Halloween Music: Dead Composers

I thought that since this is October, and since I've been on a dead composer kick on my FaceBook page (http://www.facebook.com/MinnichMusic) I'd focus on some music suitable to the Halloween theme. This time, with a classical bent.

And what better place to start than Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Take the time to read about the organ, because that's really cool, too. But here's a little bit about the music. It wasn't written to be spooky, of course, but it certainly has become the spooky classic extraordinaire. Turns out, it may not have been written by J. S. Bach, after all. Some music scholars have raised some doubts, based on parallel octaves at the beginning and a bunch of other scholarly things. So, well, then. Hmm. . . I'm still going to call it Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. So there.

I'm following maybe-Bach with sort-of-Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. Try and stay with me through this - after you've watched the video, of course. Go on, I'll wait. This is the 1940 Disney Fantasia version, and is well worth the watch.

You're back already? Sorry if you had to wait, I was stirring the soup for dinner. 

Now, back to Bald Mountain. Why sort-of-Mussorgsky? Here we go. Modest Mussorgsky (What? No, he wasn't particularly modest. Modest is his first name, long "O". Sheesh!) wrote St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain, when he was 27. (Right? He was born in 1839. Wrote the piece in 1867. In 69 he would have been 30, take away 3 years, and you get 27. OK, good.) The problem was that nobody was particularly impressed with the composition, except Modest. He kept trying to sneak it into other things; a ballet, and an opera. (See? I told you he wasn't particularly modest!) 

Finally, 5 years after Modest's death, another Russian composer, Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov, found the original, and liked it. But he couldn't just let it be, he made his own arrangement of the composition, and that became popular. (Modest never heard it performed. And his original composition was not even published until 1968!) The most famous version, however, is the version used for Fantasia, which is Leopold Stokowski's arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's version of Mussorgsky's St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain. Oh, and just to confuse things even more, the Russian word "lisaya" means "bald" but in this case refers to a mountain that is bare of trees. So, in the United Kingdom, the piece is entitled: Night on the Bare Mountain. 

This brings us to Danse Macabre which is actually by Camille Saint-Saens. This began as an art song for voice and piano. (I really want to find a copy of that version!) Like Night on Bald Mountain, it is a tone poem, with the music in effect, painting a picture in your mind. According to a French legend, the Devil appears on Halloween night and raises the dead, and they dance while he plays for them on his violin: the Danse Macabre or Dance of the Dead. It includes extensive use of the tritone, or Devil's interval, an augmented 4th. And I love the use of the xylophone, mimicking the sound of the bones dancing. (And, if there's anybody out there beside the Nameless Cynic and I who love the English series, Jonathan Creek, this is used as it's theme song. Series is available through Netflix. Watch it!)

And, since I am a singer, and I find all of this instrumental music unnatural; you get this from Englebert Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel. (No, not this Engelbert Humperdinck. His real name is Arnold George Dorsey. Someone thought that Engelbert Humperdinck was a better stage name. My dad had all of his albums.) (And, NO - not Prince Humperdinck! That's a character in The Princess Bride, played by Christopher Sarandon. Sigh.) (The correct Engelbert Humperdinck was a German composer who lived from 1854-1921. He was heavily influenced by Richard Wagner. I'm not even going to try to explain about Wagner. Look him up yourself.) (The spell check on my computer really doesn't like all these repeats of Engelbert Humperdinck.)



Anyway, Engelbert Humperdinck wrote the opera using a libretto written by his sister, Adelheid Wette. (Hmm. . . it doesn't like that name, either. Oh well.) The opera is popular the world over, but more important to me is that Opera Unlimited has Hansel and Gretel in our repertory, and I play the Witch. This, sadly, is not me performing, but is taken from UNCW's outreach program. (And, no, I don't know what UNCW stands for. Sorry. I'm getting tired of looking things up for you.) 

I want a scooter for when we perform it next. But, I don't think I'll try for a split at the end. I think I'll just hold onto that last note a bit longer.