The earliest known appearance of this jig is in the August 1842 edition of the Dublin Magazine, in which collector Henry Hudson remarks:
A merry pipe-tune, for which we are indebted to Paddy Coneely. One of its many rustic names may be said to be “The Two-penny Jig.” When we see a tune genuinely belonging to this class, we always desire to have a drone in the bass, even when arranging it for the piano-forte.
This piece of orchestral music was composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, which premiered in Oslo in 1876, and was later extracted as the final piece of the “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1”, Op. 46.
A fantasy play written in verse, Peer Gynt tells of the adventures of the eponymous Peer. The sequence illustrated by the music of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” is when Peer sneaks into the Mountain King's castle. The piece then describes Peer's attempts to escape from the King and his trolls.
The simple theme begins slowly and quietly in the lowest registers of the orchestra. It is played first by the cellos and bassoons, signifying Peer Gynt's slow, careful footsteps. After being recited, the main theme is then very slightly modified with a few different ascending notes, but transposed up a perfect fifth (to the key of F-sharp major, the dominant key, but with flattened sixth) and played on different instruments: these are the King's trolls.
In order to respect the original key of the piece, we had to make use of low B, which can only be produced on a B foot flute. If your flute has a C foot, or if you find it difficult to play that low, simply transpose up an octave the two phrases that start on a low B. (Remember to revert to the written octaves after the half notes, or you'll run into the fourth register!)
There are many and varied opinions about the origins of this traditional song. Some of the proposed origins are Appalachian folk, old Irish folk, and Catskills folk. One theory is that it originates from the Negro Spirituals, and there was a deliberate concealment of the song's origins. Clearly the song is of a spiritual nature, as the “Wayfaring Stranger” sings of the hardships of his temporal life passing by and refers to his journeying on to a better place.
This song has been recorded countless times, but in the 1940s it became strongly associated with American folk singer Burl Ives, who made it one of his signature songs. Ives even used it as the title of his CBS radio show and his autobiography. For these reasons, Ives is sometimes referred to as “The Wayfaring Stranger”.
Here is a new étude from the first book of Twenty Easy Melodic Progressive Studies by Italian composer Ernesto Köhler. It starts off in D minor, but visits the keys of G minor, A major, E major and C-sharp minor before returning to the principal key.
This jig can be found in Francis O'Neill's collection Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903. O'Neill names as his source for this tune “O'Reilly”, probably blind piper Marin O'Reilly, a contemporary of O'Neill's who won first prize in the pipers' competition at the annual Feis in Dublin in 1901.
It must however be pointed out that the jig is closely related to “Jackson's Walk to Limerick”, a tune which is traditionally attributed to 18th-century gentleman piper Walker ‛Piper’ Jackson.
This Largo is the third movement of the last of the six Op. 7 flute sonatas with bass accompaniment by French flutist and composer Jean-Daniel Braun, published in Paris in 1736.
This famous aria is sung by Tamino in the Finale of Act I of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. Tamino plays his magic flute in hopes of summoning Pamina and Papageno, and the tones of his instrument summon a group of magically tamed beasts.
How strong is your magic tone!
For, gracious flute, gracious flute,
Through your playing
Even wild animals feel joy.
Then Tamino hears Papageno's pipes, which Papageno is blowing in response to the sound of Tamino's flute. Ecstatic at the thought of meeting Pamina, Tamino hurries off.
This study in triplets is taken from Giuseppe Gariboldi's Vingt petites études, or Twenty Studies. It opposes two long successions of triplets with a central 3/4-time section marked grandioso (“majestic”, “grand”).
This tune appears in both of Chicago Police Captain Francis O'Neill's large collections Music of Ireland (1903) and The Dance Music of Ireland (1907). Curiously, O'Neill prints the jig twice, once as “The Merry Maiden” and once as “Willy Walsh's Jig”, with only a difference between the two in the last two measures. Both versions are sourced to “O'Reilly”; perhaps Martin O'Reilly, “The Blind Piper of Galway”, or possibly Philip O'Reilly from Cavan.
Arguably the best-known number ever written by Giuseppe Verdi, the “Chorus of Hebrew Slaves”, Va', pensiero, sull'ali dorate (“Fly, thought, on golden wings”), is regularly given an encore when performed today; indeed, it is the only encore Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine has ever allowed.
This chorus from the third act of Nabucco (1842), inspired by Psalm 137. recollects the story of Jewish exiles from Babylon after the loss of the First Temple in Jerusalem. The opera, with its powerful chorus, established Verdi as a major composer in 19th century Italy.
Some scholars initially regarded it as an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country in the years up to 1861 and free it from foreign control. The chorus' theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines like O mia patria, si bella e perduta (“O my country, so beautiful and so lost”) was thought to have resonated with many Italians. However, much of modern scholarship has refuted this concept, and fails to see connections between Nabucco and Italian nationalism.
As was his practice with most of his dances in his early years, Beethoven scored his 12 German Dances for orchestra first, then transcribed them for piano. The instrumentation he employed in the orchestral rendition of the third dance, which we present today in an arrangement for four flutes, was oboes, bassoons, horns and strings. Among the twelve dances, this third one is particularly notable for its skillful polyphonic writing.
Here is another relatively easy étude, in F major this time, from the first book of Twenty Easy Melodic Progressive Studies by flutist and composer Ernesto Köhler.
This jig, first found in Francis O'Neill's collection Music of Ireland (Chicago, 1903), is an Irish version of the traditional Scottish tune “Blue Bonnets Over the Border”.
This Largo is the fourth and final movement of the last of the six Op. 7 flute sonatas with bass accompaniment by French flutist and composer Jean-Daniel Braun, published in Paris in 1736.
This barcarolle, titled “Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour”, is taken from Act II of the 1851 opera The Tales of Hoffmann (Les contes d'Hoffmann) by German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach.
Despite being the famous number in the opera, the duet was not written by Offenbach with Les contes d'Hoffmann in mind. He wrote it as the “Elves' Song” in the opera Die Rheinnixen (aka Les fées du Rhin, i.e. The Rhine Nixies), which premiered in 1864. Offenbach died in 1880 with Les contes d'Hoffmann unfinished, and it was Ernest Guiraud who completed the scoring and incorporated this excerpt from one of Offenbach's earlier, long-forgotten operas into the new opera.
The Barcarolle has been incorporated into many films, including Life Is Beautiful and Titanic. It also provided the tune for Elvis Presley's rendition of the song “Tonight is so Right for Love” in the 1960 film G.I. Blues.
Today's piece is étude No. 19 from Italian flutist and composer Giuseppe Gariboldi's Twenty Studies, Op. 132.