Here is another étude by Danish flutist Joachim Andersen. This Adagio in B-flat minor is study No. 16 from his Twenty-Four Etudes for Flute, Op. 33. It can easily be considered a study in accidentals... don't let all those sharps and flats scare you!
This jig is taken from Chicago Police Captain Francis O'Neill's collection The Dance Music of Ireland, published in 1907.
The tune is probably named after Chicago fiddler Edward Cronin (c. 1838–1918), originally from Limerick Junction, County Tipperary and a weaver by trade. O'Neill thought him one of the two best fiddlers in Chicago and praised his playing and his ability to improvise and to compose music, especially hornpipes. O'Neill traveled 12 miles each way to his house twice a week for two years to learn and transcribe tunes. However, “temperament and professional jealousy brought it all to an abrupt end without apparent cause”, although “when in the humor, no man could be more obliging and liberal with his music”.
This march has been among Sousa's most popular for years, considered by many his best known after Stars and Stripes Forever. It still stands as one of Sousa's most played works, and is performed widely by concert and marching bands alike; it is considered to be an essential piece for band literature.
The Washington Post newspaper claims in its history that this march was written as a tribute to the newspaper and performed by Sousa and his band in 1899. However, the work dates to 1889; moreover, The Washington Post in the march's title referred to the Marine contingent posted in the nation's capital at the time, not to the newspaper. It is true that Sousa performed the march at ceremonies held in 1899 by the newspaper, and the work's title was obviously fitting for the occasion.
This duet is sung by Pamina and Papageno in Act I of Mozart's famous opera Die Zauberflöte, or The Magic Flute. Papageno announces to Pamina that her mother, the Queen of the Night, has sent Tamino to her aid. Pamina rejoices to hear that Tamino is in love with her, and then offers sympathy and hope to Papageno, who longs for a wife to love. Together they sing an ode to love: “In men who feel love, a good heart is not lacking”.
Here is another simple étude from Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives. If you can't reach the low E-C# passage (measures 5-6, 21-22, 45-46), you can play both notes one octave higher.
This lively jig first appeared in Francis O'Neill's collection Dance Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1907.
Munster is the largest of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the south west of the island.
Is Flute Sonata in C major, BWV 1033, truly by a Bach? And if so, which Bach? This is one of three “Bach” flute sonatas of questionable attribution; the earliest surviving copy was made by Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who may simply have been serving as his father's copyist.
The work falls into four movements, in something of the chamber sonata style but without explicitly naming any dance patterns until the ending fourth movement, which is actually a pair of graceful minuets. Typically for this format, the second is capped by a terse repeat of the first.
Here is the third and last movement of Georg Philipp Telemann's sixth Canonic Sonata for two flutes. This lively “Allegro assai” in 3/8 time starts and ends in the key of A minor, but has a central section in the parallel major key of A major.
Here is another étude by Danish flutist Joachim Andersen. This Andantino in A-flat major is study No. 17 from his Twenty-Four Etudes for Flute, Op. 33.
This jig first appeared in Chicago Police Captain Francis O'Neill's collection The Dance Music of Ireland, published in 1907.
When do you write the overture to your opera? According to Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, you should wait for inspiration until the evening before the opening night, because “nothing primes inspiration more than necessity”. Fortunately for him, Rossini was famous for his writing speed. His opera La gazza ladra (literally, The Thieving Magpie) was no exception. It was reported that the producer had to lock Rossini in a room the day before the first performance in order to write the overture. Rossini then threw each sheet out of the window to his copyists, who wrote out the full orchestral parts.
This overture makes a few appearances in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and has also provided the background score for many television and radio commercials. It also appears during the famous baby-switching scene in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America.
Appearing at the beginning of Act II, this is the first aria sung by the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. She is very sad, and worried about her husband's infidelity.
O Love, give me some remedy
For my sorrow, for my sighs!
Either give me back my darling
Or at least let me die.
Here is another simple melodic étude from Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives.
The earliest appearance of this tune is found in the first volume of Smollett Holden's collection A Collection of Old Established Irish Slow and Quick Tunes, published in Dublin in 1805. Many variants have since emerged.
“Chanson de Matin” (literally “Morning Song”) was originally composed by Edward Elgar for violin and piano; later, the English composer also arranged it for a small orchestra. It was first published in 1899, though it is thought that it was almost certainly written in 1889 or 1890.
This “song” (the French chanson does mean “song”, although this piece is an instrumental one) has often invited comparison with its companion piece, “Chanson de Nuit”, and though critically it has been described as less profound, its fresh melodic appeal has made it way more popular.
Here is a new duet from Ernesto Köhler's Forty Progressive Duets, Op. 55, Volume I. This is a very simple but melodious piece, mainly in the key of C major but with a couple of modulations to G major and A minor.
Here is another étude by Danish flutist Joachim Andersen. This Allegro moderato in F minor is study No. 18 from his Twenty-Four Etudes for Flute, Op. 33.
The earliest appearance of this jig is possibly in the music manuscript collection of Uilleann piper and Anglican cleric James Goodman, who collected it in Munster (the south-western province of Ireland) in the mid-19th century. Goodman's version was in Mixolydian mode, although versions in D major (with C-sharps) are just as common.
This courante (or, to follow the Italian spelling used by Bach, “Corrente”) constitutes the second movement of the famous Partita in A minor for solo flute. It is a courante of the livelier Italian-derived variety, relatively quick-tempoed and in simple triple meter. Also true to tradition are the asymmetrical dimensions of the movement's two “halves”: twenty-two bars, forty-one bars.
Truly striking is the unexpected high D-sharp that the flute hollers out near the end of the first part and then leaves without ever resolving in the same register, forcing us to be content with an E-natural in the octave below.
Luigi Hugues was an Italian amateur musician of the late 19th century, best known today as a composer and arranger of virtuoso works for the flute. Among his didactic works is “La scuola del flauto” (“The School of the Flute”), a collection of flute duets divided in 4 levels of difficulties. The duet we present today is No. 2 of the second volume.
Thanks to Paolo from Italy for contributing this piece!
This is étude No. 8 from Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives.
This jig first appeared in Francis O'Neill's collection The Dance Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1907. In Irish Folk Music: a Fascinating Hobby (1910), O'Neill remarked:
Through Edward Cronin's efforts we obtained from John Mulvihill, a native of Limerick, an unpublished jig named the “Stolen Purse”, which in its quaint tonality indicates its evolution from some traditional lament.
Cronin, a excellent fiddler, was a member of the Irish Music Club in Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century, and was himself born in Limerick in the 1840s.
According to some scholars, the Salve Regina in C minor might be the last work written by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. It has been said that had the Italian composer not died when he was only 26, he might have been as great a composer as Mozart.
Pergolesi's setting of this traditional Latin prayer is passionate, richly expressive, and yet somewhat dark. Indeed, the first of its six movements is a largo of exquisite beauty, a perfect illustration of a particular kind of baroque beauty, intensely expressive but at the same time seeming to hold back a freedom of lyricism.
This piece was originally a vocal trio from Act I of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, or The Magic Flute. Sarastro's moorish slave Monostatos is trying to seduce Pamina, when Papageno, sent ahead by Tamino to find Pamina, enters. Monostatos and Papageno are each terrified by the other's strange appearance and both flee the stage, but Papageno soon returns and announces to Pamina that her mother has sent Tamino to her aid.
Here is another étude by Danish flutist Joachim Andersen. This Adagio in E-flat major is study No. 19 from his Twenty-Four Etudes for Flute, Op. 33.
The earliest appearances of this tune are as an untitled jig in P.W. Joyce's Ancient Irish Music (1873) and Elias Howe's 1000 Jigs and Reels (c. 1867). The title “A Trip to Galway” is first found in Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883). P.W. Joyce writes: “This spirited tune has remained in my memory since I was a child [in the 1840s in County Limerick] and I could hardly help learning it, for it was a general favourite with fiddlers, pipers and dancers.”
The symphonic suite Scheherazade was composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888. It is based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as The Arabian Nights. Rimsky-Korsakov's headnote explains the scenario:
The Sultan Schahriar, persuaded of the falseness and faithlessness of women, has sworn to put to death each one of his wives after the first night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by interesting him in tales she told him during 1001 nights. Pricked by curiosity, the Sultan put off his wife's execution from day to day, and at last gave up entirely his bloody plan.
Four such lifesaving narratives, rendered in music, follow. In later years, however, Rimsky-Korsakov declared that Scheherazade should be regarded as a symphonic suite with an unspecified Oriental program.
The theme we present today is probably the most famous, and appears at the beginning of the third movement, titled “The Young Prince and the Young Princess”.
Here is another nice duet from La scuola del flauto (The School of the Flute) by Luigi Hugues, this time taken from volume 1.
Thanks to Paolo for contributing this piece!
This Allegro moderato is étude No. 9 from Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Gariboldi's collection of 30 Etudes faciles et progressives.
This jig is taken from Francis O'Neill's The Dance Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1907. It was probably derived from a Scottish tune, first published under the title “Miss Douglas Brigton's Jigg” in John Bowie's A Collection of Strathspey Reels and Country Dances (Edinburgh, 1789).