Phase 4 Stereo Post 6 Classical Round-up

The following are all composers of classical music.

Zoltán Kodály

Hungarian Zoltán Kodály's most well-known work is probably Háry János, a story about an ex-soldier prone to telling tall tales, and it is this that we find on:

Prokofiev: Lieutenant Kijé/Kodaly: Háry János (PFS 4355), his only showing amongst the Phase 4s.

Háry János is a folk opera which is an opera but mainly with spoken parts and maybe an occasional song. There are 18 specific characters involved in this work, seven of which are singers, the rest having speaking parts. As well as the above list, there might be a bunch of soldiers hanging around border control areas, that sort of thing.

It tells the story of Háry who attracted the amorous attention of Napoleon Bonaparte's wife, Marie Louise, and then went and defeated Bony in battle! Just another day in the life of a veteran soldier, which is usually now spent slouching outside the local tavern telling his story to anyone who will listen.

The music begins with a 'musical sneeze'. It's a Hungarian thing. You see, if a statement is made and is followed up by a sneeze from one of those who heard it, Hungarian superstition decrees that the statement must be true. I'm not sure what statement it is to which the musical sneeze responds here, since it comes before anything is said. Still, for this same reason, one of Háry's audience also sneezes throughout the tales though we can only listen out for the former as we have an orchestral version here. And, whilst this music is still very popular in Hungary, it is rarely played outside of the country without vocalists - so this record may be one of the few chances that you'll get to hear it in instrumental form.

Háry János features the cimbalom. You remember ... briefly mentioned in TWO blog Post 17. It's a trapezoid shaped instrument that you sit at like you would at a piano. It looks like a horizontal harp with the strings exposed for to be hit with small hand-held hammers. Unlike a harp, however, there are something like 125 strings to a cimbalom though there are 3 or 4 strings to each note. John Leach is the cimbalomnist (I made that up) here.

Leach played several exotic instruments such as santur, koto, zheng, kantele and cimbalom. - they are all stringed instruments but the santur, like the cimbalom is dulcimer-like and is played with hammers whilst the others are more zither-like and the strings are plucked. John Leach played the cimbalom for the music of, for example, the 1965 film, The Ipcress File and 1971 TV show, The Persuaders. He also played the koto on the soundtrack to You Only Live Twice the 1967 James Bond movie, amongst others. He didn't write these, of course but he did compose a lot of pieces as library music which were used for various programmes and shows, one of which, 'Sun Ride'. was taken for the theme for TV game show Ask the Family. which ran from 1967 to 1984. .

His writing pseudonym was Janos Lehar

Paul Dukas

Frenchman Paul Abraham Dukas' most popular work is L'apprenti Sorcier and this is the piece that is found on his one appearance in our collection; a record that he shares with Sibelius and Liszt.

• Sibelius, Dukas, Liszt – Great Tone Poems For Orchestra (PFS 4169)

L'apprenti Sorcier is a symphonic poem.

What’s a symphonic poem?

Oh, not you again! OK, listen up! Yer symphonic poem, sometimes referred to as a tone poem, is an orchestral composition which depicts not only the words of a poem, but maybe also a story or whole novel or even a painting.

So what is L'apprenti Sorcier based on?

It is supposed to evoke the scenes and moods of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem, which is called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Now, even I have heard of this piece of music – how come?

Well, it was used by Walt Disney to back a piece of animated cartoon of Mickey Mouse who was actually in the part of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This was one of eight short films set to classical music in one big film called Fantasia.

Ah, yes. And what is the funny name that is at the start of this section?

L’apprenti Sorcier? Well, M. Dukas is French so this is simply The Sorcerer's Apprentice in the composer’s own language.

Oh yeah! I geddit!

I’m so pleased.

Now, where were we? Ah yes, So, as well as composing music, Dukas was a music critic writing for a number of French periodicals. His first review was of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen on the occasion that Gustav Mahler was conducting in 1892, the same year of his composer debut in Paris with Polyeucte.

Amongst several other positions held throughout his life, Paul Dukas was Professor of Composition Conservatoire de Paris and the École Normale de Musique where his students included Olivier Messiaen and Manuel Ponce.

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen was invited to become the organist at Église de la Sainte-Trinité in Paris when he was 22 and he was still there 61 years later! The timing of the termination of his post there coincided with that of his death at age 83.

Before then, however, Messiaen was famously tucked away for nine months in a German prisoner of war camp during the 2nd World War during which he actually continued to write, producing Quartet for the end of time. He wrote it for piano, cello, violin and clarinet – an odd combo you might think but this is all the instruments that were available in the camp. It does pay to be creatively versatile. It also helps to be a chromaesthete.

And before you ask, a synesthete is someone in which stimulation of one sensory system or cognitive pathway perceives experiences in another sensory system or cognitive pathway. For example, about 1% of people the world over, associate sounds with colours. The colours perceived per sound can be different from person to person but this ‘hearing in colour’ occurs spontaneously and automatically. Anyway, Oliver Messiaen had just such a neurological condition, which is called chromaesthesia, and he even wrote, literally … I mean, in a literal sense … oh, you know … in book form … about it; how he saw colours on hearing particular chords and how seeing colour combinations was important to his compositional process. P.S. I made up the word 'chromaesthete'.

Hold on to your hats, now. There’s more, because M. Messiaen went in for a bit of parametrisation, too.

Music theory suggests that there are four main elements, or parameters, that can be manipulated when composing music and that are quite separate from each other. These are: pitch, loudness, timbre and duration. To these may be added rhythm and dynamics. These phenomena/parameters are the major considerations in the serialism method of composing music.

Composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt were committed to serialism and used serial techniques in most of their music. Béla Bartók, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland as well as Olivier Messiaen used serialism in just some of their pieces.

Yeah, but what does serialism sound like?

Oh, I wondered where you were. Well, it doesn’t sound like music to me. Just a series of repeated sounds layered over the top of other repeated sounds. No harmony lives here. Melody has moved out and arrhythmia has moved in.

Serialism is a way of writing music with 12 notes – this was first established by Schoenberg with his 12 Tone Technique where all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are used in the composer’s chosen order. There can be no note repetition until all 12 notes have been played and this note order should be largely maintained throughout the piece with any changes being associated somehow with the original note order.

zzzzzZZ zzzzZZ zzzzzzzzzz zzz zzz zzz zzz

What's that noise? Sounds like someone sleeping ... Aha! Peace at last! Shhhhh! Let's proceed quietly.

Examples of Messiaen's forays into serialism are his Turangalîla Symphony and Mode de valeurs et d’intensités. Happily (for me anyway) Olly's one Phase 4 contribution is from his pre-serialism period (L'Ascension) though there are acceptable hints of the later phase to come. He inhabits one side of:

• Stokowski/Messiaen/Charles Ives - L'Ascension/Orchestral Set Number 2 – (PFS 4203)

... Charles Ives occupies the other side.

Charles Ives

American Charles Ives has his father to thank for his interest in bitonality, polytonality and the rest. Whilst George Edward Ives didn’t compose exactly, he did enjoy experimenting with different tones and rhythms … at the same time!

Charles began developing his own ideas for sounds when he was left by his father to sit and wait (and listen) whilst he played/practiced with his band along with other bands playing at the same time. Hearing several tunes simultaneously at such a young age installed within him, an appreciation of polytonality.

Ives junior began writing hymns for church services when just 13 years of age. A year later he was taking a salary for playing the organ in the church and then at 17, he had composed ‘Variation on America’ which, as previously discussed, is actually various versions of ‘God Save the Queen’, that is, ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’. This composition was in preparation for the July 4th celebrations of the following year.

Aged 20, Charles Ives went to Yale University where he began to compose choral stuff to start with but when his father passed away, he went on to work on polytonality and counterpoint as a sort of tribute to his Dad. This did not go down too well with his tutor so he had to revert back and tow the line.

On graduating, Ives took a job as an insurance clerk, a line he stayed in until he was about 55, having become redundant from his second place of work and setting up his own successful insurance company. He was still working on his music and even took part-time work as the organist and choir director of a local church in the early years.

His most well-known piece, apparently, is Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass.

Charles Ives features on two LPs in our collection. PFS 4203 above and:

• Ives – Symphony No. 2 (PFS 4251)

... a whole record to himself! The music of this album is a bit of a mixture of regular sounding sections with other more cacophonous parts but, you know, I might get used to it ... Orchestral Set Number 2 from the other record is musically more conventional but with its own sound, really. I can't think of anyone who's work it resembles. I reckon I might have a new composer to put into my online playlists!

César Franck

Composer of the Romantic period, César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck, was born in Liege in what was to become the Wallonia region of Belgium. I tell you this simply so that I can also tell you that in Wallonia, they spoke Walloon! I say ‘spoke’ because there are apparently not many folk there younger than 50 that know more than a few profanities in the language these days.

César was actually pushed by his father towards the piano and music as a career which seems a bit unusual to me as most parents wanted their offspring to become lawyers or architects or something – anything other than a musician. Anyway, Franck junior gave his first public performances when he was eleven years old and he was soon whisked away by his dad to Paris to study and play concerts. It appears, however, that César Franck’s father may have irritated the Paris music critics sufficiently, after a few years, to feel it prudent to move back home. Young Franck was now 19.

The next four or so years were tricky ones as few people were showing any interest in the proposed career choice for César and though he began producing more mature works, they were recognised, generally, as not being good enough.

Things took an upturn a few years later, however, as, at age 23, César Franck had a bust-up with his parents over a girlfriend, his father forbidding marriage or any such talk. Things got so bad that César walked away from his home to live with the girl’s family who made hm welcome. A couple of years later, wedding plans were coming to fruition at the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette parish church, where he was also taken on as assistant organist – and this was the second piece of good luck. From here, C Franck’s career took off with bigger and bigger engagements.

His composing went from strength to strength and he began developing a style of his own, showing similarities, his opponents complained, of Germanic forms – this caused a split in his contemporaries as well as the general public, who were perturbed by the influx of German music into France, with some in favour and some in opposition. There appears to be a five or six year period during Franck’s late fifties/early sixties when most of his ‘advanced’ works were produced and it was towards the end of this time that he wrote Symphony in D minor, the piece chosen to represent him in our record collection on:

Stokowski/César Franck – Symphony in D Minor (PFS 4218)

This work is in three rather than the usual four symphonic movements and uses a cyclic form but the thing about it that its critics didn’t like was a perceived Beethovenness about it. Franck never hid his appreciation of Beethoven and so may even have taken this as a complement.

Incidentally, cyclic form in music is used in pieces of more than one section or movement when a theme or particular melody is inserted into some or all sections in order to link them. In the case at hand, the theme, which initially occurs at the start of the first movement, appears in all three sections though, not being familiar with the piece and with the theme being slow and quiet, it may not be easy to identify at first.

Over the years César Franck had many students, one of which was, firm friend, Henri Duparc, to whom Symphony in D minor was dedicated.

Henri Duparc

French, romantic era composer, Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc takes his bow on:

• Stokowski Encores (PFS 4351)

Duparc managed about 38 pieces of work in his sadly curtailed writing career. When he was 37, he was diagnosed with neurasthenia, a mental illness, which was the initial reason for a cessation of Henri’s musical aspirations but the clincher was, five or so years later, progressive vision loss which resulted in complete blindness! He lived until age 85.

Here we get his ‘Extase’, (Ecstasy) the lyric, written by Jean Lahor, which goes something like this (except that it would normally be in French):

On a pale lily my heart is sleeping

A sleep as sweet as death:

Exquisite death, death perfumed

By the breath of the beloved:

On your pale breast my heart is sleeping…

Arthur Honegger

Oscar Arthur Honegger was a Swiss, violin playing conductor who required absolute isolation to compose in so, imagine the chagrin of being told, as a lovely young bride, that you’ll have to live in a different apartment! Well, Arthur must have had something because she, let’s call her Andrée Vaurabourg, went to live with her mother whilst he popped in every day for his lunch! I mean, whatever it was that Honegger had, it is difficult to imagine that Andrée actually found it as they lived in this fashion for the extent of the marriage. And I’m not sure how they managed it but they also had a daughter!

We find his 'Pastorale D'Ete', as his sole contribution to the Phase 4s, on:

• Bernard Herrmann – The Impressionists (PFS 4224)

Alexander Scriabin

Born on Christmas Day, Russian chromaesthete (I hope you remember this made-up word from above) composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was the first to introduce a light show, rock gig-like. He developed a colour keyboard attached to a colour light projector along with a system of notation of the colours and lights which were used to accentuate the music as it was played. This revolutionary system was used for the first time ever in 1910. Scriabin controlled the light show by ‘playing’ the colour keyboard himself for the early performances.

Alexander, one time, had some trouble with a painful right hand and whilst there seems to be some argument as to how it was caused, why not go with the one that says that he was practicing playing a bit of Liszt and overstretched his small hand. Whatever, the cause, the effect was to give his compositions a left hand lean so presenting something just a little different compared to his contemporaries. and I should think, with the right hand of a pianist being to do with melody, helping him on the way to atonality which seemed all the rage at the time.

Alexander Scriabin died young at age 43 of blood poisoning caused by a pimple on his lip! The pimple grew into a large wound and rapidly got out of control taking the composer away from the world at the height of his career.

He has just one Phase 4 tune, Le Poeme De L'Extase which can be found on:

• Stokowski Conducts Scriabin/Rimsky-Korsakov/Dvořák - Le Poème De L'Extase/Capriccio Espagnol/Slavonic Dance In E Minor Op.72 No. 2 (PFS 4333)

There is a hint of melody that creeps up on you but the most noticeable bits are those discordant blasts and cacophonous dins. An occasional splendid rush of the blood.

Ferde Grofé

One of Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé's claims to fame was that he, as arranger, transformed George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue from a score for two pianos to full orchestration. His most well-known work is The Grand Canyon Suite which takes up the whole of a Phase 4 LP:

• Grofé – Stanley Black – Grand Canyon Suite (PFS 4036)

This music satisfied an obsession of Grofé's to present an impression of the Grand Canyon by musical means. This he managed by setting five movements, namely:

• Sunrise

• Painted Desert

• On The Trail

• Sunset

• Cloudburst

Now this is lovely lush strings and delicate flutes and ... and ... there is nothing jarring about any section of this whole work except maybe the final one - which perfectly invokes a storming cloudburst. The Grand Canyon Suite was originally called Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon and Grand Canyon is also a film short (30mins) by Walt Disney made in 1958. It comprises footage of the Grand Canyon accompanied by Ferde's music - no dialogue, just music.

Ferde Grofé had a tendency towards jazz and also wrote songs like 'Daybreak' made famous by Tommy Dorsey. He also composed about 54 so-called symphonic jazz pieces for orchestra, two concertos, four ballets, 19 works for chamber music/solo pieces and ten film scores, the latest of which is The Return of Jesse James (1950) and A Christmas Story (1983) in which bits of the Grand Canyon Suite were used. The first three compositions on Ferde Grofé's CV were written when he was 14 to 16 years of age.

Manuel Ponce

Mexican Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar was influential, due to a certain extent to his friendship with Andres Segovia, for the reintroduction of the guitar into classical music.

Ponce’s life began quite excitingly. His father played a part in the revolution of 1867 that re-established Mexico’s independence and Manuel made his debut appearance whilst the family were hiding out in order to avoid being accused of any sort of misbehaviour.

Manuel Ponce was pretty much self-taught, having written a bunch of music in his teens and though much of the music being written in Mexico in the early 1900s was of the European style, Manuel chose to instal a Mexican flavour into his writing. Some of his work was to arrange traditional folk songs and one of his more popular records is Canciones Mexicanas which contains all traditional tunes except one, ‘Estrellita’, which was his own. It is this song which appears on:

• Josef Sakonov – Great Violin Encores (PFS 4265)

... as do all of the following.

Jenő Hubay

Jenő Hubay von Szalatna was born to German parents in Hungary, adopting the Hungarian form of his name in his 20s. Until then he was Eugen Huber and it was his father who changed the family name to Hubay from Huber, possibly to make it sound more French. Károly Huber was concertmaster of the Hungarian National Opera House and a teacher at the Budapest College of Music and so was well placed to begin tutoring young Jenő in violin and music in general. Hubay junior was playing in public at age 11. At 20, he made his professional debut successfully in Paris.

Jenő Hubay supplies a nice, lively violin thing which starts off PFS 4265

John Philip Sousa

JPS was an American composer largely of march music. He is particularly known for his ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ or maybe his ‘Liberty Bell March’ which will be familiar to fans of the Monty Python

Comedy team – it was used as the theme tune to the TV show Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Sousa began training in music aged about six years and later violin, piano and other instruments as well as singing. At age 13, he must have his own design for life as he planned to run off with the circus band – that was until his father found out and enlisted him into the Marines, with whom, he was obliged to stay until he was 21. No matter – he just continued his music studies with the Marines instead. His dad may have known he would be OK there as he was a trombonist in the Marine band himself.

John Philip Sousa directed the design of the sousaphone. This was tuba-like, the difference being that is shaped to fit around the body of the player, resting on the shoulders, and has a large forward-facing bell. These modifications make it easier to play than the tuba when marching and also projects the sound forwards – all the better to warn potential audiences of their arrival.

Sousa has one Phase 4 LP but a part of his 'Semper Fidelis' does also feature on:

Victory in Review Eric Rogers (PFS 4024)

John Philip Sousa – Symphonic Sousa (PFS 4382)

Paul Sternhold

I can find absolutely no information on Paul Sternhold except that he has his tune, 'Fêtes tziganes' on PFS 4265. In the event on stumbling across some info, I will update this bit. Feel free to suggest some info, dear reader ... with references, natch!

Richard Heuberger

Austrian Richard Franz Joseph Heuberger mainly composed operas and operettas but also has ballets, songs and choral works on his CV. He is known more for his earliest operetta Der Opemball (The Opera Ball) and it is this work from which 'Geh'n wir ins Chambre séparée' (‘Im Chambre séparée"), his tune on the Sakanov record, comes from. The title seems to be a combination of German and French with 'Geh'n wir ins' meaning something like 'let's go to' in German and 'Chambre séparée' being 'separate room' in French. A slightly odd inclination it seems to me ... oh well, whatever ...

Benjamin Godard

Benjamin Louis Paul Godard was a French composer and violinist of the Romantic era who is probably most well-known for his Opera Jocelyn from which his track, ‘Berceuse de Jocelyn’, is taken for PFS 4265. It is a gentle song, a lullaby, that in French, is known as ‘Oh, Do Not Wake Up Yet’ and in English, ‘Angels Guard Thee’.

Godard died young at 45 with tuberculosis but he managed to knock up seven more operas, five symphonies, piano concertos, violin concertos, string quartets, piano and violin sonatas plus at least a hundred songs so he was no slacker.

Being of Jewish extraction, Benjamin Godard took a poor view of Richard Wagner’s antisemitic views. Mind you, Wagner could have made a second career out of upsetting people.

His general racism set him apart from just about all of his contemporaries with a lifelong passion for expounding his views in print. He may have felt the need to protect himself as he used a nom de plume – K. Freigedank which, in English means, ‘Freethought’. It was not, however, until he was 37 in 1850 that he began to demonstrate antisemitism which may coincide with a time when Wagner was struggling to progress his composition writing and started to resent the success of Jewish writers such as Felix Mendelssohn and young Godard.

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Now, I would really to include everyone who appeared in the Phase 4 Stereo collection but I reckon that that is too much to aim for, realistically, particularly in the classical genre. If you think that there any deserving characters that are missing, please let me know.

In the meantime, I'll get to work on what might be the final Post for these records.

Photographs of LP covers will be added as soon as I have them in the collection.

References available on request

Regarding the LP cover images, they are photographs of the records in my own collection and are taken by my own hand (which explains the slight wonkiness of some of them). All images should, however, be considered the property of Decca.

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of any image in any form is prohibited.

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the text in any form is prohibited, restricted by permission of the author.