The Strad reports that a previously unknown work for viola and piano written by Dmitri Shostakovich has been found in Moscow. The discovery was announced on the composer’s birthday (25 September).
The piece is titled Impromptu Op. 33 (Shostakovich later assigned the number to another work). It was found among the papers of violist Vadim Borisovsky of the Beethoven Quartet. It is believed it was written for violist Alexander Ryvkin of the Glazunov Quartet. The duet was written, apparently in one sitting, in 1931.
We do not yet know what this newly-found work sounds like. Shostakovich wrote one other work for the viola, the Viola Sonata (his last composition), which was written in 1975. You can listen to it here.
Look closely; you’ll find
Hidden beauty sometimes in
The smallest places.
It had been quite a day. An ugly day.
It was the kind of day that, for me, only the exquisite beauty of Renaissance polyphony would wash away. And who better than Palestrina?
So I settled into my favorite chair, started some music, and closed my eyes. Beautiful.
Except…
I noticed that the movements were going by a lot quicker than I expected. Palestrina was moving at quite a clip. Before I knew it, the piece was over. Wait, what? Already? Which Palestrina had I selected?
It turned out I had selected an album containing Palestrina’s Missa Brevis, from his Third Book of Masses of 1570. It is a complete mass, no movements omitted, as can be the case in some masses. But it seemed noticeably shorter than some of his other masses. How much shorter? I did the only thing I could think of to verify my impression.
Selected Palestrina Masses performed by The Tallis Scholars conducted by Peter Phillips
Title
Kyrie
Gloria
Credo
Sanctus
Benedic-tus
Agnus Dei I
Agnus Dei II
Missa Benedic-tus es
5:59
7:10
10:59
10:22
6:45
Missa Nasce La Gioja Mia
3:06
4:33
7:25
4:52
4:25
Missa Assump-ta Est Maria
4:42
5:41
8:06
5:31
5:50
Missa Sicut Lilium Inter Spinas
3:42
6:12
9:01
5:19
5:02
n/a
Missa Papae Marcelli
4:02
5:37
8:56
6:40
6:40
Missa Brevis
2:52
3:07
5:24
4:34
5:33
You can see from the table that a) I’m a nerd; b) most of the movements of the Missa Brevis are half the length of those in the Missa Benedictus es, and for the most part are noticeably shorter than those of other masses.
While the work is short, Palestrina more than makes up for it in the beauty of his composition. This could be the most peaceful 2:52 of your day: here is the Kyrie from the Missa Brevis.
In my last post, I gave you a quick glance at a problem I was having with a Bach piece–a furry problem.
After the cat stopped “helping” me* with Bach’s Invention No. 1, I decided to examine the work in closer (and less fuzzy) detail. I decided to go molecular.
Let’s look at some of the printed music.
If you’re very good at reading music, you can see which notes sound with which other ones, and how they interact with each other. You can see patterns in the music.
But for some reason I was having a hard time. And I suspected that closer inspection would yield more information that I was picking up trying to play it as written. So I decided to take an extreme close-up approach.
I took each measure, and expanded it to an entire line of music paper. I then broke up each line into sixteen segments, to accommodate the sixteenth notes in the music. Each little segment contained a single note (except where there are ornaments, like trills and mordents). Then I transcribed the invention (thankfully, it’s only 22 measures).
When you get down to that molecular level, and you’re transcribing each note, patterns appear much more clearly. It feels a little like examining a picture at the pixel level (and kind of looks like it), but it reveals so much. It turns out that nearly every measure of the invention, in both the bass and treble clefs, uses one of three patterns: (1) four or more notes in an ascending or descending scale (blue); (2) movement by thirds in a scale-like way, up or down (for example, C-E-D-F, two steps forward, one step back, repeat; red); (3) eighth notes in intervals greater than a third (green). And the patterns repeat, over and over. First, he goes up (1), then down (2); or down (1) and then up (2). The simplicity of the movement was shocking. When you think Bach, you think complicated. You think of this flurry of intricate notes. You don’t think of individual snowflakes.
But no. It goes up as a scale; it goes down by thirds. Again. And again. Look, and enjoy the many smiley faces formed by linking the segments to indicate eighth notes.
Now, Bach might be looking down at me and saying, “Well of course it’s simple. I wrote it for my son Wilhelm Friedemann to learn how to play. And it’s only a a two-part invention, not three, or a four-part fugue.”
But that’s the genius of Bach. With the utmost simplicity, he builds beauty. He takes bricks and makes cathedrals. He does the same kind of thing in the Magnificat, in Omnes Generationes, making the simple spectacular. Bach’s music can be enjoyed without understanding the details involved in the composition, but once you see the patterns, once you can say, “I see what you did there”, you can appreciate it even more.
Beethoven, Mozart,
Bach wrote music for all time,
And now, all of space.
Bach traveled on foot
Over two hundred miles to
Hear great music, learn.
Now his music flies
Beyond the sun’s reach, into
Interstellar space.
This week NASA is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. When Voyager 1 and 2 were launched, each carried a golden record containing images and the sounds of Earth. Along with greetings in over 50 human languages, whale song, and sounds of nature, there was a selection of the world’s music, including classical music.
One of the spacecraft has now left our solar system and is in interstellar space; the other will be there soon. And as they travel through the dark and empty space between the stars, our “silent ambassadors”1 carry the story of who we are. Here are the classical selections chosen for the record:
Bach walked 250 miles to hear the music of Dieterich Buxtehude and learn from him. The Voyager spacecraft are now 10-12 billion miles from Earth and are outward bound at around 40,000 miles per hour. They’re still sending back fascinating and valuable data. Like Bach, they have traveled a long way in the pursuit of knowledge. And the results have been glorious.
Image of Saturn, its rings, and two moons taken by the Voyager spacecraft. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
What music would you select to represent all of us?
Sometimes, you have to get out of the office. Way out of the office. Or just away. To a place where there are no computers, no connectivity, no cell phone coverage. No chargers, no chatter, no cable.
The middle of a large body of water is optimal.
Sunshine and breezes on a beautiful day can go a long way toward recharging your own battery, and the shimmer of a beautiful lake, the splash of water as your boat travels along are incomparable antidotes for the noise and bustle of a busy life. And we’re all busy, too busy, always aware of the ticking clock, the march of time.
All this hustle and bustle might seem to be a modern phenomenon, but really it’s not. People have been escaping to nature for a very long time.
Schubert, ah Schubert! He knew; of course, he knew. In his song Auf dem Wasser zu singen. Schubert sets to music a poem of Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg that describes a boat trip at evening and reflects on the passage of time. The piano ripples like the water, and the play of light and shadow at evening is reflected in Schubert’s characteristic shifts between major and minor keys. The poet also notes the passage of time: each day time escapes, flying away. But he is not disturbed, as he says that he will take wing and escape from time someday.
Catapulting into Classical 