Some Moosic from Edvard Grieg

Photo by Dave Wild.

I was driving through the countryside the other day, and saw some cows grazing in a field.  I was reminded of Edvard Grieg’s Cattle Call, a solo piano piece I had played a long time ago.  Grieg has always been a favorite of mine.  I particularly enjoy the little vignettes he creates in his solo piano miniatures, in particular, his Lyric Pieces.

When I went to look it up again, I remembered that there was more than one Cattle Call.  There are four pieces known as Cattle Call, or Cow Call, or Cow Keeper’s Tune.  Op. 17 No. 22 and Op. 66 No. 1 were written for solo piano.  Op. 63 No. 2, which expands on the first Cattle Call, was written for a string ensemble.  And there is a song called Cow Call from Op. 67.

Each of them evokes a peaceful, bucolic, restful end-of-the-day feeling.  This is music to make you say ahhhh.  I think we all could use that sometimes.

Here are some lovely performances of Grieg’s Cattle Call pieces.

Op. 66. No. 1

Op. 63 No. 2 for strings

(It would seem from these videos that cows also enjoy moosic, in these cases, the cello and harp)

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A footnote for musical completeness (‘cause that’s how I roll).  The Cow Call from Op. 67 is not part of the published Op. 67.  Grieg set a number of poems from Arne Garborg’s poem cycle Haugtussa.  The published music includes eight songs.  But Grieg wrote 12 others that were not included (these are designated EG 152), including Cow Call.  Information from https://imslp.org/wiki/Haugtussa%2C_Op.67_(Grieg%2C_Edvard).

Image attribution:

“A Cow”, photo by publicenergy [Dave Wild, https://www.flickr.com/photos/publicenergy/], 2007, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.   https://www.flickr.com/photos/publicenergy/1846375599/.

Free Concert Webcast: Vaughan Williams, Gounod, Dvorak, and More

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has just added a new concert to their free on-demand concert library.  You can see the concert here.  Here is the program:

Charles Gounod:  Petite Symphonie for Wind Instruments

Lembit Beecher: The Conference of the Birds

Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending

Antonín Dvořák: Serenade for Strings

While you’re there, check out other performances in the library, which you can browse by composer, genre, nationality, conductor, or performer.

Enjoy!

To the Sun: Classical Music and an Exciting NASA Mission

The Sun. Credit: NASA/SDO

Many composers have written music to evoke the mood of seeing the rising sun, and I thought I’d bring some of this music to you today because an exciting new scientific mission is about to begin.  Early Saturday morning, NASA, the American space agency, is sending an unmanned spacecraft closer to the Sun than ever before to study its many mysteries.  It is the Parker Solar Probe.

NASA has wanted to implement this mission since the dawn of the space age, but it is only now that the technology is available to make it possible.  Parker Solar Probe’s heat shield will withstand temperatures of 2500 degrees Fahrenheit (1377 Celsius) while the measuring instruments in its shadow will remain at a comfortable room temperature.

You can see live coverage of the launch of the Parker Solar Probe, named for pioneering scientist Eugene Parker, at https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public starting at 3:00 AM EDT (GMT-4) on Saturday, August 11, 2018 (the launch window begins at 3:33 AM).

And now to the music.  We must start with an excerpt of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, iconic sunrise music if there ever was any.

You can see Gustavo Dudamel conduct the entire piece with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra here.  And here is an audio recording of Richard Strauss conducting his own piece in 1944 with the Vienna Philharmonic.

For a calmer start to your morning, I suggest Grieg’s Morning Mood.

Here is the beautiful and haunting On the Nature of Daylight (Entropy) by Max Richter.

You may also enjoy Aulis Sallinen’s Sunrise Serenade, Op. 63 for two trumpets and orchestra.  And here is Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture, Op. 17.

Reaching back in time, here is Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in B flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise.”

Finally, here is the oldest surviving music about the sun, nearly the oldest surviving written music, the Hymn to the Sun by Mesomedes of Crete, second century CE.

Wishing NASA the best of luck with its pioneering mission, and wishing all of you sunny days ahead!

 

Previous space-related posts you may enjoy

Haiku Wednesday:  Beyond–Bach in Interstellar Space

Beethoven’s Cavatina–The Universe in the Palm of Your Hand

Free Music Scores and More

Benjamin Franklin, colonial America’s Renaissance man, said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”  I’m here to save you a few pennies today.

The Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester has made a wealth of music scores and books from the Sibley Music Library available on the web.  The digitized items may be downloaded for your reading and playing pleasure.

Here is a link to the Sibley Music Library digitized collection, where you can search for the topic of your choice.  A search on Beethoven will yield hundreds of music scores and 83 books, as well as theses and other analytical works.  The books are older and in the public domain, but then, Beethoven hasn’t written any new letters lately (the previous link is for a biography containing letters translated into English.  You can read Beethoven’s letters in German here).  As always, verify that the works are indeed in the public domain in your country (laws vary).

And since we’re being frugal, I thought it would be appropriate to present Beethoven’s Rondo e capriccio Op. 129, which is commonly called Rage Over the Lost Penny.  Enjoy!