Friday, October 1, 2021

The Renaissance in Music and the Arts

 by 

The idea of the Renaissance, in which language, literature, the arts and music saw a remarkable change and renewal, started gradually taking shape in the 14th century, celebrated then and later by writers, artists and musicians such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cola di Rienzi, Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Dufay, Monteverdi, Lasso, Palestrina, and many others. The Renaissance’s human spirit, ‘being born again’, shaped not only musical, artistic and literary production, but also laid the spiritual, intellectual and moral foundation of life well into the 19th century.

Music, according to Tinctoris, a Renaissance era theorist from the Netherlands, is a ‘nova ars’ – new art – which rejected all that had grown stale from the Middle Ages, and focused instead on infusing it with sweetness and truth (‘suavitas et veritas’). Thinkers and theorists such as Tinctoris joined Italian musicians, such as Gafori, to establish a systematic theory of composition.

During the Renaissance music became polyphonic, leaving the ‘linearity’ of the plainchant monophony of the Middle Ages. The tonic triad centers the musical composition and each voice, unrestricted, equal in freedom and authority, weaving together, creates a musical unity, seeing the work as a harmonic whole. Renaissance composers found a new relationship to language, to word and voice, to prosody and meter, and to the pictorial and emotional content of their texts.

One of the most significant achievements of the time in music and painting is the transition from successive to simultaneous composition. In painting, the classical triangle (just as the tonic triad in music) centers the image on canvas. Painting during the Renaissance era abandoned the medieval superposition of narrative scenes and arrived at the central perspective, at a definite element of form from a single point of sight to the unity of time, action and space. In Botticelli’s painting, the vanishing point is centered on the Holy Family contained in the classical triangle in the center of the painting, which is set into an Italian landscape. The clothing of the Magi and their retinue (Italian courtiers) is in the style of Renaissance Italy, which was intended to demonstrate unity of time, action and space, i.e. order, balance and harmony. The light within the painting is evenly distributed, leaving nothing in the dark, nothing ‘unseen’. Painting found its depth, so that viewers of these paintings could perceive the work almost as if they were looking through a window into three-dimensional space. Painters reinforced this perspective by framing their paintings with replicated window frames to further enhance and emphasize the ‘modern’ three-dimensionality of their work.

From the Renaissance on, the day began to be measured in twenty-four hour periods, which, when applied to theatre and opera, becomes the famous “règle des 24 heures” (24 hour rule). It stipulated that all action on stage has to be started and completed within 24 hours – a rule which continued until the 19th century and was broken only by the Romantic time period.

Again, painting and music found their equivalent in the literature of the time, where protagonists find psychological depth.

In the music of the late Renaissance however, a different texture emerges, an antagonism between discant and bass begins and an entirely new sense of form emerges: a sensuous delight in color and the expression of extreme emotion replaces harmony, order and balance – the Baroque casts its shadow.

Classical Mercury: Freddie and the Bohemian Rhapsody

 

by Maureen Buja, Interlude
Dragging Freddie Mercury to the realm of classical music

Freddie Mercury

We don’t think of the late Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) in the realm of classical music except for his duets with Montserrat Caballée. Secretly though, the world of classical music has been looking at the music of Freddie Mercury and dragging it over to the classical side.

Queen

Queen

Looking at A Night at the Opera (1975), Queen’s breakout album, we have to focus on the most memorable piece of that album, Bohemian Rhapsody, which had the whole world singing both the solo and supporting voices. And, of all the songs by Queen, this song has had, for better or worse, the most classical makeovers.

Danny Saucedo (2013) (photo by Frankie Fouganthin)

Danny Saucedo (2013) (photo by Frankie Fouganthin)

The problem with the song is that someone has to be Freddie Mercury and very few singers can or want to take on that responsibility. The Swedish singer Danny Saucedo, who made his name in 2006 winning the Swedish version of Idol, took it on with a backing choir with some success. You want the choir to be a bit more precise, particularly at the beginning, but the recording itself seems to be a large part of the problem.

Freddie Mercury: Bohemian Rhapsody (arr. A. Goransson and P. Olofson) (Danny Saucedo, soloist; Adolf Fredriks Gosskor; Pelle Olofson, cond.)

Forestella

Forestella

The K-Pop group Forestella got around the soloist problem by having all members of the group take the lyrics, either singly or together.


Sebastian Di Bin

Sebastian Di Bin

Solo piano versions make up for the big size of the performing ensemble by changing the character of the work.

Anderson and Roe Piano Duo

Anderson and Roe Piano Duo

Duo piano versions give us a bit more.

Freddie Mercury: Bohemian Rhapsody (arr. G. Anderson and E.J. Roe for 2 pianos) (Anderson and Roe Piano Duo)

Philharmonix–The Vienna Berlin Music Club

Philharmonix–The Vienna Berlin Music Club

Chamber ensembles give us a different reflection, but we’re still lacking that solo sound. This one, German/Austrian group Philharmonix (The Vienna Berlin Music Club) add an intro by Bach with curious modulations.


United States Air Force Band of Mid-America

United States Air Force Band of Mid-America

As good as the United States Air Force Band is, their version is just a little feeble and too square.

David Garrett

David Garrett

When the soloist is not a vocalist but an instrumentalist, some interesting versions start to emerge. With violin soloist David Garrett, who, after his childhood start as a classical player, turned to the crossover side to add pop and rock music to his repertoire, we have a virtuoso player taking on a virtuoso apart. For his performance he is backed not only by a rock band but also a chamber orchestra, who seem to be adding all the parts previously played on synthesizer.

Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman

The final version we’ll look at, although it’s certainly not the end to all the versions of Bohemian Rhapsody, is one done by Rick Wakeman. Wakeman, who has his own reputation as a progressive rock musician, being part of the group Yes on and off for more than 30 years, is also a formidable keyboardist. His solo channels not only Freddie Mercury’s original music but also adds in a bit of Mozart, a bit of his own music, a bit of prog-rock, and re-orchestrates the piece sometimes in the style of the Beatles. It’s a curious mix of classical and pop styles.

There are still other versions out there for clarinet ensemble, marching band, for full symphony orchestra, and so on, even the Muppets complete with singing chickens, singing bananas, and explosions.

The work itself was radical on so many fronts. Its video was credited by Rolling Stone as ‘practically inventing the music video seven years before MTV went on the air.’ Its construction without a refrain chorus that was the standard for pop music at the time, its ballad section, its operatic section, its hard rock section, the coda and its length of nearly 6 minutes were all unique at the time. Initially, Queen’s label EMI, didn’t want to release it as a single due in part to the length, but the work has gone on to be considered (and voted) as the greatest song in popular music.

Jodie Devos (photo by Domique Gaul)

Jodie Devos (photo by Domique Gaul)

Belgian soprano Jodie Devos closes her 2021 album of love songs, And Love Said…, with You Take My Breath Away, a track from A Day at the Races. She’s able to give the song a musical and vocal drama using rubato and other tempo changes that are effective in making this a classical vocal work. It’s a lovely, delicate performance.

The King’s Singers (2019)

The King’s Singers (2019)

From the same Queen album, the British ensemble The King’s Singers change another song, Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy, into an a cappella version that just comes across as slightly smarmy and too cute.

Stephanie Szanto and Simon Bucher

Stephanie Szanto and Simon Bucher

One way that Freddie Mercury’s songs were rarely taken was into a much more operatic style. He didn’t have the voice for it and few of the classical versions of his music want to take it in that direction, However, in their over-the-top version, Swiss mezzo Stephanie Szanto and pianist Simon Bucher transform Bicycle Race into a number of other vocal styles. It is nearly indescribable. We open with Chopin and close with a bit of Mozart and in the middle, a whole lot of other composers get channeled.


2Cellos

2Cellos

Freddie Mercury’s final song, written by all of Queen together, was The Show Must Go On, recorded in 1990 and released just 6 weeks before his death of AIDS. A reference to his own illness and his efforts to maintain a performance presence, the work has moved through other performers with Queen, such as Elton John and Adam Lambert, each of whom fail to reach Freddie Mercury’s impassioned performance level. However, the Slovenian cellist Luka Šulić and the Croatian cellist Stjepan Hauser, who make up the duo 2Cellos, bring back some of that emotion we miss in the other performance.


Their video for the work is set in an end of the world scenario – even while the Earth is doomed to destruction from a collision with an asteroid…but the show must go on.