Roussel's Strangely Neglected 1st Symphony. The Poem of the Forest

Absolutely beautiful music.

Roussel: Duo for Bassoon and Double Bass

Albert Roussel - Désiré N'Nkaoua (2006) - Rustiques, op 5

Roussel - Résurrection, Op. 4 (Symphonic Prelude after Tolstoy)

Lazare-Lévy plays Roussel, Suite op.14 (3rd mvt)

And now, for something quite a bit different, the fine and relatively seldom played Albert Roussel played by the extremely fine, little known, French Pianist Lazare Lévy.

Max Reger, from " Fünf Humoresken" op 20 No 5 (Max Reger, piano) played 1905

On Nova and Brian Greene

I hadn't watched Nova on PBS since before analog TV died and so  hadn't seen Brain Greene's stuff.   Visiting a relative and seeing the program about quantum entanglement was really disappointing.   Personality driven science shows are for cabloid TV, not PBS.   If anything he's more annoying than Neil deGrasse Tyson in that department.  

Not tempted to buy TV again,  I don't miss it at all.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert Totentanz

Another wonderful display of volume control and skilled use of stops.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Vorüber für Kunstharmonium

Sigfrid Karg-Elert, more than any of the other composers posted here this week,  devoted himself to the possibilities of the harmonium as it developed into its most massive forms, the "Art Harmoniums".  He clearly  was attracted by the possibilities of volume control and  Balázs Szabó does an amazing job of bringing that out in this performance.  There are clear influences of late romantic German composers as well as Debussy in his music.    He's another of those composers whose music could do with a revival, it was far from trivial.

Georges Bizet : Ronde Turque

As far as can be gathered from my far from perfect reading of the Italian,  this piece is played on a harmonium that also was a celeste.   The large array of stops shown on the video gives some idea of how the reed organ in the late 19th and early 20th century seems to have been a predecessor of the synthesizer,  giving the player a large number of sounds to work, or play, within a package that could be moved  around and which fit in the home.   Maybe that has something to do with why it declined as the focus of serious composers as much as the changing aesthetics of the time.  Maybe it became too much of a good thing?   Later today I'll post a piece from a composer who did more with those possibilities than just about any other composer who wrote for harmonium.

These and many of the other pieces I'm posting this week are available in the IMSLP music library online.

Georges Bizet Caprice

Arthur Bird: Adagio

This is from the You Tube channel of musicman7nc, whose obvious expertise in the reed organ and harmonium extends to playing the music written for it quite well.  He is quite skilled in the of the use of the pedals to vary wind supply as a means of expression.

César Franck- Prélude,Fugue et Variation Op.18 Harmonium & Piano

A very rarely heard transcription that Franck made of his op.18 piece for organ.   The harmonium gives the piece an intimate and sad feeling that the organ solo doesn't.   The piano from Franck's own time adds a feeling of fragility.   Quite beautiful.   Got no idea what the temple has to do with it.

Arthur Bird : Improvisato

July 23 is Arthur Bird's birthday

Arthur Bird : Auf Dem Lande

Arthur Bird (1856-1920) is a composer I'd know from a single hearing of a piece for wind ensemble about thirty years ago.   It made enough of an impression on me that I'd periodically looked for sheet music of his work and had looked up the scant information available on his life.   Thanks to YouTube you can now hear more of his work.   Bird was an expert contrapuntal composer of high romantic music with a distinctive voice.   One of the reasons he's available on YouTube is that he was one of a small number of composers who wrote serious art music for the harmonium.   Here is a piece played by Artis Wodehouse on the exact model of Mason and Hamlin he wrote it for.  

You can read the music for this piece and several others I will be posting here. 

Interruption of Service

Later this week I will begin a period away from blogging and blog commenting due to a sudden, unexpected health problem.

I will post those things I'd already prepared.

UPDATE:  My break has been cancelled.

The Murderers Hiding In The Audience Share

Note:  This is a piece I first posted at Echidne of the Snakes in October, 2006.  It is reposted here, today, for obvious reasons.   How many of us can name any of those involved in this previous mass murder   How many of us can name those in the mass murders that have happened since then?

In the news coverage of the murders of the school girls in Pennsylvania there was talk about the similarities between the actions of the murderer and those of the man who took hostages and murdered a school girl in Colorado the week before. One report I heard went into quite a lot of detail about the similarities, a lot more detail than could have been useful to their audience. They’ve got to fill those 24 hours with something. I guess. But, considering what they were saying about copy-cat crime, you would think that it might have occurred to them that a particular segment of their audience might have found their descriptions very useful. I wonder why none of them seemed to think it was possible that some murderer of the near or distant future might have found their information quite instructive.

What is the use of crime reporting? It shouldn’t be useful for the trial, that’s certainly not the role of reporters but of police and prosecutors. Nancy Grace might be confused about that but real reporters shouldn’t be. Ideally jurors wouldn’t have heard any news reporting that could prejudice their decision about the evidence presented in trial. The right to a fair trial, both for the accused and the public, is clearly more important than whatever right the casual observer has to know most of the details as soon as possible.

There is some public interest served in reporting some facts of these crimes. The public needs to know that crimes are being committed and the nature of those crimes especially if the criminal is still at large. But there is a level of detail that goes past what is needed and risks becoming prurient or even dangerous.

Most people can listen to the sordid details and speculations generated by the cabloids with only their character damaged but pretending they are the only ones who could be listening is willful ignorance. The old justification for allowing pornography was true, most people who consume it don’t imitate it. But a study of the effects on the general population wouldn’t show much that was useful. It is the people who do commit horrible crimes who need to be studied. Where did they get the ideas for their crimes, especially those that don’t seem to be original ideas. What is the copy-cat effect of the crime shows on TV?

Is there a significant effect? Are there people susceptible to imitating the crimes spelled out in such loving detail on A&E and Discovery? On the cabloid news stations? And if there is an effect proven beyond a preponderance of the evidence what use should be made of that fact? I don’t know.

But since they are the ones who are always talking about copy-cat murderers don’t they have a responsibility to take that into account when they are structuring their dramatic recitations of these crimes? They certainly do write the shows for dramatic effect, to follow a saleable narrative. Can they make them profitable and responsible at the same time? Maybe they need to look for a good model of responsible reporting. They won’t find much of that on American TV outside of Bill Moyers.

Max Reger - Introduction and Passacaglia in d-minor

Max Reger: Clarinet Sonata no.1

Max Reger: Nachtlied