About the Composer

In the course of researching (read: obsessing over) Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle, I came across a Hungarian film adaptation of the piece on YouTube. It’s annoyingly divided into fourteen segments, but anyone familiar with the piece or interested should take a look.

Here’s the segment containing my favorite part, known to people familiar with the piece as “The Seventh Door”. It’s basically the denouement, where we find out what Bluebeard’s been trying to prevent Judit from discovering. Below is the corresponding excerpt from my own translation of the libretto, mentioned in the previous post.

		BLUEBEARD
See them.
There are all of my late wives.
See my former wives.
See whom I loved.

		JUDIT
They’re alive.  They’re alive in here!

	(The three former wives enter through the seventh door,
	glorious and laden with crowns and jewels. One after
	the other, their faces pale, they proudly take their
	places opposite Bluebeard, who dips to his knees.)

		BLUEBEARD
	(With his arms outstretched as if he were dreaming.)
They’re beautiful. Beautiful.
Beautiful flowers.
They always were, and they still live.
It was they who collected my many treasures.
It was they who tended my garden.
It was they who made my empire grow.
All of it belongs to them.
All of it. All of it.

		JUDIT
	(Standing among the former wives as the fourth,
	doubled over and afraid.)
How beautiful they are. How magnificent.
I am bedraggled and worn.

		BLUEBEARD
	(Stands. Whispering.)
The first one I found at dawn,
In the beautiful, red-smelling dawn.
Every dawn belongs to her now.
Hers is the fine, red robe.
Hers is the silver crown.
Every dawn belongs to her now.

		JUDIT
Oh, she’s more beautiful than I.  More splendid than I.

	(The first wife goes back.)

		BLUEBEARD
The second one I found at noon.
Speechless, flaming, golden noon.
Every noon belongs to her now.
Hers is the heavy robe of fire.
Hers is the golden crown.
Every noon belongs to her now.

		JUDIT
Oh, she’s more beautiful than I.  More splendid than I.

	(The second wife goes back.)

		BLUEBEARD
The third one I found at evening.
Peaceful, languid, dusky evening.
Every evening belongs to her now.
Hers is the brown robe of sorrow.
Every evening belongs to her now.

		JUDIT
Oh, she’s more beautiful than I.  More splendid than I.

	(The third wife goes back.  Bluebeard stops in front of
	Judit, and they face each other for a long time.  The
	fourth door slowly closes.)

		BLUEBEARD
The fourth I found at night.

		JUDIT
Bluebeard, stop! Stop!

		BLUEBEARD
Starlit, black night.

		JUDIT
Stop.  Stop. I’m here still!

The rest of the segments can be viewed here. I have no connection to the person who’s posted this, nor do I know if he or she has any connection to the filmmakers. Note that the segments appear in reverse order.

This may be of interest to very few regulars, but here it is for the future Kodály googler.

More YouTube trolling has turned up this footage of Zoltán Kodály himself interviewed on Hungarian Television in 1953. It was around this time that the ideas about music education he had been putting out in his writings for decades were just starting to be put into practice officially in Hungary’s education system.

I’ve never seen footage of Kodály before, or heard his voice, so this is a real gem for me. Below, I’ve translated the essential part of Kodály’s comments in the interview.

Yes, on a trial basis, the Ministry of Education has allowed about ten schools to teach singing six hours a week. So, we don’t have a lot of experience yet, but we’re seeing a surprising result in these schools. The students are improving in all areas. Their speech has improved; their writing has improved; their reading has improved. They’re learning to read earlier.

All of this goes back to music. For example, writing music down requires such precision that, if the written note is too high up or low down, it means something completely different. So, that influences their penmanship. Math is also going a lot better for them. Music involves constant counting, so it becomes useful to arithmetic as well.

But the most important thing is the effect it has on discipline. We complain about how hard it is to teach children discipline. Generally, in these schools things go a lot more smoothly. Ensemble singing gets them used to discipline and a feeling of responsibility.

Some of this may seem a little forced, but the epilogue is that Kodály’s notions on singing in schools were put into practice in Hungary in the 50’s and 60’s with the well-documented results that Hungarian students excelled in a number of areas as compared with those of other countries.

It is well known among Sondheim kooks such as myself that Stephen Sondheim’s favorite among his own songs is “Someone in a Tree” from the 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. I love this song too, but it’s never been clear to me exactly why it stands out in particular for Sondheim.

Briefly, the song attempts to deal with a particular event that’s important to the piece, but not particularly dramatic. Sondheim even calls it a “song about nothing” (which is very interesting in these post-Seinfeld times). What’s interesting about the song is the reciter’s setup line: “No one knows what happened in the treaty house.” The solution is to tell the story from three points of view: 1) An old man who remembers watching from the top of a tree when he was a boy; 2) That same old man as a 10-year-old boy; and 3) A soldier hiding under the floorboards of the treaty house.

The old man and the boy report what they’ve seen. The soldier reports what he’s heard. It’s a brilliant use of time and space in a theatrical moment.

The first video below is a very young Frank Rich interviewing Sondheim and his collaborator John Weidman in Sondheim’s house, presumably during the (extremely brief) run of the original Broadway production. In this video discusses in depth how the song came about and why he loves it so much. He also talks about the repetitive accompaniment figure, and how it came about.

The second video is a continuation of the first, where Sondheim accompanies the four cast members involved in a reading of the song.

Now, here’s the song as it looked in it’s full production.

Just a personal note about all this. I’m literally kvelling that YouTube has made it possible to see all of this. I had once before seen the second video, with the actors in Sondheim’s house, at a Sondheim-kook event here in San Francisco many years ago, but I did not know of the existence of the first part. I used to think I’d seen every Sondheim interview that exists on video. I also have to say that it’s really fun to see what the inside of his house looks like (or at least what it looked like in 1976).

Happy new year! I just found this and had to share.

This is Kodály’s “Esti Dal” (Evening Song) performed by the King’s Singers. It is possibly my favorite piece of choral music. Here’s my own translation of the text:

As I lay down for the night by the edge of the woods,
I pull my blanket up to my chin.
I put my hands together,
Thus imploring you, my good Lord

My Lord, grant me a place to stay,
For I’ve grown tired of wandering,
Of hiding,
Of living in a foreign land

My Lord, grant me a good night
Send me your blessed angel
To give courage to the dreams in our hearts.
My Lord, grant me a good night

It’s a 1960 appearance on the television show “I’ve Got a Secret”

From Cornelius

Oh, and also…

I have nothing more to say

Just found this while trying to find out more about the bass harmonica. Meet the Sväng New Harmonica Quartet of Finland, here offering a bit of that terrific Bulgarian rhythm I blogged about previously. I have trouble turning this off once it gets going. The second half of the video is more of a Ragtime number; also terrific.

As for the bass harmonica, I’d previously only heard it as part of the odd accompaniment in part of the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer” (lai lai lai - thwack - lai lai lai lai lai… etc.). I finally got around to trying to figure out what on earth that instrument is!

Blue Gobo has an addictive collection of footage from original Broadway productions dating at least as far back as Rogers and Hart’s Jumbo (1935). Most of the footage that interests me is of scenes excerpted on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 50’s and 60’s.

The first one that jumped out at me was this performance of “Cool” with the original cast of West Side Story on Ed Sullivan in 1959 or so. The Jerome Robbins choreography, as I’d seen it in the film version, always seemed kind of goofy to me, but now seeing it on a stage, I can sort of imagine how effective it must have been live in its time.

And speaking of Leonard Bernstein musicals, here’s Carol Channing on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1953 doing “100 Ways to Lose A Man” from the Bernstein/Comden/Green show Wonderful Town. Mainly, I love this for the awkward, contrived setup that Ed concocted. Notice how Carol is barely able to play along.

I enjoy these clips for their historical interest as much as anything else. Here’s the 1968 cast of Hair, again on Ed Sullivan. If you watch to the end, you can see them file into the frightened and bewildered audience, and then attack a frightened and bewildered Ed with flowers.

Many more fascinating original cast excerpts, some fairly obscure, are found at Blue Gobo. My thanks to Charles Gilbert for the discovery.

In researching the last post I came across something that has me howling. A couple of Dutch guys made this loopy music video using a Burt Bacharach song I’d never heard before (from a movie I’ve never heard of before). The song isn’t much to blog about, but video is hilarious.

Here’s a little-known song by Burt Bacharach that I like a lot. “Fool Killer” follows and elusive, moody chord progression and is pretty sophisticated for a 60’s pop song. The instrumentation displays Bacharach’s usual cleverness and restraint. Vibes and little guitar tremolos combine with the odd chord progression to match the mysterious quality of the lyrics. As always with Bacharach, pay attention to the violins, which (as always with Bacharach) come in for the second verse.

This song was recorded by Gene Pitney for a movie in 1965, but some sort of business mix-up between Burt’s and Gene’s people resulted in the end of the singer’s working relationship with Bacharach and the song was not used for the film.

Here’s the song, accompanied by a weird montage of Gene Pitney album covers. (It’s all I could find. Oh, well.)