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Music open thread: Music in E minor [1]
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Date: 2023-07-24
Continuing my survey of music along the circle of fifths, looking for music that is undeservedly obscure for one reason or another. Such as with music by women composers, black composers and such. And also music by those composers acknowledged as great but for which most of their oeuvre is nevertheless ignored.
But for E minor I’m going to start with a couple of very famous pieces by white men that might be quite familiar to most people who’ve taken piano lessons. First, “Le Coucou” by Claude Daquin.
Wow! And that tone quality! At that age, I couldn’t even play “Long, Long Ago.”
A little boy plays Chopin’s Prelude in E minor in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Masterpiece Society,” in which each resident’s profession is genetically predetermined. So it might be impressive for a normal human boy to play that Chopin prelude, but for a kid in that masterpiece society, maybe not so much so.
If I’ve cued it up correctly, the Chopin starts at 3:33, but the whole video is less than eight minutes total. Do note that it contains a lot of spoken dialogue, which you may or may not appreciate depending on your liking or disliking Star Trek.
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The strings of the violin are G, D, A and E. Major seconds on the D and A strings and the G and E open make for a strong E minor tonic chord quadruple stop.
Looking at the guitar’s six strings, the tuning seems to be specifically designed for E minor. Major seconds on the A and D strings and the other four open, strum and you get a very nice, resonant E minor chord.
However, as my one-time guitar professor was at pains to explain, chords of three or more notes are rare in classical guitar music, as you can see in this Tarrega etude.
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Antonio Vivaldi wrote a lot more besides the Four Seasons. The twelve concerti of “La Stravaganza” are oddly obscure. My interest in this dozen started with Anton Martynov’s recording, I previewed the tracks for No. 4 in A minor and No. 5 in A major on the Naxos Music Library. I was impressed from the beginning.
If instead I had chosen No. 2 in E minor, I’m not sure I would have been immediately impressed, though it would have grown on me. Here’s Luca Ranzato with the Interpreti Veneziani.
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Sounds very nice. I think it would also sound good for a larger orchestra, with woodwinds and horns and trumpets and trombones, so I’ve orchestrated it. I think my orchestration is good, only problem in this recording is that it’s not an actual orchestra.
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If Telemann has greatest hits besides the Tafelmusik, the Concerto in E minor for Flute, Recorder and Strings ought to be one of them. The canonical recording, in my opinion, is Michala Petri’s, but this other recording has its own charm:
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One time I actually fell asleep to Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Opus 64, live in concert, played by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, I don’t remember the soloist or the conductor. But please don’t take this as a commentary on the quality of the composition or the performance. I had come home from Parris Island, and I hadn’t realized how sleep-deprived I was.
However, the Opus 64 might nevertheless be my least favorite of Mendelssohn’s compositions for soloist and orchestra. Long before that one, Mendelssohn wrote a Violin Concerto in D minor that wasn’t first published until 1952. I find the D minor much more interesting than the E minor.
Now, this next piece, this is the kind of music I’m doing this survey for. Florence Price was the first black woman to have had a composition played by a major orchestra. Hopefully there’s been more than a dozen since her, but I might be disappointed if I actually try to count.
Here’s her Symphony No. 1 is in E minor, which I prefer to her more famous Third.
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It’s very much influenced by Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, which is a work I’d like more if it wasn’t so overplayed.
I do like Robert Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Opus 52, which, despite frequent plays on the old WQRS, I didn’t get as tired of it as the Dvořák Ninth. However, let’s defer discussion of the Schumann for when we get around to E major.
The composer Jean Sibelius on the Finnish hundra mark note. The markka (ISO-4217 codes FIM and 246) was Finland’s currency before the euro (ISO-4217 codes EUR and 978).
I have two recordings of Price’s First in my iTunes collection, the older one is by John Jeter conducting the Fort Smith Symphony on the Naxos label, the newer one is by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the Deutsche Grammophon label; they’re both relatively recent, though.
Like Price, Jean Sibelius also wrote his Symphony No. 1 in E minor. It was my favorite Sibelius symphony before I understood the Seventh. The First starts out with a desolate clarinet solo with a theme that one might suspect gets transformed to major in the finale. That’s not what happens. But what I find most memorable in this symphony are mostly major key passages, and the vigorous C major scherzo.
For a symphony in E minor with a clarinet theme that gets turned to major at the end, let’s turn our attention to Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, coincidentally also Opus 64 like the famous Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor. Here’s Alondra de la Parra conducting the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.
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The open thread question: what is your favorite music in E minor?
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