Update: Unfortunately, the Youtube user removed both videos which were the pieces titled Jamais and The Blessed Spirits. I will change the not working videos for other ones that I also like.
The following piece was one of my favorites from more than 10 years ago. Unfortunately this version is truncated due to Youtube limits. The complete piece is about 14 minutes long. Update: The video was changed (see note above) .
On May 7th, 1856 , Johannes Brahms’ mother wrote to him in a letter:
“… This morning I woke up at exactly the hour at which you first saw the light of day, 23 years ago. Half an hour later I had you in my arms, at my breast… and now you are so far away from me!
No words are more sincere and eloquent than these when talking about Johannes’ birth, on May 7th, 1833, in Hamburg.
In 1865, 11 years after the letter, Brahms’ mother passed away. This event led Johannes to write his most sublime choral work, A German Requiem. Its fifth movement, which we listen next in the emotive voice of Barbara Bonney, was the last one added to the requiem, expressly in the memory of his mother.
Johannes Brahms has been previously featured in this blog and there’s a good reason for it. This blog wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for his music! The two authors of Flux (as we have come to call this blog to save time) got to meet each other partly because we shared a big interest in his works. Natis, the heart of this blog, has played Brahms’ music on clarinet, for her own constant delight and amazement. Alejandro (me!), has listened to almost all of Brahms’ works, enjoying every musical note created by him. This post is our small tribute to one of the greatest musicians of all times. Happy Birthday, Johannes!
We as Westerners admire much more the man who can do the work of ten men, than ten men working as one.
Kevin Volans, born in South Africa in 1941, studied music in Johannesburg and, thereafter, made post-graduate studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the UK. In the early 80’s, rejecting the Apartheid, a system of racial segregation enforced by the South African government until 1994, Volans started an exploration of diverse African compositional techniques, as applied to Western music. Volans himself explains his motivations:
I wanted to reflect in the music an image of a multicultural society - one in which the traditions of different cultures are represented, honoured and, above all, shared - no more 'separate development'!
“Mbira” was the first of this series of works. It was composed for two harpsichords re-tuned in African tuning, and a rattle. This work gets its name from the Mbira, a traditional instrument from Zimbabwe, which is central to a music genre with the same name. In the first part of this work, Volans emulates the Mbira music patterns with the harpsichords. The coda, however, follows a non-traditional style.
In 1982, Kevin Volans composed one of his best known works, titled “White Man Sleeps”. It was originally written for two harpsichords, viola da gamba and percussion, but in 1986, at the request of the Kronos Quartet, it was re-worked for string quartet. The innovative character of this work is captured in the following excerpt from Volans’ own exposition:
It was a bit like introducing an African computer virus into the heart of Western contemporary music. Thus I concentrated on the anti-hierarchic nature of traditional African music, the interlocking techniques, shifting downbeats, the largely non-functional harmony, the open forms, the extremely fast tempi of some music, the non-developmental use of repetition, contrasting and irregular patterning, the tone colour, the energy and the joy.
Let’s listen to the second movement. The other movements are available as well.
His broad knowledge of music, allowed him to make compositions that ranged from baroque to folk music arrangements. The following work, interpreted by the Colombian guitarist Fernando Ramirez, is one of the finest arpeggio studies for guitar.
Many world-class guitarists were fans of Barrios, with Andrés Segovia, David Russell and John Williams among them. John Williams, who plays the piece Choro da saudade in the following video, said of Barrios:
As a guitarist/composer, Barrios is the best of the lot, regardless of era. His music is better formed, it's more poetic, it's more everything! And it's more of all those things in a timeless way.
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