Author Archives: SY

Music on the Point

Concerts with Personality

Corey Hamm Piano

Musical Journal I

Jan. 25th

To be honest, I did not really appreciate and understand the three music pieces played by Corey Hamm. The melody is very different from the Canon we heard in class, and I could not find some obvious strophic parts. The rhythms are unexpected with no clear developing route and logics.

“Piano Sonata No.8, Op.84” is composed by Sergei Prokofiev, with three movements. It was composed during the World War II. The first movement “Andante dolce” is in B Flat Major. Modulation and second theme is in G minor. The melody gradually became wide and crazy, with power and energy from the war. The second movement “Andante sognando” uses Andante, and the melody is delight. The composer seems to recall the peace and happy time before the world when people sing and dance together. It is in triple meter and the melody sounds like minuet for me. The third movement “Vivace”starts with several arpeggios. The first theme is B Flat Major, the second theme is A minor, followed by a brief B Flat Major, then switch to B Major, after which, C major and D Flat Major also occur. The final section ends at B Flat Major. The complex change in key zone makes the third movement dramatic: I can feel that the world changed a lot because of the war, and millions of life die away which was unpreventable. The struggle and cry presented in this piece left deep impressions to people.

I preferred the second piece Piano Sonata No.1 “Floating Shadows” composed by Gao Ping. Gao Ping is a Chinese composers and thus I am able to find some materials about him and his music piece. Gao Ping is born in a family full of music atmosphere. His father is a famous composer when his mother is a great singer, and his parents are music professors in China. The first movement of is light and floating. The music image is like two persons contradance: left and right hands play melodies in distinct key zone, and two rhythms are independent, like shadows floating around. The second movement is dark and sorrow. The third movement is fast and brilliant, like a dancing song. It imitates the beat of small gongs and uses a lot of portamento. Gao uses motivic fragmentation to break the large themes in the first and second movement into smaller themes, and used these pieces in the third movement. The emotion dramatically change in the whole piece, it indicates that a lots of things are like “floating light and passing shadow”, which people cannot capture.

Henri Dutilleux wrote “Sonata pour piano” after the World War II. It is composed of three movements: “Allegro con moto”, “Lied” and “Choral et variations”. The “Lied” is in A B A form. The tonic key is D Flat Major. It is a brilliant piece which gives me a sense of impressionism. It is similar to Debussy “Cloud” – in both pieces, music sounds like floating and drifting around with no clear direction.

The Vancouver Symphony Presents

Tausk Conducts Mozart

Symphonies 39, 41 & 41

Musical Journal IV

Mar. 22nd

Mozart composed three symphonies within three months during the summer of 1788: symphony No.39, No.40, and No.41. These symphonies are his final and greatest masterpieces.

Symphony No.39 is in E Flat Major, filled with energy and power. It starts with an introduction with slow tempo, using brass section. It followed by violin and timpani, and then a graceful and carefree allegro in sonata form. The second movement is also slow, with an overlay of warmth added. Threats presented by the occasional turbulent outbursts prove temporary, evaporating quickly in the general atmosphere of good humour. The third movement has a powerful start, the first part of third movement is repeated 4 times. Then the theme changes, flute and clarinets play the leading melody, and then the violin follows and imitates the leading melody. The flute and clarinets play another leading melody, all the string instruments imitate the melody. The outer sections of the third movement, a minuet, are all ballroom stateliness. The central trio belongs squarely to the countryside. Based on a traditional dance tune from Switzerland, its rustic nature is enhanced by the sound of clarinets. The symphony wraps up with a nimble and witty finale, summoning images of the comic opera world that Mozart understood so fully.

The symphony No.40 in G Minor is sorrowful with soft sound. It reflected Mozart’s own downtrodden feelings at the time when he created it. The first movement is in sonata form. During the development, it uses a lot of imitation and motivic fragmentation. Mozart took out part of theme of exposition and then took small motives out of the large theme to use in the development section. In the theme 2 of recapitulation, everything is dark. The second theme resembles a series of sighs. The coda is in minor key, ends at a dark way with lots of shadows. The symphony’s sole oasis of repose arrives in the placid second movement. Most of the part is played by violin. Viola and cello either follows and imitates the same melody of violin, or set as an accompaniment of violin melody. Sometimes, clarinets and flute set as an accompaniment of violin as well. The third movement is fast and exciting. The first theme is composed of: full orchestra (all instruments play together) in the beginning, then orchestra excluding string instruments, followed by full orchestra, and then orchestra excluding string instruments. In the second theme, only flute and clarinets play the new theme, echo by violin; and then flute, clarinets and horns play the same rhythm in the new theme but in different keys. Later, it comes back to the full orchestra with the same melody in the beginning of the third movement, then the melody of the second theme added. In the fourth movement, there are a lot of repeats; full orchestra in the end.

Symphony No.41 in C Major is also called “Jupiter”. The introduction of the first movement is in slow tempo. It involves horns, trumpets and timpani to play the melody with joyous energy. The full orchestra part is extremely loud. The second movement has a soft start, the melodic lines are added layer by layer. It turns from slow and soft to delight and leaping. In the third movement, the usage of horns and trumpets are interesting – they play the melody as an accompaniment of the violin to form a contrast.

The King’s Singers

Royal Blood: Music For Henry VIII

Musical Journal II

Feb. 9th

The King’s Singers is composed of six wonderful singers. In the concert, the singing group performed the music pieces composed during the period of King Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth. During that period, the tension between the old Catholicism and the new Protestantism create religious art, and a climate of fear amongst those who wished to continue practicing ‘the old faith’.

William Byrd was a great composer in the region of Elizabeth I. and he was one of the Queen’s favoured musicians. As Elizabeth clamped down on illicit, secret recusant Catholic worship, Byrd was forced out of London, to live under the protection of a Catholic landlord. In a large country manor house, Byrd wrote some of his most emotionally charge music for the Catholic mass services which was taken place in secret. One of the work is “Ne irascaris, Domine”. In the second part of this piece: the first line ‘Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta’, it seems to have a hidden message of solidarity for other recusants. The second line‘Sion deserta facta est’, the text is sung only once with no repeat, and the texture is homophonic. The third line ‘Jerusalem desolata est’ uses both homophonic and polyphonic texture. ‘Jerusalem’ uses polyphonic and imitation, this word is repeated. ‘desolata’ is also repeated again and again, with a sense of Canon music style. ‘est’ is not repeated, all singers came to sing together in the same melody. The last two line translated to English is ‘Zion has become a wilderness, Jersalem has been made desolate’, using a metaphor, which in the eyes of Byrd, has been taken over by unholy powers and abandoned by God.

After Elizabeth I’s death in 1603, James I was crowned as England’s new monarch. James I’s first son – Henry Prince of Wales – became very popular with the nation, and was expected to be the king. However, he died of Typhoid Fever at the age of 18 in 1612, and there was a national outpouring of grief. Thomas Tomkins wrote “When David heard” to mourn the death of Prince Henry. Tomkins uses the biblical childhood death of Absalom and the grief of King David to mirror that of Henry and the grief of the whole nation. The music piece is slow and sorrowful. The third line of music text is ‘and thus he said: my son, my son, O Absalom my son’, the whole sentence is repeated six times, and the ‘my son’ is repeated for even above 20 times! The audience can feel the call of ‘my son’ with deep sadness again and again, and can imagine of a character – broken hearted James I. The forth (last) line is ‘would God I had died for thee!’ is also repeated with the whole sentence in different keys, and the texture is polyphonic. Different singers sang the same text with different melodic at different times again and again. Then, singers went back to sing the third line in the end, and the whole piece ended with ‘my son’. This strophic style illustrates the painful call from a mother and emphasizes the distress and pity.

All the pieces use imitation and strophic method, which is the characteristics of the music pieces during that period. Also, the words in the pieces are simple and easy to understand, the singers sing in a way that the audience can hear the words clearly.

UBC Symphony Orchestra

Jonathan Girard

Music Journal III

Mar. 15th

“A Northern Suite” was the first symphonic composition of John Luther Adams, and it was composed for Gordon Wright and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra in 1979-80. Adams is a composer deeply connected with nation, and “A Northern Suite” is associated with the geography of the Northern area. The work is composed of five movement. The first movement “Blue Ice, Crystal Air” starts with violin solo and the third movement “Cloud Forest” started with glockenspiel solo, flute solo, and clarinet solo one by one. These two parts are like delicate bird voice, which followed by softly imitative texture. The second, third and fifth movements contain a dense web of overlapping rhythms across the orchestra. There are a lot of parts using varies imitation of the natural sounds, including bird song, ice flow, wind, etc. When the diverse layers coalesce, the result brings forth the composer’s image of these scenes in nature.

The “Clarinet Concerto” by Jean Françaix is my favorite piece in this concert. There are four movements. The structure of the first movement is a little bit similar to the first movement of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto in C Minor”. In the theme 2 of exposition in “Piano Concerto in C Minor”, at first is piano (echo by orchestra), then orchestra (echo by piano). While in the theme 2 of the first movement in “Clarinet Concerto”, there are clarinet (echo by orchestra), then Orchestra (echo by clarinet). In the third movement, sometimes clarinet shows in leaping melody followed by orchestra in smooth melody, then orchestra in leaping melody followed by clarinet melody. The followed smooth part is an accompaniment and always imitates the leaping part. The clarinet solo part and orchestra set up a great contrast, the following and imitation made the audience feel that the clarinet and orchestra seems chasing each other. Carlos Savall-Guardiola, the great clarinetist, showed the extreme technique in dynamic shaping, articulation, musicality, and speed. The overall nature of the piece, much like other work by Françaix, is decidedly jovial and at times mocking.

Claude Debussy composed “La Mer”, and his inspiration came from seascapes in art, such as Hokusai’s famous woodblock print “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”. There are three movement. The first movement “From dawn to noon on the sea” is in B minor, at first the melody is delight and fast, the timpani added. The intensive string melody and hard timpani beating shows audiences the image of sun breaking out the clouds and the fantastic moved view of sunrise. The second movement “Play of the waves” is in C sharp minor, vividly draws a picture of wave patting the seashore. The melody is delight and lightsome, like waves chasing each other happily. The third movement “Dialogue of wind and the sea”, unlike what I was expected, the sound of timpani is not loud, instead is in low volume, and it represents the thunder far away. There are a lot of light, leaping and happy part, not heavy and down-mood at all. Only at the very end, the sound of timpani became louder and louder with intense gong, ended up with full orchestra.

Vanman Male Choral Summit

Cantus & Chor Leoni

Musical Journal V

April. 12th

The composer Zachary Wadsworth briefly talked about his family in the concert. His mother was in a symphony choir and his father played folk music, and thus he grew up in a family with strong folk music atmosphere. The folk songs are universally associated with love, lost, longing, or laughter, but Wadsworth wanted to write something different. He wrote a new series called “Future Folk Songs”, in which he imagines the things people will do in the future.

There are five songs in this series: “True Song” shows the power of truth telling, and reflects the wrong parts of residential school system in Canada, and in the future people still remember the wrongs of the past. “Screen Song” is about parents persuade their children to put away the digital products such as cell phones, and let them go to sleep. “Working song” draws a picture that robot will replace human to do hard labour. “Mars Song” imagines the arrival of people on Mars and the funny things that will happen. “Mountain Song” involved global warning and love: lovers stay together at the top of the mountain to escape from arising water level.

I would like to talk about the composition of “Working Song”. In the beginning of the “Working Song”, all the parts of the choir song one melody at the same pitch together, and it sounds strong, makes the audience feel the hard work done by the robot. All the robots work day and night with no stop. Then the base imitate the sounds of robot, it sounds like “Le…..”, followed by which, base sing “Robot listen now” and tenor sing “Stich this patient up”. The base again continue to sing the same line “Robot listen now”, and the tenor sing the same melody just with the text change, for example, “Do my taxes”, “Fill my water cup”, and “Send my faxes”. This kind of composition, with repeated melody while different text added to it, called hymn. We hear the same hymn tune several times over, and know that the composers use strophic technique in this song. The interesting part is that when the base sing the second time of robot song “Le….”, the tenor say “Shh”, like a conversation between robot and human. After this part, the choir begin to sing in a low volume, and then gradually become louder and return to the original volume. Before the end, the tenor sing “Ah……”; at the same time, the base begin to repeat “Robert listen, robot listen”, and then “Ah…..”. The “Ah….” of tenor and base join together and the voice stop.

The composition of five songs are different, but their endings are similar. In the “Screen Song” and “Working Song”, the tenor and base join together to see the same melody line and then the voice volume gradually drop and finally silence. In the “Mountain Song”, two parts do not join together, the tenor sing “Oh my love”, and the base follow and imitate, singing at the lower pitch. “Oh my love” is repeated again and again, two parts in the choir sing at the different time, and the volume goes down and down in the end.

I really like “Future Folk Song” series, the composition is not complex and the musical textures are easy to understand, so that audience can have a clear understanding of the structures and meanings of the song. The composers combine universal themes with specific details of the imaging future, also added some creative elements such as the robot sound in “Working Song”, which make the songs more interesting and attractive.