The Dies Irae is one of the most-used themes in western music. Mahlerman selects some fine examples... Scholars are split, but to put the four note descending motive (and the bars that follow) into some sort of context, I will give the palm to the 13th Century Franciscan Thomas of Celano for conjuring-up ... Read More...
Classical
There is much more to contemporary serious music than Alan Titchmarsh's choices on Classic FM. Mahlerman selects some 'post-minimalist' composers who should stand the test of time... Look, let's get one thing straight, I have got nothing against Dr Karl Jenkins, the most performed living composer in the world. Before the doctorate and ... Read More...
Brit selects four gorgeous, popular operatic melodies... Some opera this week - nothing esoteric, the only gimmick is that these tunes are a quartet, trio, duet and solo aria respectively, and they’re in reverse order of loveliness (according to me, anyway) – hence an 'operatic countdown'. This performance of the Bella Figlia ... Read More...
With two thirds of the planet covered by water, is it any surprise that the churning mightiness of the seas and oceans has influenced artists, writers and musicians so profoundly?... Homer acknowledged that there was '...nothing so dire as the sea' and, more recently, the great Philip Roth intoned on the ... Read More...
A nautical theme this week, as Brit selects pieces from a great movie soundtrack... Not only is Patrick O’Brian’s 'Aubrey-Maturin' series of books one of the great reading experiences available to mankind but it has also spawned a fine movie in Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The ... Read More...
What can we learn from a composer's very first work? Mahlerman investigates... Not the first work composed, but the first work published, the Opus 1 has held a peculiar fascination for musicians down the years. Sometimes the work (opus), even if penned by one of the great masters, is perfectly serviceable ... Read More...
In this week's music post, Mahlerman is contemplating star-cross'd lovers... No need for officers from Operation Yewtree to plan a dawn raid, but the archetypal love story of the Renaissance enshrined in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet does throw up a few parallels. It did take place a long time ... Read More...
There was more to Henry VIII than head-chopping and monastery-bashing... Bloody Tudors everywhere at the moment. I've been reading Hilary Mantel, watching BBC Two’s Tudor season, and now I can’t get this song out of my head. ‘I’m 'Enery the Eighth I am’, Joe Brown claims in a tale about a ... Read More...
Mahlerman guides you through the development of serious music in Spain... After a turbulent history of invasion and occupation by Romans, Visigoths and Moors (British pensioners don't count - yet) it is perhaps not surprising that by the time the nineteenth century rolled around, Spain was one of the most backward ... Read More...
This week Mahlerman leads us into the spooky world of Bela Bartok... A glance at the photograph of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok gives a clue perhaps to the tensions, at times almost unbearable, that we find in much of his music. Reading his touching letters, as I have been, it ... Read More...
