Hebrew Melodies

The Russian-Jewish composer Joseph Achron (1886-1943), born in Lithuania, died in Hollywood, sounds like another fascinating neglected figure. 

The summary of his career seems to run as follows: A pupil of Liadov, he became keen on writing "Jewish music" initially through applying his studies of folk music. After falling under the spell of Scriabin for a while, he left Russia after the Revolution and passed through Mandatory Palestine before emigrating to America in the mid 1920s. The short stay in Palestine resulted in a renewed determination to write in a new Jewish idiom, this time based on traditional Biblical cantillation. Late on, perhaps influenced by his friendship with Schoenberg, he began writing atonal music. 

I wish I knew some of his Scriabinesque music and I would love to hear some of his late radical music too; in fact, so neglected is Achron that I can only bring you three of his works.

His best-known piece is the Hebrew Melody of 1911 - a piece for violin and orchestra (more commonly heard arranged for violin and piano) which freely arranges a number of Jewish folk-tunes in a warmly Romantic fashion. It's a very easy piece to like.

The other two pieces both date from just after Achron's post-Middle Eastern arrival in America. They are both wonderful works and ought to be in the mainstream repertoire. 

The first movement of the two-movement First Violin Concerto (Pt2,Pt3) show Achron's attempts to write in a new Jewish idiom most clearly. The themes of the movement are all closely based on ritual chants used to recite Biblical passages in synagogues, where musical motifs are associated with specific signs. The result is rhapsodic and passionate music of a very attractive melodic character. The second movement reverts to folksong inspiration and is subtitled Improvisations on 2 themes Yemeniques. The two Yemenite Jewish folksongs are alternated and occasionally woven together polyphonically. Anyone who enjoys the concertos of Szymanowski should respond with enthusiasm to this beautiful piece - as will many others besides. 

The Children's Suite for clarinet, piano and string quartet is also inspired by Jewish melody but, in its twenty short movements, has a good-humoured character that is far removed from the serious mood of the First Violin Concerto. It is full of wonderful tunes and has a Prokofiev-like sense of colour and mischief allied to an un-Prokofiev-like warmth. Audiences would just love it - and hopefully you will too. 

4'33'' and counting...

For a composer some people don't consider to be a true composer, John Cage composed some of the most beguiling pieces of the Twentieth Century. Just take a listen to the Six Melodies for violin and keyboard instrument from 1950. Ignore the technical details of how the piece was constructed and simply marvel at the freshness of Cage's melodies, harmonies and sonorities. This tranquil piece sounds like the sort of music an American folk-fiddler might improvise dreamily on a hot summer's afternoon somewhere deep in the country.

The Six Melodies and the somewhat similar String Quartet in Four Parts (with its beautifully still third movement) came at the end of the phase of Cage's music-making that produced many of his most accessible and popular pieces. The gentle, near-Debussyan In a Landscape for piano from 1948 has won itself many friends in recent years. Hints of the Indonesian gamelan in that hypnotic piece can be heard more clearly in Daughters of the Lonesome Isle from 1945 - a captivating piece written for prepared piano (a piano that has had screws, bolts, pins, wedges and the like inserted between its strings) where the solo instrument is made to sound like an entire Balinese orchestra. (You might also like to try Bacchanale from 1940). The music of this time is often modal or Eastern flavoured, touched by the influence of Satie as much as by the likes of Webern and - dare I say- quite conventional (relatively-speaking). This naturally makes it easier for audiences to fall in love with - as many do. 

Who could fail to be delighted by the Suite for Toy Piano of 1948 - a piece that makes the most of an instrument of highly limited resources and contains yet more tunes? Or the folk-like whimsy of The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs for voice and closed piano from 1942 and the lovely melody of the unaccompanied song (setting e.e.cummings) Experiences No.2 from 1948? Or the delicate music he wrote for the film Works by Calder in 1950?

The CD I fell in love with the music of John Cage to was of the complete Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (Pts. 2,3,4,5) from 1946-48), dance-like, melodically-appealing pieces of entrancing directness (whatever the compositional techniques involved). Here the modality and the far-Eastern flavour of Cage's music of this period reaches its height. The sonatas are so called because they follow the binary structure of the sonatas of Scarlatti, with each half receiving a repeat. My favourite sonata is XII - a piece of fantasy and good humour with delightful rhythms, bell-like harmonies, ritualistic dancing, attractive melodies, lulling ostinati and, in the second, half Balinese gongs, neo-Mozartian writing and sonorous descent beneath a repeating pattern. I love it. Listen out also for the paired sonatas XIV/XV (Gemini) which are in many ways gentle precursors of Minimalism.  If you don't already know them I urge you to explore them. 

The ballet The Seasons (1947) is another delightful masterpiece from this period. If you ever get to hear it in its orchestral version I suspect you will be even more delighted. 

John Cage is generally known, however, for writing pieces of a more experimental nature. Before this period of approachable pieces he had made some of the earliest forays into electroacoustic music. 1939 saw the birth of his Imaginary Landscape No.1 for muted piano, cymbal and two variable-speed phonographs with amplifiers. This period also saw him writing landmark pieces for percussion, such as the vibrant Second Construction for four percussionists of 1940 and Imaginary Landscape No.2 from 1942 (using tin cans, conch shell, ratchet, bass drum, buzzers, water gong, metal wastebasket, lion's roar and amplified coil of wire). Uniting these two trends and anticipating the 'chance' and 'happening' style pieces to come is the entertaining Credo in Us from 1942 - a piece that pioneers what nowadays would be called 'sampling'. 

As Cage entered the 1950s, the Zen Buddhist influence became paramount and he began his attempt to rid his music of his own personality and wishes. The first steps in this direction were made in the Concerto for Prepared Piano of 1950-51. His music began (for a short period of time) to sound surprisingly like that being written by the ultra-serialist radicals of European music - the Boulezes and Stockhausens. Famously, Cage turned to the Taoist I Ching, or Book of Changes, and wrote his remarkable Music of Changes of 1951 as a result. Applying chance procedures to sounds, durations, dynamics, tempi and density he produced a substantial piece that sounded for all the world like Boulez's 'total serialist' Structures Book 1a - a work whose soundworld was rigorously determined down to the finest detail. This remarkable coincidence of soundworlds - one achieved by chance, the other achieved by the strictest possible application of rules - rather took the sails out of the European Total Serialist project. Why bother meticulously plotting every detail of a piece when something that most listeners would take to be achieved by similar means (Cage's Music of Changes) was, in fact, produced by meticulously applying the results of what (to all intents and purposes) amounts to myriad tosses of a coin?

Cage's music had certainly changed with Music of Changes. Little of what came in the years following it has much chance of achieving popularity - with one very famous exception: 4'33''. Written in 1952 (and re-written in 1960, this study in silence is meant to get the listener to savour the sounds being heard around them, relish the noises, relish the silence, be at one with the world. Many people think its a gimmick, a joke. I don't doubt that Cage was unaware that he might get a lot of publicity from the piece (and, boy, has that happened!!) but I believe his motivation was genuine. It is a pleasant experience to sit and listen to sounds going on around you and allow them to form themselves into a sort of music. I'm not so sure it works in a concert hall, however - as all you get is shuffling, breathing, the odd cough, maybe a stray mobile phone going off. There is so much more to John Cage, though, than 4'33". Once taken on board as an interesting concept, there is no need to every listen to for a second time! Performers should play it far less often and play other pieces by John Cage instead.

Perhaps we could hear more pieces from this period like Music for Carillon I, which continues to demonstrate the composer's love for percussion instruments, or more chance-procedures generated piano works - like the Music For Piano for any number of pianos.

Cage's electronic music also grew far more radical in this period, as you can here from the remarkable Williams Mix of 1952. I always associate this kind of piece with the mid 1950s, where a lot of works can sound rather like it. It's very intriguing that Cage was at the forefront of the style so early. (A later example, Fontana Mix, from 1958 shows this style developing even further).

These pieces show that in the 1950s the music of John Cage sounded close to the European avant-garde. Just listen to the astonishing Piano Concerto of 1957 and compare it with the delights of the piano music of the 1940s to see how far he had moved. His Aria of 1958, which calls for ten vocal styles from the singer (ranging from baby-talk to Sprechgesang to Marlene Dietrich), might remind you of similar pieces by the likes of Berio and Ligeti (and many imitators). 

His application of chance methods and his urge to purge his music of intention grew ever more intense and he gave up writing music in conventional ways in 1958, putting unusual notations and graphs before performers instead and allowing them to interpret them as they chose. The results (as with the Piano Concerto) have an experimental quality that can make them sound rather like electronic music - as with Variations II from 1961. This is the sort of music that is meant to sound like noise - and is noise. Whether you can, as a listener, enjoy it as music is a matter of personal taste. Collage was also becoming a significant interest of the composer's - as can be heard in Rozart Mix for tape loops (which I would urge you, if you can, to listen to through headphones to get the full effect) and which Cage could adapt to the spirit of the time, as in  HPSCHD - a piece that definitely sounds as if it sounds from around 1969! A multi-media event, with slides, films, light effects (etc), HPSCHD is a chaotic-sounding mix of live harpsichords and taped performances of pieces for harpsichord by the old Classical masters.  

As the 1970s arrived Cage returned to writing down his music. The harbinger of this was Cheap Imitation from 1969, a gentle and simple-sounding solo piano piece based on Satie's Socrate. (For those of you who are hating his avant-garde pieces this might come as a relief!) 

Not everything that followed marked a return to relative simplicity and approachability, nor was chance thrown out of the window. A huge set of piano pieces called Etudes australes was written in 1974-75 deriving its individual notes and chords from star charts of the Australian skies. As might be expected, the resulting music is generally pointillistic and harks back to the sort of piano writing of the early 1950s - both Cage's own and that of his European contemporaries in the Avant-Garde. (For an earlier orchestral take on the same inspiration, please try Atlas Eclipticalis (1961-2)). Other etudes of similar difficulty (for performer and listener alike) followed - Freeman Etudes for solo violin and Etudes Boreales for cello or piano, both from the late 1970s.

The elements of tape-looping (as found in Rozart Mix) and minimalism (in Cheap Imitation) suggest points of connection between Cage and the newly-born Minimalist movement in America and, as we arrive at the late pieces, we find this minimalist strand growing in importance in Cage's output. Perhaps the work to start with here is Litany for the Whale from 1980 - a meditative 25-minute piece for two voices, each singing chant-like melodies based on just five notes (echoing the five letters of the word 'whale' apparently). It sounds decidedly monkish. This simple-sounding, rather beautiful and hypnotic piece of 'Holy Minimalism' might have come as a surprise to those who grew up on the avant-garde Cage of the 1950s and 1960s. Sometimes this side of his late style could take on a surprisingly conventional sound, as in the clearly-structured Souvenirs for organ from 1984 - another work based on a recurring theme suggestive of plainchant which might very well appeal to those listeners who like Arvo Pärt (though there are one or two disruptive surprises along the way). For an attractive example of tape-looping - or the inspiration of tape-looping as the piece can be played by several live pianists - combined with his old technique of creating a collage from snatches of existing melodies, I suspect you'll be intrigued to hear The Beatles 1962-1970 from 1990. 

Another strand in late Cage is the return of obvious oriental elements, as in Ryoanji from 1985 - a piece evoking a Zen garden in a temple in Kyoto which bends its melodic lines microtonally in ways strongly suggestive of Japanese music - and the easier-on-the-ear Haikai for flute and a metal instrument called a zoomoozophone of 1984.

Towards the end of his life this minimalism manifested itself again in his 'Number Pieces' - a long line of pieces named after the number of players performing the pieces - as very slow-moving meditations on sustained sounds. You can hear this at its most beguiling in Four², a piece from 1990 written for four-part choir (SATB) and the sort of thing that might make you think of the music of the spheres. You are hearing single notes evolving over long durations, interacting (very slowly) with other single notes. A nearly-as-harmonious piece for instruments is Thirteen from 1992 and, expanding the forces to orchestral proportion, Seventy Four  from 1992 provides another example of just how easy-to-listen-to late Cage can be. (More music of the spheres.) You can hear the style developing if you hear one of the earlier 'Number Pieces', Twenty-Three from 1988. I can easily imagine that many of these late pieces could become immensely popular which New Age types. Though not a New Age type myself, I am fond of several of them. (I can imagine some of you will find them tedious).

There is a lot of Cage to explore and I hope this post inspires you to give him a try. I suspect you will dislike some of it but hopefully find some very pleasant discoveries too. In general terms (as you may have guessed) I like a lot of early and quite a bit of late Cage. It's the highly avant-garde stuff in the middle that I find hardest to warm to. Each to their own of course.

Top Billings

As today is Independence Day in the United States, who better to be the subject of a post than that nation's first great musical original, the pioneering William Billings (1746-1800)?

The largely self-taught Billings, a tanner by trade, composed hundreds of unaccompanied, four-part choral works. They were written to be sung by amateurs in parish churches and have something of the freshness of folk music about them. When I first came to the music of Billings a decade or so ago, I assumed (reading his dates) that his choral music would sound rather like Handel or, maybe, Haydn. I was in for a big surprise. It sounds so different to the kind of sacred music being written in Europe at the time; indeed, it sounds timeless. Out go many of the niceties of Baroque and Classical counterpoint and in come 'fuguing songs', modality, the fresh country air of open fifths, and fifths and octaves moving in parallel. Another unusual feature is that the main melody in a Billings piece lies in the tenor part, which he wrote first. The other lines - first the bass, then the soprano and finally the alto - were then composed around it. 

This may sound like music out of its time but it was, in fact, very much of its time - and place. Billings was a friend of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and wrote one of the most popular revolutionary anthems, Chester ('Let tyrants shake their iron rod'). It was a great favourite with the revolting American colonists during the War of Independence and sounds great fun to sing. 

Chester later got a new lease of life when William Schuman used it as the basis of the third movement of his New England Triptych.

Billings' style can encompass a range of moods. If you fancy a bit of early Christmas good cheer then Billings is your man. His Shepherd's Carol ('Methinks I see an heaven'ly host') may have the traditional triple-time lilt of the old pastoral sicilienne but its energy, robust part-writing and memorable tune mark it out as pure Billings - as does Judea ('A Virgin Unspotted'). If you want to hear a forthright, dramatically-paced telling of David's Lamentation ('David, the King, was grieved and moved') over the death of his son, Absalom, then again Billings is your man. The 'anthem for mariners' Euroclydon ('They that go down to the Sea in Ships') is a similarly fine piece of word-painting. The latter pieces show how flexibly Billings could handle his four-part writing, using contrasting textures to get his hymn's message across. This reaches its height in I am the Rose of Sharon

Sometimes the harmonies of Billings could have come fresh out of the Renaissance, by-passing over one hundred and fifty years of Baroque harmonic innovation. The effects can be captivating, as you can hear with his touching Emmaus ('When Jesus Wept').

Billings is such a fascinating one-off.

Further listening:

The Lord is ris'n indeed

O Praise the Lord of Heaven!

Chesterfield

Kittery

Rum Punches - the Music of Conlon Nancarrow

American or Mexican? Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) spent the last 57 years of his life in Mexico, 41 of them as a Mexican citizen. Either way, Nancarrow is a one-off composer whose stature should make any country proud to claim him.

Nancarrow's music has thankfully shot to prominence in the last forty years, partly after he was acclaimed as the greatest living composer by another great (then) living composer, Ligeti. (Ligeti was amazed to discover that Nancarrow's Study No.20 resembled his own Monument). Music lovers of various hues - lovers of complexity, minimalists and John Cagers, mainstream contemporary types, avant-gardists, others - all began eagerly devouring his music.

From 1951 to 1983 Nancarrow (working in isolation) wrote only for the player piano - also known at the pianolo - in an attempt to realise music that he felt would be impossible for live musicians to perform. With a degree of patient that is quite staggering, he would spend months punching out by hand all the notes on a roll that would, say, comprise a single, four-minute piece. The player piano was a mechanical instrument that could play, as perfectly as the composer intended (without any of the imperfections of a human performance), layer upon layer of independent lines. It could help create music of unprecedented complexity, setting those lines in inhumanly precise and recondite ratios to each other, allowing ultra-sophisticated rhythms that are impossible to notate and creating patterns of cross-rhythms that had never previously been possible to perform. Any sequence of notes was now possible.The instrument could also play music at unheard-of speeds. Massive, perfectly coordinated chords that are beyond a pair of hands and lightning-fast glissandi became possible. As for those lines, counterpoint is one of the main essences of Nancarrow's music. At the heart of his style stand canons. Fiendishly complex canons. The player piano was at their command. 

All this may sound daunting and experimental but this is music that brims with exuberance and is often great fun to hear. It invariably sounds right. I know I'm not the only listener to gasp and laugh out loud many times while listening to Nancarrow's pieces, and I don't doubt for one second that that's just the way he would have wanted it. It can sometimes sound as zany as a Looney Tunes cartoon. It is, simply put, some of the most life-affirming music ever written. 

The early studies often have a strong feel of popular music and jazz. (Nancarrow had been a jazz trumpeter). The world of Art Tatum, Fats Waller and Earl Hines is often a felt presence. Boogie-woogie reigns supreme at times. As time passes, however, Nancarrow's studies lose a lot of their jazziness and become more abstract-sounding, either more Neo-Classical (Bach, Stravinksky, Hindemith) or more pointillist (Webern). They don't, however, become any less engaging.  

As recent virtuosos exceeded the virtuosity of earlier generations, Nancarrow found that some of his 'impossible-for-humans' pieces weren't impossible to perform after all. (Some, however, always will be. They are simply too fast). Also, people began arranging his pieces for ensembles (ranging from two pianos to orchestras). Those by Yvar Mikhashoff were highly influential and remain especially beguiling. (A healthy selection of them can be heard here). I urge you to give them a listen. Click on any number and see what happens!

Studies for player piano

1, 2, 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 3e, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45a, 45b, 45c, 46, 47, 48c, 49a, 49b, 49c, 50

Other player piano pieces

For Yoko (1992-3)

Towards the end of his life the composer even began writing for conventional instruments (and living people) again. His early years as a composer, naturally, involved writing for nothing else.  

Early Works for Human Beings

Prelude & Blues for piano (1935) 

Toccata for violin and piano (1935) 

Sonatina for piano (1941) 

Trio No. 1 for clarinet, bassoon, and piano (1942) 

Piece No. 1 for Small Orchestra (1943) 

String Quartet No.1 (1945) 

Late Works for Human Beings 

Tango? (1983) 

Piece No. 2 for Small Orchestra (1986) 

String Quartet No. 3 (1987) 

Canon A for Ursula (1988) 

Canon B for Ursula (1988)

The mysterious Mr. Hovhaness

Though he never won huge critical acclaim, the hugely prolific Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) has always had a loyal following. His best music reassures the listener that all is well with the world (even when it isn't). Its gentleness and radiance is allied to a modal language that gives it a quality which anybody in my own country who treasures the hymn-like lyricism of Vaughan Williams (as found in the slow movement of his Fifth Symphony) will find attractive. Along with a taste for singing melodies (sometimes with an Armenian-tinged accent) his music also manifests a confidence with lively counterpoint that shows that the spirit of Bach is close to his heart. 

Hovhaness's best-known work is undoubtedly the Second Symphony (Mysterious Mountain), a work of considerable beauty that seeks to evoke the grandeur and mystery of mountains in general. There are three movements. The first shows combines rapt and intensely hymn-like modal writing with woodwind-led pastoral passages. The second movement is an expressive double fugue where exceptionally fluent polyphonic writing is first put in the service of lyricism before the pace picks up considerably and is built up excitingly on strings while Hovhaness's brass bring back the main theme in glory, rather in the manner of a chorale melody in a Bach cantata fantasia. An imposing climax is followed by the final movement which begins quietly before an oriental-sounding dance figure begins to rise up and sweep all before it - a remarkable piece of writing. After this mighty wind has passed the mysterious mountain looms back into view and the hymn-like modal radiance and pastoralism of the first movement returns. 

Another Hovhaness symphony that stands out from the crowd (and it is a crowd, given that he wrote nearly 70 of them!) is the Sixth Symphony (Celestial Gate). What makes it stand out is its main melody - one of the loveliest ever written. If that sounds like quite a bold statement, I doubt you'll disagree with it when you hear the tune in question. Due to his use of irregular rhythms and phrasing, the composer makes his music float above the earth. The chromatic gropings of the opening bassoon solo set a mysterious mood in play which the clarinet assuages with the main melody. As in the Second Symphony, a rapt serenity fills the music - a mood maintained when Hovhaness's characteristic fugal writing begins. This fugue builds to a radiant climax before yielding to a beautiful, peaceful vision on solo strings. The next section of this single-movement work returns to the chromatic gropings of the opening and the mood darkens. This chromatic writing alternates with aleatory swarm-like writing conjured by the unmeasured, uncoordinated repetition of short ostinato figures. Melancholy and hope contend, with the lovely melody most definitely conveying the latter. Then the music turns sinister with percussion, trumpet and Bernard Hermann-like slashing strings conjuring a dark vision of considerable power, underpinned by modal harmonies. A quiet dance-like passage for pizzicato strings follows, which is no less mysterious. The flute introduces an oriental-sounding melody above it. In time, however, the reassuring hymn-like side of the composer returns and all is well again. The trumpet sings to us, warmly. At the end the violins float up into the heavens in music of a deeply ethereal nature. 

If you enjoy the serene, radiant side of Hovhaness - and his lyrical use of trumpet - then please also try the short but lovely Prayer of St. Gregory, an intermezzo for trumpet and chamber orchestra. At its climax (when the trumpet falls silent) it glows like a Bach chorale. 

'Euphony' is a word that describes Hovhaness in this mood. You can also hear him being euphonious in the String Quartet No.4 'The Ancient Tree'. This isn't anywhere near so distinguished (backing up the critical contention that he is a variable composer) but it has a nostalgic quality that is quite sweet. Arvo Pärt's popular Fratres doesn't seem too far away, melodically-speaking, at times, though the 'Armenian' quality of the melody is not to be underestimated. That said, there's also a fugue-based section on a folk-like theme whose character again recalls Vaughan Williams (to these English ears) and the delicious closing section is clearly Bach-inspired. 

Another fine example of the composer's art is the Alleluia and Fugue, Op.40b. Vaughan Williams Tallis Fantasia meets Bach!

Hovhaness' appeal to 'conservative' listeners is understandable but even 'radical' listeners can find works in his voluminous output to appeal to them, such as this gamelan-inspired piece for four harps, Island of the Mysterious Bells. Fascinating, isn't it?

For a flavour of what he was like as a choral (and orchestral) composer, please try his rather magnificent Magnificat (entirely characteristic!) Hear eight-part writing in block chords, polyphony from ages past, oriental melismas, aleatory passages - in other words, pure Hovhaness. 

Having hopefully helped win you over to Alan Hovhaness, what are the objections to his music? That he is a primitivist, peddling a production-line that brings diminishing returns. There's certainly some truth in that, and I've heard one or two pieces (literally only 'one or two') by the composer than are toe-curdlingly bad (I remember The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, thankfully not on YouTube) and even his devotees tend to admit that his later symphonies aren't up to the standard of the earlier ones. Still, I've heard a good thirty or so pieces by the composer (a small fraction admittedly!) and it's been a case of 'so far so good' so far!

For those wishing to explore further:

----Prelude and Quadruple Fugue
----Symphony No.19 (Vishnu)
----Symphony No.22 (City of Light)
----Symphony No.50 (Mount St. Helens)
----Concerto for Two Pianos
----Anahid
----And God Created Whales
----Tzaikerk, "Evening Song"

Feldman: Oboe on a desolate sea

Impressionist art (Sisley) goes well with Impressionist music (Delius), Expressionist Art (Kirchner) with Expressionist music (Schoenberg), Cubism (Picasso) with certain works of Stravinsky. What music does Abstract Expressionism best go with? (I'm sure you've always wondered that!) How about a piece by Morton Feldman (1926-1987) to accompany that particular painting by Mark Rothko?

Unquestionably of Feldman's finest pieces, Oboe and Orchestra is a poetic, hypnotic work that creates a mood of melancholy beauty and brings to mind (well, to my mind at least!) certain images - a scorched desert or the desolate southern oceans over which the oboe floats alone like an ever-migrating bird. Sometimes it floats calmly on gentle air currents of orchestral sound, at others it is buffeted by rougher winds over harsher, louder landscapes of sound. Some such impressions are, probably, inescapable when listening to such music - music that is generally quiet and at times ritualistic (those soft-sounding gongs!), oriental even (Japanese garden music!). The orchestra, though (surprisingly) large, is used precisely, sparely, atmospheric. Often it hums. It does have dramatic, even startling moments - as Feldman presumably doesn't want complacency to replace quietude! The oboe sings a long, sad, angular song, a line containing many memorable, frequently-returning gestures (those falling semitones, that octave-displaced three-note chromatic scale fragment) as well as many unpredictable turns (including piercing, bird-like cries). Structurally, the opening is sustained and quiet (and beautiful). A striking, more turbulent passage follows (like the sound of muffled howling winds). The two moods and types of music then alternate. In passing the harmony is highly dissonant, though you'd often feel it to be consonant. When the piece pauses on the note D - a D that spreads over several octaves - a new peace comes, marked by spellbinding magic, though the melancholy mood remains, deepens even. It's very beautiful, strange and haunting. The piece halts again, as if holding its breath.  From the sound of a low harp to the keening of the oboe and the aggression of the brass we move towards the looming 'crisis' - though, this being Feldman, it's a far from overstated crisis. The brass grow thuggish. The oboe's song grows yet sadder, lonelier, lovelier in response. The final minutes return us, delicately, to quietude. 

The Four Ages of Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring is one of the handful of pieces which first turned me onto classical music in my late teens. (What the others were you will doubtless discover in due course!) I used to listen to it over and over again. I listen to it far less often these days but, even now, I still get a tingle down my spine whenever I hear its quiet opening bars.

Appalachian Spring is a piece I will save for another post. I want to use it, however, as a beacon on the landscape of Copland's output - the highpoint of his 'American' style, where that style appears at its simplest and most accessible. Other scores in his 'American' style cluster around Appalachian Spring and there are foretastes and aftertastes of it among his early and late works. Copland, however, wrote in several styles throughout his composing life and his music was not always so simple or accessible - it could also be tough, dissonant, modernist. He was a composer not only the music of prairies but also the music of the city. He could write in a populist folksong-inspired style but was no less capable of composing in a potentially crowd-displeasing abstract vein - the kind of music that could famously make the likes of Jackie Kennedy exclaim, 'Oh, Mr. Copland!' (after a performance of the late serialist work, Connotations).

To simplify (and how!), Copland began as a composer of the Jazz Age, passed into an Age of Modernist Austerity, embraced the New Deal ideals of American 'music for the people' and then reverted to modernism for a final Cold War Era of serialism. Of course, it's far from being as neat and tidy as that! Still, even if 'The Four Ages of Copland' is a simplistic concept I think it's not entirely unhelpful. I will chose four representative pieces from each 'Age' to give you a flavour of the range of Aaron Copland's wonderful music. The Jazz Age is represented by the Piano Concerto of 1926, the Age of Modernist Austerity by the Piano Variations of 1930, the New Deal 'Americana' period by the Violin Sonata and the Era of Serialism by the orchestral work Inscape.

The Piano Concerto comes from the time of Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue and Piano Concerto and is the jazziest piece Copland ever wrote. I've long felt that the sort of symphonic jazz we hear in, say, Bernstein comes much more from this piece than from the more famous Gershwin pieces. The first part is influenced by the blues while the second part takes its inspiration from the livelier side of jazz. The arresting opening fanfares for trumpets and trombones, soon joined by the strings, are typical of Copland throughout his output. They have the confidence of 1920s skyscrapers. They repeatedly sound a three-note figure which is treated in canon, with cross rhythms. A memorable bluesy melody (with much use of the minor third) flows out from them in a blaze of lyricism. The soloist then enters and rhapsodises on this tune attractively. The three-note figure opens that melody too and continues to be influential throughout - and not just in the first movement - as orchestra and piano take turns in singing the blues. The movement moves between gently dreaming on this theme and bursting out in fresh fanfares and/or creating a complex cityscape of sound. With the second movement comes a dramatic switch of mood. There's a cocky-sounding piano solo in the style of a lively jazz improvisation to begin with.The jazzy writing in the piano part is reflected in the orchestra, especially when Copland begins making the orchestra sound like a jazz ensemble. Wild and catchy (it has another memorable main theme), this section should get you tapping your toes - at times. 

From popular music (jazz) and catchy tunes, it's onto something very different with the severely abstract  and unquestionably modernist Piano Variations. Bernstein - a great enthusiast for the piece - is often quoted about this piece saying that he could empty a room at parties just by playing it! Once you get to know it though, it's a piece you can get very enthusiastic about. It may seem like a strikingly dissonant and austere score but I would compare it to Bartok in its fierce energy and it's not all about percussive piano writing and sharply-angled phrases as there are also consoling, inward-looking passages and memorable ideas. The Piano Concerto drew a lot on that three-note figure and here Copland takes a five-note figure and makes that the basis of his piece. Here, though, he treats in a way closely akin to serialism - i.e. as a tone row. He keeps his harmonic language tonal though and the result is very far from dry. I find it a gripping work and love it to bits - as much as I love the Piano Concerto. 

On though to the Violin Sonata. Here we are recognisably in the world of Appalachian Spring, with simplicity, uncluttered textures, themes that sound like folk songs or hymn tunes and a pastoral atmosphere that is far from the urban jazz of the Piano Concerto and the abstracted cityscape of the Piano Concerto. This is music that aims to speak straight to the American people. What remains constant though is the composer's ability to make a lot from simple starting ideas. As in the Variations a five-note figure (which you will hear the violin play straight away) plays a key role, generating much of the material of the lovely first movement. If the Variations were fierce then the Violin Sonata is serene but the flow of lyrical melody is set alongside exhilarating and joyous passages. The central slow movement is remarkably simple - especially if heard after the Variations! The piano plays its own tune and the violin plays another, though there is no disharmony between the two whatsoever and they often walk hand in hand. The closing Allegro presents a highly puckish first subject and contrasts it with a more lyrical second theme before a jubilant dancing third theme enters. At the end, things slow and the music that began the first movement returns wistfully. 

When we enter the Age of Serialism and come to Inscape (the title comes from Gerard Manley Hopkins) we find Copland returning to his own serial technique - that of the Piano Variations - but fusing it with the serial techniques of Schoenberg and his disciples. I chose Inscape rather than Connotations because it is more representative than Connotations in trying to keep tonality in play while simultaneously writing 12-note music - and also because I prefer it! Those twelve notes are all packed into the open chord before two-line writing begins - writing that does sometimes sound like the Copland of the open prairies. It changes places with further assertions of dissonant chords of the kind that recall the abstract urban landscape of the Piano Variations. Though he is wearing someone else's suit to a certain extent, Inscape still sounds like true Copland. Serial music seems to be plummeting out of fashion at a moment - not that Copland's serial works were ever really in fashion! - and part of me regrets that Copland felt he had to pursue the 12-tone path, but Inscape is a grand and often beautiful work and I'm glad he wrote it. 

None of these scores gets played very often in the United Kingdom, which is a shame. Radio producers and concerto programmes here should look beyond El Salon Mexico and the three great ballets (Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring)!

Solid Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was one of the great prodigies of music, producing works by the tender age of twelve that equal those of better-known prodigies like Mozart and Mendelssohn. Great composers from Mahler to Strauss acclaimed a genius in the making. The Brno-born Viennese boy grew into a composer who achieved worldwide fame with his operas and concert works. In the 1930s he moved between Austria and Hollywood and became one of the founders and greatest exponents of film music. Following the Nazi occupation of Austria, Korngold - being Jewish - stayed in America and became a U.S. citizen in 1943. Great film scores poured from him until, soon after the war ended, his efforts shifted firmly back to concert works. Alas, by this time his lush romantic style was becoming unpopular with the critics and his star waned. This period of neglect continued after his death until a couple of decades ago when a revival of interest in his music got into full swing. His star has risen again.

As a sample of what the 12-year old Erich was capable of please try the section from his Characteristic Pieces entitled Don Quixote's Conversion and Death, music of considerable sophistication - especially in its harmonies (which remind me at times of the celesta chords in the Presentation of the Silver Rose from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier). That piano piece would deserve a 'Wow!' even if it wasn't written by a pre-teenage composer. Composed slightly later, and just as advanced harmonically, please also try the The Fairy Tale's Epilogue from his Seven Fairy Tale Pictures Op.3. Its opening bars have shades of Debussy and Schoenberg but the true-romantic melodist in Korngold soon takes wing - and how! Other pre-teen pieces include the ballet-pantomime Der Schneemann ('The Snowman'), the overture from which is performed here by an amateur orchestral, and - from his eleventh year - the Piano Sonata No.1, whose first movement espouses an adult-sounding dramatic rhetoric and whose finale takes the tricky form of a passacaglia on a theme by his teacher, Zemlinsky.

Reaching his thirteenth year, he finished his Piano Trio in D, Op.1. You can hear the lovely, ardent first movement here. He also wrote his grand Piano Sonata No.2 (a better work than the first) in which the surging Romanticism of the Largo third movement displays fully mature-sounding chromatic harmony and where the fiery, almost diabolical Scherzo holds a trio of rich Viennese charm at its centre.

By the age of 14 his mastery of the orchestra had yielded such a dashing score as the Schauspiel Overture, Op.4, music sure to appeal to any lover of the music of Richard Strauss...and talking of Strauss, around this time Korngold also wrote a set of songs known as his Einfache Lieder, Op.9 ('Simple Songs'). Please treat yourself to Sommer ('Summer') from that set in its lush (1917) orchestral guise, where the German's influence is felt most attractively. In another gorgeous song, Liebesbriefchen ('Love Letters'), the world of Marietta's famous lied from Die tote Stadt can be heard not so much in embryo but in full ripeness. Extraordinary songs.

By 15 years of age, Korngold had upped his game even further and written such a glorious piece as the Sinfonietta. Handling a large orchestra with the skill of a Strauss or Mahler, he used that fine beast to pour fourth a stream of glowing invention in this masterly score. Don't be fooled by the title as this is a 45-minute long work of symphonic proportions. It's a remarkable thing that, however wonderful his later works, Erich never surpassed this work of childhood. His mature voice is already found here - as anyone who knows his film scores will appreciate. The sumptuous, swashbuckling first movement is followed by a fiery scherzo (with a lustrous trio tune), then a dreamy, enchantingly-scored slow movement and a sweeping finale to round things off. The work opens with something that was to become the composer's signature in music - a figure make from two interlocking rising fourths and a rising fifth called 'The Motif of the Cheerful Heart'. This appears again and again in later Korngold works and in the Sinfonietta acts throughout as the springboard for much of his thematic material.

Other works from that time include the Violin Sonata, Op.6. You can sample its post-Wagnerian lyricism and emotional warmth here in the Adagio. Even rarer is this Heine-setting for chorus and orchestra, Der Sturm ('The Tempest'), where the youngster anticipates the style of some of his own middle-aged film music quite strikingly. (This is no idle fancy on my part. He re-used it in his score for The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.)

So what was Erich Korngold writing in his late teens? Mainly operas. 1916 saw the birth of two of them - Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta. From Der Ring des Polykrates, please try the beautiful 'Diary Scene'. You must also try the glorious finale from Violanta (shades of Strauss's Elektra abounding) here, and orchestral excerpts from the score here and here. As well as these stage works, he also had time to write the String Sextet in D major, Op.10. The Brahms sextets and that other famous late-Romantic sextet, Schoenberg's Transfigured Night, seem to be its closest antecedents - plus the usual dash of Richard Strauss - but it speaks in its own voice, even if that voice isn't quite the same voice as the more familiar Korngold of the orchestral music. There are four movements: a Moderato-Allegro, a nostalgic Adagio, a lyrical Intermezzo with a Viennese waltz for its trio and a presto Finale with plenty of panache. Throughout, the flow of melody is sure to win it friends. Korngold did briefly serve in the Austrian army during the First World War and from that period comes this brilliant Military March. Korngold composing light music!

By the time Korngold enters his early twenties he is ready to produce many of his best-known works, beginning with some incidental music to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. There's an orchestral suite which begins with a fizzing Overture followed by a nostalgia-suffused movement called The Maiden in the Bridal Chamber...at which point we'll cross to the popular version for violin and piano to hear this same beautiful section in a new guise and follow it with the mock-Mahlerian march Dogberry and Verges, the blissful Scene in the Garden and, finally, the lively and virtuosic Masquerade (Hornpipe). The orchestral version from the incidental music itself of this last movement is well worth hearing too. (Stravinsky's Pulcinella was just about to be written!)

Korngold entered the 1920s with his most famous opera, Die tote Stadt ('The Dead City'). We often hear its most famous highlight (originally a tenor-soprano duet) as a separate concert aria for soprano and orchestra, namely Marietta's Lied. I've always had a soft spot for it. The aria has a superb span of rapturous melody worthy of Puccini and those shifting harmonies at the end are pure magic. The orchestration is as enchanting as you'd expect from Korngold. The composer wisely reprised this tune at the close of the finale of his opera, giving it to the tenor. The other well-known number from Die tote Stadt is the beautiful lyrical baritone aria known as Pierrots Tanzlied. Puccini loved this opera - and so did Berg!

Following on from Die tote Stadt came the four melancholy Lieder des Abschieds ('Songs of Farewell'), glorious songs where the influence of Mahler is most keenly felt and where Korngold's gift for writing long melodic lines is again heard to its best advantage. You can hear a couple of them, Mond, so gehst du wieder auf ('Moon, You Rise Again') and  Sterbelied ('Requiem'), in their original versions for voice and piano at the links provided and Mond, so gehst du wieder auf can be heard along with Gefasster Abschied ('Serene Farewell') in their orchestral versions here. The orchestrations (made in 1923) really do carry the music into the soundworld of Strauss's widely-adored Four Last Songs of the late 1940s. Mond, so gehst du wieder auf, in particular, is particularly special and its haunting melody provides the theme for the variations of the slow movement of the Piano Quintet, Op.15. This centrepiece of the Quintet is a very fine movement, covering a surprising range of moods, keys and textures. The first movement is almost as good, having a fine sweep, plenty of lyricism and some lovely key changes. Unfortunately the Finale really isn't up to the same standard as its companions, for all its energy and cheerfulness.

Around the same time Erich wrote the first of his three string quartets. The String Quartet No.1, Op.26 is one of a few works from this time that show the composer writing in a somewhat more abrasive manner (foreshadowed by passages in Die tote Stadt), though such wild or anxious-sounding passages are assuaged by sweeter, more lyrical sections. The second movement Adagio shows Korngold pushing his chromatic harmony quite far, though without ever threatening to abandon tonality. The stylish Intermezzo isn't free from tension either but it's followed by a Finale where anxieties are replaced by a broad smile - and 'the Motif of the Cheerful Heart'. The First String Quartet is a fascinating work and ought to be played more often.

You may be familiar with the name Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist brother of Ludwig who lost an arm in the First World War for whom Ravel wrote his famous Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. Korngold also wrote a Piano Concerto for the Left Hand for him - a heroic affair for the pianist with a lovely second subject. (The whole concerto can be purchased here.) That work from 1923 was followed seven years later by a chamber work for Wittgenstein - the Suite for 2 violins, cello and piano left-hand, Op.23. The titles of the suite's movement are in the same neo-Classical vein as found in Stravinsky and in Schoenberg's contemporary suites. Of course, the music sounds like neither Stravinsky nor Schoenberg, though - as in the First String Quartet - there is a toughness at times in the Suite that is not usually associated with this composer and suggests that he was keeping up with the zeitgeist (a little bit). The opening Präludium und Fuge is quite powerful, the second movement Walzer is warmly nostalgic (and my favourite movement), the Groteske central movement is rather wild and interesting (with a sharply contrasted trio section), the following Lied is sweetly lyrical and the closing Rondo - Finale (Variationen) is a charmer.

Now that was a leap from 1923 to 1930, so what was Korngold up to in between the Piano Concerto and the Suite? Some songs (such as Was du mir bist? ('What are you to me?') from his Gesänge, Op.18), some piano pieces and the Baby-Serenade, Op.24. The major work of these years, though, was another opera - Das Wunder der Heliane. Many critics consider this, rather than Die tote Stadt, to be his operatic masterpiece, full of near-Expressionist experimentation whilst remaining quintessentially Korngold in its mix of passionate post-Wagnerian Romanticism and operetta-style lyricism. Some describe Heliane's gorgeous Act Two aria Ich ging zu ihm as an update of Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, though it seems more Richard Strauss than Richard Wagner to me. The opera opens most beautifully and ends rapturously. The prelude to the Third Act is wonderfully like film music. 

Film music was soon to become very important in Korngold's life and career but before we reach 1934 and the composer's first visit to Hollywood, there's one of my favourite works to consider - the String Quartet No.2, Op.26 of that fateful year, 1933. This is such a Viennese-sounding work, full of imagination, fine craftsmanship, great tunes and charm - plus plenty of harmonic daring. I can't account for why it is so neglected. A part-dramatic, part-easy-going opening Allegro is followed by a lightly-sighing Intermezzo, a soulful and imaginatively-scored Larghetto/Lento and a delightful Finale in waltz-time (which rivals the waltzes of Strauss's Rosenkavalier) to finish.

In 1934 actor and director Max Reinhardt invited Erich to Hollywood to turn Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream into film music, which he duly did. Here's our man's transformation of the perfect Mendelssohn Overture into  pure Hollywoodelssohn. He stayed four years, writing some of the earliest classic film scores, beginning with the swashbuckling Captain Blood (1935) with its magnificent main theme and love scene, and continuing with - among others - The Green Pastures, Anthony Adverse, The Prince and the Pauper and Another Dawn. What a feast of uplifting, romantic, tuneful, brilliantly-written, wonderfully orchestrated music lies on the end of those links! 

Korngold then went back to Vienna, but only very briefly because Hollywood beckoned again, asking for music for Errol Flynn's latest film of daring-do, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Korngold headed straight back to America and wrote this masterly score. Shortly after, Hitler sent his army into Austria and, obviously and very wisely, Korngold stayed put in the Land of the Free. More glorious film scores poured out of him in the following years - just to name most of them is to know their quality: Juarez, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, a favourite of mine The Sea Hawk, The Sea Wolf, Kings Row, The Constant Nymph, Of Human Bondage, Deception and Escape Me Never. 

One of the consequences of all this film music was that when Korngold stopped composing film music in 1946 and returned to concert music he had a ready store of themes to plunder. For the Cello Concerto, Op.37 , however, he simply expanded a cello concerto that was integral to the plot of Deception and created a short but effective single-movement piece. Even better though is the now popular Violin Concerto, Op.35. This drew on themes from Anthony Adverse, Juarez, Another Dawn and The Prince and the Pauper. Only the worst kind of critic would now sniff at its tunefulness and populism, given the incredible quality of the music and the genius for craftsmanship displayed by its creator. Both the first and second movements are deeply lyrical - the first ardent, the second nostalgic in character - while the third combines lyricism with energy and fizzing virtuosity and has a climax where the orchestra rides in like the rescuing hero in a Hollywood blockbuster - a moment that always carries me away! 

Now, Korngold hadn't just been writing film music during the years leading up to the fall of Hitler. He also composed some of his finest songs - songs from Shakespeare. There are the glorious Songs of the Clown, op.29, of which I find Come Away, Death and For the Rain It Raineth Every Day particularly attractive. The Four Shakespeare Songs, Op.31 are also masterly, with a touching Desdemona's Song standing out.

1939 saw the birth of Korngold's latest opera, Die Kathrin - a more tender and far simpler work than his earlier operas. Typical lush scoring, catchy popular tunes, soaring romantic melodies, beautiful love-duets, a dash of Strauss, a splash of Puccini - it's got 'em all! (Critics seem much less enamoured with the plot, which they say is over-sentimental). Please try the Act One love duet, the Wanderer's Song, the Soldier's March and Prayer, the Letter Aria, the Nightclub Scene and the Serenade. That's a representative selection.

1941, the year America entered the Second World War and the year before Nazi Germany decided on the 'Final Solution', saw Erich Korngold compose his only two religious works: His Passover Psalm, Op.30 for soprano, chorus and orchestra and his Prayer, Op.32 for tenor, female chorus, harp and organ. The Passover Psalm is the better piece and sounds remarkably like a thoroughly post-Romantic update of Schubert's lyrical choral music with added touches of Jewish melody. It's a splendidly stirring piece.

Besides the concertos, what did Korngold get up to in the twelve remaining years of his life after the end of the war? This final decade was the period when the tide of critical opinion shifted so painfully away from a composer whose success in the looked-down-upon medium of film music and 'outdated' Romantic style was not what was looked for in serious modern composers by those looking for tougher, harsher music to 'reflect the age'. He flopped when he attempted a comeback in Vienna and when back in America fared little better. Poor Korngold's sell-by-date had expired - at least according to the critics, some of whom were deeply unkind in their criticism of him (as is the way of the breed - sometimes!) Such things don't matter for us now, thankfully. We can judge those late pieces on  their own terms. 

Korngold began his return to concert music with the String Quartet No.3, Op.34. As with the concertos, he drew on themes from several of his films (Between Two World, The Sea Wolf and Deception), which gives the work its strong melodic appeal. However, here the result does unquestionably (to my ears) sound like 'proper' chamber music. The first movement and Scherzo, in particular, sounds surprisingly (and effectively) 'modern' - though the trio of the Scherzo is pure lyrical lushness. The slow movement is marked 'like a folk tune' and begins with a tender lyricism that should go straight to your heart, though there are nervous stirrings at the movement's heart and the music deepens interestingly. The Finale is tuneful feel-good music and it makes me feel good.

His final set of songs, the Fünf Lieder, op. 38, begins with Glückwunsch ('I wish you bliss') which has something of Marietta's Lied about it and is as lovely as that comparison might lead you to expect. The rest of the set maintains a high level. There's Der Kranke ('The sick one'), Alt-spanisch ('Old Spanish Song') - unusually Ravel-like -, Old English Song and, back to Shakespeare, My Mistress' Eyes. 

There are two more significant orchestral scores to go. The first is the Symphonic Serenade, Op.39. This seems to me to be an unqualified masterpiece, worthy to stand in the grand tradition (occupied by the likes of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Elgar, etc) of works for string orchestra. The opening Allegro is excellent, with an opening theme that is unquestionably (as we critical types say) inspired. The Intermezzo is somewhat in the vein of the Scherzo from the Third Quartet and, in its pizzicato writing, shows Korngold to be a master of orchestration to the very end. The third movement Lento religioso is very beautiful and seems to partake of the spirit of another of Austria's finest composers, Anton Bruckner, as much as of Gustav Mahler. (Who suspected that of Erich Korngold?) Typically, the Finale is fun but also a worthy conclusion to an impressive piece of 'symphonic' writing. 

The other major orchestral work from this period is the Symphony in F sharp, Op.40 - the work that seemed to sink Korngold in America. It's a fascinating work, but I must admit that it doesn't seem quite so impressive as either the contemporary Symphonic Serenade or the childhood Sinfonietta. I came to it late in my Korngold journey and was rather taken aback by the Mahlerian anger of the opening movement. There are familiar Korngold passages of consoling lyricism and heroic uplift but quite a bit of this gripping if disconcerting movement sounds startlingly bitter. It's tempting to try and tease out personal motives for its mood but probably fruitless. The Scherzo is fierce too, though it too has the consolation of brilliant orchestration and some stirring writing for the horns (Errol Flynn to the rescue!). The Adagio seems heavy with disconsolate feeling. It is a clear attempt to speak from the heart through music. The Finale is swashbuckling stuff and characteristically displays a 'Cheerful Heart'. [2022 Update: In the ten years since I first posted this I've come to disagree with myself over part of this. I've now fallen completely in love with this masterpiece, especially the scherzo and the profoundly beautiful slow movement].

There's also a delicious tribute to one of the musical love's of Erich's life - Johann Strauss II - in Straussiana: Part of a polka and a waltz. Minor Korngold? Most definitely, but Korngold loved his other Strauss even more than Richard and this work pays tribute to someone whose ideals clearly meant a lot to our man.

And, yes, there was a final stage work. The man whose operas had featured so many operetta-like melodies ending his (short) life as a composer for the stage by composing an operetta, Die stumme Serenade ('The Silent Serenade'). YouTube has some intriguing stuff on this, including a magical glimpse of Korngold himself, humming along as he plays a waltz from the score on the piano and there are several very pleasing extracts from a staging of the piece which can be accessed (hopefully) here.

I've enjoyed writing this survey of Erich Korngold's music and I hope you will be further tempted to explore his output at your leisure.