Ligeti, Kubrick, musica ricercatta

 
When, in 1968, the Hungarian composer György Ligeti learned that the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick had included a considerable part of his music to the soundtrack of the movie 2001 Space Odyssey without his approval, he did not make a mess as we would have done, normally, in the Western world. By then an Austrian citizen, Ligeti simply sued Kubrick for damages and demanded a financial compensation amounting to the sum of one dollar.

Worldwide audience
Coming from a Jewish family that had been under the rigours of Nazism – from which only his mother was spared –, and himself a child of a totalitarian society, Ligeti believed that Kubrick had only incurred in the indelicacy of not requesting his authorization, although, obviously, the filmmaker had not paid the corresponding rights either. But it was a wise way of dealing with the situation, for soon after the release of 2001... he saw how his music travelled around the world, thanks precisely to that sloppy action.

György Ligeti (1923 - 2006)

Add and go
Kubrick lost the litigation and paid the dollar, we suppose, because in two of his next five films he turned again to Ligeti to create the soundtrack for the films The Shining, from 1980, and finally, for Eyes Wide Shut, his last release, from 1999. We suppose, too, that this time he did pay the fee.

Timbre and "sonorism"
Ligeti's music – at least from the 1960s onwards – is marked by a virtual abandonment of harmony, rhythm and melody (no more, no less), in order to focus on timbre and thereby achieve what he called the making of a "sound mass". A fitting expression of this idea is his work Atmospheres, part of which was used in 2001..., along with his Requiem (accompanying the discovery of the monolith) and the a cappella work for 16 voices, Lux Aeterna. The madness of the central character in The Shining gets full support with the orchestral work, Lontano, from 1967.

Musica ricercata 
It's not easy at all humming Ligeti's work, by the way. There are no tunes here. Although, you can try to recognize a couple of notes in some of the movements that make up his piano work, from 1953, Musica Ricercata, a set of eleven pieces censored by the Hungarian authorities of its time as "decadent" (Ricercare = search; instrumental composition typical of the 16th and 17th centuries). The first movement is built on two notes, the second on three, and so on until the last, built on twelve notes.

Second movement = mesto, rigido e cerimoniale
It is the one that Kubrick incorporated in Eyes Wide Shut. The three notes that the composer uses are: E-sharp, F-sharp and G. But G makes its entrance almost in the middle of the piece, at 1:43, attacked vigorously, and then accelerating to a "tremolo" as the left hand takes up the initial motif of the two notes in octaves (2:04). The movement ends by pressing only the G note, rittardando, until it fades out.

It may first appear somewhat monotonous. But it achieves an atmosphere. As Ligeti would claim,  that's what it's all about.

The rendering is by the Spanish pianist, Vicente Uñón.

Ponchielli, Gioconda - Dance of the Hours

 
Around 1880, the chapel composer position in Italy was on the verge of disappearing. The newly born Italian state had been dismantling the ecclesiastical musical organizations and transferring their traditional teaching duties to the new secular conservatories. However, as is typical of the history of some of humanity's transformations, both institutions behaved wisely enough to coexist in perfect harmony for a time.

It is therefore not surprising that in 1881 the composer Amilcare Ponchielli served as maestro di capella of the cathedral of Bergamo and also as professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni were among his pupils.

La Gioconda, a lyrical drama
There is no doubt that the pupils surpassed the master. Amilcare Ponchielli, even with ten operas to his credit, is remembered today for his only work still performed on the world's stages, the opera La Gioconda, a lyric drama in four acts set to a libretto based on a play in prose by Victor Hugo. The play was enthusiastically received for its premiere at La Scala in Milan in 1876, and became a dazzling success in 1880 at the same theater, after numerous revisions.

Amilcare Ponchielli (1834 - 1886)

All in all, the work was the last breath of a musical universe in retreat before the advance of the style that would become known as verismo, which would do away with mythological heroes and fantastic settings, and which would be led precisely by his pupils Mascagni and Puccini.

The additional element

It's true that the audience of 1880 was already beginning to get tired of some plays that were not exempt from a certain vulgarity. Therefore, it was necessary to add some extra element to the development of the story, making the actors and singers participate as an audience in some spectacle that occurred, with more or less artifice, in the "reality level" of the story told.

Dance of the Hours
To this need responds the inclusion of a ballet at the end of the third act of La Gioconda, the popular Dance of the Hours, which Walt Disney's film Fantasia was responsible for making it even more famous, even though – or precisely because of it – it was a parody that features as dancers hippos, ostriches, lizards and elephants in tutus.

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In the performance presented here, there are no elephants or hippopotamuses, but quite the opposite. At the Gran Teatro Liceu in Barcelona, the sensual Italian dancer Letizia Giuliani is accompanied by the Spanish dancer Angel Corella, both in charge of the leading roles. The melodies that have become popular, clearly recognizable by every listener, can be heard at minutes 1:55 and 8:11.
(Sadly, Youtube has catalogued the video as for adults (!). So, it can only be watched there (!). Anyway, it's soooooo worth it.)

Mozart, Sonata for keyboard four-hands

In the span of just over three years, W.A. Mozart, along with his father Leopold, toured Italian cities three times. The first in 1770, shortly before his fourteenth birthday, and the last, two years later, returning finally to Salzburg in March 1773, when he had just turned seventeen. In all the cities he was highly honored, in all of them he stunned the audience, in all of them he was commissioned for compositions that he fully completed, but neither in Milan, nor in Rome, nor in Naples nor in Bologna was achieved the goal Leopold intended: get a job for his son, in a renowned court.

On the second tour, Wolfgang had to appear in Milan with a serenade to celebrate the wedding of Archduke Ferdinand, the Governor and Captain-General of Lombardy. "This child will make us all forget" commented a court musician after hearing Mozart's music. This did not prevent Ferdinand from delaying the matter after hearing Leopold's request. The same thing happened on the third tour, scheduled to fulfill the Milanese commission for an opera. This time Leopold went to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, with similar results: "We will consider your proposal," he was told.

But it is Leopold who suffers from all this. It is not the case for the indefatigable Wolfgang, who works tirelessly during these three years to fulfill the countless commissions and, of course, for his own satisfaction.
He corresponds extensively with his mother and his sister Nannerl.

A gift for Nannerl
We believe that Nannerl recalled the pleasant evenings they enjoyed together in Salzburg, playing the harpsichord with four hands. These memories fill her beloved brother with anxiety and will lead him to take a break from the tournées and commitments to sit down to compose, sometime in 1772, a gift for Nannerl and for himself: the Sonata in D major for keyboard four-hands. Wolfgang Amadeus is sixteen years old.

The rendition is by the sisters Anastasia and Liubov Gromoglasova. Recital of the year 2012 in one of the halls of the Moscow Conservatory.

Sonata in D Major for keyboard four-hands, KV 381
Compared to the volume of the rest of his piano writing, the sonatas for piano four hands constitute a very small group in Mozartian output: only five sonatas plus an incomplete one, written between 1765 and 1787. The sonata in D major is the third in chronological order and was not published until 1783.

As it is obvious – considering the composer's youth and the period –, the work is structured in the traditional manner of a classical sonata: fast - slow - fast movements.

Allegro  At 00:35 (and then at 1:23): they are barely eight notes but it is impossible not to relate them to the famous Duettino sull' aria from The Marriage of Figaro. (They will have waited fourteen years).

Andante 3:35  Some opinions on Youtube claim that it should be played slower, but I think the girls do the right thing: the movement is andante and not adagio. 

Allegro molto 9:14  In tune with the opinion of the scholar Alfred Einstein (not to be confused with Albert, who had another profession) – who saw in this sonata an "Italian symphony" reduced to the piano –, the movement contemplates tutti passages (the whole "orchestra": both pianists) and soli (one or the other of the soloists).

Ravel, "Gaspard de la Nuit"

The famous musical triptych Gaspard de la Nuit, whose original and complete title is Gaspard de la Nuit: Trois Poèmes pour Piano d'après Aloysius Bertrand, is a work for solo piano composed by Maurice Ravel in 1908. It is inspired by a collection of prose poems published in 1842 – one year after the death of its author, the French romantic poet Aloysius Bertrand –, a work in which the poet pours a very personal, magical and phantasmagoric impression of the Middle Ages.

Gaspard, the treasurer of the night

The name "Gaspard", derived from its original Persian form, denotes the keeper of the royal treasure. So, in a very free translation of the title of the piece and the collection of poems, it could be translated into English as "the man in charge of the treasures of the night", which is not so far from the opinion of the contemporary German musicologist and pianist Siglind Brum, for whom "Gaspard de la Nuit" alludes to the keeper of the precious, the obscure and the mysterious.

Ondine, by Arthur Rackman, 1909.

Ondine, Le Gibet, Scarbo

Three of Bertrand's six poems were translated into music by Ravel to form this sort of "sonata" in three movements, which he named after the poems chosen: Ondine, Le Gibet and Scarbo, the names of three characters from this 19th-century work of fantastic literature, if we agree that "the gallows" (le gibet) is also one of them.

The last movement, Scarbo, is the one that has made this piece famous because of its enormous technical demands. It appears that Ravel achieved his purpose: to write a more difficult work than Balakirev's Islamey, also famous for its difficulty.

The rendition, outstanding, is by the French pianist Helene Tysman.

The three movements, with commentary, follow the video.

Ondine. It is the most colorful and sensual movement. In the poem, Ondine is a mermaid who sings to a man, to whom she describes her fantastic world trying to seduce him. But the man is married, and to a "mortal". When he tells Ondine this, the mermaid cries and laughs, then disappears as quickly as she appeared. On the piano, the performer must create an atmosphere that is both soft and bright, with subtle differences in the "touch" for water that ripples, rushes, shimmers or leaps.

Le Gibet (7:29) A picture of desolation and misery. The solitary corpse of a man hanging from a gallows (le gibet) stands out on the horizon. The sound of bells coming from within the walls of a distant city creates a sepulchral atmosphere of hopeless resignation. The movement is made up of three relentlessly repeated motifs: a B flat in ostinato (the bells), a melodic chord progression, and a second cantabile melody. "You don't have to be afraid that it sounds monotonous," said one pianist; in fact, monotony is an integral part of the movement.

Scarbo (13:08) The narrator describes his fear of Scarbo, an evil goblin who comes in the middle of the night, sometimes to dance but sometimes he hides and only makes noises, only to reappear suddenly. In the end, when the madness becomes unbearable, Scarbo disappears. With its repeated notes and two terrifying climaxes, this is the highest point in technical difficulty of the three movements. Difficulties include repeated notes in both hands and double-note scales of major seconds in the right hand. The movement ends without fuss, like a disappearing gnome.

Mili Balakirev, "Islamey"

Perhaps one of the most difficult pieces written for piano, Islamey - Oriental Fantasy is a short work composed in 1869 by the Russian pianist and composer Mili Balakirev, leader of the famous group known as The Mighty Five, which emerged in Russia in the mid-19th century to form the Russian chapter of the nationalist movements that began to prevail in European music.

Balakirev, the guiding light
Although in terms of the projection of his music he was widely surpassed by almost all the other members (Musorgsky, Borodin, Rimski-Korsakov, with the exception of Cesar Cui, the theoretician), Mili Balakirev played in the group the role of the one who imposed the aesthetic and nationalistic guidelines, to the point that, in the beginning, his colleagues submitted their works to the supervision of the intuitive master, whose first academic steps he had taken in the branch of science.

Balakirev - Rimsky Kórsakov
Cui - Musorgsky - Borodin

Islamey, the idea
In 1862, a young Balakirev, 25 years old, undertook a long journey through the Caucasus and Crimean regions carrying out an exemplary collection of folk music. It was there where the idea for the composition of the exuberant and perfectly finished Islamey arose, which was originally intended to be part of a symphonic poem – Tamara – on which he was working at that time:

"...the majestic beauty of luxuriant nature there and the beauty of the inhabitants that harmonises with it – all these things together made a deep impression on me... Since I interested myself in the vocal music there, I made the acquaintance of a Circassian prince, who frequently came to me and played folk tunes on his instrument, that was something like a violin. One of them, called Islamey, a dance-tune, pleased me extraordinarily and with a view to the work I had in mind on Tamara I began to arrange it for the piano. The second theme was communicated to me in Moscow by an Armenian actor, who came from the Crimea and is, as he assured me, well known among the Crimean Tatars. (Letter to Eduard Reiss, 1892).

Legendary for its enormous technical difficulties, Islamey is a piece that can be tackled successfully by only a few of the great virtuosos. So much so that Maurice Ravel once remarked that his demanding piece Gaspard de la Nuit was composed for, among other purposes, trying to write something more difficult than Islamey. And Balakirev himself went so far as to confess that there were some fragments of the piece "that I have not been able to get to grips with". Despite everything, Balakirev composed the piece in the course of one month, in 1869.

The work
As already mentioned, it is based on two folkloric themes. The first is a fast, energetic dance with fast repeated notes – the one picked up on his trip to the Caucasus – which governs the entire first section of the piece – and part of the third. A middle section, at 2:01, introduces a romantic melody – the Crimean theme – which at 3:30 will acquire greater vivacity to take up again at 4:08 the initial theme, which then transformed into a frenetic dance will advance towards the closing in a dramatic fashion after a sort of coda at 5:47.

The rendition is by the outstanding Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky, who is also a jazz pianist, and by the way, only needs one hand, the left one, to play Chopin's Revolutionary Etude.