Movement 5: Passa Calle

Boccherini was an Italian composer and cellist. He was working during the Classical period (1730–1830), but his music sounds like it is from an earlier time. Much of it is grand and courtly, and during his lifetime it would have been considered ‘old-fashioned’.

The title of this work translates as ‘Night Music from the Streets of Madrid’ and it is there that Boccherini found himself in 1780, working for the exiled Spanish king. Scholars argue over whether the work is programmatic (ie tells a story) but every movement has an evocative title and Boccherini himself refused to publish the work outside of Spain, claiming it would be ‘ridiculous’ to people unfamiliar with the location.

Today we will hear the fifth movement, ‘Passa Calle’, which is a description of singers and revellers ‘passing along’ the street.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Kats-Chernin is an multi award-winning Australian composer. She was born in what is now the capital of Uzbekistan and spent her early life in the Russian SSR before moving to Australia in 1975. After studying in Sydney she became part of the underground theatre scene there using the name ‘Kats Chernin’. Further studies took her to Germany and in 1993 she wrote Clocks for Ensemble Modern. It was this piece that made her world famous.

Back in Australia, Kats-Chernin was commissioned to write a ballet using a Hans Christian Andersen story The Wild Swans as stimulus. Eliza Aria comes from that score. You may recognise it from the 2007 Lloyds Bank advert or from elsewhere – it has been used numerous times on screen and at one time was the third most performed classical work in UK TV advertising!

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Movement 3: Vivo

Villa-Lobos is regularly described as ‘the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian music’. He was born into a wealthy, cultured family in Rio de Janeiro but, despite having the money to afford great tuition, was largely self-taught. After the unexpected death of his father, 12-year-old Heitor was sent out to support the family and he did so by playing cello, clarinet and guitar in cinema and theatre orchestras.

The Jet Whistle is from 1950 and shows off his eccentric side. Each of the three movements are in a different style of triple time (three beats in the bar). Movement 3, 'Vivo', sounds the most like the title. The cello provides accompaniment whilst the flute races up and down, screeches and trills.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Price was born in Little Rock, Arkansas into a well-respected mixed-race family. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a music teacher. She began piano lessons with her mum at the age of four and composed her first pieces aged 11. After moving with her husband to Chicago to escape the difficult racial situation of the Deep South, she became the first African-American composer to have a piece played by a major American symphony orchestra. Florence Price was a true pioneer. She was not only African-American, working during a time of segregation, but she was a woman, working within the very male dominated area of orchestral music.

This undated song is a setting of a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar and contains the famous line ‘I know why the caged bird sings’.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Hoagland (Hoagy) Howard Carmichael was named after a visiting circus troupe who happened to be staying with Hoagy’s parents during his mother’s pregnancy. Hoagy had no formal musical training and learnt piano at a young age from his mother. He grew up to be one of the most successful of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, penning over 100 songs, 50 of which were hits.

Stardust was an early success. Written in 1927 and performed by hundreds of artists, it is one of the most recorded songs of all time. The original recording, with Hoagy on piano, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and is in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

The African-American composer and conductor Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was named after the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He grew up in New York City where he attended high school, university and eventually the Manhattan School of Music. As a young man he taught music at Brooklyn College whilst training in Europe to be a conductor during the vacations. In 1965 he co-founded Symphony of the New World, the first racially integrated orchestra in the US and later he became its music director. His music is a blend of his many influences from Baroque counterpoint to American jazz, with Romanticism, blues and folk thrown in too.

This small but poignant piece was the final music he worked on. It was left unfinished at the time of his death and remained unpublished until 2021.

_{Note by Rachel Leach}

Thank you for joining us for this Relaxed Lunchtime Performance.

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