J-zine - Music Room

If your browser supports it, you can listen to my rendering of March Past (4m 5 secs). My sincere apologies to Oscar Peterson.

The man that hath no music in himself
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

The motions of his spirits are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.

Merchant of Venice, Act V.

By the way, Ralph Vaughan Williams has used that Shakespearean quotation as text for his Serenade to Music. It's a lovely choral piece with a fascinating story attached to it. I should write a page about it some time.

Listening to the music of J.S. Bach^* (38K / 15m 29secs) is one of my ways to turn off the world. If you are a Bach lover too, go to the Classical MIDI Archives. They have lots of other composers too.

Scott Joplin

Let's take a jump from the world of Johan Sebstian Bach, to the the rather seedy saloons and "parlors" where a young black musician was playing "jig-piano"; in other words the music that was to become rag-time. Sometime around 1897 he composed the rag that essentially defined the genre.

Solace
(5m 55 secs)
The Entertainer
(3m 47 secs)

Maple Leaf Rag:

(3m 41 secs)

It was Scott Joplin's break through when, at the second attempt, he managed to get his Maple Leaf Rag published in 1899. It was reputed to have sold more than one million copies -- sheet music copies, of course. The proceeds brought him fame and a comfortable life. He married and passed his time teaching and composing.

From being a composer of rag-time, Scott Joplin began to interest himself in music for the stage. First it was dance music. Gradually it developed and culminated in a work he called Treemonisha -- a strange mixture of rag-time and grand opera. It was misunderstood and rejected; those who appreciated rag-time couldn't understand it, and those who loved opera simply didn't want to know about something written by a Negro.

The rest of the story is one of rejection and a gradual decline of health -- the result of syphilis. Fortunately for posterity, Scott Joplin published Treemonisha at his own expense. It was never performed in his life time. A run through of the score at an audition intended to attract backers was the closest he got to hearing his work.

Wagner

Well, I'd better make a clean breast of it and admit it. I'm a Wagner lover. When I was still at school, a friend and I used to travel to London and attend the Royal Opera House performances of Der Ring Des Nibelungen.

Die Walküre - from the fire music Act 3, Scene 3

Frankly, you should rush off and listen to this from a CD, or better still, go to a live performance. If you can't do either, listen to a snatch from Act 3. Wotan sentenced his favourite daughter to eternal sleep as punishment for her disobedience(So küßt er die Gottheit von dir.).

The descending motive of fate (6 secs):

is the prompt for Wotan to command the fire god, Loge, to encircle her with a ring of fire so that only one who knows no fear can enter and awake her.

The fire music (3 min 38 secs):

Note^*: The Bach piece is Toccata Bvw 913