Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3

Many years ago, my daughter's violin teacher, Mark Pfannschmidt, gave us a call. He wanted to know whether we could make use of some free tickets to a performance of the National Chamber Orchestra, with which he sometimes plays. Since the tickets ranged in price from $17 to $34, we jumped at the chance. The concert took place at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Center for the Performing Arts in Rockville, Maryland, which town--for some strange reason--is the final resting place for that writer and his wife, Zelda.

The National Chamber Orchestra which has since become The National Philharmonic is under the direction of Piotr Gajewski, who is also on the musical faculty at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Gajewski also worked with a local youth orchestra that my daughter played with. I was pleasantly surprised to see the program featured two works by Bach, the Piano Concerto No. 4 in A and the third Brandenburg Concerto. My knowledge of the latter goes back to before high school, for I think it also appears on "Switched-On Bach." But, I really fell in love with it when, on a visit to my friend Paul Mankowski's house, I heard a recording of it conducted by Pablo Casals.

Bach wrote six concertos for the Margrave, Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg (Bavaria) in 1721. Supposedly he dedicated them to the Margrave in the hopes of gaining employment in Berlin with the Margrave's orchestras, which was one of the finest in Europe at that time period. Unfortunately, the Margrave had asked him to compose them two years earlier, and by the time Bach presented them, his request for employment was ignored. Interesting to know that way back then they already used to say: "We'll let you know."

The term "concerto" originally meant a group of instruments playing together, but by Bach's time it had evolved into a group of instruments playing in combination or alternating with a larger orchestra. It eventually came to be applied to a form with three movements for a single instrument, like a piano or violin, playing "against" an orchestra. In the third Brandenburg Concerto, Bach gives the focus to three groups--the violins, violas and cello--and puts a bass and harpsichord continuo behind them.

Though I've listened to this piece countless times, that night was the first time I'd ever seen it performed live. It adds such a dimension to see how a melody will start with one group of instruments, move to a second, and finally end up in the third. In a way Bach pioneered this technique and it gave rise to new forms-trios, quartets, quintets, and other chamber arrangements.

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto Number 3 has just two real movements. There is a brief interlude, called adagio between the two allegro movements, but it only consists of two notes. On some recordings, you will hear that expanded with an improvisational piece given to the harpsichord. That was the case on my old Casals recording.

The first and last movements of the Brandenburg Concerto Number 3 live up to the "happy" label. (Allegro means happy in Italian.) Both also have strong beats, which (and I'm not sure if this is "cultured" behavior) make me tap my feet along with them.

The reason Bach wanted to get a job with the Margrave's orchestra, had to do with his dissatisfaction composing liturgical music, which he had to do as a choir master. At the age of 36, when he composed them, perhaps he was having a midlife crisis, and wanted to follow his bliss. The Third Brandenbug Concerto, therefore, is that much more remarkable because it has none of the whining, self-pitying tone of the modern, balding men stuck in dead-end jobs. It soars! And how much more fun we would all have if we did, too

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Joaquin Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez

A suave gentleman with graying temples stands in front of the latest "luxury" gas-guzzler from Detroit. The scene takes place in a courtyard in what looks like Seville, Spain. The man, actor Ricardo Montalban, rolls his Rs as he unctuously gushes about the "fine Corinthian leather" seats. On the soundtrack, strings swell up into a very Spanish sounding melody.

I find it odd how almost every popular American television sitcom ridicules classical music and musicians. Conductors are painted as long-haired, temperamental brats; children who play instruments are portrayed as four-eye geeks; and composers are tortured souls detached from reality. Yet the Madison Avenue advertising firm that dreamed up this ad would have you believe that buying this over-priced deathtrap will bestow "class" upon you, almost like knighthood. And they use classical music to cement that connection.

It doesn't matter that it's all a lie. For example, I once heard an ad executive laughing about that very car commercial with Moltalban. He said they had just made up the term "Corinthian leather." There is no such thing. All smoke and mirrors.

There is nothing classy about a factory assembly line. (Believe me, I've worked on a few.) Even less so when then brunt of the work is done by robots, which completely does away with the human touch. No class at all in building a product that wastes fossil fuel, which kills over 30,000 people in the US alone every year, and which is a major source of pollution. (Been to London or Paris lately?)

Does that mean that I'd be prepared to say that a hand-crafted car like the Rolls-Royce is classy? Not really. Think about the people who buy them. Prince Charles, for example, had as tawdry a personal and romantic life as any soap opera character or inbred, hillbilly yokel from Podunksville. Please explain to me, please, how saying to your mistress "I want to be your [feminine hygiene product connotes] class."

Actually, what is classy is the craftsmen who make the Rolls-Royce by hand, the millionaire who gives away his money, the person who does not blame others or wallow in self-pity because of setbacks or disabilities. Like today's composer.

Joaquin Rodrigo was born in 1901. At the age of three, a measles outbreak in Spain blinded him. Despite this disability, he went on to be an accomplished pianist and then studied composition with Paul Dukas (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) in Paris. In Paris he became friends with Ravel, Milhaud, Honegger and Manuel de Falla. He stayed there for five years before returning to Spain in 1933. From then until his death he traveled lecturing and performing (piano). He lives in Madrid.

Rodrigo composed the Concierto de Aranjuez in 1939 and it became an instant success. Oddly enough, he did not play the guitar. He composed on the piano and his wife transcribed the piece for guitar. He has written 11 concertos for different instruments, and in the US he's known primarily for the Concierto de Aranjuez and another work, Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre.

I first heard the piece on a local classical music station when in high school. Of course, I checked it out of the library immediately and played it about a million times. Though very short, at around 21 minutes, it really packs a punch. The first movement is very upbeat and sounds technically challenging for the performer. The second movement is the one that appeared in the car commerical, and which you often hear in elevators. It sounds almost stereotypically Spanish. The guitar begins the last movement and echos itself, almost like a light fugue. By the time it's over you feel, well if not like "fine Corinthian leather," then I don't know what.

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Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

Johann Sebastian Bach is another one of those great composers whose music can serve as a starting point for someone interested in learning about classical music. I use the term generic term "classical" here to refer to all "serious" music, because as most of you know, Bach falls into the baroque period. Confused yet? I think I can be forgiven, because The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music lists among its definition for "classical", "music of permanent value, not ephemeral." The technical definition is to describe music that is concerned with form and proportion rather than emotion, and usually refers to the 18th and early 19th century. The Oxford manages to get a dig in at us hoi polloi: "Amongst less educated people, music with no 'tune' in it." Those whacky Brits. How can you not love a country that gave us Shakespeare and baked beans on toast?

Baroque refers to the period of music immediately preceding classical, that is the 17th and early 18th century, usually from Germany and Austria. Baroque, from the French meaning "bizarre," was applied to the fanciful wrought-gold and cherub adorned architecture of that time period. Bach was probably the most prolific composers (in more ways than one) of this period: he produced countless works for the organ, chorus, instruments and orchestra—-plus 23 sons. That doesn't sound too impressive, except for the sons, but consider this, he wrote a cantata (in this case a sung mass) for every day of the year!

I usually think of music from this time period as being either stately—like Handel's Water Music and Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos—or meticulous like Bach's works for solo instruments such as the harpsichord, violin, viola and of course the organ. Bach wrote a lot of organ music, having been a church organist and director of the school of the church of Saint Thomas in Leipzig.

The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is probably one of Bach's most famous and accessible pieces. It gets played a lot around Halloween in the U.S., because some idiot used it the soundtrack for some horror movie years ago. The opening part, the toccata, for that reason now sounds ominous and full of sturm und drang. The fugue is a form of composition that has several "voices" or melodies that start in succession, almost like a round, but then which interweave with one another according to strict rules of harmony. This is why the music to me sounds meticulous or mathematical. The modern philosopher, Douglas Hofstader, wrote a huge tome called Godell, Escher, and Bach in which he analyzes the structure of the fugue, almost ad nauseum.

Another place where the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor turns up is in Walt Disney's film Fantasia. Leopold Stokowski orchestrated the piece and the Disney cartoonist used the technique of aurora borealis to represent the different voices of the fugue. It's sort of boring really, and to my mind, kind of emasculates this piece.

Of course, as an adolescent, I was drawn to the toccata, but eventually I came to love the fugue as well, which is actually quite beautiful and sweet compared to the strong emotions in the toccata. In my high school French class, I met a fellow student, named John Claeys, who was a gifted artist and could play the organ by ear. One of his hobbies was collecting decorative molding from abandoned Victorian houses in our county. His basement bedroom looked like something out of a horror film itself, with its dark paneling. John had even found an old upright pump organs on one of his forays and installed this in his lair. He was able to figure out the fingering for part of the toccata and took great pleasure wheezing it out on that old organ.

John and I made a horror movie for our French class with his dad's super eight camera. I played a crazed madman, who at one point runs out of control in my mothers black 1968 Volkwagen beetle and dirves it over a cliff. John sacrificed one of his plastic car models for the actual crash and burning of the bug. The only thing it had to do with French class were the hand-written dialog cards, which said things like sacre bleu! Of course, we used the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor for the soundtrack.

In 1972 or thereabouts, an organist named Virgil Fox, decided to adapt techniques from The Grateful Dead and give concerts with psychedelic light shows. He came to a small private college in my home town and I dragged John along to the concert with me. It was absolutely captivating.

Fox must have thought he was the reincarnation of Franz Lizst: he strode onstage wearing a black cape, which he whirled off as he sat down at his instrument. He played a huge five-manual (keyboard) organ and between pieces he would explain to the audience exactly how each piece was constructed and how complex it was. One piece, I think it was the Gigue Fugue, required him to play four melodies, one with each appendage simultaneously. The crowd—and I—went wild and after he finished he played a number of encores. After each set of applause would die down, I would stand up and scream "Play Toccata and Fugue in D Minor!". After his fourth encore, and dripping with sweat, he yelled back "OK!" Needless to say, I was transported, and though somewhat embarrassed by my behavior after all these years, I still enjoy this piece.

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