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Noon Edition

Good Scents

This week, the Ether Game Brain Trust is bringing you a show that will certainly pass the smell test! It's a fragrance-filled episode of musical olfactory delights, a show all about smells in music that we're calling "Good Scents." Follow your nose to our aromatic playlist below:

  • Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Coffee Cantata – There's hardly a more intoxicating aroma that the smell of freshly ground coffee. Coffee made its way to Europe in the late 17th century, and became widespread by the 18th century. Caffeine was the fuel behind the Age of Enlightenment. Coffee was even seen as dangerous for a while, but by Bach's time, there were no fewer than eight full-time coffee houses in Leipzig. At one of these establishments called Zimmermann's, Bach led performances of the Collegium Musicum, and his "Coffee Cantata" was likely composed for such a performance. The piece is more like a comic opera than a cantata, and centers around a rebellious a coffee drinker who sings an ode to java. The cantata libretto was written by Christian Friedrich Henrici, who used the pen name "Picander." Picander was also the librettist to Bach's much more serious work the St. Matthew Passion.


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  • "Benedictus" from the Roman Catholic Mass – The mass has been set to music countless times over the century. Mozart, for instance, wrote at least 17 masses, mostly when he was working as a church musician in Salzburg. The "Benedictus" portion of the mass is traditionally linked to a certain smell within the Roman liturgy. If you've ever toured a cathedral, you may have noticed the scent of incense in the sanctuary. During the singing of the "Benedictus," it is indicated in the liturgy that the altar should be perfumed with incense. A priest usually does this with a special incense burner called a thurible which swings on a chain so that the fragrance can be dispersed throughout the worship area.


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  • Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975), The Nose – Here's the general plot of Shostakovich's surreal opera The Nose: a petty bureaucrat named Kovalyov awakes one morning to find that his nose has detached itself from his face and run away. When he finally finds his nose, he discovers that it can now walk, talk, and sing, and (to make matters worse) his nose also now outranks him professionally. The story is a savage satire of bureaucracy, while subtly emphasizing the importance of olfactory politeness and good hygiene in high society. The original story was actually written in the mid-nineteenth century by author Nikolai Gogol, and adapted by Shostakovich almost a century later in 1928. Shostakovich wrote this during the brief time when the Soviet government was lax about the content of modern art. But a few years later, they cracked down on surrealism and political satire, and The Nose wasn't performed again until 1974.


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  • Claude Debussy (1862–1918), "Les parfums de la nuit" ("The Fragrance of the Night") from Images Pour Orchestra: Iberia – Throughout his career, Debussy spoke often about incorporating elements of visual art into his music, and expressing them in musical terms. Les parfums de la nuit is an excellent example of this, forming the middle of a musical triptych that Debussy titled Iberia. A triptych is an organizational term used in visual art to describe a work that is divided into three related panels, often hinged together so that the whole frame can be folded shut. Iberia is itself the middle movement of a larger triptych that Debussy titled Images pour Orchestra, meaning that Les parfums de la nuit is actually a triptych within a triptych. The title translates to "the fragrance of the night." Debussy hoped the piece would conjure up the atmosphere of a Spanish night, full of the fascinating smells of a festival preparing for the following day.


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  • Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), Rückert-Lieder, "Ich atmet' einen linden Duft!" ("I breathed a scent of linden") – They say that scent and memory are closely related. We as humans tend to associate certain aromas with strong emotional connections, be it disgust, passion, comfort, or love. That's the subject of this song from Gustav Mahler's song cycle Rückert-Lieder, songs by 19th-century poet Friedrich Rückert. It's all about the beautiful scent of a sprig from a linden tree. Since that sprig was a gift from a lover, that linden scent is now the fragrance of love. Mahler wrote this song right around the turn of the 20th century during one of his summer vacations down to his lakeside cabin in southern Austria. At the cabin, he wrote four of his symphonies and set ten poems by Rückert to music. Five of those poems became his Rückert-Lieder song cycle. The other five became his song cycle known as Kindertotenlieder, or "Songs of the Death of Children."


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  • Anthony Newly and Leslie Bricusse, The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd – There's an old colloquialism in the theatre, when performers are swept away by the experience of being on stage. They become enthralled by "the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd." Well, the 1964 musical by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse transposes this saying, calling itself The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd. The nonsense of that title is indicative of what you'll find in the play. It doesn't have a clear plot, but rather is an allegory about the separation of classes in British society. The musical itself wasn't very successful, but its songs made their way into pop music. "Feeling Good" was sung by Nina Simone in 1965, the song "The Joker" was a minor hit for Bobby Rydell the same year, and the song "Who Can I Turn To?" reached number 33 on the charts for singer Tony Bennett.


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  • Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921), Hänsel Und Gretel – Humperdinck originally composed Hansel and Gretel as a work for piano and a small group of singers. Realizing its potential, he went on to orchestrate the piece as a full-scale opera that premiered in 1894 under the baton of Richard Strauss. Strauss called the opera "a masterpiece of the highest quality... all of it original, new, and so authentically German." Like in the German fairy tale, the villain in Humperdinck's opera is a child-eating witch who lives in a candy house. In Humperdinck's version, Hansel and Gretel's father the Woodcutter tells us that she she is known as the Gingerbread Witch because she coaxes children to her forest home with the smell of gingerbread. There, she uses her magic oven to turn them into gingerbread so she can eat them. When the witch is pushed into the oven in the final act of the opera however, she does not turn into gingerbread. Instead the oven explodes.


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  • Peter Cornelius (1824–1874), Der Barbier Von Bagdad – The smell of flowers plays a key role in Der Barbier von Bagdad, the first of three operas composed by 19th-century German composer and violinist Peter Cornelius. Cornelius penned both the music and libretto, inspired by two of his favorite stories from the Arabian Nights: The Tale of the Tailor and The Barber's Stories of his Six Brothers. The opera mixes elements of both stories: the hero Nureddin is in love with the princess Margiana. However, Margiana is supposed to be given instead to a rich royal suitor. A farce ensues, which culminates in Nureddin being locked in a trunk where he apparently suffocates to death. Margiana brings flowers to his body, and the scent of them miraculously brings Nureddin back to life as well as dissolves all plot barriers between the lover's marriage.


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  • Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" – In the early 90s, "Teen Spirit" was a brand of deodorant aimed at teenage girls. Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's girlfriend wore Teen Spirit, and a friend of his noticed that the sweet deodorant smell had clung to Cobain. So that friend scrawled "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" onto the wall of his motel. Now Cobain wasn't one to peruse the women's deodorant aisle, so he misinterpreted the phrase as some kind of revolutionary slogan, and the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was born. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was Cobain's attempt to write a pop song in the style of the alternative rock group The Pixies. But the song with its overdriven guitars and screaming vocals ended up ushering in the grunge style into the mainstream. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a huge hit for Nirvana and is often thought of as one of the greatest rock songs of all time.


Music Heard On This Episode

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