Music I Like, #8: Rare and Precious Chain, by Jethro Tull

One of the mindblowing things about teaching university students in the year of Our Lord 2022 is that many of them are too young to remember a world without social media. Meanwhile, I was a few years younger they are now when Youtube was becoming a Big Thing, and I remember the first time I encountered a fan vid for a TV show. The combination of music and clips from the show was absolutely perfect.

The song was Jethro Tull's 'Rare and Precious Chain' and the TV show was Robin of Sherwood. Such a good show, such an excellent song. Here it is.

 

I should also add: rather unusually for a rock band, Jethro Tull includes a flutist (the flute part is one of key ingredients that make this song so excellent). My mother is a professional flutist and I grew up reading her Flute Talk magazines. One of their issues in the early 2000s had a fabulous profile of the flutist of Jethro Tull, Ian Anderson. He seemed amused and delighted to be speaking about his music and career to a bunch of classical musicians.

NB: I'm trying to make sure that all the recordings I'm sharing are from the artists' official channels or have been licensed to Youtube by their record companies--that way they make money from engagement with videos and ad revenue (also, it respects their copyright rights as creators!) However, I want to share the Robin of Sherwood fanvid that introduced me to this song because I enjoy how the creator of the video has matched lyrics and footage from the show. Here it is.

Music I Like, #7, Salut d'amor by Edward Elgar

In her book, Heifetz as I Knew Him, Ayke Agus writers about the great violinist's love of 'itsy-bitsies', short but musically rich pieces that could be played as encores or at the end of concerts. There is a great interview where Agus speaks more about these short pieces and her love of them here.

Edward Elgar's Salut D'Amor is one of my favourite of these. It has a lovely story behind it, too: the composer wrote it as an engagement gift for his wife.

Music I Like, #6: Step by Step by Pete Seeger, arr. John McCutcheon

Being introduced to great music by a friend is one of the true pleasures of life. When I was in high school, our friend Catherine introduced me and my sister to one of her favourite artists, the incredible American folk musician and songwriter John McCutcheon. I left my CDs at home when I moved to UK, and hadn't listened to McCutcheon for years--until the coronavirus pandemic hit and he played a regular concert over Facebook Live. The three of us got together to listen from three time zones and two countries, sharing our delight in what we were hearing by sending each other text messages.

Today is the New York City Marathon, and so this one also comes with a dedication for everyone who had a difficult day in today's hot and humid weather, and most especially to the back of the back runners finishing in the dark. Step by step, you got this!

Music I Like #5, Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better) by Irving Berlin

No lengthy reasons for my love of this one. Some of the songs and storylines from Annie Get Your Gun have aged rather badly, but not this one.

Also, Ethel Merman's voice could bring down the walls of Jericho.

Music I Like, #4, Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Chamber music is a glorious subset of classical music written for small groups of instruments, meant to be played by small groups of friends and family in homes and other intimate spaces. Seeing it performed in a concert hall by professional musicians is one of my favourite things to do. I also adore playing it myself, though I haven't made the opportunity to do so in many years.

There will be more pieces of chamber music to come but let's get this started off with a Mozart piano quartet. The Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478, is something I first heard as a teenager, when I attended a summer camp called Apple Hill. The camp focuses on bringing together people of a ranges of backgrounds and ages to play music together, on the theory that the sort of listening, openness, and responsiveness one learns through making music with others can be applied to making the world a more just and peaceful place. This piece always brings back memories of being fifteen, sitting in the hayloft of an old barn, legs laced through the railings, listening in spellbound wonder as my fellow campers made their instruments sing to each other.

 

Music I Like #3, All Star by Smash Mouth

Sometime in the early 2000s, I borrowed a CD of the soundtrack for Shrek (2001) from my local public library. I no longer remember how and why this happened--I'm not sure I had even seen the movie itself at that point--but it's how I first heard this song. It makes me laugh.

Music I Like, #2: Passacaglia in G Minor by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber

One of the things I love about classical music is the complexity and beauty of its structure, and the piece I choosing to share today requires some explanations of those structures. The word passacaglia comes from the Spanish words pasa calle, to walk down the street. It first appears in seventeenth century instrumental music as an interlude between dances or songs and often has the form of a set of variations over a sustained bass line called an ostinato.

The Austrian violinist and composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) is known for the way that his music expanded and explored the possibilities of the violin as a musical instrument. This is especially apparent Biber's fifteen Rosary Sonatas, each of which was written to illustrate a different meditation on the life of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Many of them use a technique called scordatura, in which the violinist tunes the strings of their instrument to non-standard pitches in pursuit of different harmonies and textures. The series of sonatas ends with a sixteenth piece, one of the most famous Baroque passacaglias, and one of my favourite pieces of music.

I learned and played this on the viola, so I am giving you a link to a recording by the violist Wenting Kang.