watch: https://youtu.be/-ul7M0MPw2M?si=HrWTttKxswSaBsv5

Christina Perri - Jar of Hearts (forgiving piano)

Recording at the Film Scoring Academy in Europe

A Place Time Forgot

A small, blue edition of Hart Crane's masterpiece, The Bridge, has been living in my library for decades. The thought of doing something musically with it popped into mind now and then, but I never quite mustered the courage to do anything with it.  However, during the days of coronavirus driven isolation, when the importance of human connectedness, so aptly symbolized by the image of the bridge, had been hammered into our consciousness, the time had come. 

For those so inclined, read the poem. The Bridge, over the course of its 15 chapters, is an attempt to capture the essence of America in the 1920s, as Crane experienced it. I think he succeeded in capturing the complexities of America - from its violent beginnings as the culture of native Americans was crushed by expanding European cultures to the crass commercialism that erupted at the turn of the century (and still exists, in spades, today), tempered by the buoyant optimism and hope for mankind in spirits like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and the American transcendentalists. But above all, the poem relies upon the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of connectedness, spanning the myriad of events across time and geography that culminate in what we are, wherever we are, today.

Crane’s poem attempted perhaps too much.  The span of the Brooklyn Bridge became a symbol of everything connected to everything else – the past to the present, urban America to rural America, a vast dream of America from its pre-European existence to the bustling America of big, industrial cities and great railroads spanning the continent.

In this music, the solo viola, in its middle range, spans between the musical soundscapes that represent the images evoked by the poem.  It reaches between the low and high instruments, between the dark, swirling eddies of water beneath the bridge to the searing sunlight, piercing the harp-like cables of the bridge, while seagulls soar overhead.  It also is the voice of the poem’s protagonist, seeking redemption in a violent and crassly commercial world.

Scattered, like leaves, in the music, are apparitions from the past – a fragment of a melody from a court composer to Ferdinand and Isabella, a made-up Irish gig, bits of jazz and flashes of tunes from the 1920s that Hart Crane would have heard during his days in New York.
 


Indiana

Claire de Lune - Debussy

12 Babbie's Daughter

11 Elevazione

10 Lost Sea Voices

Written by Caroline Dale
Published by BMG Rights

08 Merlin's Hat

Sonata 46 for violin and classical guitar

Sandra Haniszewska - Violin
Tomasz Kandulski - Classical Guitar

I was attending music school as an undergraduate in 1998 at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, Matthew Gould (of Duo 46) was attending as a Doctoral student in guitar and living in Austin with his partner, violinist Beth Schneider. They had started Duo 46 maybe a few years before this. I was hanging out with them a lot in those days - just going over to their apartment or whatever. One day, Matt said to me, "Hey man, why don't you write us a piece?", and I said, "Umm.. ok."

At this point, I don't think they expected much. They hadn't had that many pieces written for them yet, and I was just starting as a composer, only in my second year of school. I decided I wanted to write something that would really show off what they could do technically and musically, and that would leave audiences breathless.

Not knowing how to begin, I lifted a line from a piece that I had just written - a solo flute piece titled "The Five Rings of Miyamoto Musashi". That became the opening line of the piece. Then, inspired by the one movement sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, I wrote the piece based on that line. The piece is full of things that I was just discovering and becoming influenced by at the time: baroque sonatas, renaissance lute music (hence the "lute" tuning of the guitar), the tangos of Piazzolla as well as the ever-present rock and heavy metal that has always been part of my music. Since Duo 46 premiered the piece in 1999, Sonata 46 has become one of my most frequently and widely performed pieces.

Notes

Sonata 46 (Haniszewska-Kandulski Duo)

Johan Sebastian Bach: Double for violin solo in B minor, Partita 1

Michael Lynn - recorder, Kathie Stewart - Flute - with Apollo's Fire

Please support me by joining my Patreon page: www.patreon.com/MichaelLynnFlutes

12 Babbie's Daughter

dharma-carolinedale

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ڤِيونـا؛ڤِيكتور،!.

Sonoscapist

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