(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Music open thread: Music in G major [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-31 Continuing my survey of music along the circle of fifths, looking for music that is undeservedly obscure for some reason or another. Could be because the composer is black, or a woman. Or it could be because the composer is one of those dead white men acknowledged as great composers, but, aside from his greatest hits, most of his music is obscure. The key of G major is very well-suited to the violin. A particularly easy triple stop for a V chord has two open strings and a couple of “frets” on the E-string. The blue boxes on 0 mean no finger on that string but that string is still bowed. The G-string should not be bowed on this one. You can follow that with a quadruple stop for the I chord with two open strings, a major second and a minor third on the other two strings. The lowest note of the violin is open G, a perfect fourth below middle C. That’s a fact heavily emphasized in Vivaldi’s Concerto alla Rustica, which is in G major. You’ll see and hear what I mean in this video: x YouTube Video I haven’t crunched the numbers, but it looks like G major as the main tonality for a large scale composition kind of fell out of favor after the 18th Century. Leopold Mozart used G major a lot, several of his symphonies are in that key. Same goes for the Haydn brothers. Beethoven wrote no symphonies in that key, and only one concerto, the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58. Clara Schumann’s Piano Sonata in G minor has a beautifully sweet scherzo in G major. x YouTube Video Brilliant pianist, I have enjoyed her Schumann recordings. For this piece, though, I prefer Jozef de Beenhouwer's more mechanical reading. Still, upvote from me. It’s such a nice piece, but for some reason Clara Schumann, who has a few opus numbers to her credit, wasn’t able to get her sonata published in her lifetime. Maybe the publisher thought their customers would be skeptical of a sonata by a woman, but would give a woman’s smaller compositions in freer forms a chance. So, the scherzo of the sonata became the finale of her Four Fugitive Pieces, Opus 15. Her husband Robert also wrote little piano pieces like that, as well as Felix Mendelssohn. This sweet bagatelle in G major from Beethoven’s Opus 126 set was an important precedent. It has a sweetness not usually found in Beethoven. x YouTube Video Beethoven wrote only one string quartet in G major, Opus 18, No. 2. He actually seemed to prefer flat keys for string quartets. Though he actually wrote four piano sonatas in G major, they’re shorter and lighter than most of the other sonatas. The imposing “Hammerklavier,” running more than forty minutes in most performances, is in B-flat major. From Beethoven’s middle period, the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major is perhaps Beethoven’s most important large-scale composition in G major, and it also has some of that sweetness from the later bagatelle. Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G major might be the most significant symphony in G major since the time of the Haydn brothers. Like Vivaldi’s Concerto alla Rustica, G minor also figures prominently in this symphony. I especially like the finale, a set of variations that gives several important solos to some section leaders. The most obvious of these is the trombone fanfare with which the finale begins, but the principal flutist also gets a solo she can really sink her teeth into, figuratively speaking, of course. The conductor, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, sure seems like a nice guy, clapping for his players at the end. Notice that he puts on a mask before the last round of applause. This recording is from two years ago, before the coronavirus emergency could be downgraded. To be clear, the coronavirus is still around. Oops, I forgot about Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G major, in which the innocence of childhood is confronted by the brutal reality of adult life. Some of Leopold Mozart’s son’s most famous music is in G major. That includes, to an extent, the Symphony No. 37 in G major, K. 444/425a, admired as a paragon of symphonic excellence when most people thought Wolfgang Amadeus was the composer, and dropped from the repertoire like a hot potato when Michael Haydn was discovered to be the primary composer. It’s an attitude that often gets very ridiculous. I actually saw a boxed set once of Wolfgang’s symphonies that included No. 37 but only the bit that Wolfgang wrote. What happened was that Wolfgang needed a whole new symphony fast. It needed to have three or four movements and a slow introduction for the opening Allegro. Wolfgang had recently helped Michael Haydn out with a couple of violin and viola sonatas to complete a set of six such sonatas for the archbishop, and so Michael gave Wolfgang one of his symphonies in G major, Wolfgang just needed to write the slow intro for it, which was something he could manage in the short time frame for the concert. Leopold Mozart disapproved of Michael Haydn on account of the latter being kind of a drunk. Leopold Mozart also disapproved of Antonio Salieri for different reasons, like supposedly hamstringing his son’s career. The rivalry was real: it was a stage dad against the poets, which were supposedly Salieri’s cabal. But Wolfgang recognized the value of having mentors in addition to his father, and frequently sought out Salieri’s tutelage. Of course they didn’t put that in the movie. As there is no dramatic slander against Michael Haydn, it’s easy to forget how important Michael Haydn was to Wolfgang Amadeus. Here’s the Theresia Orchestra conducted by Alfredo Bernardini in the Symphony No. 37 in G major, the whole thing, as Wolfgang Amadeus used it for his concert. x YouTube Video Leopold Mozart would have no problem with his Symphony in G major, the “old Lambach,” K. 7a Anhang 221, being attributed to his son. Certainly at Bärenreiter they think they can make more money off it attributing it to the son rather than to the father. Here’s how I know Leopold is the author of that one: it doesn’t bore me, and it feels energetic and purposeful. I wanted to include a video of it but couldn’t find one I liked for both the audio and the video track. With the “new Lambach,” also in G major and more certainly written by Wolfgang, I often find myself wondering how many times a repeat has been taken. I know each repeat is only taken twice, but it feels like it’s taken more than twice. Still, that symphony doesn’t get dragged out as much as his later symphonies. The open thread question: What is your favorite music in G major? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/31/2036425/-Music-open-thread-Music-in-G-major Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/