Day 6
Welcome to the start of Unit 2 - E.asy.
There are two videos today, one to wrap up Unit 1 - D.aily, and one to get started on what’s next :)
D.AILY FRAMEWORK WRAP-UP
E.ASY FRAMEWORK - UNIT 2, LESSON 1
Downloads:
Two things for today
Today’s Recommended Listening:
W.A. Mozart (1756-1791)
Marriage of Figaro: Overture
George Szell / Cleveland Orchestra
[Spotify] - 4 minutes
Mozart is the Einstein of music. Ultra-super-genius who composed more than 600 works including 40+ symphonies, 30+ concertos, a bunch of operas, dozens of pieces of chamber music countless works for keyboard… in a 35-year lifespan. And you know how some people are over-hyped? Mozart’s not. He’s that good.
Let’s take a listen today to a piece that definitely has a well-known opening riff that you’ve heard a million times but may not have connected to a name - the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro. An Overture is like the opening credits in a Marvel Movie. You get glimpses of the characters you’ll encounter (or here, the musical fragments) and the action isn’t actually going yet.
Overtures were also how they got the audience to sit down and get ready to watch the opera and they’re always orchestra-only, without any singers. Often, that means the composers gave the super-flashy stuff to the orchestra, like the strings (including cellos!) get right here at the opening of the opera. For that reason, orchestras like to program Overtures on their non-opera concerts, too. So if you’ve ever attended and the first piece has been “The Overture to…”, that’s why.
Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro, when he was 30. Operas were the musicals of the time - a couple hours long, featuring actors (singers) and music. The difference is that in opera, time slows down even more. Whenever a character is singing, it’s almost always a few minutes of song that reveals an instant of thought. In that way, funny enough, I think of Opera and Anime as being comparable. Food for thought.
You can summarize every opera with 3 questions: Who falls in love? Who dies? Who gets revenge. Honestly, that’s pretty much it ;)
About George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra: Cleveland is regarded as the great American orchestral interpreter of Mozart / Haydn / Beethoven. Ultra-precise and with a unique sound, and Szell is probably my favorite Mozart conductor for that orchestra.
What to explore next:
Mozart | Piano Concerto #24 [Mitsuko Uchida as soloist, with Cleveland]
Mozart | String Quartet #19 - “Dissonance” [Emerson String Quartet]
Leonard Bernstein | Overture to Candide [Bernstein conducting NY Philharmonic]
See you tomorrow!
—Eric