Or maybe you have. I remember Karl Haas doing a turn he called the Mystery Composer every once in a while on his old radio show. He’d play a little unfamiliar music, feed you some obscure tidbit about the composer, and dare you to figure out who it was. Then he’d play something else—a slightly less obscure tidbit—and tell you a little more. Eventually you’d figure out it was Bizet or Mendelssohn or whoever. (Yes, the Mystery Composer often turned out to be someone pretty well known.) The game was usually fun. I wish I had the patience to reconstruct a few for you.
Instead I’m just going to tell you about five very creative musicians that you might enjoy knowing. None of them have achieved the name-recognition of Mendelssohn, but they have written some good music in spite of that. And maybe our little non-game will inspire you to tell me about a composer or two that I should have mentioned here.
1. Tobias Hume (?1569–1645). That’s Captain Hume. He was a mercenary, one of the many Scots who fought in Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and Poland during the Thirty Years War. Hume also wrote some very sprightly music. As he said, “My Profession being, as my Education hath beene, Armes, the onely effeminate part of me hath beene Musicke.” What little we do know about Hume is laid out with great humor and humanity by David McGuinness in his booklet notes for Concerto Caledonia’s Captain Tobias Hume: A Scottish Soldier (Delphian DCD34140). McGuinness plays virginals on the release, directs the group, and edited and produced the recording. Good on you, David!
Here’s a bit of “A mery conceit: The Queens delight” from the second of only two publications he issued, Captain Humes Poeticall Musicke of 1607:
Hume: A Mery Conceit (The Queens Delight)
McGuinness speculates that Anne of Denmark, James VI’s consort, had been especially fond of “Tickell, Tickell,” from Hume’s first collection, Musicall Humors (1605), since “A mery conceit” is based on that earlier air. And how did Hume become acquainted with Anne? Perhaps was part of the massive retinue with which James VI sailed from Leith to Kristiania (Oslo) and Copenhagen in 1589, there to meet Anne. Hume fell on hard times later, but he left behind some charming songs, dances, and “character” pieces. Concerto Caledonia, with its instrumentation of renaissance flutes, nyckelharpa, orpharion, cittern, lyra d’amore, various viols and a fine tenor (Thomas Walker), does them all proud, including this little “Pollish Vilanell”:
Hume: A Pollish Vilanell
2. Myroslav Skoryk (b. 1938). I’m loading this one up front, because having heard a good sample of his music, I’m quite serious about beating the drum for this really fine, virtually unknown composer. Why isn’t he more celebrated?
Skoryk is Ukrainian, born in Lviv some 76 years ago. When he was 9, his family was deported to Siberia and not allowed to return home for 8 years. Once back, he entered the local conservatory and then (in the early ‘60s) the Moscow Conservatory, taking the doctoral course with Kabalevsky. He returned again to Ukraine and spent his life there, composing, teaching, administrating. He is the winner of “the prestigious Shevchenko Prize,” among many other honors. All this and more is recounted in Richard Whitehouse’s excellent booklet note for Skoryk: Carpathian Concerto (Naxos 8.573333), a live recording of the Odessa Philharmonic concerts commemorating his 75th birthday.
But think what this means. Skoryk’s parents were apparently visible enough, influential enough, to pose a threat to Stalin and his minions, even in Lviv (in Polish, Lwów, and actually an ancient city of considerable cultural importance). One would understand if he bore some resentment over the years of exile and hardship. But once back in his homeland, Skoryk kept his head down, worked hard, and became an artistic landmark in the region. He is a prolific composer whose music reflects a surprisingly wide range of influences and interests: regional folk music, jazz, the avant-garde, Socialist Realism à la Shostakovich, film and theatre. Never again will I make jokes about Lower Slobbovia or the wretched Elbonians. There are whole worlds out there, with heroes, villains, and great artists who remain utterly unknown to the rest of us: our loss.
It’s hard to choose examples, because the Odessa recording offers so much good music. The album begins with Skoryk’s first big hit, Dytynstvo (“Childhood”) from 1965 and includes works from nearly every decade thereafter. Here’s a taste of the one-movement Violin Concerto No. 7 from 2009:
Violin Concerto No. 7
It’s one of four substantial, lengthy works on the disc. Four shorter pieces round out the collection, including this 1981 Melody:
The High Pass: Melody (version for strings)
Considering it’s a live recording, the sound quality is more than acceptable. There’s some auditorium rumble present (HVAC?) but no audience noise, and the performances are not merely accurate, they’re razor-sharp and warmly expressive. Kudos to conductor Hobart Earle and the Odessa Phil, who, like this music, ought to be more widely known. Strongly recommended.
3. Benjamin Godard (1849–1895). You’re thinking, Wait a minute. I know this one. Yes, you do. And this is what you know:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk84NUWOvEE
. . . the “Berceuse” from his opera Jocelyn. Which is a bit—but only a very little bit—like thinking of Beethoven as that guy who wrote “Für Elise.” For one thing, Godard’s “Berceuse” is a truly beautiful song that rewards any singer who treats it with the sensitivity it deserves.
For another thing, Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony and other works by which we more rightly remember him, but Godard? Alas, no. He is remembered for little other than the “Berceuse.”
Now along comes vol. 63 (!) of Hyperion Records’ series The Romantic Piano Concerto, and we have two-and-a-half more reasons to celebrate Godard: two piano concertos and an Introduction and Allegro. Howard Shelley plays the piano and conducts the Tasmanian SO in sparkling performances that capture the charm of these works. Check out the dramatic opening of Concerto No. 1 in A minor:
Godard: Piano Concerto No 1 in A minor, Op 31 – 1: Andante – Allegro vivace
The concerto is in four movements, like Brahms’s No. 2, but this is not Brahms. None of the movements lasts more than 10 minutes; the Scherzo clocks in at under 5. Godard’s artistic models were conservative Romantic miniaturists like Mendelssohn and Schumann. His biographer John Trevitt tells us that “Godard’s precocity . . . led to exaggerated fame early in his career, resulting in a lack of self-criticism.” Nevertheless he did know how to spin out a tune, as in the slow movement of his Concerto No. 2 in G minor:
Godard: Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor, Op 148 – 2: Andante –
If you like this, you might also want to give Godard’s Concerto romantique for violin and orchestra a try. Trevitt considers it a “worthy addition to the violinist’s repertory,” and there’s a fine recording out there from Chloë Hanslip (Naxos 8.570554). Here’s a taste:
Concerto romantique, Op. 35: IV. Allegro molto
4. Dan Visconti (b. 1982). Here is how Visconti’s Black Bend begins:
Black Bend
And this is what it becomes, bit by painful, langorous, sneaky bit:
Black Bend
There’s more. But getting there is at least as much fun as arriving, maybe more so, because Visconti breaks down blues discourse into all the attendant primal grunts, slides, sighs, whispers, and cries you could ever have imagined, plus a few you couldn’t have.
He says he was inspired “by certain local legends surrounding the collapse of a railroad bridge over a meandering stretch of the Cuyahoga River.” Right. Dan Visconti is not Ukrainian, not French, not a Scot. He’s from Cleveland. And again I have to ask, how come this thirty-something genius isn’t better known, especially in his own country?
You can check out his credentials here—believe me, he’s got ‘em. And his interview for the TED Blog here. (I couldn’t find his 2014 TED Talk.) Black Bend is on a very fine new recording from Sono Luminus entitled American Aggregate (DSL-92179; Blu-ray Pure Audio & CD). The excellent chamber ensemble Inscape—Richard Scerbo, director—is made up of musicians from the D. C. area (service bands!) and the Chesapeake Bay region. They just play the socks off this music, plus works by a bunch of other young or youngish Americans you’ve also probably never heard of. I can’t list them all here, but you can find a longer description of the recording, and of Inscape’s previous outing for Sono Luminus, here. Strongly recommended.
I will close this brief meditation on living American musicians who should be More Beloved Than Rihanna with one more clip from American Aggregate. This is from a work entitled What I Decided to Keep by Stephen Gorbos. He says that memories of Bartok’s 5th String Quartet informed his sense of this work. In terms of structural flow, that may be true, but the sounds it makes are a whole lot funkier.
What I Decided to Keep
5. Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672). Wir müssen die Ordnung haben. For some reason that phrase comes to mind when I think of old Schütz, a composer whose music I respect and have conducted or otherwise performed many times over the years. If there’s anyone on this list that you may have heard of already, should have heard of, it’d be he. Schütz is the most significant German composer to have emerged before J. S. Bach and after Heinrich Isaac, or maybe Michael Praetorius.
But why would die Ordnung (order; regulation) be in order? Schütz’s musical fate was irrevocably cast when he made not one but two trips to Italy early in his career. From 1609 to 1612 he lived in Venice and studied with Giovanni Gabrieli, the remarkable composer and director of music at St. Mark’s Cathedral. In 1628, having established himself as court composer in Dresden, Schütz returned to Venice to hear the music of Claudio Monteverdi and absorb the newer, more operatic style that he had pioneered. Schütz brought both of these Italians’ sensibilities back to Germany and created a profusion of music for church and stage that reflected his great teachers.
At the same time, he somewhat trimmed the sails of sprezzatura and stile recitativo and the “colossal Baroque,” etc., so that the prevailing temperament of his work remained thoroughly Germanic and thus acceptable to his patrons in the North. It seems cleaner and more tightly regulated, in a way that his flamboyant Southern teachers might have considered a bit, well, under-the-top. But that same slightly prosaic quality may well account for Schütz’s continuing popularity, especially with the buttoned-down crowd that has been drawn to church and choral music for centuries. The measured grace of his music offers something comforting, consolatory even, a quality that his Italian mentors cannot match. Listen to this, the first minute-and-a-half of “An den Wassern zu Babel,” from the Psalmen Davids (1619):
Psalmen Davids: 16. Psalm 137: An Den Wassern Zu Babel SWV 37 – Coro Favorito I (1, 3, 5, 8) – Coro Favorito II (2, 4, 7, 9) – Coro Capella I + II
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song, asked us to rejoice in our painful cries, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
It helps to have the German text at hand or you’ll miss the subtle nature of Schütz’s setting. At 1’15” for example, the words und in unserm Heulen fröhlich sein—“and in our painful cries to rejoice”—evoke two paradoxical musical ideas, an empty-sounding moan for Heulen and a livelier motive for fröhlich. The irony of the verse is echoed in the music. Yet overall this setting of the well-known psalm provides a harmoniously flowing affect: we register the sadness of the text but are comforted by the music’s rich chords. Wir müssen die Ordnung haben.
German Baroque specialist Hans-Christoph Rademann, helming the Dresdner Kammerchor and Barockorchester, has been making his way through the complete works of Schütz, and his volume devoted to the Psalmen Davids (Carus 83.255; 2 SACDs) is well worth owning if you have an interest in Baroque music. Rademann has now put out 9 or 10 sets in the series, so I feel obligated to recommend another. It’s difficult. The Musikalisches Exequien (Carus 83.238; SACD) features hi-res sound, but its centerpiece is a funerary work commissioned by an eccentric German count, Heinrich Posthumus Reuss. Count Reuss is reported to have lain in his exquisitely custom-made coffin once or twice just so he could listen to Schütz’s exquisite music before his death. The work is shaped to the needs of the service it anticipated, including an extremely long vocal concerto intended as processional music for the funeral’s distinguished attendees. All in all, less fun than you might think.
Maybe the Auferstehungshistorie (“Resurrection Story”; Carus 83.256) would be a better choice. That way, you could compare Schütz’s skill at oratorio composition with that of Charpentier and Carissimi (see last month’s column). Or, to step away from Rademann’s many volumes now, perhaps our Gentle Reader would prefer a one-disc Schütz sampler, in rather more aggressive surround sound: Polychoral Splendor (audite 92.652; SACD), which I reviewed in this space a year or so ago. It combines works from several Schütz collections with canzone from his mentor Gabrieli. Warmly recommended. One way or another, you need a little Schütz in your life.