This week we searched for an oasis of musical refreshment with a show inspired by the desert. Browse our playlist below and bring a bottle of water. 

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) Messiah: Comfort Ye & Every Valley In 1741, Handel was suffering through one of his career’s low points.  It was so bad that he considered returning to Germany.  One of Handel’s friends, Charles Jennens, convinced Handel to instead work on an oratorio about the life of Christ.  Jennens’s libretto was drawn from Scripture and follows the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus in its three movements.  The admonition to “make straight in the desert a highway” comes from the book of Isaiah.  Messiah was first performed in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1742.  The work has undergone a number of changes, but has proven to be Handel’s most popular piece.

Maurice Jarre (1924-2009) Lawrence of Arabia 'Suite' Maurice Jarre studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire with Arthur Honegger.  After serving in World War Two, Jarre worked in various radio and military ensembles.  A breakthrough came in 1952 when he was invited to write the score for the film Hôtel des Invalides.  The success of this film led Jarre to work almost exclusively on film scores.  In 1962, Jarre wrote the score for David Lean’s monumental film Lawrence of Arabia.  This film earned Jarre an Academy Award for Best Original Score.  He would go on to win two more Academy Awards, for the films Doctor Zhivago in 1965 and A Passage to India in 1984.  He has also won three Golden Globes, two British Academy Awards, and a Grammy.  The score for Lawrence of Arabia was also the first time the electronic instrument known as the ondes martenot was used in the score to an American film.

Steve Reich (b.1936) The Desert Music Composer Steve Reich began his career experimenting with loops of recorded sound, and only later began working with more conventional instruments. In 1976, Reich produced Music for 18 Musicians, a breakthrough work that found a large audience when it was recorded two years later by his own percussion-oriented ensemble. After this success, he began to write music for larger ensembles. In 1981, he created Tehillim, a work based on Hebrew cantillation of the Psalms, and his first piece in many years to incorporate text. Three years later came The Desert Music, written to texts by poet William Carlos Williams. Like many of Reich’s works, repetition of short rhythmic ideas are stretched out over many, many bars. This technique allows the short text of Williams poems to last for a total of 45 minutes.

Lalo Schifrin (b. 1932) Symphonic Impressions of Oman This programmatic work carries all the indications of a composer with a deep understanding of symphonic composition. That being said, more than any of his classical works, Argentinian-American composer Lalo Schifrin’s most well known music is the theme to Mission Impossible. Symphonic Impressions of Oman is an eight movement homage to Oman, one of the oldest countries in the Arab world, whose music can be traced to Mesopotamia. In introducing the piece, Schifrin wrote that “This work is the result of my admiration for the country and its culture. A magical atmosphere which envelopes a fairytale landscape…” Working with Oman’s Ministry of Information, Schifrin gained access to some of the oldest music of the Islamic world, challenging himself to unify Oman’s folk music, with its short melodic phrases and complex rhythms, with his original material. The result is a work that brings together tradition and innovation, a musical testimony of the composer’s respect for both. 

Romberg, Sigmund (1887-1951) Desert Song: 'My Desert is Waiting' Sigmund Romberg was sent to Vienna by his parents to study civil engineering, but music wound up occupying most of his time.  He worked as a theatrical coach and accompanist, gaining a thorough background in the Viennese operetta.  After coming to New York in 1909, he found work as a performer in various restaurants.  One of these venues was frequented by theater people, and Romberg was brought to the attention of the Shubert brothers, who hired him as a staff composer.  Romberg’s first original operetta was The Student Prince, written in 1924.  Two years later came Desert Song, a show partially based on the then-current Riff Wars in North Africa.  The operetta’s other inspiration was the romantic character of the “sheik,” created by Rudolph Valentino  in 1921 and reprised by him in 1926.  Sadly, Valentino himself died three months before the opening of Desert Song.

Granville Bantock (1868-1946) Omar Khayyam: Prelude and Camel Caravan Given Granville Bantock’s avid interest in Arabic and Persian literature, it is no surprise that he would choose The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as the source of one of his grandest symphonic works. It was also a very shrewd choice, capitalizing on the popularity of Edward Fitzgerald’s liberal translation of the poetry collection which, when first published, caused a sensation among Victorian readers, and was on to its fifth edition by the time Bantock wrote the piece. Rarely had a composer completed such a monumental setting of a literary work. Bantock includes all 101 quatrains in his three-hour adaptation of The Rubaiyat, re-organizing the collection into three parts and seamlessly linking them together. Several musical interludes evoke the Persian cultural landscape, or at least a late 19th-century Western perception of it, including musical imagery suggesting the desert and the Feast of Ramadan. 

Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935) Turkish Fragments, OP. 62: Caravan Ippolitov-Ivanov is best known for his work Caucasian Sketches, inspired by a geographical region with its own desert landscapes. However, he approached the subject again when he wrote his Turkish Fragments in 1930. The work is vaguely programmatic, divided into four movements titled Caravan, At Rest, Night, and Festival, and incorporates folk music from Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkmen, Western Turkic and Arabic tradition. The Caravan movement takes a Turkish folk melody and turns it into a dramatic desert processional, and with the frequent use of cymbals and triangle, bring to mind the Viennese alla turka style popularized by Mozart two centuries earlier.

John Luther Adams (b.1953) Become Desert American composer John Luther Adams first approached music through playing trumpet, piano and drums in rock bands. However, an appreciation for Frank Zappa’s music led him to the composers which inspired Zappa: Cage, Feldman, and Varese, and switched his focus to studying contemporary composition and percussion in southern California. Additionally fostering interests in environmental conservation, he eventually moved to Alaska to work as an activist, while also establishing himself as a composer and performer, playing timpani in the Fairbanks Symphonic Orchestra. His music is almost exclusively focused on nature and environment, his interest in the specific resonances of certain environments has led him to develop a type of composition which expresses “sonic geography.” Become Desert simultaneously celebrates the broadening stillness of the desert landscape, as inspired by Adams’ own experiences in the Alaskan tundra, but also laments the process of desertification around the globe. 

Gordon Sumner (b. 1951) Desert Rose The group known as The Police was founded in London in 1977.  After climbing to the top of the British charts, the band became an international sensation.  Ghost in the Machine reached No. 2 on the U.S. album charts in 1981, and 1983’s Synchronicity reached No. 1.  Shortly after that, The Police announced that they would take a “sabbatical” to allow group members to pursue individual projects.  Founding member Sting pursued a solo career, espousing the causes of environmentalism and human rights.  His style eventually moved from the jazz-tinged Nothing Like the Sun to the more pop-oriented Ten Summoner’s Tales.  The single “Desert Rose” comes from Sting’s 1999 album Brand New Day, and continues his move away from heavyweight songs and political messages.