I've been sharing some personal memories of the music I've assembled for the holiday season that you can hear all this month on Pianonoise Radio. All of the recordings date from before our move to Pittsburgh, my cancer, and my job change. I have started to make recordings again, and some of them have begun finding their way to the web; however, it will probably be next year before I add any of them to the holiday program.
We left off right before the Liszt piece, "The Shepherds at the Manger" which is a little thing based on the tune "In Dulci Jubilo." I discovered its existence while reading a forum question posed by a piano teacher who was trying to find some "Christian" music for piano that he could stand, and while the efforts of the various (probably non-Christian) parties involved to find something classical and church-appropriate was fairly amusing, there were some suggestions that bordered on useful--at least this little guy could come in handy at Christmas. However, my efforts to record it were racked by even greater comedy, as you can read here. I think it may be one of my favorite blog posts.
The two books of Bartok carols were recorded the same year, the year that our church sanctuary got new carpet in the middle of Advent, which made things difficult, since in the busiest season of the year I didn't have access to the organ for nearly two weeks. Recording was also difficult since the better piano was also buried under a pile of debris for the duration. I managed to hack out this recording in such a hurry I think I might have only had one day to learn the piece, which accounts for a couple of mis-readings and one place where I left out a line of one of the carols! I still like the recording, though. Bartok gives me something very different to listen to during this most hackneyed of musical months, though I suppose the rest of the populace would rather listen to the same popular songs and occasional carols all the time. Oh well, it is my website, and you can skip it if you want. I like it, anyway, and since familiarity is nine tenths of the law in music, you probably will too if you listen to it a few times. Unfortunately I can't find the words to any of the carols.
Call it OCD if you will, or just rampant creativity, but the Tunder Canzona comes with special features, such as being able to hear it from different locations. I've explained it all in this blog.
Listening to the meditative beauty of Bach's next version of "Now Come, Savior of the Nations" it is hard to believe that I spent several minutes before the recording desperately trying to kill a grasshopper. It was hiding under one of the windows of the sanctuary and it would not shut up so that I could record in peace. Eventually it did, which is good; I never did find it. If the title seems a little familiar it is because it is based on an ancient advent hymn and Bach himself wrote four organ settings of the same hymn. This one is the most often played by a mile, being so peaceful. I'll be playing it next week in church for what I think is the third time. I try not to repeat selections very often which is why the last time I played it during a Christmas season was 2008. The present recording I think comes from 2011 and was made during the summer (hence the grasshopper). This is often the best time to record Christmas music as I am much too busy in December.
If we go back into the eons of time; that is, to my teenage years--I had a tradition of Christmas improvisations. I would take several carols, and make up my own arrangements of them in front of a tape recorder. They ranged from melancholy to ridiculous. I do less of that now, but one year, after continuing to struggle with the shrinkage of time during the holidays, I revived the practice, and several of the remaining pieces are improvisations. The good news is that after years of practice I can make up something on the spot that sounds reasonably close to a printed composition. The bad news is I was trying to sneak it in between rehearsals and concerts, and wasn't always at my best. I think five of these were made at once one morning just before a staff Christmas lunch. I've since written some of the them out for further use and even played one on Christmas eve from the (partially completed) score (not enough time!). Some of the meanderings and hesitations will disappear then. I also find improvisations can be a good starting point for an actual composition later--provided I can remember them, or happen to record them, which isn't likely except at Christmas. If you take delight in the "authenticity" that is the actual unfiltered moment of inspiration, then these last pieces are for you. I'll be bringing my recorded to church this year too, to capture the moment. I'll also be going back to some of the music I played during my college years, and graduate school, to remind myself of more Christmases past.
The funny, the bizarre, and the annoying, all are part of the history of these recordings, but while these words may give you a back stage glance into the messy reality that is a life in music, it is the music itself, evocative of peace, love, hope and joy, as well as melancholy, drama, and wonder--this is my Christmas present to you. This year and every year at this time as we examine ourselves we reckon with and see more clearly our passage through the portal of time. The music will be here next year too, I hope, but with some additions from this next chapter of my life, which is just beginning, in the building at the bottom of the page. Have a Merry Christmas, and if you don't celebrate Christmas (or even if you do), may you have peace, joy and love.
Michael Hammer
Showing posts with label Pianonoise holiday program notes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pianonoise holiday program notes. Show all posts
Friday, December 8, 2017
Friday, December 1, 2017
Ghosts of Christmas music past
These notes concern music from the Pianonoise Holiday program for 2017 which you can access right here at Pianonoise Radio! Happy listening.
For a lot of people an important way to relate to music is through memory--what was on the radio at a key moment in their lives, for example, or a special song that takes them back. As a musician I am not immune to this. Although I relate to music on many levels, most of which have more directly to do with the music itself, over time many of the pieces I play also have a part to play in the soundtrack of memory. This is especially true of the Christmas music, some of which gives me an excuse to relate some favorite anecdotes, some strange, some hilarious--well, perhaps. Or at least mildly amusing. It's really up to you...
The 2017 holiday program begins with a setting of "Now we sing of Christmas"--a piano piece far more modest that the vast, difficult Dupre organ setting I keep meaning to get around to each year. But even that was two years in the making. Like most of the pieces you are about to hear, this was recorded during my years in Illinois, during which the Christmas season was so busy that I sometimes only had time to jot down ideas for compositions while running down the hall between rehearsals. Thus, I began the piece one year, and, at about the 56 second mark, when I get to the bottom of that run, that's the following year when I picked the piece up again and finished it one evening in a lounge at a nearby church in a spare half hour (a luxury!). Good times.
I don't know when exactly I decided to pair it with a charming little piece by Edvard Grieg that has nothing whatever to do with Christmas, but I think it turned out well. It seems to be in the same spirit.
The organ piece that follows (Invitation) was recorded on an organ in need of repair (and soon to get some), which a tonic G that wouldn't sound. You can read about the hilarity of that recording sesson here.
I like to go hunting all over the world, and one fellow in Lithuania has an organ blog on whose sight I often get ideas. As a sight reading exercise he once posted something from a Croatian composer I'd never heard of, and although I didn't care for that piece particularly, I went on IMSLP and discovered four delightful little Pastorales that I played for Christmas in 2016.
The Bartok Carols came over the radio once when I was out Christmas shopping. Several years later I recorded them myself, complete with an outtake that featured some jingling bells.
By the way, regarding organ repair, I used to have fun with the playback system--the pipes didn't care whether I was playing them live or had pre-recorded the music. I would often record a performance at the console on the playback system and only later get out the microphones to capture what I had played earlier with my digital recorder, letting the organ play my performance back for benefit of the microphones. Thus, in one of the two Pastorales (the one in C) that I didn't include in the program (but you can find on the mp3 Index page under Pintaric), the custodian is actually running the vacuum cleaner while I am recording my performance at the console (but not during the actual through the air recording which was done later) and in the one in Bb that you are listening to I didn't have time to make all the necessary stop changes so while the sound was being fed to the microphone I posed as my own organ assistant and pushed in and pulled out the stop knobs as needed while the the organ played--this is like playing a duet with your past self (which I have also done).
I enjoy musical detective work but I had a heckuva time tracking down the music for Samuel Wesley's strange and interesting digressions on the old carol" God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman." Eventually I found a professor in Maryland who had recorded the music, emailed him to ask where I could find it, and he kindly sent me a copy. It was from a volume that was no longer in print. A year later I found myself at a table in my own church next to the musicologist who had edited the volume! If only I had known sooner I could have saved a little geography.
I'm going to skip the next three pieces except to mention that the Marteau was written in quite a hurry and recorded before an unrelated concert.
The Gigue fugue is called that because there is quite a lot of delicious dancing about in the pedals. About a third of the way through the recording I discovered that one of my shoes had come untied, which made for a rather uncomfortable two minutes--but I went ahead and finished it anyhow. I usually do a few takes, but the runner up (or was it slightly better) featured someone dressed as Santa coming into the sanctuary with bells ringing loudly and basically wrecking the end of the recording (which I never let on; I mean, it was Father Christmas, after all).
Gottschalk's Cradle Song reminds me of Christmas Eve 2010 which might just be the best one ever, with a foot of snow outside and easily the best Christmas present I ever gave my father (or perhaps anyone)--for a more expanded version go here. During the Gottschalk prelude you could have heard a pin drop which is unusual for any audience, particularly at the start of a church service, and a downright miracle with a sanctuary full (300?) of families for what I always thought of as a pretty zooey 7:00 service. It was less miraculous, but just as special, at the 11pm candlelight service later on.
I've been playing the Bach Pastorale on and off ever since my first church appointment as a teenager, at a little church in the burbs a college friend called the "Fisher Price" church because of its size and primary color scheme. It had been a tradition of the former organist, who referred to the organ there as "the eight-rank wonder." I've graduated to bigger things of course but next week I'll be playing a concert out of town that isn't much larger (a 9-rank Wicks). Small organs can be charming if they have a pleasant complement of stops. I'm looking forward to it.
I sense your attention is waning (or mine is) so I'll save the remaining commentary for next time.
For a lot of people an important way to relate to music is through memory--what was on the radio at a key moment in their lives, for example, or a special song that takes them back. As a musician I am not immune to this. Although I relate to music on many levels, most of which have more directly to do with the music itself, over time many of the pieces I play also have a part to play in the soundtrack of memory. This is especially true of the Christmas music, some of which gives me an excuse to relate some favorite anecdotes, some strange, some hilarious--well, perhaps. Or at least mildly amusing. It's really up to you...
The 2017 holiday program begins with a setting of "Now we sing of Christmas"--a piano piece far more modest that the vast, difficult Dupre organ setting I keep meaning to get around to each year. But even that was two years in the making. Like most of the pieces you are about to hear, this was recorded during my years in Illinois, during which the Christmas season was so busy that I sometimes only had time to jot down ideas for compositions while running down the hall between rehearsals. Thus, I began the piece one year, and, at about the 56 second mark, when I get to the bottom of that run, that's the following year when I picked the piece up again and finished it one evening in a lounge at a nearby church in a spare half hour (a luxury!). Good times.
I don't know when exactly I decided to pair it with a charming little piece by Edvard Grieg that has nothing whatever to do with Christmas, but I think it turned out well. It seems to be in the same spirit.
The organ piece that follows (Invitation) was recorded on an organ in need of repair (and soon to get some), which a tonic G that wouldn't sound. You can read about the hilarity of that recording sesson here.
I like to go hunting all over the world, and one fellow in Lithuania has an organ blog on whose sight I often get ideas. As a sight reading exercise he once posted something from a Croatian composer I'd never heard of, and although I didn't care for that piece particularly, I went on IMSLP and discovered four delightful little Pastorales that I played for Christmas in 2016.
The Bartok Carols came over the radio once when I was out Christmas shopping. Several years later I recorded them myself, complete with an outtake that featured some jingling bells.
By the way, regarding organ repair, I used to have fun with the playback system--the pipes didn't care whether I was playing them live or had pre-recorded the music. I would often record a performance at the console on the playback system and only later get out the microphones to capture what I had played earlier with my digital recorder, letting the organ play my performance back for benefit of the microphones. Thus, in one of the two Pastorales (the one in C) that I didn't include in the program (but you can find on the mp3 Index page under Pintaric), the custodian is actually running the vacuum cleaner while I am recording my performance at the console (but not during the actual through the air recording which was done later) and in the one in Bb that you are listening to I didn't have time to make all the necessary stop changes so while the sound was being fed to the microphone I posed as my own organ assistant and pushed in and pulled out the stop knobs as needed while the the organ played--this is like playing a duet with your past self (which I have also done).
I enjoy musical detective work but I had a heckuva time tracking down the music for Samuel Wesley's strange and interesting digressions on the old carol" God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman." Eventually I found a professor in Maryland who had recorded the music, emailed him to ask where I could find it, and he kindly sent me a copy. It was from a volume that was no longer in print. A year later I found myself at a table in my own church next to the musicologist who had edited the volume! If only I had known sooner I could have saved a little geography.
I'm going to skip the next three pieces except to mention that the Marteau was written in quite a hurry and recorded before an unrelated concert.
The Gigue fugue is called that because there is quite a lot of delicious dancing about in the pedals. About a third of the way through the recording I discovered that one of my shoes had come untied, which made for a rather uncomfortable two minutes--but I went ahead and finished it anyhow. I usually do a few takes, but the runner up (or was it slightly better) featured someone dressed as Santa coming into the sanctuary with bells ringing loudly and basically wrecking the end of the recording (which I never let on; I mean, it was Father Christmas, after all).
Gottschalk's Cradle Song reminds me of Christmas Eve 2010 which might just be the best one ever, with a foot of snow outside and easily the best Christmas present I ever gave my father (or perhaps anyone)--for a more expanded version go here. During the Gottschalk prelude you could have heard a pin drop which is unusual for any audience, particularly at the start of a church service, and a downright miracle with a sanctuary full (300?) of families for what I always thought of as a pretty zooey 7:00 service. It was less miraculous, but just as special, at the 11pm candlelight service later on.
I've been playing the Bach Pastorale on and off ever since my first church appointment as a teenager, at a little church in the burbs a college friend called the "Fisher Price" church because of its size and primary color scheme. It had been a tradition of the former organist, who referred to the organ there as "the eight-rank wonder." I've graduated to bigger things of course but next week I'll be playing a concert out of town that isn't much larger (a 9-rank Wicks). Small organs can be charming if they have a pleasant complement of stops. I'm looking forward to it.
I sense your attention is waning (or mine is) so I'll save the remaining commentary for next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)