Sunday, May 03, 2009

Sunday Music Blogging

4 comments:

Tacitus Voltaire said...

chausson is apparantly a valued composer even though he died tragically young at 44 in 1899. his songs achieve their effect with simple arrangements that vary little in their pulsing chords and single note harmony lines in the tenor on the piano accompanying the singer, and the harmony does not break out of the late romantic. the simple and touching modulations and added note chords bring drama to melodies that float on a tide of emotion that feelingly rehearses its sorrow, and then leaves quietly

Jazzbumpa said...

What TV said.

Check this out.

Jazzbumpa said...

Is aiqing lost? (S)He seems to have wandered in from an alternate reality

Tacitus Voltaire said...

although one would sure say "who cares", i feel compelled to correct my egregious cases of missing the point, here

the first is that the interesting thing about chausson still being played is not that he died at 44 - after all, mozart and purcell both died in their 30s and nobody thinks it odd that they are major composers - but that he has only 39 works listed in his accepted canon. satie might have the next smallest list of works for a well known composer of the era, but a list of his compositions numbers well over a hundred

the other too-fine point is his status as a late-romantic. while he is commonly listed this way, and his harmonic materials do not venture out into, say, whole tone or pentatonic scales, still, the relatively static harmonic movement and blurring of chord relationships with added notes in this lovely little song evoke the advanced styles of the time quite clearly, in a way that richard strauss did not even in strauss' compositions in the decade following chausson's death.

and, having said my piece, i wish also to convey the news that a number of atriots have been concerned about phila's well being in the past few days