#program music

Evoking specific scenes could be challenging, but with this, music has a story inside it and allows the person imagine the narrative too.

Absolute music is also good, but prog does something important in storytelling, since it can allow music to evolve in form. And no, I'm not saying that absolute music can't do the same thing. I'm just talking about when following the narrative requires changing the form.

My opinion: without program music, movie soundtracks would've been impossible to make.

I can see Flynn as “have you ever listened to this album high?” And then gets absolutely destroyed at the board meeting because the system doesn’t work for a solid week.

The Lone Howl (2020) is a programmatic piece that narrates the story of the Assyrian invasion from the time of the prophet Isaiah. It fuses the following two features – the use of found sounds as compositional instruments and elements of Arab music.

Synopsis

In the 8th century BCE, the word of God came to His prophet Isaiah:

“Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and rejoice over Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.” [Isaiah 8:6-8, ESV]

For this week of Russian Composers, I decided to focus on Russian music that has a fascination with the “fantastic”, with magic and Romantic folk tales and other cultures, and how that influenced orchestral writing. The forefront of this style of orchestral music was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who ironically developed this Russian style through works that were about places other than Russia. For this suite, he was inspired by tales from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and used its framing narrative to connect four symphonic poems of contrasting character. Scheherezade, the main character of the tale, is represented by the solo violin and a delicate wavering theme. Originally, Rimsky-Korsakov was going to go with more abstract titles for each movement [“Prelude”, “Ballade”, “Adagio” and “Finale” respectively] but his musical colleagues suggested he keep some hints of the program. So, each movement in a way “tells the story” of a different tale, all strung together by Scheherezade’s theme. The frame narrative is about a Sultan, a misogynist whose distrust and hatred of women leads him to kill every woman he marries after their first night together. Scheherezade is chosen to be the next bride, so in order to escape this violent fate, she tells him a story, ending on a cliff hanger just as the sun comes up, leading him to keep her alive so he can hear the rest of the tale the next night. She does this every night, for a thousand more nights, until in the end the Sultan recants his vow for he has truly fallen in love with Scheherezade. It is a really dark and disturbing story, but we have to remember that it is ancient Middle Eastern poetry. The work opens with a bold and growling theme from the brass, the Sultan’s theme, which acts as the curtain raiser, before Scheherezade is introduced by the solo violin. Her theme bleeds into the first story, Sinbad’s ship. Both themes are morphed around a gentle swaying pattern in the orchestra, like waves in the sea. The music here is gorgeous, constantly modulating on an ‘octatonic scale’ which gives off this feeling of wonder and discovery. At the end, Scheherezade’s theme returns, slightly varied in a short cadenza that acts as a recitative toward the next tale, the Kalandar Prince, which is a set of variations, mostly focusing on taking the melody through different moods and orchestrations. It builds up in intensity, and ending in a thunderous coda, it takes us right into the third movement, the young Prince and Princess, a lusciously written love duet. The last movement, the Festival in Baghdad, opens with another Scheherezade cadenza before breaking out in a rowdy dance, which starts to incorporate ideas from earlier in the suite. It ends with a great crash, the sinking of Sinbad’s ship, and then we drift out of the reverie into “real life”, where the Sultan’s theme is transformed, and Scheherezade sighs in peace, now free from the threat of death.

Stay tuned for more Russian composers this week on musicainextenso!