Octoberish Music -- Classical Edition
Photo by John Mccann on Unsplash
As longtime readers know, October is the beginning of the best part of the year for me.
Past Octoberish posts have focused on books, popular music, places, and movies. I also did a couple of yearly updates here and here. I've been meaning to do a post on classical music for a few years, and today, I'm finally getting to it.
Octoberish doesn't just mean "spooky" to me, although I love a good shudder. It's also about a pleasurable melancholy; a haunting evocation of times past; dry leaves skittering along windswept streets; murmurations of starlings in the gloaming; raindrops sliding down the age-softened features of statues; and afternoon light sifting through forgotten corridors.
The music I've chosen to highlight reflects that. You will not find below any mention of famous pieces associated with the season, like Orff's Carmina Burana or Bach's "Toccata and Fugue," nor yet the soundtracks to films like Jaws or Psycho. Instead, in chronological order, here are 19 classical pieces that for me, are perfectly Octoberish.
Josquin des Prez -- "Miserere mei, Deus" (1503)
The text is based on Psalm 51, King David's confession of grave sin and entreaty for God's mercy. The great French Renaissance composer Josquin set it with keen sensitivity, perhaps to express grief over the execution of Savonarola.
Thomas Tallis -- The Lamentations of Jeremiah (1560)
The early part of Holy Week is a dark time, commemorated by services like Tenebrae. I first heard Tallis's piece sung at a Tenebrae service at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and it was love at first hearing. The text is from the book of Lamentations, written by the prophet Jeremiah (and source of the word "jeremiad"). Though it's intended to be sung in early spring, I find its mood perfectly suited to autumn.
Claudio Monteverdi -- "Lasciatemi morire" (1614)
This is the only surviving piece of the lost opera L'Arianna, which dramatized Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus on the isle of Naxos. Arianna sings (in translation), "Leave me to die, and who do you think can comfort me in such a harsh state, in such great suffering? Leave me to die." Yep, it's bleak.
François Couperin -- "Les Barricades Mystérieuses" (1717)
This is one of my "desert island" pieces of music. It was of course composed for the harpsichord, but I find the piano more soulful in general. Here's a great essay on its hypnotic power.
Johann Sebastian Bach -- "Aria," Goldberg Variations (1741)
Here's something else written for harpsichord that I vastly prefer on piano, especially when performed by Glenn Gould. I wrote about this piece here. I love the entire thing, but the Aria (on which all the variations are based) is the most melancholy part of it.
Franz Schubert -- "Der Erlkönig" (1815)
Schubert first set Goethe's poem to music when he was 17 years old. He then revised it a couple of times and published it as his Opus no. 1 just six years later. In it, a boy carried on horseback warns his father that the dread Erl-King is trying to steal him away. The father reassures the son while urging his horse on faster, but by the time they reach home, the boy is dead. I love the rhythms suggesting the galloping horse as well as the key shifts that increase the tension throughout. Such genius and pathos expressed in four short minutes.
Hector Berlioz -- "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath" from Symphonie Fantastique (1830)
When I was 13, I somehow got a recording of this piece and was transfixed, playing it over and over until the vinyl wore out. It really gets going a couple of minutes in, first with an ominous chime, and then with the trombones playing the 13th century dirge "Dies Irae." Chilling!
Jean Sibelius -- The Swan of Tuonela (1895)
In the great Finnish saga Kalevala, in an effort to win a wife from the evil queen Louhi, the great hero Lemminki is supposed to kill a sacred swan who floats serenely down a river in Tuonela, the realm of the dead. Instead, he's shot and killed. There is an eventual happy ending, however; Lemminki's mother descends to the underworld. There, she finds all the pieces of Lemminki's body, sews them back together, and then entreats the father-god Ukko to bring her son back to life with a drop of heavenly honey. I get it; I'd do the same for any of my own children.
Erik Satie -- "Pièces froides" (1897)
Satie was kind of a weirdo, but I love his spare, contemplative music. This suite is not as well known as his Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies, but it's gorgeous.
Claude Debussy -- "The Drowned Cathedral" (1910)
"La cathédrale engloutie" is probably more strictly translated "the submerged cathedral," but "drowned" is so much more Octoberish. The great Impressionist composer was inspired by the image of a cathedral in the mythical city of Ys, which is said to emerge from the sea off the coast of Brittany on perfectly still, clear mornings.
Ralph Vaughan Williams -- Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Anyone still reading this post knows that RVW is my favorite composer, likely because he is the most Octoberish of all composers. It's hard for me to find words about this gorgeous piece; it's too close to my heart. Instead, I'll borrow those of a reviewer at the piece's premier: "One is living in two centuries at once… Throughout its course one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new. The work is wonderful because it seems to lift one into some unknown regions of musical thought and feeling." Indeed.
Ralph Vaughan Williams -- Sinfonia Antarctica (1952)
Based on music RVW wrote for the (understandably) bleak film Scott of the Antarctic, this symphony evokes adventure, loneliness, and eventual doom. A literary quote accompanies each of the five movements. The last is from the final, stoic entry in Captain Scott's journal: "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint."
Benjamin Britten -- The Turn of the Screw (1954)
Patrick and I saw the Glimmerglass Opera Company's production of this piece in 1992, and I still remember how my hair literally stood up on the back of my neck at the ghostly appearance of Peter Quint. A brilliant adaptation of a brilliant novella.
Alan Hovhaness -- Symphony no. 2 Mysterious Mountain (1955)
In a 1971 interview, the Armenian-American composer said, "We are in danger of destroying ourselves, and I have a great fear about this ... The older generation is ruling ruthlessly... It's the greed of huge companies and huge organizations which control life in a kind of a brutal way ...What's the use of having the most powerful country in the world if we have killed the soul."
Not much has changed since then, it seems. Hovhaness's music is often a refuge of mysticism and contemplation, perhaps as a result of his perfectly understandable misanthropism. A critic once dubbed this piece "The Tallis Fantasia meets Parsifal," which to me is a ringing endorsement.
Henryk Gorecki -- Symphony no. 3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1976)
I first heard Dawn Upshaw sing this on a 1992 recording released to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. Each movement features a soprano singing words of grief from various Polish sources. This is the perfect auditory counterpart to the feature films of Paweł Pawlikowski.
John Adams -- Phrygian Gates (1977)
I'm a fan of modal music. To my ear, it often sounds ancient, exotic, or otherworldly. This minimalist, repetitive piece is no exception. Though it was written almost 30 years before and has no intentional connection, it reminds me of Christo's Central Park Gates installation, with its fluttering, saffron banners, which our family was lucky enough to tour in 2005.
Philip Glass -- "Façades," Glassworks (1982)
The first time I heard a Philip Glass piece was when I saw the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi (which I'm pleased to have spelled right on my first try just now) in the theater. It was mesmerizing, and I jumped at the chance to hear a live performance by the composer and a touring orchestra along with the film seven years later at New York's Beacon Theater. This piece was written to accompany part of the film that was later edited out, so Glass included it in his album Glassworks later that year. Another melancholy, minimalist, circular piece of the sort my husband finds maddening but that enthralls me.
Einojuhani Rautavaara -- "Autumn Gardens" (1999)
Another Finnish tone poem: are you sensing a theme here? Well, my best friend is half-Finnish, and since knowing her, I've become fascinated with that amazing little country on Russia's northwestern border. Rautavaara's music is often termed mystical, which means it fits right in with my prevailing mood.
Ola Gjeilo -- "Northern Lights" (2009)
Ola Gjeilo (pronounced YAY-low) is a young Norwegian who's my latest #composercrush. His choral music is exquisite, and our church choir has sung several of his pieces to date. His piece "Ubi Caritas" was a strong contender for this list, but "Northern Lights," with words from The Song of Solomon 6:4-5, was the first piece of his I ever heard. Tess and I were in the car on the way to the doctor, and when it started playing on KUSC, we were transfixed. Later that day, I ordered two of Gjeilo's CDs and a bunch of sheet music.
Here's the text, translated from Latin: "Thou art beautiful, O my love, sweet and comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army set in array. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have made me flee away." Gjeilo reports he was inspired by viewing the awesomely beautiful aurora borealis near his home in Oslo. The piece sounds ancient and modern at the same time and reminds me of C.S. Lewis's yearning for "northernness," a very Octoberish emotion.
Whether the above pieces are new or familiar, or if you have Octoberish classical favorites of your own, please comment and let me know. Until then, Happy October!