songs for hundreds of different elements. How the station works is that you enter a song or piece or composer that you like and the site creates a radio station just for you. It plays pieces by different composers / artists that have similar characteristics to the one you originally chose. If you dislike a piece it plays you can tell it and it eliminates the piece from your station.

You can also create a station with multiple artists. Just to see what would happen, I created a station by typing in John Philip Sousa and Brahms. It did exactly what it said it would, playing rousing marches by various composers with some Brahms and Tchaikovsky thrown it. It was a jarring mix of styles (as expected!) but this feature is quite handy for situations where more than one person is listening. My brother-in-law is a chemistry professor who uses Pandora in his lab. He has each student type one artist into the station for a mix that everyone can agree on.

The best thing about Pandora is that it exposes you to music you have never heard before that you will most likely enjoy. It doesn't lump entire genres together, assuming, say, that if you like Vivaldi's Spring that you will also love Bach's St. Matthew Passion. The music genome project looks at so many elements that they are able to categorize pieces more narrowly than simply Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th Century. I created a station using Stravinsky's Petroushka, which is one of my all-time favorite pieces. I listened for about an hour while Pandora played piece after piece that I had never heard before. I probably wouldn't have picked Michael Tippett's Second Symphony to listen to on my own, but I enjoyed the part I heard on Pandora so much that now I plan to seek out the CD.

For some festive music this weekend, I highly recommend attending the KSO's performance in World's Fair Park. If you can't make it there, or to any live performance this 4th of July, typing John Philip Sousa into Pandora will give you a great mix of music perfect for Independence Day.

Never Forget

Happy Memorial Day! For those who would like to go beyond Taps to honor our fallen soldiers, here are some pieces that are suitable for the day. Not all were specifically written in response to war or loss, but all evoke emotion appropriate to the gravity of the day.

Symphony #3 by Beethoven
Missa Solemnis by Beethoven
Symphony #9 by Beethoven
1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky
Mass in the Time of War by Haydn
Adagio for Strings by Barber
Lament by Frank Bridge (I know this was written in memory of the German bombing of the Lusitania, a luxury ship, but the piece is so haunting I had to include it here.)
Symphony #7 by Shostakovich
Lincoln Portrait by Copland
Symphony for the Sons of Nam by James "Kimo" Williams

Requiem by Mozart
Requiem by Faure
Requiem by Brahms
War Requiem by Britten

Spring

Before I joined the Knoxville Symphony in 2001, I had lived my entire life in the Chicago area. I had a difficult transition to life in the south. I was incredibly homesick. One thing I did appreciate right away was the weather. It gets cold here, but nothing like the bone-chilling, freeze-your-eyelids-shut cold that I grew up with. I don't miss slogging through several feet of snow or digging my car out daily. I enjoy not owning a snow shovel. The snowstorm we had a few weeks back was just enough for me. It covered the ground, but it was gone a few days later. Perfect. As cold and snowy as winter was up north, I much preferred it to early spring. The end of March is my least favorite time of year in Chicago. It's cold, gray, and muddy. East Tennessee weather is about a month and a half ahead of Chicago weather as far as average highs, so it makes sense that mid-February is my least favorite time of year here. It's cold, gray, and muddy, but we've also had days of beautiful sun and unusual warmth. It's playing with my emotions and I don't like it. I'm ready for spring to be here in full-force. To try to influence the weather, I have put together a play list of classical pieces that have to do with spring. I hope you enjoy, even if it does nothing to speed the warm weather.

Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland
Spring from The Four Seasons by Vivaldi
The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky
Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring) by Johann Strauss
Symphony #6 (Pastoral) by Beethoven
O, Joy at the Dawn of Spring by Alan Hovhaness
Incidental Music from Peer Gynt by Grieg
Kentucky Spring by Roy Harris
Sonata for piano and violin #5 in F major (“Spring”) by Beethoven
Little Symphony, for chamber orchestra No. 1, "Le Printemps", Op. 43 by Darius Milhaud
Symphony #1 in B flat, “Spring” by Schumann
Printemps, symphonic suite for chorus, piano & orchestra by Debussy
Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

Now playing...

Often I'm asked if I listen to a recording of a piece in preparation to play it. The answer is yes, sometimes. If I'm not familiar with a piece I like to listen to a recording of it to make my at-home preparation easier. Hearing all the parts together helps to put my single part into perspective. A complicated passage where my section is playing alone requires different attention than a complicated passage where the entire orchestra is playing as loud as possible. However, if a piece is a familiar warhorse, such as our upcoming performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, I might listen to a recording once or twice, but I generally leave it at that. Everyone has an opinion about how these pieces should be played. My job is to follow Lucas' direction to bring his interpretation to life. For me, too much listening clouds my ability to do that.

Although my colleagues and I are not always listening to the repertoire we are currently playing, we do listen to a lot of music. So, what are we listening to? I decided to ask a few of my friends in the orchestra what music they are listening to the most right now.

Katy Gawne (yours truly), principal violist:
We have a deep love of vinyl at our house, so most of what I'm listening to right now are old recordings.
Violinist Fritz Kreisler playing pieces by, well, Fritz Kreisler
Benny Goodman: Sing Sing Sing (big band)
The Best of Ted Hawkins. (blues)

Jen Bloch, violist:
The soundtrack to Farinelli (Farinelli was the most famous castrato singer ever. The soundtrack blends two voices to achieve the striking and now long-lost sound of the castrato singer.)
Sting – Brave New Day
Edgar Meyer – Appalachian Waltz

Cathy Leach, principal trumpet:
Violinist Hillary Hahn playing the Sibelius violin concerto
The soundtrack to the musical “Avenue Q”

Lisa Muci, violin and Eunsoon Corliss, assistant principal viola:
folk music from Persia, Africa, and Iran
The soundtrack from the musical “Chicago”

Jill Allard, second flute:
The Weepies (acoustic folk rock)

Jim Fellenbaum, resident conductor:
The Nutcracker
Four Scottish Dances by Malcolm Arnold
Street Scene by Kurt Weill

The musicians I talked with were excited about what they were listening to. Eunsoon actually sang one of the Iranian folk songs for me that she is arranging for string quartet and Jill ran and got her ipod so that I could listen to the Weepies myself. I am excited because now I have a long list of music to seek out and enjoy. I hope that you got some ideas for new tunes, too.