Category Archives: Notes on Music

The philosophy of music: or the music of philosophy ?

Notes on Music

Lunchtime Concert series featured in EK One magazine

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I’m delighted to see that the current Lunchtime Concerts series, now celebrating its ten-year anniversary of sponsorship with Furley Page Solicitors, is featured in the recent issue of EK One, the luxury bi-monthly lifestyle magazine for East Kent.

Flip to page 10 for the feature, including a photograph.

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Notes on Music

On Radio 3 this week: Shorter and the Queen of Sheba

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Just to draw your attention to a couple of highlights on Radio 3’s iPlayer this week.

First up, the colossus of the saxophone world Wayne Shorter leads his quartet in a live session recorded at the Barbican earlier this month. Former Miles Davis sideman, one of the original members of fusion giants Weather Report, and a player who showed there could be life after Coltrane, this is Shorter’s first UK appearance for a number of years.

Also on iPlayer is a rarity, a piece from composer Alec Roth: his Departure of the Queen of Sheba, (1999)  received its first broadcast in a concert with the Orchestra of the Swan in Loughborough last night. Roth has written some fantastic pieces: his Chinese Gardens for tenor and guitar is a miniature gem of immaculate refinement, whilst his choral work Shared Ground displays a rich harmonic language with sumptuous colour, with the occasional hint of Vaughan Williams.

Roth’s companion piece to Handel’s lively depiction of her arrival depicts the famous Queen and King Solomon meeting in the Garden of Earthly delights; Roth includes Handel’s theme in an altered fashion, and the work is scored for the same forces as Handel’s but includes a cor anglais. The emotional atmosphere of Roth’s work is far removed from the buccolic jollity of the Queen’s arrival, and instead is profoundly lachrymaic, with the oboe and cor anglais weaving heart-rending melodic lines in a tender dialogue over an almost minimalist accompanying texture.

The piece beings forty minutes in to the programme, and is preceded by a short interview with the composer.

Don’t miss either.

Notes on Music

All that jazz: the KD Jazz Orchestra at the Canterbury Festival

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With the Canterbury Festival in full swing, the music department has a foothold in events both this week and next.

KD Jazz Orchestra

This Friday, our very own conductor of the University Concert and Big Bands, the light-fingered Ian Swatman, is appearing at the Festival Club, St. Alphege Lane, at 8.30pm as part of the exuberant and lively KD Jazz and Dance Orchestra. Alongside Ian are several of our visiting instrumental teachers: Peter Cook (sax), Steve Wassell (sousaphone) and Chris Hall (drums), whilst Kevin Dickon (trumpet) also guests with the University Big Band.

Featuring a foot-tapping programme of music including Dixieland jazz and the music of Michael Buble, this’ll have you dancing in the aisles! (If they permit it, he added hastily…).

Next week, some of the University’s young and talented Music Scholars appear in a lunchtime on Friday 28 October: more on that anon…

Notes on Music

Reporting live from Open Day…

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It seems but scant moments ago that we were here at the music stand at the University’s Open Day; checking back, I see it’s been about four weeks since last we were here; how time flies when you’re busy getting music together at the start of the academic year!

I walked across to the Sports Hall this morning at 8.30 to set up, accompanying a chap who was coming to the Open Day; he’d come straight from working a night-shift directly onto the campus to come and find out about courses of study in IT: now that’s dedication – hats off to you, sir!

It’s now 9.30am, and we’ve already had two visitors to the ‘Making Music’ stand asking about choral and piano-playing opportunities.

We’ll be reporting live from the stand throughout the day – and on Twitter – keep up via @Unikent_music.

New this time are live updates from the University on Twitter (or via text) from @UniKentLive; follow them for live updates and assistance throughout the day!

10.20am; our usual competition for ‘Visitor from the Farthest-Flung Corner of the World’ has had a strong contender with someone coming from Spain. Nine visitors so far….

12.30pm: we’re now up to thirty-five visitors: no further challenges to the ‘Farthest-Flung’ competition, although a tip of the hat to visitors from Bath and Torquay! A variety of singers and instrumentalists coming to the stand. When’s lunch ?

2pm: heading into the final hour of the day, I notice the Twitter-trending on #kentopenday is keeping the Twitterverse busy, lots of reaction to today’s events from visitors.  Visitors from Southampton, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Hertfordshire and elsewhere having been keeping the music stand busy. Lots of awareness of, and interest in, the new Colyer-Fergusson music building and the opportunities to use it when it opens net summer. And we’ve not even finished the ‘Revels’ that we opened at 10 o’clock this morning: that shows you how busy we’ve been. I wonder if there’s a recognised system for measuring levels of industry by the amount of sweets that have been unconsumed ?

3pm: and that’s it! Good to see so many people interested in making music at the University from September next year, save travelling home, we look forward to seeing you in the new music building!

Notes on Music

Meet the Music Society: music social tonight

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With the heady excitement of Freshers’ Week behind us, this week sees the musical gears of the University begin to grind into action.

Tonight, the Music Social gives students new to the University the chance to meet this year’s Music Society, and find out about all the music going on this year; it’s your chance to network like-minded musicians, from string and brass players looking to form quartets to singers wanting to audition for Chamber Choir or join Chorus, lovers of ‘Glee’ to find out about Sing! or form their own ensembles, or guitarists and bass-players looking to form a band. Free refreshments, musical entertainment (and possible even a quiz); tonight, Eliot Hall, 7.30pm.

On Wednesday, Concert and Big Band swing into action: Concert Band rehearsals begin at 7.30pm, Big Band at 8.45pm, again in Eliot Hall.

On Thursday, the Orchestra stirs into life: string players at Grade 6 standard and above welcome, woodwind and brass players may also come along and will need to sign up at the end of the rehearsal for principal player auditions this coming Saturday.

Next week: Chorus and Chamber Choir. More details on those two soon.

Notes on Music

Whatever you do: make music!

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Whatever your musical tastes and interests, the University has something for everyone! From Chorus and Orchestra to Concert and Big Band,  Chamber Choir, jazz, Sing! and Guitar Club, plus a range of music societies catering for your desires: make music a part of your university life.

University Big BandVisit the music department website to explore the range of music-making activities on offer, and use the ‘Getting Started‘ page to guide you through all the auditions and first rehearsals as term begins.

Whatever you do: make music!

Notes on Music

A feast of Fitkin on Radio 3

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For all the Fitkin fans amongst us, there’s a veritable Fitkin-fest on Radio 3 this week.

From Monday, and on iPlayer until next Monday, there’s the chance to hear the London premiere of L, written as a present for and here also performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Then from Tuesday (also on iPlayer for a week here), there’s an interview with Fitkin himself on ‘In Tune,’ together with the composer playing three short piano pieces live in the studio, and a broadcast of ‘Metal’ and an extract from ‘Circuit.’

From tonight, there will be the chance to hear the Prom premiere of his Cello Concerto, also written for Yo-Yo Ma, after which is a broadcast of some of his chamber works performed by the London Sinfonietta Academy Ensemble, from the ‘Proms Composer Portraits,’ where Fitkin will be in conversation with Tom Service, and presenting his ‘Sciosophy,’ ‘Hurl,’ and ‘Sinew.’

A previous post about Fitkin, including the chance to listen to some of his pieces, appeared on here back in February.

A Fervent Feast from Radio 3: don’t miss.

And here’s part of ‘Loud’ from earlier this year at London’s King’s Place:

 

 

Notes on Music, Now Hear This!

Sweet melancholy: Satie’s ‘Je te veux’

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There is something almost unbearably melancholic about Satie’s elegaic song, ‘Je te veux,’ especially in this beautifully nuanced performance by Jessye Norman.

ScoreThe first phrase yearns upwards, starting on the mediant and moving E – G – D ; there’s no tonic in this first gesture, instead the phrase reaches beyond it to land on the ‘D’ before falling back to ‘C,’ although not for long: the phrase then descends D – C – B – A, with a brief trip to E before the B (the sweeping melody rising from the bass-clef beginning in bar 5). In fact, on closer inspection, the melody only articulates a ‘C’ once in its whole sixteen-bar duration; the leading-note, B natural, appears to have a greater significance, as though the melody is aspiring to, but canever quite attain, the tonic.

That initial gesture is the key to the whole piece – a yearning, a reaching for something (or someone), with the arch-shape of the melody going beyond the tonic and and moving over it. without staying on it for any significant length. The fact that the melodic line doesn’t dwell on the tonic gives the piece its rootless, moving quality. The only time we really feel at ease is at the end of the verse (and its subsequent reprises), when the line finally descends onto, and remains on, C, a fact Satie emphasises at the eventual end of the piece when the melody ends with those final three descending notes (E to C) transposed up an octave.

(You can see a copy of the score for solo piano here.)

Satie published it in several incarnations – piano and voice (1903), orchestra, brass and piano solo. For all his riotous tricks in the later ballet scores Parade and Relache, the quirky titles and in-score annotations for the performer to read in piano works such as the Sonatine bureacratique, Je te veux is perhaps a rare moment of Satie wearing his heart on his sleeve. It’s a short, lyrical, and somehow achingly sad moment amongst the rest of Satie’s challenging output.