Claire Allen, violin
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Dagobah

8/30/2013

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This post is for everyone has big dreams for their violin playing but who doesn't like to practice very much. I know you're out there. In the words of my dear friend Greg Schenden, we're going Star Wars today!

If it isn't clear from the Yoda in my teaching studio (pictured at left), I'm more than a little bit of a Star Wars geek. And while there are so many characters, planets, and moments I love in the Star Wars trilogy (the original one), what I want to write about today is my least favorite part of the movie: Dagobah.

I'm someone who loves action. I want to see the X-Wings dogfight with the TIE Fighters. I want the lightsaber duels. I want to see those adorable Ewoks take down the stormtroopers. And of course, I want the happy, triumphant ending. Good over evil. BAM. Done.

What makes me really uncomfortable are all those icky middle bits, like Dagobah. It's my least favorite part in Empire Strikes Back, it's one of the most irritating and boring levels in the LEGO computer game...I just don't like it. I'd rather be flying an X-Wing, not waiting around in Dagobah for it to get out of the swamp.

In The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (an amazing must-read, but give yourself lots of time and be patient...), he writes about the stages of the hero's journey. Simplified, it goes something like this: the call, descent into the underworld, and return to the external world. Luke gets the call to be a Jedi when he meets Obi-Wan on Tatooine, he trains to become a Jedi on Dagobah with Yoda, and then he returns to the fight between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire, transformed. 

While I live for that final lightsaber duel in Return of the Jedi between Luke and Vader, I've been realizing more and more that Dagobah, back in Empire Strikes Back, is actually the most important part of the story. This is where Luke does the real work of becoming a Jedi. It's where he meets Yoda, his most important teacher. It's where he learns to connect with the Force and to find some measure of inner discipline. It's where he comes face to face with his biggest enemy: himself.

I think we can all identify with Luke. Luke wants to be a great Jedi, a great warrior. He wants to learn what he needs to know and get back out there to the action. He wants to skip ahead to the glorious parts and gloss over the hard, sweaty work. He sees himself taking on the Empire, flying off in his X-Wing and triumphantly defeating Vader. When he initially envisioned himself as a Jedi, he most certainly didn't see himself running laps around a swamp with a tiny green creature on his back pushing him harder and harder.

While most of us aren't training to save the universe as a Jedi, I do think there are a lot of parallels between the process of becoming a Jedi and the process of becoming a musician. When one feels the call to become a musician, we most likely see a performance of someone on stage and fall in love. We say to ourselves, "I want to do that." And instantly, in our mind, we see ourselves onstage playing the Tchaikovsky concerto before we even learn to hold the instrument. I know I'm certainly guilty of that. It's not a bad thing to have goals. What we need to realize, though, is where our goals are, realistically. A good violin teacher will not say "Okay, let's start Tchaikovsky!" More likely, you'll be given lots of scales, etudes, and pieces that are easier than Tchaikovsky. For years. It's a wonderful thing to have Tchaikovsky (or whatever your dream piece is) as a shining beacon for yourself. But you also have to run those laps around the swamp. You have to embrace the journey, come face to face with yourself and the reality of your violin playing right now, and put in the work.

How many of us, in our practicing, will play straight through a piece we love a couple of times and then call it a day? It's a lot more fun than practicing your scales, isn't it? It's not productive, though. Play-throughs as regular practice are a sure path to the dark side of sloppy and careless playing. Good practice that leads to the path of being a violin Jedi involves careful planning, attention to detail, and practicing and repeating small sections over and over again. Take a look at my blog post on Conscious Repetition for more on this.

The fact of the matter is that by focusing your attention on developing your skills, you actually are learning what you need to play your dream piece. I'll end this post by telling you a story from my own experience.

A few years ago, I learned the Tchaikovsky concerto for my graduate school auditions. It was a long, brutal process. The piece was definitely a "challenge" piece for me, and there was one passage in particular that just eluded me every time. For the violinists out there, it's that scale passage at the top of the fourth page, right after the second theme. Several long, fast scales that come at you one after another. I practiced this passage every way imaginable, and still, without fail, I blew it every single time I performed it.

I did, however, get into Peabody for graduate school (they stopped me before that passage in my audition), and I spent the next two years playing etudes and scales. I didn't touch Tchaikovsky or any repertoire of a comparable level to it. What I did do was play Kreutzer 2 for a month as I realigned my posture, reshaped my left hand, and essentially rebuilt my playing from the ground up. After my first year of grad school, I spent a summer only playing scales. Every key, three octaves. No repertoire.

During spring semester of my last year of grad school, I was having one of those practice days where I just wanted to play stuff. My year and a half of etudes and scales was really wearing on me. I'd finished my recital. So, just for the heck of it, I pulled out Tchaikovsky and just started playing, pretty mindlessly. When I got to that scale passage, I tossed it off like it was nothing. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't looked at it, hadn't practiced it, but because of the time I put in building the skills I needed to play it, I could.

The moral of this story is that Yoda is always right. And your personal Dagobah, all those icky middle bits of your journey, are actually the ones that will help you get to your goal. Do the work in the middle and don't be tempted down the path of only seeing the final product. For that path, young Jedi, leads to the dark side. And if you don't believe me, take it from the Jedi Master himself:

Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. 
May the Force be with you. Now go play some scales!
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Classical Music for Nonclassical Listeners- the Rocker

8/18/2013

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This post is for everyone who likes to rock out. Yes - classical music can rock, too! 

For me, there are two elements about rock music that seem to stick out: the beat, and a sense of edginess with the sound and the lyrics. 

Let's start with the beat. Modern, non-classical music has a beat that is always present in the percussion parts, backed up by the bassline. You know what I'm talking about. You've danced to it at parties. You've heard it throbbing through your ceilings and walls when your neighbor is reveling in their new speakers. That beat.

Take a listen to this classic AC/DC song and see if you can tap your foot along with the beat or clap it.
Try the same thing with this Imagine Dragons song.
Now pull up songs by your own favorite artists and listen to a few seconds of it. See if you can hear the beat. Notice what you really like about the sound.
Now for that edge. Something I think that people admire about their favorite rock groups and their music is that sense of rebellion against society, against the norm. It's music that speaks out against convention, war, corporations, giving in to pressure, and more. And we can easily understand this, because the intense beat, volume, and the lyrics tell us exactly what we mean.

It's both easier and harder to draw meaning from instrumental classical music. It's easier because we're not limited by words. The listener can draw any meaning they want from the music, and that might be totally different from what everyone else hears. Many shades of meaning can be found in a single passage. However, it's also harder, because we don't hear voices singing lyrics, so we don't hear the story told by the composer in words. We can't sing along. 

BUT. Classical music is just as rebellious, groundbreaking, and edgy as anything written in the popular sphere.

Let's talk for a moment about Dmitri Shostakovich, a composer living in the Soviet Union during the 20th century (now known as the "modern" era in classical music). We know from history that the Soviets completely took control (or tried to) of every part of life for the people living under their rule. This extended to music. Public figures such as Shostakovich were expected to help uphold the regime. He couldn't necessarily write the music that he wanted to write, which was that of deep sorrow and anger at how his people were being mistreated by the government. He found sneaky ways to let his feelings into the music he wrote, all while pretending that his music supported the Soviets. Often his music has a bitter and sarcastic tone - at other times, it has a kind of terror to it.

The piece below is officially titled the third movement of his Third String Quartet. However, early sketches and notes on the work show that the five movements represent the story of a war. The happy innocence before the war, growing feelings of unease, the terror of war, the profound grief and loss in the aftermath of the war, and the struggle to find normalcy after the war ends. This third movement depicts the war. See if you can tap the beat in this movement, too!

**Take a moment to plug your computer into high quality speakers and turn the volume up! **
In the 20th century, classical composers were constantly searching for new ways to write music. The goal was no longer to create the most beautiful work or the most poignant outpouring of feelings, but also to find an innovative and groundbreaking way to compose a piece - even to shock the listener.

Also, the string quartet is the string world's version of a rock band. Generally speaking, the cellist is the drumset/bassist, the second violin and viola are the rhythm section and backup singers, and the first violin is the lead guitarist/vocalist. Generally. The beauty of string quartet writing is that it constantly changes and evolves, so the roles of the players change. The upper strings might suddenly take over the beat and bassline while the cellist gets the melody, and then have it switch back within a few measures. Listen to the Shostakovich movement again and see if you can keep track of who has a more rhythmic part and who has something that's more melodic.

Bela Bartok was a Hungarian composer who experimented throughout his life with different compositional techniques. Check out his String Quartet No. 5 below:
Classical music is performed without amplification. This means that what you hear is what can be naturally produced on the instrument - they are really playing that loud, with no microphones. Any balance created among them is done by ear, not by a sound board. It's true that in studio recordings, audio engineers can tweak balance levels to perfection, but when you hear a live classical performance, it's raw and unedited. This is a great reason to hear classical music live. It's an experience like none other.

Also, if you liked the Bartok, the Takacs Quartet, who you heard performing in the video, will be in Washington, DC in January, performing all six of the Bartok string quartets in two days. Here's a link to the concerts. 

If what you're after in your music is sheer intensity and volume of sound, and you've already connected your highest quality speakers, then you might be more interested in an orchestral sound. After all, the loudest and most intense string quartet is only four players. An orchestra can easily have over a hundred.

Now we're going to listen to a piece by Igor Stravinsky, another Russian who was pushing boundaries. He came of age in an era where Romanticism has pushed to the limit and he wanted to do something completely new. His ballet The Rite of Spring caused riots at the premiere. How's that for edgy and rebellious? This music uses an idea called primitivism, where Stravinsky tried to channel simple and primitive - think prehistoric tribes and cultures - ideas and beats. The plot of the ballet follows the life of a prehistoric tribe who has one gruesome ritual to ensure a bountiful harvest every year: one young girl is chosen and dances herself to death. 

One of the things Stravinsky experimented with in his music was the sense of rhythm and pulse. There is always a pulse, but it's an irregular one. See if you can keep up with the rapid changes. Take a listen to one of the dances from this ballet below:
And finally, we come to a symphonic work by Shostakovich - the finale from his 5th Symphony, which is as intense and rhythmic as anything you can hear today. This symphony premiered after another of Shostakovich's works had been repressed by Stalin. A subtitle for the work is "A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism." If you are interested in learning more, please watch the FREE documentary available on PBS.org.
As required, the work displayed lyricism, a heroic tone and inspiration from Russian literature. Still, many hear a subtext of critical despair beneath the crowd-pleasing melodies.

[On the Fourth Movement, the recording of which appears below]

With his fate hanging in the balance, Shostakovich had to come up with an upbeat ending for his Fifth Symphony. Concluding with the melancholy of the third movement was not an option. However, the celebratory mood of the fourth movement sounds forced to some ears.

The movement begins with a string of march-like themes filled with swaggering attitude. The pace of the piece grows and the orchestra swirls with musical currents that burst with triumph – until all hope is dashed by another dead end.

The music that follows suggests quiet remembrance of those who are gone.

In a traditional symphony, we might expect a brisk march at this point, sweeping us on to victory. Instead, a dead slow march begins. Audiences recognized the musical reference toBoris Godunov – the opera in which crowds are forced to praise the Tsar.

Finally, with a great deal of effort, Shostakovich reveals his triumphant ending. As in the first movement, there is one expressively altered note, though. Not B natural, confirming the happy major version of the scale, but B flat, which delivers the sad minor version.

After so much time making his way to the major scale why does Shostakovich return to minor at the end? Perhaps it is his signal that the happy harmonies of the ending are as false as a Potemkin village.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 reflected his situation as an artist who would be judged by politics as much as by talent. Although some audiences heard condemnation of the government through inflections of despair, Stalin found the politics of the music acceptable and Shostakovich won a reprieve – at least for another decade.

So in conclusion, those of you who find yourselves drawn to more percussive, rhythmic, and edgy music may find that the 20th century or the "modern" era of classical music provides some of that for you. I strongly urge you to look up more music by Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. You might enjoy Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra or Music for Strings, Celeste and Percussion, in addition to his other string quartets or his two violin concertos. Shostakovich also wrote several more string quartets, a violin concerto, and several symphonies. As for Stravinsky, you can explore more of his ballet music such as The Firebird, his work L'Histoire du Soldat, or his violin concerto.
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Entering the Music World: A Guide for the Nonmusical Parent

8/15/2013

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As a teacher, I know that my main job with a young beginner is to instruct the parent. Often, parents apologetically say to me, "I have no musical talent." And I say to them, "That's okay!" Because it is. It is really okay that you don't have a musical background. There are plenty of things you can do to create a home environment that nurtures your child's musical ear and creativity. Here are some of them:

1. Have music on in the home and on the go. Switch your car radio to the local classical station (90.9 FM, if you're in the DC area). Stream it online. Ask your child's teacher for some of their favorite composers and look them up on an online streaming site. Many public libraries now have online access to streaming music - check out yours! This doesn't have to be serious "It is now time to listen to classical music" time. Just turn on the radio, find some CDs, go on a little violin-themed iTunes shopping spree, and fill your house with music!

2. Go to concerts. Go to concerts. Go to concerts. Check out the Concert Attendance page of my studio website for a list of venues and groups in the DC and Northern Virginia areas. Going to concerts doesn't have to break the bank! There are plenty of free concerts available. And in my studio, going to two or more concerts a semester will get you one discounted lesson.  Going to LIVE concerts is so unbelievably important. Your kids will love it. You will love it. Your kids will get to watch professional musicians at work. You'll experience sound in a completely different way. This can become a great thing for your family, if it is something you enjoy doing together. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of going to the Kennedy Center (by the way, they have free concerts there EVERY DAY at the Millennium Stage) with my parents. Concert tickets can also make great birthday or holiday presents. So I repeat: Go to concerts. Go to concerts. Go to concerts.

3. Find a good teacher. You might not be sure your child wants to pursue music seriously. Your child might not know if they want to pursue music seriously. And that's okay. But a good teacher is a must and a very worthy investment. The right teacher will give your child the fundamental skills that they need to have whether they go on to become a professional musician or whether they just want to have the joy of really playing an instrument well. Also, your ears will thank you, as the child with a good teacher will likely produce a better sound on their instrument than the child who experiments unaided. 

4. Trust that teacher once you find them. Trust that they know how to teach violin and help support them as they teach your child. In violin, we learn certain skills in a certain order, and it is natural for your child and for you to get a little impatient. However, it's important that you, as the parent, help your child understand that they need to master one skill to their teacher's satisfaction before they will learn a new one. If your child throws a temper tantrum because their teacher hasn't let them go on to Lightly Row and insists that they play all the Twinkle variations with their violin tall and their pinky curved first, then please support the teacher. I promise. Your child's violin teacher wants your child to advance just as much as you do. Having a conversation with the teacher about how special, creative, and unique your child is will not get them to Lightly Row (or whatever it is) any faster.

5. Enable your child's practicing. Create a space for them in your home that is exclusively for their practicing, and make sure all family members know not to intrude during that time. Gently remind your child to practice from time to time. Make sure there is time in their schedule for practicing. Some students are in so many different activities and they come into lessons and tell me they only have time to practice a few days a week. While I do respect every family's schedule, it's also a simple fact of violin life that the more consistently you practice, the more progress your child will make. Also, make it possible for your child to practice even when they have friends over for playdates - suggest that their friends watch television for half an hour, or have your child play some of their pieces as a mini concert. It's also important to take the violin with you on extended vacations if your child is really quite serious about playing. It's okay to leave the instrument for a weekend trip, but for longer vacations, it's important for them to keep practicing, even if it's just for fifteen minutes a day.

6. Be interested in the learning process. Attend lessons with your child while they're young and, once they become a teen and a more independent practicer, engage them in conversation about their lessons. Ask what they learned, and how the teacher is working on it. I find that students with parents who take an active interest in their music-making make faster progress and have more success than students with parents who just drop them off once a week.
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Fall News

8/10/2013

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I am excited to give you all an update on my musical life and to let you know what has been happening lately!

First of all, on the performance front, I will be giving a recital at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, DC with some wonderful friends of mine: Dr. Kathleen DeJardin, the director of music at Trinity, pianist Michael Delfin, and violist Lillian Green. The recital will be in November and I will post the exact date on the website as soon as possible!

In the meantime, to hear me play, you can attend Mass at Holy Trinity, where I play at the Young Adult Community masses and bounce between other services. On August 24, I will be playing at the 11:30 am Mass - our wonderful organist Timothy Duhr and I will play a beautiful prelude piece and then I'll play a solo postlude. I'm in the very beginning stages of working on some other performance opportunities for this season and will keep the website updated.

Now for the really big news: there are now TWO different ways you can study violin with me this fall! I've joined the faculty of Potomac Arts Academy in Fairfax, Virginia and will also be building my own studio in Arlington, Virginia. I'm very excited about both of these jobs and the fact that teaching in multiple locations will enable me to be more accessible to a wider range of students. Teaching private lessons to students of varying ages and levels has always been a passion of mine and I am absolutely thrilled to be starting my first year of full-time teaching. I'm here in the Northern Virginia area to stay, and teaching lessons is my first priority. My goal is to build two permanent, thriving studios and to provide a lot of wonderful experiences and quality violin training to everyone who comes through my door.

Use the Contact Claire form to find out more information!

That's all for now, but stay tuned...

Claire
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Classical Music for the Nonclassical Listener - Program Music Part 2

8/6/2013

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We start here with another Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky, and a French orchestrator, Maurice Ravel (you may know his famous piece Bolero). Mussorgsky wrote a piece called Pictures at an Exhibition for piano, and years later, Ravel arranged it for full orchestra. Mussorgsky's knowledge of artwork by his friend Victor Hartman. He imagines walking through an art museum (the Promenade theme) and stopping at each painting and being drawn in by the scene.
None of the orchestrations, however, change the fundamental spirit of the piece. Mussorgsky imagines himself making his way down the hallway that showcased his late friend's work, with his stately procession represented by the Promenade that opens the piece and returns several times. Upon stopping at each image, he reflects on what he sees. Between the early movements, the promenade returns regularly, as Mussorgsky is conscious of moving from one scene to the next. As the work progresses, however, he becomes less aware of the interval between pictures, and more immersed in the continuous psychological experience of moving from one state of mind to the next. By the end, the composer sees himself transformed by the connection with Hartman through his visual expressions of Russian pride and humanity.

  • Gnomus. This movement is fairly self-explanatory, although it would be fascinating to see the picture – reportedly of a gnome-shaped nutcracker – that inspired such thorny writing from Mussorgsky. Ravel, in his orchestration, uses a wide variety of percussion instruments, adding to the mysterious, otherwordly atmosphere.
  • The Old Castle. The Hartman sketch evidently depicted a troubadour outside of an old castle, with his song here carried by the alto saxophone. The saxophone never really caught on as an orchestral instrument, and its rare appearances are usually in works by early 20th-century French composers (including Ravel) or jazz- influenced Americans (especially Gershwin). Here, the noble and exotic quality of the saxophone's sound makes it an ideal choice. The saxophone plays in no other movement of the piece.
  • Tuileries. This movement is the shortest of the work (except for some of the promenades), and captures the simplicity of Paris gardens with their visitors.
  • Bydlo. Bydlo means "ox-cart," and the movement seems to summon the spirit of peasant workers. The strain of the melody is captured by assigning it to a low brass instrument. Ravel specified "tuba" but wrote the part in a much higher range than the tuba player is asked to play in anywhere else in the piece. Some orchestral tuba players bring along a second, higher-pitched instrument for this movement only; the present performance assigns the solo to the euphonium.
  • Ballet of Chicks in their Shells. This is the first movement for which the sketch has been positively identified. Hartman was assisting in the costume design for a ballet production, and the sketch shows two people wearing egg-shaped outfits and wearing chick "helmets." The agitated peeps of the chicks are captured in high woodwinds and pizzicato strings.
  • Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle. Hartman created two independent sketches of Jewish men – one rich (with a fur hat) and the other poor (sitting by the street with a cane). The rich Jew is represented by the brash strings (and some woodwinds) in the opening of the movement, whereas the poor Jew, asking for money, is realized by the high trumpet in an annoying, repetitive figure. Rather than convey an anti-Semitic message, the composer probably sought to make a social commentary: the rich and poor live in separate worlds, and it is far too easy for the rich to take no notice of those who have been less fortunate.
  • Limoges. Probably the most colorfully orchestrated movement, this lightfooted scherzo depicts women gossiping at a French market. The melody is passed back and forth between the violins and various woodwind instruments, all while a diverse group of percussion instruments contributes to the feeling of general chaos.
  • Catacombae. From the bustle of the market place, the listener is plunged into the foreboding underground. Almost entirely focused on the brass, this movement moves with deathly slowness, making its way through eerily shifting harmonies. Because the sound of the piano necessarily starts to decay after the keys have been struck, making the instrument incapabale of a true sustained sound, this movement benefits more than many of the others from an orchestral treatment. The following section, Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua, is a transformation of the promenade melody; the Latin translates to "With the Dead in a dead language." Visible in the sketch for "Catacombae" is a cage full of skulls, and Mussorgsky wrote in the margin of his piano original, "The creative genius of Hartman leads me to the skulls and invokes them; the skulls begin to glow."
  • The Hut on Fowl's Legs. Given such a bizarre title, the Hartman sketch is a disappointment. The "hut" is a clock, perhaps of a size to sit on a desk (although the scale of the sketch is hard to determine); the "fowl's legs" are small chicken legs, easily overlooked, incorporated into the body of the clock base. More important in understanding the character of the movement is Mussorgsky's subtitle, "Baba Yaga." Baba Yaga is a witch from Russian fairy tales, living ina hut with hen's legs which permit it to rotate in place. Each new victim (a lost child) is lured inside and crushed to death, to be later eaten by the witch. Hartman intended his sketch of the clock to be reminiscent of Baba Yaga's mysterious hut, so Mussorgsky used the sketch as a springboard to write a movement about the witch herself.
  • The Great Gate of Kiev. In the spirit of greatest nationalistic affirmation, Mussorgsky drew inspiration from a patriotic competition for the final movement of the work. Hartman had submitted a design to be considered for the proposed new, grand entrance to Kiev, which was to commemorate Alexander II's successful escape from assassination there. No winner for the contest was ever selected, and no gate was ever built. Still, Hartman's impressive design received attention and a following, due to its resonance with the Russian people's pride of their nation and heritage. Hartman's sketch included a chapel, and Kiev had a long history of religious importance, so Mussorgsky adopted a sense of reverence in his tribute to the would-be gate and its city. The piano original is no match for the splendor of Ravel's orchestration, especially in the full chords that end the piece – leading some scholars to conjecture that Mussorgsky thought of his piece in orchestral terms from the very beginning.
Originally from http://www.music.pomona.edu/orchestra/mus_pict.htm.
Let's take a listen:
Finally, we're going to listen to a work by a German composer with a love for literature. Richard Strauss was famous for his tone poems and one of the most famous is based on the Spanish novel Don Quixote. In this work, a solo cellist represents the bumbling knight and a solo violist represents his faithful sidekick, Sancho Panza. Here's an excerpt from program notes provided for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Read the full text here.
In the introduction, the knight’s beclouded brain is suggested by the momentary use of mutes in all the instruments and strange harmonies, bordering on the atonal. In the first variation, we are introduced (via woodwinds and strings) to the Don’s unattainable love, Dulcinea, and there ensues the fight with evil giants, in fact windmills, ending with the Don’s graphic fall from his horse (harp glissando). Variation II is the infamous contest with the army of the “Great Emperor Alifanfaron,” in actuality a flock of sheep (you can’t miss them). Critics of Strauss’ time were particularly outraged by this all-too-realistic cacophony.

Variation III is a quiet dialog in which the Don reproves Sancho for his lack of ideals. IV is another battle scene, this time a losing battle against a procession of penitents, whom the Don mistakes for a band of robbers, bent on abducting a statue of the Virgin Mary. Variation V: The Don has been solidly trounced, but hardly defeated. He conjures up a vision of Dulcinea to give him courage (horn, harp, violins).

Variation VI “relates” a trick played on the Don by Sancho, who leads his master to believe that the first hip-swinging, tambourine-slapping señorita they encounter in the street is Dulcinea. The Don fulminates against the wizards who have turned his goddess into this floozy. Variation VII finds the Don and Sancho Panza seated on hobby-horses, imagining themselves flying through the air, the atmosphere created by a relative newcomer to the orchestra’s battery in 1897, the wind machine. VIII: In this wacky F-major barcarolle, the Don and Sancho are floating in an oarless boat toward a threatening water-mill (oboe and violin). The boat capsizes but the two manage to save themselves; they thank God in a passage marked religioso. Religion – a most confusing subject for the Don – is likewise a part of IX, where he encounters a pair of monks, conversing in the strict counterpoint of a pair of bassoons, who he thinks are evil wizards. He puts them to rout in his routing key, D minor.

In Variation X a townsman of the Don’s, Sanson Carasco, disguised as “The Knight of the White Moon,” challenges the Don to combat and emerges victorious. Sanson has in fact devised this as a way of leading Don Quixote back into sanity. In the Finale, the veil indeed lifts and the Don, sadly perhaps, is again in possession of his cognitive faculties. He is ready for death, and, as Cervantes writes, quoting the notary in attendance, “Never has a mind died so mildly, so peacefully, so Christianly.”

Let's take a listen. Make sure you listen for the flock of sheep - remember the famous scene in the novel when Don Quixote attacks them, imagining they are an enemy army? They're given a role in this, too. Skip to 4:50 to get straight to the music if you don't want to listen to the interview. This is a playlist, so make sure you listen to all six parts!
I hope our exploration of these four works has entertained you and helped you hear stories in classical music. If you want to listen to more works similar to this, here's a small list that is by no means all the works out there...

Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6, "Pastorale"
Edward Elgar: Enigma Variations
Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol
Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky: Suite from Swan Lake
                                       Suite from the Nutcracker
                                       Capriccio Italien
Richard Strauss: Don Juan
                           Ein Heldenleben ("The Hero's Life")
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Classical Music for the Nonclassical Listener - Program Music Part 1

8/5/2013

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Program music refers to a type of classical music that became very popular in the mid-19th century. This music, rather than being an abstract work such as Beethoven's Symphony No. 4, has a specific image and story in mind, and you can follow along with the sonic depiction of these particular plots, feelings, and characters.

This blog post will present four famous programmatic works to you!
We're going to start with Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. This piece is a real trip. Literally. In this edgy piece by Hector Berlioz, the "program" he writes for his work depicts a young artist (himself) in a drug-induced slumber, dreaming feverishly of the woman he is obsessed with. Here are the program notes given by the composer:
 A young musician of morbid sensitivity and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a moment of despair caused by frustrated love. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions, in which his experiences, feelings and memories are translated in his feverish brain into musical thoughts and images. His beloved becomes for him a melody and like an idée fixe which he meets and hears everywhere.

Part one
Daydreams, passions

     He remembers first the uneasiness of spirit, the indefinable passion, the melancholy, the aimless joys he felt even before seeing his beloved; then the explosive love she suddenly inspired in him, his delirious anguish, his fits of jealous fury, his returns of tenderness, his religious consolations.

Part two
A ball

     He meets again his beloved in a ball during a glittering fête.

Part three
Scene in the countryside

     One summer evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds dialoguing with their ‘Ranz des vaches’; this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the light wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier colouring; but she reappears, he feels a pang of anguish, and painful thoughts disturb him: what if she betrayed him… One of the shepherds resumes his simple melody, the other one no longer answers. The sun sets… distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence…

Part four
March to the scaffold

    He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end, the idée fixe reappears for a moment like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part five
Dream of a witches’ sabbath

     He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance-tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath… Roars of delight at her arrival… She joins the diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies Irae. The dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies Irae.
Some crazy stuff here. Take a listen and see if you can hear the story! I find the March to the Scaffold and the Dream of a Witches' Sabbath particularly descriptive. You'll find that the parts begin in the video as follows:
Part 1 - 00:00
Part 2- 13:40
Part 3- 20:30
Part 4- 37:30
Part 5- 42:30

From Berlioz's opium induced dreams, I take you to Russia and the mind of a masterful orchestrator who created a wonderful symphonic work using the inspiration of the famous work of literature 1001 Arabian Nights. The composer is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and the work is Scheherazade. 

For younger listeners, there's a wonderful interactive computer game available here that will take them through the story.

The basic premise of the story is that the sultan enraged by the adultery of his wife, had her executed. He then goes through several new wives - marrying them and then executing them the next day so they never have a chance to betray him. Finally, he marries the beautiful Scheherazade, who comes up with an ingenious plan to save her own life. She tells him fantastic tales which always end with a cliffhanger. Wanting to hear the rest of the story, the Sultan spares her until the next night. She keeps this up for years, until finally the sultan falls in love with her and they have a long and happy life together.

This piece begins with a stern, authoritative theme played by the low strings and the brass. This represents the harsh, serious sultan who has been executing his wives. Throughout the work, you hear a beautiful violin solo that comes back again and again. This represents Scheherazade telling the story. The four movements of the work represent different stories that she tells the Sultan.

Here is the breakdown of the movements as described by Marin Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. See the full text or listen to the audio of her interview with NPR here.
Scheherazade weaves her tales seamlessly, starting with "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship." We hear the waves undulating (audio), retreating and growing in intensity. Every modulation represents an unexpected turn in the story, and I try to maximize the surprise of these twists. My goal is to reflect Scheherazade's own storytelling: to capture the imagination and leave the listener in a constant state of disequilibrium. For me, it's important not to have too many obvious arrival points, but rather to steer towards a goal and then veer away from it like the music and the story both do.

The second movement opens with Scheherazade's voice again, but each time, it's more elaborate and more ornamented. This movement is called "The Tale of the Kalender Prince," and Rimsky-Korsakov uses exotic,Middle Eastern-sounding melodic solos (audio) for the woodwind instruments. Here, I want to exaggerate the foreignness of the sounds. I ask the solo players to take more time, play as though they are improvising.

The main love story in Scheherazade is found in the third movement, called "The Young Prince and the Young Princess." The trick here for me is not to overdo the sentimentality and detract from the innocence of this beautiful story. I try to keep the sound simple yet intimate and never overwrought. That way, when the final statement (audio) arrives, complete with cymbal crash, there's room to really go over the top.

Scheherazade shows her true genius in the final movement, "The Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck on a Rock; Conclusion." The music begins with an impatient Sultan, his theme hurriedly coaxing Scheherazade to finish the story. He can barely contain himself by this point, in his excitement to hear what happens next. Each morning, when the executioner has arrived at his door, the Sultan has sent him away, saying "Come back tomorrow," so that Scheherazade can continue her tale.

She continues to spin her tales of wonder while gradually bringing in every theme from the previous movements, deftly tying everything together. By this time, the Sultan has forgotten to tell the executioner to return the next day. We hear his low voice at the end, finally subdued and tamed.

This is the end of part one - check back tomorrow for our examination of two more programmatic works for your enjoyment!
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Classical Music for the Nonclassical Listener

8/2/2013

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I had the wonderful privilege this last week of working with some students at Bishop O'Connell High School during their pre-school strings camp. It was a great time for me to meet kids who are so excited about music that they'll come into school for a camp even before the official start of the school year and to get to talk to them.

One of the things we talked about was what kind of music they liked to listen to - and interestingly enough to me, classical wasn't one of the things on the list. I listen to the weirdest mix of things in my own life. Classical, of course, but I also really like Taylor Swift. I like Celtic-inspired music, so I listen to bands like Flogging Molly, Enter the Haggis, and Great Big Sea. I also like a lot of local indie artists that my sister Margaret takes me to see such as Taylor Carson and Laura Tsaggaris. But classical music has always had a certain pull for me.

So, for the music lover who doesn't love classical music yet, I'm starting this blog series and I hope this will introduce you to at least ONE classical work that you like, and possibly more.
Firstly, for the person who likes movie soundtracks - Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, etc. I'm presenting a small case study for you. In honor of Discovery Channel's Shark Week, which I am incredibly excited about, I give you...one of the most iconic movie themes of all time, written by John Williams - JAWS!
Now I invite you to take a listen to the opening (or, if you like it, the whole thing!) of Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World."
This symphony by Dvorak was composed in 1893, some 80+ years before Jaws was released. All the great movie soundtrack composers come from a long, rich history of symphonic tradition. There are a lot of great symphonies where you can hear similar sounds. There is also a lot of music composed that's called "program music," meaning that there is a specific story that the music is trying to depict. In subsequent blog posts, I'll be presenting some of those works and their stories to you. I'll also introduce you to some classical music that even a hard core rocker might fall for.

I'm really passionate about classical music, and I really do think it still deserves a place on our mp3 players, our hard drives, in our cd collections, and in our hearts. I hope I'll convince some of you of that, too.
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    Claire Allen

    Written thoughts on my musical life.

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