Music

13 July

Gareth Coker (1984-) – Ori and the Will of the Wisps: Main Theme

Gareth Coker
from https://twitter.com/garethcoker

Gareth Coker is a British composer best known for his work on the critically acclaimed video games by Moon Studios, Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

Coker learnt the piano at a very early age. In school, he joined the orchestra and a jazz band and later studied at the Royal Academy of Music focussing on musical composition. He travelled and lived abroad in Japan for three years, studying various instruments. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he juggled between composing for video games and the University of Southern California’s film scoring program.

In 2011, Coker composed the accompanying music Ori and the Blind Forest which was nominated for a BAFTA Game Award for Best Music.

12 July

Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) – Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission

Thomas Music Morricone 0

Ennio Morricone
by Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21288724

Ennio Morricone was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player, writing in a wide range of musical styles. Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. He started as a talented football player for A.S. Roma but quickly left the sport to follow his passion for music. His score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is considered one of the most influential soundtracks in history.

After playing the trumpet in jazz bands in the 1940s, he began writing for film and theatre in 1955.

Morricone’s best-known compositions include The Ecstasy of Gold, Se Telefonando and Gabriel’s Oboe. In 1971, he received an award for achieving worldwide sales of 22 million, and by 2016 Morricone had sold over 70 million records worldwide. In 2016, Morricone received his first Oscar for his work, at the time becoming the oldest person ever to win one.

11 July

Max Bruch (1838-1920) – Violin Concerto No. 1, II: Adagio

Thomas Music Bruch 0

Max Bruch
by What We Hear in Music, Anne S. Faulkner, Victor Talking Machine Co., 1913,Imported from English Wikipedia: [1] originally uploaded by User:RJHall, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=966169

Max Bruch was a German composer, teacher, and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which, shared here, has become a staple of the violin repertoire.

The concerto was first completed in 1866 and Bruch sold the score to the publisher for a small lump sum — but he kept a copy of his own. At the end of World War I, he was destitute, having been unable to enforce the payment of royalties for his other works because of chaotic world-wide economic conditions.

The slow second movement is often admired for its melody, and is generally considered to be the heart of the concerto. The themes, presented by the violin, are underscored by a constantly moving orchestra part, keeping the movement alive and helping it flow from one part to the next.

The first movement of this concerto was shared here.

9 July

One For The Weekend: Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) – Faust et Hélène

Thomas Music Boulanger 0

Lili Boulanger
by unidentified photographer – http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/lili.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4236201

Marie-Juliette Olga “Lili” Boulanger was a French composer and the first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize. Her older sister was the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.

In 1912, Boulanger competed in the Prix de Rome but during her performance, she collapsed from illness. She returned in 1913 at the age of 19 to win the composition prize for her cantata Faust et Hélène. The cantata had many performances during her lifetime and because of the prize, she gained a contract with the publisher Ricordi.

She suffered from chronic illness, beginning with a case of bronchial pneumonia at age two that weakened her immune system, leading to a shortened life, dying at the age of 24.

Have a lovely, restful weekend – the Summer break for schools in the UK is almost upon us.

8 July

Traditional – Korobeiniki

Thomas Music Traditional 0

The melody

Korobeiniki is a nineteenth-century Russian folk song that tells the story of a meeting between a peddler and a girl, describing their haggling over goods in a metaphor for courtship.

Outside Russia, Korobeiniki is widely known as the Tetris theme (titled “A-Type” in the game), from its appearance in Nintendo’s 1989 Game Boy version of the game.

The song Korobeiniki is based on a poem of the same name by Nikolay Nekrasov, which was first printed in the Sovremennik magazine in 1861. Its increasing tempo and the associated dance style led to it quickly becoming a popular Russian folk song.

Korobeiniki were peddlers with trays, who sold fabric, haberdashery, books and other small items in pre-revolutionary Russia.

7 July

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) – Vieille prière bouddhique

Thomas Music Boulanger 0

Lili Boulanger
by unidentified photographer – http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/lili.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4236201

She suffered from chronic illness, beginning with a case of bronchial pneumonia at age two that weakened her immune system, leading to a shortened life, dying at the age of 24.

6 July

Jun Nagao (1964-) – The Earth

Thomas Music Nagao 0

Jun Nagao
from https://cdn-us.anidb.net/images/main/92411.jpg

Japanese composer Jun Nagao arranged The Planets for his Trouvère Quartet in 2003, including added movements for Earth and Pluto, since both were considered planets at the time.

The suite was arranged for concert band and premiered in 2014.

The work contains original themes, themes from The Planets, and other popular Holst melodies.

The rest of the posts in this series can be found in the links below.

Colin Matthews, OBE is an English composer of classical music.

In 2000, Matthews wrote this addition to Gustav Holst’s The Planets in a similar style to the original work. Matthews even altered the ending of Holst’s Neptune in order to make the start of his piece fit better.

Colin Matthews (1946-) – Pluto, the Renewer

Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer, arranger and teacher.

The Planets, Op. 32, is his seven-movement orchestral suite written between 1914 and 1916. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System.

The movements in Holst’s suite can be found below:

5 July

Jerome Moross (1913-1983) – The Big Country

Thomas Music Moross 0

Jerome Moross
from https://moviemusicuk.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/jerome-moross-2.jpg

Jerome Moross was an American composer best known for his music for film and television. He also composed works for symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists and musical theatre, as well as orchestrating scores for other composers.

His best-known film score was written for the 1958 movie The Big Country, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. He composed this main title piece after recalling a walk he took in the flatlands around Albuquerque, New Mexico, during a visit in October 1936, shortly before he moved to Hollywood.

4 July

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) – Adagio For Strings

Thomas Music Barber 0

Samuel Barber
by Carl Van Vechten – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID van.5a51697.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52003

Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. He is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century.

He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music twice: for his opera Vanessa and for the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

Adagio for Strings is arranged for string orchestra from the second movement of his String Quartet, Op. 11 and has been featured in many TV shows and movies. In 2006 a recorded performance of this work by the London Symphony Orchestra was the highest-selling classical piece on iTunes.

2 July

One For The Weekend: Havergal Brian (1876-1972) – Symphony No.1 in D minor ”Gothic’

Thomas Music Brian 0

Havergal Brian
from https://ump.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Havergal-Brian1.jpg

Havergal Brian was a British classical composer.

Brian was extremely prolific, his body of work including 32 symphonies, many of them extremely long and ambitious works for massive orchestral forces.

Brian enjoyed a period of significant popularity earlier in his career and rediscovery in the 1950s, though his music fell out of favour and since the 1970s he is very rarely studied and performed. Still, he continued to be extremely productive late into his career, composing large works even into his nineties, many of which remain unperformed. Today, he is often remembered for this, his First Symphony which calls for the largest orchestral force demanded by any conventionally structured concert work- 200 orchestral players! 4 adult and 1 children’s choir! An offstage brass band!

The Symphony No. 1 in D minor (The Gothic) was composed between 1919 and 1927. At around one and three quarter hours, it is among the longest symphonies ever composed.

It’s not the most conventional piece, but something to explore this weekend.