“The Plow That Broke the Plains” was composed by Thomson in 1936 for a documentary film of the same name.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
April 2023
Virgil Thomson, “The Plow That Broke the Plains”
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Category Archives: my favorite music
Virgil Thomson, “The River”
The orchestral suite “The River” was composed by Thomson in 1938 for a documentary file of the same name.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
April 2023
Virgil Thomson, “Five Songs from William Blake”
Besides Thomson’s musical setting of the poems — posted here — I have posted (Word document above) the text of the poems.
— Roger W. Smith
April 2023
Aaron Copland, “Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson”
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2023
Vivaldi, “Qui sedes ad dexteram Patrtis”
Vivaldi, “Qui sedes ad dexteram Patrtis”
from his Gloria, RV 588
Sometimes I think that Vivaldi does not get as much credit as he deserves.
Which is to say that everyone knows The Four Seasons — one hears it in advertising — but many of the choral works, such as this one (the lesser known of three Glorias known to have been composed by Vivaldi in his lifetime), are not preformed or heard that often.
This performance is by the Budapest Madrigal Choir under the direction of Ferenc Szekeres.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
January 2023
post updated; 50s and 60s songs
Glass, “Satyagraha”
I am posting here some of my favorite parts of Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha (Sanskrit सत्याग्रह, satyāgraha “insistence on truth,” 1979).
Loosely based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the opera comprises the second part of a trilogy of Glass operas including Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten.
The title refers to Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent resistance to injustice, Satyagraha, and the text, from the Bhagavad Gita, is sung in the original Sanskrit.
I have known the piece, which I admire, since the early 1980s.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2022
Monteverdi post updated
Thomas Tomkins
I am posting here a few selections by the Welsh composer Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656).
He is a new discovery for me.
— Roger W. Smith
March 2022
selections from Prokofiev’s score for the film Ivan the Terrible
I have posted her selected tracks from Sergei Prokofiev’s score for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Иван Грозный, Ivan Grozniy). The film was released in two parts in 1944 and 1958. Eisenstein died in 1948.
My cherished friend from New York, Bill Dalzell, who introduced me to Ivan the Terrible and many other great films, remarked that Ivan the Terrible — in which, as he would have said, pertaining to his comment, Prokofiev’s music was an important factor (in making what he said true) — is like a Russian Orthodox service: the music, the setting, the scenes (such as the one of Ivan’s coronation) . I think he would have said, especially the music.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
March 2022
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See also my post:
on aesthetic and cultural appreciation of literature and film; my favorite directors