A Brief History of Post-World War II Music

I am always fascinated by the seemingly incongruous worlds of music and other historical events. Isn't it a bit surreal that the last guardian of the classical tradition, Johannes Brahms, could have met the amateur violinist Albert Einstein? The latter was 18 years old when Brahms died. Richard Strauss, who was born in the year of Second Schleswig War, lived to see the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and composed arguably the last great late romanticism piece Four Last Songs three years after the bomb. Britten wrote his splendid yet shadowy Suite For Harp, "it is rather 18th century harp writing" as he put it, around the same time they put men on the moon. And Shostakovich was composing the formidable Viola Sonata when John Lydon joined the Sex Pistols. This bewitching conflict came all the way into the new millennium, when Gorillaz's single Clint Eastwood was released in 2001, the 71 years old Clint Eastwood himself had yet to make Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima, Flags Of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, and Changeling. That single could come out today and still sounds utterly fresh, by the way.

A couple of months ago, I had this idea of trying to make a playlist that reflects, and plays with this surface conflict, by choosing one popular song, and one piece of classical works from every post-WWII year. Before long I realized that it's simply impossible to pick up "best songs of the 1960s" or "most representative composition of the year", so I just let my personal taste take the lead, while sticking to some simple principles: The micro-interplay of consecutive tracks is most important. Classical tracks should be less than 10 minutes long in order to maintain the flow of the playlist, except for tracks at or towards the end. And of course I tried to embrace as many styles and genres as I could. Needless to say, the title of the post is exaggerated, but History of Post-WWII English-Language Pop Music and Western Classical Music would be just too dull.

I like the way this aerial survey begins with Bing Crosby's It's Been A Long, Long Time from 1945, is there a more appropriate title to start with? And the fact that Bruno Maderna's Notturno For Tape came out at the same time with Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven makes the former sounds more bold - classical composers were quietly experimenting electronic instruments when the pop musicians just began to realise that they could challenge the old LvB too. The slow movement of Barber's piano concerto works surprisingly well as a postlude to Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart In San Francisco. The triumphant ending of the heroic Bridge Over Troubled Water makes the violent striking of Crumb's Black Angles that "sail right behind" even more frightening. Reich's Electric Counterpoint works great as an prelude to EBTG's ode to nostalgia. Listen to the Snoop Dogg track and Peter Lieberson opera extract back to back, you probably would have a hard time figuring out which is the rapper. Both are from 1992. The interlacing of different kinds of music adds an inexplicable charm to the whole listening experience.

Here are the Spotify Playlists: 1945-1955  1956-1965  1966-1975 1976-1985  1986-1995  1996-2005

I stopped at 2005 as it's hard to find classical works from the last couple of years in recorded version. For the sake of usability I broke it down into 10-year, 20-track playlists. You can put them into a folder. Every playlist is within 2 hours, and offers much more fun when you listen to it from the beginning to the end. Pop songs are selected according to their initial release years, and classical works are according to the date of completion, not the premiere. I've double checked to make sure that all tracks are available in the UK and Sweden.

So, that's all for the Christmas Special. I may not post new playlists until 2011, and after three days I will set that Personal Appeal post sticky for the rest of the year. Don't worry about whether the books could be delivered in time for Christmas, the Chinese New Year is in February this year:) Thank you all for helping me share the music that I love. Best wishes for Christmas 2010 and the New Year to come.

I pasted the tracklists below, with Wikipedia or other useful links to each classical work:

The Argo Collection On Spotify

"Argo was originally established as an independent label in 1951. Although Argo’s initial intent was to record British music by British musicians, this innovative philosophy and constant quest for originality meant that the range of recordings expanded rapidly. In the end Argo became synonymous with a broad mix of recordings. Whilst this may not seem unusual to an audience in the 21st century, in 1950s Britain this was bold and innovative, paving the way for the rich array of musical genres now available in our record shops and provoking interest in hitherto unexplored realms of music, pushing the boundaries as to what could be regarded as ‘classical’ music.

Thus Argo’s catalogue came to include world music: gamelan music from Bali was among the company’s first recordings. Contemporary music by composers such as Reich, Birtwistle and Hindemith also featured in the increasingly rich catalogue.

As well as becoming a showcase label for artists, Argo was largely responsible for encouraging the popularity of Renaissance and Baroque music and bringing many unknown but spectacular works by composers such as Vivaldi, Palestrina and Monteverdi to the listening public. The famous recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons conducted by Neville Marriner, was first released on Argo. Similarly, Argo’s recordings of organ music with the great British organist Peter Hurford brought less popular but no less brilliant musical gems to a broader audience."

Check out full introduction and discography on Argo's official site.

Here's the Spotify playlist: Decca: The Argo Collection (640 tracks, total time: 1 day) It features all 50 releases from Argo, plus a sampler disk at the beginning of the playlist. Press Ctrl + G to browse in album view.

The Greatest 20th Century String Quartet Composer?

I'm still in the progress of making a 20th century string quartets playlist, on a one-quartet-per-composer basis. But I feel that I have to make a separate playlist for Heitor Villa-Lobos. This Amazon review summed it up really well:

"Few people know Villa-Lobos wrote more string quartets (17 as far as I know from this label) than Shostakovich, works with the comparable originality and intensity. His earlier quartets are heavily influenced by Faure and Ravel, but already have his own voice, very uniquely southern-hemispherenisque and with sublimely lyrical slow movements.

Later the works, the more original and more personal just like Shostakovich. But nature of the music is completely different. In his music you hear birds and animals in a way no other composers on our side of the planet could express. Some works have extraordinary organic complexity which sounds almost too daring.

Danubius Qt plays like any top class ensemble in the world, with vivid imagination and warm & firmly centered tone. Actually they play far better than those famous quartets with major classical labels. I wish Malco Polo keeps these amazing 6 volumes permanently in cataloge."

Here's the Spotify playlist: Villa-Lobos String Quartets (70 tracks, total time: 6 hours) Check out here for detailed information on every quartet.

The Art of 20th Century Fugue

A perfect playlist to shake off the Friday fever: 30 fugues written in the 20th century. Starts with the solemn E minor fugue from Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, then the grand double fugue from Hovhaness' Mysterious Mountain Symphony, the sonic earthquake from Boulez's 2nd piano sonata, Salgán's lovely A fuego lento, fugue meets tango, played by Daniel Barenboim, Sergei Taneyev's beautiful prelude and fugue in G sharp minor, and many other charmingly profound fugue pieces.

Here's the Spotify playlist: 20th Century Fugue (30 tracks, 3 hours). I will add in more interesting pieces when I find them on Spotify, and looking forward to your suggestions.

KZ Musik: Music Composed In Nazi Camps

"KZ MUSIK is the most up-to-date and complete CD encyclopedia of musical works composed by musicians imprisoned in the Nazi camps between 1933 and 1945.  The composers were imprisoned, deported, murdered – some even survived – but all were of different national, social and religious backgrounds."

The official site: http://www.kz-musik.de/Intro_E.html

The Spotify playlist: KZ Musik (142 tracks, 7 hours) I added in Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time at the end.

Also check out Entartete Musik: Music Banned By The Third Reich if you missed it. Peace.

Entartete Musik: Music Banned By The Third Reich

Entartete Musik (Degenerate music), was a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent.

Some links: The official page on the Decca website. The Google timeline. Toward Entartete Musik on danajohnhill.org, an Amzon list that features most of the albums on the playlist, and a youtube playlist: Entartete Musik.

Wiki pages of the composers featured in this playlist: Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942), Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Alma Mahler (1979-1964), Walter Braunfels (1882-1954), Emmerich Kálmán (1882-1953), Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), Karol Rathaus (1895-1954), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), Pavel Haas (1899-1944), Hans Krása (1899-1944), Ernst Krenek (1900-1991), Kurt Weill (1900-1950), Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996), Erich Zeisl (1905-1959), Franz Waxman (1906-1967), Ignace Strasfogel (1909-1994).

From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title 'Entartete Musik: music suppressed by the third reich covering lesser-known works by the above-named composers.

Here's a Spotify playlist of Entartete Musik (461 tracks, 1.4 days).

I also wanted to use a photo of Hitler listening to a rehearsal in Nuremberg from The Rest Is Noise, but it is copyrighted. If you can find any online libretto of the operas in this playlist please leave a comment, I have listened Braunfels' ravishing Die Vögel two times and I really want to know what the birds were singing. Thanks.