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Noon Edition

Ether Game Playlist : Swingin' and Snappin

Browse music from our most syncopated show to-date. We looked for the off-beat through music history in this week's Ether Game with a show called Swingin' and Snappin. 

Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899) Morning Post Waltz Op. 279 You might think that Morgenblätter, or the Morning Paper Waltz, is one of Johann Strass Jr.’s more mundanely titled waltzes. It was composed in 1863, in the shadow of Dances from the Haren, Wild Roses, Spirits of the Age and the Forest Lads. The title is likely a reference to Vienna’s regular newspaper: Morgen-Post, which described Strauss as a “true beachcomber of world history.” Strauss never failed to commemorate most social, political and historic events in Vienna with a waltz, march or polka; the result of his very commercially-oriented attitude towards composing. Three-quarter time, or three beats in a measure, gives the waltz its natural swinging quality.  The dance continuously generates a back and forth or up and down motion, making it irresistible in the ballroom. Popularized in the 18th century, the term “waltz” comes from the German walzer, meaning to roll or revolve. 

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) Humoresques, Op. 101: No. 7 in G-flat, Poco lento e grazioso We just listened to the first in a cycle of Eight Humoresques or Humoresky (in Czech) that Dvorak composed in 1894. Those who have been students of music would probably most  recognize No. 7, with its staggered rhythms and tuneful melody, became a popular piece for children. Like the scherzo and buffo, the humoresque is defined by its comedic quality.  Although Dvorak’s stint as a music educator in the United States lasted only three years, he collected many melodies while he was there, and upon returning to Bohemia, set several of them to music. These settings evolved into the Humoresques, which were published first in Germany and quickly throughout the rest of Europe and the US.  

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) Overture to Jephtha One of Handel’s great strengths as a composer was that his musical style was definitively international. For example, his compositions show influence from Kuhnau in  his North German childhood, Scarlatti in Italy, Purcell in England and Lully in France. The French influence is very noticeable in many of his overtures, including the overture to his oratorio Jephtha. Handel uses rhythms that are an imitation of a performance practice that became the norm in French Baroque music called notes inégales. In this late 17th century style, French musicians would take pairs of regular step-wise quarter notes and lengthen the first note while shortening the second, in effect, swinging the rhythm of the melodic line. This was done so often in French court music, that it became synonymous with the French overture as a genre. The practice reappeared in the 20th century with jazz musicians, who notated melodies in straight rhythms, but staggered them in practice by default-where the term “swing” comes from. The practice remains most widely associated with jazz, but it began over 300 years ago in baroque France!  

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Sonata No. 32 in c, Op. 111 Considering his profound deafness, Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas are remarkable. The first movement of the opus 109 sonata is unique with its sudden shifts in mood and tempo. The final movement features a set of variations; familiar territory for Beethoven. Earlier in his life, he wrote the Diabelli Variations, which features 33 variations on a theme by Anton Diabelli. Beethoven’s epic final sonata, opus 111, number 32 also ends with a series of variations. Embedded within the final movement is a variation that sounds as if it were written by early Jazz pianists using the harmonic language of the early 19th century. The variation has what sounds like swung rhythms, though they are notated by Beethoven as 32-note staggered duples. Many performers cite this variation as a unique challenge in the piece: trying not to let the feel slide into boogie-woogie, genre that wouldn’t appear until over a century after Beethoven.  

Granville Bantock (1868-1946) Scenes from the Scottish Highlands: I. Strathspey: The braes o' Tullymet' The musical traditions of the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides play a particularly significant role in Bantock’s music, especially during the early 1900’s when he was at his most creative and prolific as a composer. His five-movement suite for strings arranges a small collection of traditional aires and dances, most notably the strathspey, a kind of folk concert piece unique to Scottish fiddle music. The origin of the strathspey is unknown, but it likely developed from the reel in the mid-eighteenth century. The strathspey’s most distinctive features are its tempo, which is slowed down to a stately pace, and its use of the scotch snap, a kind of “reversed” swung rhythm which usually consists of a sixteenth note followed by a dotted eighth note. Strathspeys are all about showcasing the technique of the fiddle player. They are not usually danced to but can be used to link dances together in a set.

Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) King Porter Stomp Pianist Jelly Roll Morton was one of the first pioneers of jazz, and one of the most important figures in the genre. And he probably would be the first to tell you that, too! A man of many business ventures, Jelly Roll traveled from coast to coast as an itinerant piano player for about 12 years, collecting and fusing various Black music genres like ragtime and blues into his own unique piano style consisting of swung, syncopated melodies and improvisation over stride-style accompaniment. His King Porter Stomp, first recorded in 1923 became an early jazz standard and is the namesake of the “stomp progression,” an eight-bar series of chords that became the basis for hundreds of jazz and swing compositions.

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) Pastorale (For Flute and Piano) As a member of a group of early modern French composers influenced by neo-classicism, Tailleferre repurposed musical forms from the Baroque and Classical periods, but used a more daring harmonic language. One of these forms, the pastorale, she first used in the famous collaborative piano work L’Album des Six in 1919, and she used the form again twenty years later to compose this lovely duet for flute and piano. The first semblance of an instrumental form known as a pastoral comes from church music in Italy during the early Baroque. A lilting melody in triple meter played over a drone was intended to evoke the music of shepherds playing their pipes in the idyllic countryside. 

Frederic Rzewski (b.1938) North American Ballads: Down By the Riverside Frederic Rzewski’s politically-conscious piano music requires a whole gamut of modernist and improvisatory techniques. His virtuosic North American Ballads can move from frank tonality to incredibly intricate pointillism with almost dizzying suddenness. The tunes he arranges in his ballades were specifically chosen to highlight the struggles of the working class. Down By the Riverside became an anthem for the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s, sung in the picket lines by black and white protesters alike. The swung accompaniment in the piece’s opening iteration recalls the song’s origins as an African-American spiritual. 

Tom Maxwell (b.1965) Hell Let’s travel back in time for a moment to the late 1990s. Bill Clinton is president, Friends is the biggest show on television, and on the radio, swing music has strangely made a comeback. The swing revival movement—a retro movement that hearkened back to the swing music of the 1930s and 40s—actually began back in 1980s with the retro rockabilly band the Stray Cats and their leader Brian Setzer. But swing revival hit its peak between 1996 and 1999. The band the Squirrel Nut Zippers (named after the old caramel candy) had a platinum hit with their song “Hell” in 1996, followed by other hits from swing revival artists Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in 1997 and 1998. Then in 1999, the movement hit its pinnacle when The Brian Setzer Orchestra won a Grammy Award for their cover of Louis Prima’s song “Jump, Jive, an’ Wail.”

Music Heard On This Episode

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