Tag Archives: Bach

125 years of sublime sound

1 Reply

On April 11, 1888 an orchestra of 120 musicians together with a chorus of 500 singers performed works of Wagner, Handel, Bach, and Beethoven in a new building in what was then called Nieuwer-Amstel. It was the beginning of the story of the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam’s famous and much beloved concert hall. And no doubt it’s been a long, fascinating story…

This year, the city’s oldest and grandest classical music venue celebrates its 125th birthday. Due to its remarkable acoustics, the Concertgebouw is considered one of the finest concert halls worldwide – and for good reason. Anyone who’s been fortunate enough to attend a concert in the magnificent Grote Zaal (‘Big Hall’) is familiar with the unique aura and enchanting atmosphere of the venue.

The Concertgebouw in 1902

The Concertgebouw in 1902

Throughout its long -and at times turbulent- history, the Concertgebouw has been host to an astonishing string of world-renowned composers who came along to present premieres of their works, such as Gustav Mahler, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel and Béla Bartók.

But by no means is the list confined to the classical genre alone. Legendary figures from the world of popular music have also performed in Amsterdam’s historic venue. Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey have all been guests of the Concertgebouw, along with rock giants such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

Personally, I always regard a visit to the Concertgebouw as a kind of pilgrimage to one of the world’s unique music temples. Along with Vienna’s Musikverein or London’s Royal Albert Hall, it ranks as one of the most beautiful concert halls I have ever visited. But more importantly, it is a place where music can be experienced most fully and intensely, and thus I think the word ‘temple’ should not ring too much out of place.

In all my years in Amsterdam, I’ve had the chance to see some truly amazing performances at the Concertgebouw. I was there for a solo piano recital by Daniel Barenboim for the celebration of Chopin’s bicentennial. I saw Earl Wild performing shortly after his ninetieth birthday, attended recitals by some of the world’s greatest pianists (Evgeny Kissin, Alfred Brendel and Grigory Sokolov to name a few) and saw celebrities like Chick Corea, Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang showcasing their extraordinary skills and virtuosity on stage.

One of the most-visited concert halls worldwide, the Concertgebouw seems to have not only a glorious past but also a promising future. And I look forward to being part of the experiences it yet has to offer.

Ray Manzarek on the intro of “Light My Fire”

3 Replies

Ray Manzarek explaining how the introduction for “Light My Fire” came to life.  The background music is Invention No. 8, BWV 779 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which served as an inspiration for Manzarek.

The song’s distinctive organ intro has been characterized as “one of the most recognizable sounds in the history of rock music”.

Ray Manzarek (1939-2013)

In Ray’s words: “It just came out of, you know, fifteen or twenty years of music practice”.

Music of the spheres

Leave a reply

It was Pythagoras who first proposed that the Sun, Moon and planets all emit a unique resonance based on their orbital revolution, a theory that became known as the “Harmony of the Spheres”. In his Republic, Plato also alluded to the connection between music and astronomy: “As the eyes, said I, seem formed for studying astronomy, so do the ears seem formed for harmonious motions: and these seem to be twin sciences to one another, as also the Pythagoreans say”.

Fascinated and inspired by this idea of ‘spherical music’ (or musica universalis), British violinist Daniel Hope set out to record Spheres, which was released last February by Deutsche Grammophon. As Hope puts it: “My aim was to make an album touching on this sublime theme, while also discovering what composers nowadays might write when thinking in this context.” The final result is remarkable not only for its original concept, but also for its incorporation and imaginative combination of many diverse, yet equally intriguing, compositions.

For the purposes of this special recording, old and new composers were drawn together and some of the works appearing on the album were given their world premiere or special new arrangements. Spheres features music from a wide range of styles and composers including J.S. Bach, Gabriel Fauré, Ludovico Einaudi, Phillip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Max Richter (who also collaborated with Hope on his interpretation of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons).

Beautiful, mysterious and captivating, the music of Spheres can be seen as an ideal companion to the visual artistry of abstract filmmakers like Jordan Belson (1926-2011), who had also made a film named Music of the Spheres in 1977 (you can watch a clip here).

Images from Music of the Spheres artwork, 1977, (c) Estate of Jordan Belson

For those who find classical music passé or contemporary composers too difficult, listening to Spheres is certainly bound to make them reconsider.

Music for the eyes

1 Reply

Oskar Fischinger (1900 – 1967) was one of the most visionary and innovative figures to emerge in the filmmaking world during the first half of the 20th century. Acclaimed for his abstract animation films, his work anticipated in many ways modern-day music videos and motion graphics.

Fischinger is also recognized as the father of “visual music” (Raumlichtmusik), a new art form developed in the 1920s in which he envisioned the merging of all the arts – a new kind of figurative, non-objective Gesamstkunstwerk. As he described it: “Of this art everything is new and yet ancient in its laws and forms. Plastic – Dance – Painting – Music become one.  The Master of the new Art forms poetical work in four dimensions… Cinema was its beginning… Raumlichtmusik will be its completion.”

After Hitler’s denigration of abstract art, Fishinger moved to Los Angeles in 1936, where he worked on animated films for Paramount, MGM and Walt Disney Studios (he designed the J.S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor sequence for Disney’s Fantasia, but quit without credit because his designs were rejected as too abstract). Although he faced several difficulties with his filmmaking efforts in America, he managed to create significant compositions such as An Optical Poem (1937) (set to Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2).

An avid painter (he produced a total of around 800 canvases), Fishinger tried to relate painting to his work on film, thus creating layers of grids and geometric forms in pulsating color, and generating a third dimension of cosmic depth in light, space and rhythm.

Oskar Fischinger, ‘Optical Ballet’ (Oil on paper, 1941)

Fischinger’s magnificent Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), set to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, can also be seen as a study on the act of painting; he created it by taking a single frame for each brushstroke over the course of 9 months, its multi-layered style mirroring  the elaborate structure of Bach’s music (although not strictly synchronized with it).

Fischinger’s vision and highly innovative approach to film-making influenced profoundly subsequent creative artists; one of those who followed in his footsteps was American abstract filmmaker Jordan Belson (1926 – 2011), whose own cosmic visions would be realized through projects like the legendary Vortex concerts that took place in the late 1950s at the California Academy of Science’s Morrison Planetarium in San Fransisco (featuring music by Henry Jacobs and avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen).

Stills from ‘Allures’ (1961), ‘Samadhi’ (1967), ‘Epilogue’ (2005) (c) Jordan Belson

Belson saw Fischinger as the man who “could turn even the simplest things into a luxurious, magical illusion of cosmic elegance.”

No small achievement indeed.

Bachbird singing

Leave a reply

While also connected with the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Paul McCartney’s Blackbird is said to have been originally inspired from the experience of being woken by a blackbird’s song just before sunrise.

Musically speaking, McCartney was influenced by J.S. Bach’s Bourrée from the Suite in E minor for Lute (BWV 996), a piece often performed on the classical guitar. George Harrison and Colin Manley had taught him how to play Bach’s Bourrée at Liverpool Institute. As Sir Paul later put it: “I bastardized it, but it was the basis of how I wrote Blackbird.”

In this recording I’ve tried to bring the two pieces together, accompanied by the singing of birds on a sunny day…