Ether Game: Your Daily Dose of Musical Fun and Frustration (A Production of WFIU Public Radio)

Frédéric Chopin is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists that ever lived. His virtuosic compositions clearly show that he was a prodigiously gifted musician and a radically amazing performer. In addition to flashy compositions for the concert hall, Chopin composed two collections of etudes that still frustrate the living daylights out of piano students to this day. Chopin’s etudes are some of the most challenging and evocative pieces of all the works in the concert piano repertoire. Some are so popular that over time they have been given nicknames, such as the name “The Winter Wind” for this etude. Although none of the nicknames were officially titled by Chopin himself, they create interesting pretext and encourage the imagination to fabricate epic works embodied by these studies. Chopin composed a total of 27 etudes, twelve each in Op. 10 and Op. 25 and the “3 New Etudes”. The “Winter Wind” etude is taken from the Op. 25 collection, which was dedicated by Chopin to the mistress of Franz Liszt.

Winter has long been a source of literary inspiration for numerous authors across many different lands. In the Romantic era, winter was often used as a metaphor for death and aging. Hence, we get the idea of saying that someone is in “the winter of their lives.” Franz Schubert was no stranger to this kind of poetic idea and took it to a whole new level when he composed the song cycle Winterreise. Winterreise is a cycle of 24 songs on the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, whose Die schöne Müllerin cycle was also set to music by Schubert. Several of Schubert’s friends and colleagues noted that he composed Winterreise during a long period of depression in his life, a time when “life had lost its rosiness and winter was upon him.” In this song, “Spring Dream,” the poet dreams of wandering through flowery fields in May, all the while having flashbacks of his lost love

First appearing in the 1939 Marx Bros. film “At the Circus,” “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” was not credited to Arlen and Harburg in the film’s credits. This and the song’s bizarrely comical lyrics probably lead many people to assume that it had been written by Groucho Marx himself. While all four Marx brothers were musically talented and frequently sang and performed instruments in their films, Groucho, for whom the song remained a signature piece, hadn’t had a hand in its composition. Although Arlen and Harburg didn’t get credited for “Lydia,” however, they received the lion’s share of credit for one of their other projects of 1939—the music and lyrics for The Wizard of Oz.

Debussy’s two books of preludes for solo piano, composed between 1907 and 1910, seem at first glance to be rife with richly programmatic music. Fireworks, goldfish, woodland sprites, and pedantic musicians are all musically “depicted” in the preludes. In the movement we just heard, we “see” a girl’s fair hair and. But, as it turns out, Debussy was notoriously fuzzy regarding whether or not these pieces were even supposed to be programmatic at all! While some were undoubtedly composed as depictions, others seem to have been given titles long after they were composed, almost as an afterthought. In this regard, it is fascinating that Debussy specifically instructed his publisher to put the title of each prelude at the end of the piece, rather than at the beginning!

Madrigals were incredibly popular in the Renaissance. For one thing, they were full of intense romantic poetry, and consequently, full of body parts: beating hearts, fluttering hair, reaching hands, and—of course—hauntingly beautiful eyes. In addition, they were often easy enough to sing at home. This didn’t last, however. By the end of the 16th century, new madrigals frequently employed musical sophistication such as could only be achieved by a professional ensemble. The famed “concerto di donne,” an all-female group of singing virtuosi from Ferrara, helped to spur this transition. Monteverdi’s third madrigal collection also appeared at this time. While some of its contents are more accessible, many are quite difficult. It has been speculated that Monteverdi’s patron, the Duke of Mantua, may have wanted music for his own “knock-off” version of the Ferrarese group!

One of the most fascinating aspects of Bach’s Passions is the use of Lutheran chorales. They have a theological function—relating a song known by the entire congregation to an appropriate place in the Passion story. In the Matthew Passion, they also serve a structural role: Bach sets the same chorale, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” multiple times, with a different text and harmonization each time. For a long time, the St. Matthew Passion was thought to have been first performed on Good Friday Vespers, 1729, but it was probably first performed two years earlier, in 1727. This incorrect date was further solidified by a supposed centenary performance in 1829, under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn. A 102-year anniversary just doesn’t have the same ring.