Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

When the great pianist and composer Frederic Chopin decided to write a piano sonata in 1837, fashions had turned against the genre itself. Perhaps it was a feeling that Beethoven had essentially "finished" the genre, or perhaps it was a sense that a non-Germanic composer couldn't possibly master a form such as the Sonata, but Chopin's forays into the realm of the Piano Sonata were not generally appreciated. Robert Schumann famously said this about the Sonata: "The idea of calling it a sonata is a caprice, if not a jest, for he has simply bound together four of his most maddest children, thus under his name smuggling them into a place into which they could not else have penetrated.", This is criticism that we'll pick apart later, because it is very specific and goes to a big challenge within the piece. Mendelssohn also despised the piece, and until 1900, most of the critical reception to the piece was negative, criticizing its supposed lack of coherence and the strange last movement in particular. As a complete piece, the Sonata was rarely played until the 20th century. But there was one movement of the Sonata that was played a lot, and which has remained perhaps one of the most recognizable pieces of classical music in history. Yes, the famous Chopin Funeral March isn't a standalone piece, it's part of the 2nd piano sonata! And slowly, as forms became less rigid, and as experiments with tonality and even with inner coherence of movements became less taboo, Chopin's sonata received a critical second look, and performers began to take on the piece not as an exercise in trying to make the rest of the Sonata work around the Funeral March, but as a great work in its entirety. Now it is firmly part of the repertoire and is hailed as a masterpiece of innovation and creativity. The Funeral March itself is probably in the top 5 most played pieces of classical music, and was played at Chopin's own funeral, as well as at the funerals of John F Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II, as well as of Soviet and Communist leaders. This of course doesn't include the countless times the movement has been heard at funerals of lesser-known figures. It is practically a cultural meme at this point and has been adapted thousands of times - if you think about a funeral, or about death, it is certainly possible that the Chopin Funeral march filters through your mind. But today is about much more than the Funeral March, it is about exploring this whole sonata, from its scintillating first few chords, to the experiments with sonata form throughout the first movement, to the dramatic scherzo, to that funeral march, and to the frankly bizarre last movement, which is over before you even blink. We're going to talk about all this, and more, on this Patreon Sponsored episode. Join us!

Dmitri Shostakovich: "I have set myself a task fraught with tremendous responsibility, to express in sound the immortal image of Lenin as a great son of the Russian people and as a leader of the masses. I have received numerous letters from all over the Soviet Union with regard to my future symphony. The most important advice contained therein was to make considerable use of musical folklore." In the massively consequential year of 1939, Shostakovich used these words to launch his Sixth Symphony. The piece was meant to have soloists and a chorus alongside the orchestra — perhaps a nod to his Second and Third Symphonies, which were essentially propaganda pieces. Shostakovich even promised to use the poem "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" by Vladimir Mayakovsky as the basis for his choral text. The Soviet public eagerly awaited this new symphony, which was inevitably going to be compared with his Fifth Symphony — the piece that had brought Shostakovich back into the Soviet government's good graces, and which remains one of his most popular works even as it's also one of his most complex and nuanced pieces beneath its relatively conservative surface. But whether Shostakovich ever actually planned to write this gigantic "Lenin" symphony is highly doubtful, since no sketches of it have ever turned up. Instead, Shostakovich pivoted publicly to describing his new symphony this way: "The musical character of the Sixth Symphony will differ from the mood and emotional tone of the Fifth Symphony, in which moments of tragedy and tension were characteristic. In my latest symphony, music of a contemplative and lyrical order predominates. I wanted to convey in it the moods of spring, joy, youth."[6] As you can see, Shostakovich wasn't actually saying much about the content of the symphony — if anything at all. He was leaving things deliberately ambiguous, and, fittingly, ambiguous is a pretty good description of this highly enigmatic symphony. Everything about this symphony is slightly off. It's in three movements, not the typical four, and it opens with a massive slow movement; the two remaining movements are fast and significantly shorter, together lasting less than the first movement alone. It was written in 1939 — supposedly a year of military triumph for the Soviet Union, given the Stalin pact with Hitler that allowed Hitler to invade Poland and launch World War II — and yet there is not a hint of military triumphalism in it. In short, this symphony confused a lot of people and has always received mixed reviews, whether from musicologists trying to fit it into the traditional "everything in Shostakovich is about Stalin" narrative, or from Soviet critics of the time trying to fit it into Socialist Realist aesthetics. In the end, descriptions of Shostakovich always attempt to put him into a box — silent dissident, Soviet stooge, hero, coward, etc. The truth, of course, is complicated, and this symphony is a great example of the eternal enigma that is Dmitri Shostakovich. Today, on this Patreon-sponsored episode, I'll take you through this wonderful symphony from a musical perspective, trying to parse its unusual form, its unusually lyrical first movement, and the wild, madcap dash of the final two movements. Join us!

When it comes to a piece like the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, a few words or phrases regularly come up: the concerto is described as "mellow" or Mozart's "swan song," but most often it is described as "perfect." Such a perfect piece as Mozart's Clarinet Concerto must have been hugely popular during Mozart's lifetime, right? It must have been played all over, by all the virtuoso clarinetists of the day. Well, that is not even close to the case. At the age of 35, Mozart was kind of old news in the economically depressed, repressed, and censored city of Vienna in 1790. There were very few concerts during this period, and Mozart's popularity had waned severely. The clarinet concerto, one of a wealth of brilliant (and yes, perfect) pieces Mozart wrote in the final year of his life, was performed once by the man for whom Mozart wrote it, Anton Stadler, before Mozart's death, but the location and the program of that concert are forgotten. The manuscript of the concerto is lost, which means we actually don't know a lot about it, especially considering it wasn't actually written for a standard clarinet, but for a basset clarinet (we'll get to that later). The piece was written just about two months before Mozart's death and was his last completed work, though there's absolutely no evidence that Mozart knew he was dying when he wrote it. All in all, there's actually a lot of mystery surrounding this perfect piece, and yet, when we hear the luminous music that Mozart wrote, all of this falls away. There is truly a kind of perfection to this music, a golden quality that is inescapable. There is no clarinet concerto that is performed more often or more recorded, and it remains a perennial favorite for clarinetists and orchestras around the world. Today, on this Patreon-sponsored episode, we'll talk about all these mysteries surrounding this concerto, Anton Stadler, the basset clarinet, and of course, the wonderful music itself, though, as always, Mozart sometimes defies description. Join us!

Thence the universe resounds With a joyful cry I AM. These are the final lines of Alexander Scriabin's epic Poem of Ecstasy, a 300-line poem that takes nearly 10 minutes to read aloud and is one of the most surreal texts in the world. Scriabin wrote a Poem of Ecstasy in text and a Poem of Ecstasy in music simultaneously. Both are absolutely wild, with the musical Poem of Ecstasy being a 20-minute thrill ride that alternates between languid, sinewy, seductive music and some of the loudest, most over-the-top, and dramatic music that could possibly exist. I've always been fascinated by Scriabin, and so this week's episode is an opportunity to talk about his wild (I'm going to be using that word a lot today) life and the eclectic philosophy behind Scriabin's works, as well as to take you through this masterpiece of musical sensuality. Scriabin not only doesn't shy away from sensual aspects in music but instead fully embraces them; in fact, the original title for this piece was Orgiastic Poem! Thankfully, since the piece probably would have never been performed with that title, Scriabin changed the name to Poem of Ecstasy, and the piece has stayed in the repertoire of most big orchestras ever since. And big is the key word here, because this piece is written for an absolutely massive orchestra. Like a Mahler symphony, the Poem of Ecstasy is an event whenever it is performed, simply from seeing the sheer size of the orchestra on stage when you see this piece live in concert. It is truly an overwhelming experience to listen to this piece, and I can't wait to share it with you this week. Join us!