Ye-Me-Le - Sergio Mendes

 

Easy To Be Hard

Ye-Me-Le

Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66

Produced by Sergio Mendes

Arranged by Sergio Mendes

Engineer: Larry Levine

Studio: A&M Recording Studio

Orchestra Arranged & Conducted by Dave Grusin

Guitar: Oscar Castro Neves

Cover Painting: Ivan De Morales

Art Direction: Tom Wilkes

Photography: Jim McCrary

A&M Records SP 4236

1969

Wichita Lineman

Norwegian Wood

Some Time Ago

Moanin'

Look Who's Mine

Ye-Me-Le

Easy To Be Heard

Where Are You Coming From

Masquerade

What The World Needs Now

Collaboration - The Modern Jazz Quartet with Laurindo Almeida

 

Concierto De Aranjuez

Collaboration

The Modern Jazz Quartet

With Laurindo Almeida

Recording Engineer: Ray Hall

Cover Design: Marvin Israel

Supervision: Nesuhi Ertegun

The painting by Juan Gris appears on the cover by courtesy of the publishing house of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Atlantic STEREO 1429

1966

The Modern Jazz Quartet is composed of: John Lewis, piano; Milt Jackson, vibraharp; Percy Heath, bass; Connie Kay, drums. The Quartet is augmented on this LP by guest artist Laurindo Almeida, guitar. Laurindo Almedia appears through the courtesy of Capitol Records, Inc.

From the back cover: Collaboration, as the term is used in music, generally means a sharing in some intellectual creation. Very often, especially in recent years, it has denoted a bringing together of elements not customarily seen or heard together. The joint labors of love in which John Lewis has been involved have included collaborations with symphony orchestras at home and abroad; with an American saxophonist, a Belgian guitarist, a Danish violinist, a German trombonist; with traditionalists, boppers and avant-gardists; with anyone, in short, whose talents have made a strong impression on his singularly perceptive ear.

The teaming of The Modern Jazz Quartet with Laurindo Almeida began as a project for the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival. Until that time the MJQ and Almeida had never worked together; they had been based on opposite coasts and their paths had never crossed.

Almeida at that time was basking in a reputation that had reached him in a curiously indirect manner. Born in Sao Paolo, Brazil, he had come to the U.S. while still in his twen- ties and gained recognition as featured guitarist with the Stan Kenton orchestra. Living near Hollywood, he was accepted among musicians as a master of the classical Spanish concert guitar and among jazzmen as an artist eager to experiment in the blending of jazz and Latin idioms. His first recordings of Brazilian themes with a jazz combo were made in the early 1950s, but it was not until a decade later, when the bossa nova movement upset seismographs throughout the United States, that his name became nationally known through a series of performances of popular songs reshaped to fit the new fad.

John Lewis knew and respected Almeida not simply as a purveyor of Brazilian music, but as a performer with a far broader range of interests. "After we played together in Monterey," Almeida says, "John invited me to tour with the Quartet as guest soloist. We left the United States in February 1964 and stayed together until early June."

"We started in Milan and spent almost a month in Italy and Sicily. We worked in some of the smaller towns where hardly any other American groups had been heard. Later we played in Switzerland, Belgium, France, England, Germany, Scandinavia, Yugoslavia; and also three cities in Spain. I hadn't been in Spain since just before the Civil War, in 1936."

"It was different from so many of these European tours; no rushing. We took four months to play 50 concerts. We enjoyed working together, and had time to really see the countries we visited and get to know their people. The greatest night of the whole tour, for me personally and for the Quartet too I believe, was Paris. The audience there was just magnificent."

"The reaction seemed to indicate that the audiences were pretty well divided between classical and jazz fans. We were able to play whatever we liked. And of course by the time we came home and made this album we knew one another well enough to give the best possible performance of all this material."

With the exception of Foi A Saudade, all the numbers heard here were played by Almeida and the MJQ during their tour. Their repertoire, by composers ranging from 18th Century Germany to 20th Century North and South America, hints at the breadth of their mutual interests.

Silver is a composition characteristic of the jazz-oriented side of John Lewis. There is more than a suggestion of the blues; there are tempo changes, and at one point, going into the slower last movement, there is a tricky retard that called for particularly close listening on the part of all five participants.

Trieste revisits territory that should be familiar to most Lewis students. It was recorded by the regular MJQ per- sonnel in the Lonely Woman album (Atlantic 1381). Though the new version starts almost exactly like the original, many differences develop along the way. There are several curious and fascinating historical overtones. The tango rhythm harks back to Rudolph Valentino and the 1920s, though this is a tango that sometimes swings in a totally contemporary sense. At one point John Lewis' solo evokes the 1930s with touches of Earl Hines and Fats Waller; and Laurindo's interplay with Milt Jackson toward the end may remind students of early jazz guitar that the timbre (and time) of Eddie Lang will never be out of date. Note also the ponticello effects (playing on the bridge of the guitar) added by Laurindo for color.

Valeria is part of the original music Lewis wrote for the motion picture A Milanese Story. It was heard in the original soundtrack album (Atlantic 1388), played by an international group that included a string quartet. The introduction and coda wrap the new performance in a dark, brooding flamenco mood, with Connie Kay's clave effects adding a contrastingly light percussive note. Almeida plays a mainly rhythmic role while Lewis and Bags contribute some of the most propulsive straight-four jazz of the session.

The Bach Fugue In A Minor remains faithful to the composition from the first note almost to the last, but the special requirements of this instrumentation are put to total use as Almeida, Jackson, Lewis and Heath are all involved at one point or another in the weaving of the counterpoint. The qualification in the above phrase "from the first note almost to the last" is an allowance for the little cadenza that comes unexpectedly at the end. Here, for just a moment, we find Bach dipping into Bags' bag. "This is one number," says Laurindo, "that used to bring down the house wherever we played it. Performing it was a great delight for us all."

One Note Samba was first played by Almeida with the Quartet at Monterey. Partly ad lib, partly routined by Lau- rindo, it is the only track in the album not arranged by John Lewis. The dual authenticity of this performance, with Jackson's and Lewis' solos backed by Almeida's comping and Connie Kay's steady bossa nova pulse, demonstrates ideally the marriage of the two musics.

Foi A Saudade (the title means "There was a longing") is a fast bossa nova by Djalma Ferreira, best known as composer of Recado, one of the first bossa novas brought to this country after the tremor hit us. "Europe loves the bossa nova," Almeida reports, "and I am very fond of the writing of Ferreira. He came here from Brazil early in 1964 and now lives not far from me in the San Fernando Valley." Almeida's solo, mainly in single note style, is a highlight. The melody has a flavor that is as much Spanish as Brazilian, perhaps because of the importance of a flat ninth in the second bar (D Flat against a C7), which is not a common element in the typical bossa nova.

Of the Concierto de Aranjuez Almeida says: "This is one part, the adagio movement, of a three-part work by Joaquin Rodrigo, the blind Spanish composer of contemporary music. I met Rodrigo in Los Angeles when Segovia played one of his works. He is a sort of modern Albeniz. By now many jazz lovers know him, of course, because Miles Davis and Gil Evans included this Concierto in their Sketches of Spain."

A sense of stately beauty is evoked both by Rodrigo's thematic structure and by the performance of Almeida and the Quartet. Here the synthesis of talents reaches its zenith of sensitivity, and for Almeida at several points it becomes a technical as well as an emotional triumph. Lewis adapted the orchestration for the Quartet while leaving the guitar part untouched.

"I am very proud of this performance," says Almeida. "It is one of the best things I ever did." His quiet pride is shared by the four men who played this brilliantly conceived and superbly executed work for warmly receptive audiences all over Europe. The Concierto reminds us that this album represents an amalgamation not only of personalities, but of cultures, of nations, of musical emotions.

The meeting of the MJQ and Almeida has been a collaboration in a sense more comprehensive than any that would have been feasible a decade or two ago, when the idioms represented here would have been two or three disparate worlds, total strangers to each other. – LEONARD FEATHER

The Modern Jazz Quartet can also be heard on the following Atlantic LPs: A Quartet Is A Quartet Is A Quartet / The Modern Jazz Quartet, Quartetto di Milano, The Hun- garian Gypsy Quartet (1420); The Sheriff (1414), The Comedy/Guest Artist: Diahann Carroll (1390); European Concert, Volume Two (1386); European Concert, Volume One (1385); Lonely Woman (1381); The Modern Jazz Quartet & Orchestra (1359); Third Stream Music / The Modern Jazz Quartet & Guests: The Jimmy Giuffre Three & The Beaux Arts String Quartet (1345); Pyramid (1325); The Modern Jazz Quartet At Music Inn / Guest Artist: Sonny Rollins (1299); One Never Knows (1284); The Modern Jazz Quartet (1265); The Modern Jazz Quartet At Music Inn / Guest Artist: Jimmy Giuffre (1247); Fontessa (1231).

The European Concert is also available in a two-LP set (2-603).

Silver

Trieste

Valeria

Fugue In A Minor

One Note Samba

For A Saudade

Concierto De Aranjuez

Good Vibrations - Hugo Montenegro

 

Tony's Theme

Good Vibrations

Hugo Montenegro

Produced by Joe Reisman

Whistler: Muzzy Marcellino

Recorded in RCA's Music Center Of The World, Hollywood, California 

Recording Engineer: Mickey Crofford

RCA STEREO LSP-4104

1969

From the back cover: The thing for a composer-arranger-conductor-recording artist to do is find a sound, style or lick that is uniquely his own and separate himself and his orchestra from all the others. OK, Hugo Montenegro has done this. He did it with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. His usage of the ocarina, the electric violin and a whistler was really tricky. That sound fooled most of us – we didn't know what it was, but we liked it.

Mr. Montenegro told me that the "sound" he used for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was one he researched a long time. He said he recorded over 200 different kinds of woodwind instruments, flutes, recorders, whistles, pipes, etc., before he finally decided that the ocarina was the sound he wanted. Therefore, it stands to reason that he must have done similarly involved research and experimentation to come up with the combination of electric violin and Muzzy Marcellino (the whistler, or rather, a whistler). Let's face it. You don't just jump up and say out of the blue: "I'll do that tune with an electric fiddle and a whistler!"

Anyway, the unique problem that Hugo Montenegro has is that he likes to research and experiment with all his music. He doesn't want to take what is a valid idea for one tune and, because it was successful, blow it up out of proportion and force it to fit every tune he does. This "freedom" to experiment is always a problem to any successful recording artist because the recording industry and the public tend to embrace the result of experimentation – the sound, the style, the lick, or whatever-instead of the motivation that caused it to be created. We always believe in the miracle instead of why or where from which it comes.

In this album Hugo Montenegro has come up with some new licks as a result of research and experimentation. The big concept, I think, is his utilization of voices. In popular music of late the "group" vocal backing behind the lead singer has become as important and involved artistically as the lead or melody. Hugo has taken the vocal backing of rock, folk rock, bossa nova, etc., and brought it up front, producing an interesting and exciting vocal effect. Because of the spirit in which it was created, GOOD VIBRATIONS can definitely be felt from this album.

Good Vibrations

Classical Gas

Another Place, Another Time (theme from the television production, "The Outcasts")

Tony's Theme (from the Twentieth Century-Fox release, "Lady In Cement")

A Future Left Behind (theme from "The Big Valley")

Lady In Cement (from the Twentieth Century-Fox release, "Lady In Cement")

Happy Together

Lullaby From "Rosemary's Baby" (from the Paramount picture, "Rosemary's Baby)

Knowing When To Leave (from the Broadway production, "Promises, Promises")

Night Rider

Love Is Blue

Thomas Morley - Elizabethan Madrigals - The New York Pro Musica Antiqua

 

Miraculous Love's Wounding

Thomas Morley (1557 - 1603)

Elizabethan Madrigals - Canzonets - Balletts

The New York Pro Musica Antiqua

Conducted by Noah Greenberg

With Incidental Virginal Interludes played by Blanche Winogron

Counterpoint/Esoteric CPT 520 (S-2397 - 5520)

1966

THE PRIMAVERA SINGERS

RUTH DAIGON - Soprano

LOIS ROMAN - Soprano

RUSSELL OBERLIN - Counter-Tenor

ARTHUR SQUIRES - Tenor

CHARLES BRESSLER - Tenor

BRAYTON LEWIS - Bass

THE PRIMAVERA SINGERS of the NEW YORK PRO MUSICA ANTIQUA, formed with the purpose of faithfully presenting the neglected works of Medieval. Renaissance and Baroque music, have performed in concerts of vocal and instrumental music of this period. Noah Greenberg, the conductor of The Primavera Singers, was instrumental in the founding of the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, and leads an active musical life as a choral director, composer, and teacher in that city. He has been a student of the Renaissance period for many years and has done much to heighten interest in this music among musicians and music-lovers.

Blanche Winogron has appeared as a Virginalist in concert and on radio. She has devoted many years to the study and performance of early keyboard music and has begun to record the literature for this beautiful instrument. Her set of Virginals were made especially for her in 1936 by John Challis of Detroit, and is a faithful reproduction of the seventeenth century English Virginals.

From the back cover: Thomas Morley was one of the leading musical figures in Elizabethan England. A pupil of the great William Byrd. "founder" of the English Madrigal School. Morley distinguished himself as a composer, theoritician, organist and publisher.

From the sparce facts that remain concerning Morley's life, we know that he was born circa 1557 married in 1587 and took his degree of B. Mus. at Oxford in the next year. He became organist at St. Paul's. London. a short time after this and left that post when sworn in as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1592. The records at St. Helen's (where Morley's children were baptized) indi- cate that Morley lived in the parish of Little St. Helen's. Bishopsgate. between 1596 and 1601. as did William Shakespeare. Morley's health was poor during these years and it is believed he died in the year 1603.

Morley and his contemporaries were strongly influenced by the Italian School but their works were unmistakably English in flavor. The music this master has left us images all we know and love about Elizabethan England: its great exuberance, its elegant tragedy and its "kindly lust."

SIDE ONE

From – the First Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces. 1595.

SING WE AND CHANT IT
While love doth grant it.
Not long youth lasteth.

And old age hasteth. 

Now is best leisure 

To take our pleasure. 

All things invite us 

Now to delight us. 

Hence, care, be packing! 

No mirth be lacking! 

Let spare no treasure 

To live in pleasure.

From – Canzonets or Little Short Songs to Three Voyces. 1593.

CEASE. MINE EYES. cease your lamenting.
In vain you hope of her hard heart's relenting.
Drop not so fast. O cease your flowing!
O drop not where no grace is growing!
She laughs, she smiles, she plays with joy and gladness 

To see your grief and sadness.

O love, thou art abused!
Was ne'er true love so scornfully thus used!

From –  the First Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces. 1595.

NOW IS THE MONTH OF MAYING,
When merry lads are playing
Each with his bonny lass
Upon the greeny grass.
The Spring, clad all in gladness. 

Doth laugh at Winter's sadness. 

And to the bagpipe's sound
The nymphs tread out their ground. 

Fie then! why sit we musing. 

Youth's sweet delight refusing? 

Say, dainty nymphs, and speak.

 Shall we play barley-break?

Virginal Interlude – BARAFOSTUS DREAME (ANON.)

From – the First Booke of Canzonets to Two Voyces. 1595.

MIRACULOUS LOVE'S WOUNDING!
Even those darts, my sweet Phyllis,
So fiercely shot against my heart rebounding. 

Are turned to roses, violets and lilies,
With odour sweet abounding.

From – Madrigalls to Foure Voyces.... the First Booke. 1594.

NOW IS THE GENTLE SEASON FRESHLY FLOWERING, 

To sing and play and dance. while May endureth. 

And woo and wed, that sweet delight procureth.

THE FIELDS ABROAD with spangled flowers are gilded. 

The meads are mantled, and closes.
In May each bush arrayed and sweet wild roses. 

The nightingale her bower hath gaily builded. 

And full of kindly lust and love's inspiring. 

'I love, I love,' she sings, her mate desiring.

Virginal Interlude – GALIARDA (MORLEY.)

From – the First Booke of Canzonets to Two Voyces. 1595.

I GO BEFORE. MY DARLING.
Follow thou to the bower in the close alley.
There we will together
Sweetly kiss each other.
And like two wantons dally.

From – the First Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces. 1595.

LADY. THOSE CHERRIES PLENTY.
Which grow on your lips dainty.
Ere long will fade and languish.
Then now, while yet they last them.
O let me pull and taste them.

A Dialogue to Seven Voyces

PHYLLIS. I FAIN WOULD DIE NOW. 

O to die what should move thee? 

For that you do not love me. 

I love thee! but plain to make it. 

Ask what thou wilt and take it. 

O sweet, then this I crave thee, 

Since you to love will have me, 

Give me in my tormenting, 

One kiss for my contenting. 

This unawares doth daunt me. 

Else what thou wilt I grant thee. 

Ah Phyllis! well I see then 

My death thy joy will be then. 

O no, no, no, I request thee
To tarry but some fitter time and leisure..
Alas. death will arrest me
You know before I shall possess this treasure.
Temper this sadness.
No, no, dear, do not languish.
For time and love with gladness
Once ere long will provide for this our anguish.
(CLAIRE HOLMES. Assisting Artist... Alto)

SIDE TWO

From – the First Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces. 1595.

MY BONNY LASS SHE SMILETH
When she my heart beguileth.
Smile less, dear love, therefore, 

And you shall love me more. 

When she her sweet eye turneth, 

O how my heart it burneth! 

Dear love. call in their light. 

O else you'll burn me quite!

LO. SHE FLIES WHEN I WOO HER.
Nor can I get unto her.
But why do I complain me?
Say. if I die. she hath unkindly slain me.

Virginal Interlude – IRISHE DUMPE (ANON.)

LEAVE THIS TORMENTING AND STRANGE ANGUISH, 

Or kill my heart oppressed. Alas, it skill not!
For thus I will not.
Now contented,
Then tormented.
Live in love and languish.
Virginal Interlude

GOE FROM MY WINDOW (MORLEY.)

From – Madrigalls to Foure Voyces... the First Booke. 1594.

CLORINDA FALSE, ADIEU, THY LOVE TORMENTS ME. 

Let Thyrsis have thy heart since he contents thee.
O grief and bitter anguish!
For thee, unkind, I languish!
Fain I. alas, would hide it.
O but who can? I cannot, I, abide it.
Adieu, adieu, leave me, death now desiring. Thou hast, lo, thy requiring.
Thus spake Philistus on his hook relying,
And sweetly fell a-dying.

Virginal Interlude – CAN SHEE (ANON.)

From – the First Booke of Balletts to Five Voyces. 1595.
FIRE! FIRE! MY HEART!
O help! Ay me! I sit and cry me.
And call for help. but none comes nigh me!
O. I burn me! alas!
I burn! Ay me! will none come quench me? Cast water on. alas. and drench me.

At The Drop Of A Hat - Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

 

A Reluctant Cannibal

At The Drop Of A Hat

Michael Flanders and Donald Swann

Angel Records S 35797

1957

From the back cover: TWO AUTHORS, with no previous reputation as entertainers, performing their own numbers on an empty stage for two hours would seem ideal compulsory viewing in that private hell reserved for wicked theatre managers.

Yet Michael Flanders and Donald Swann have received enthusiastic and unanimous approval for their farrago, "At the Drop of a Hat". Before it arrived on Broadway, it had enjoyed a long run at London's Fortune Theatre from January 24, 1957 to May 2, 1959-759 performances, plus a special week's engagement at the 1959 Edinburgh Festival. London critics described the show as "the neatest... smartest... brightest... wittiest... most civilized... scintillating... exquisite in every respect," etc.

Both in their early thirties, Flanders and Swann write at the piano and test the result on friends, relations, even passing window-cleaners. As authors they were responsible for much of the success of Laurier Lister's "Airs on a Shoestring" which ran for over 900 performances at the Royal Court Theatre, "Penny Plain," "Fresh Airs" and other London revues.

But they found that many of their songs, written in their own personal idiom, were only suited to their own style of performance, with- out staging. "At the Drop of a Hat" is the result: they feel that in a way, they have been rehearsing it all their lives.

They met at Westminster School where they collaborated on a revue in 1940. Both went on to Christ Church, Oxford, where Flanders acted and read History ("Greensleeves"); Swann was at the piano in Sandy Wilson's undergraduate revues and read Modern Languages. After a spell at the Oxford Playhouse, Flanders served in a destroyer on convoy to Russia and Malta and was torpedoed off Africa ("The Hippopotamus Song"). Swann was with the Friends Ambulance Units in Greece. An attack of polio in 1943 left Michael Flanders in a wheel-chair, which he considers a perfect mask for constitutional laziness, and he turned to radio and TV where he has made over 1,000 broadcasts and where he evolved the intimate style of commentary that he uses in the show ("Song of Reproduction"). His translation of Stravinsky's "Soldier's Tale" is now the standard English version and his concert performance of it with Peter Ustinov and Sir Ralph Richardson was a surprise sell-out. Donald Swann, one of the best light pianists in England, is much in demand as composer, musical director and accompanist.

In performances bluff, bearded Flanders and diffident, bespectacled Swann have been described as "Falstaff singing duets with Hamlet." They write in Flanders' contemporary studio ("Design for Living"). Swann is married and has two daughters ("Misalliance"); Flanders is not ("Madeira").

Success has not changed them, they are still the same arrogant, self- opinionated pair they always were. Flanders has made it clear that he will not accept a Peerage unless Swann gets a Bishopric.

BROADWAY DOFFS ITS HAT!

"Lively, witty, literate, ingratiating, explosively funny, and excellent, excellent companions for a daffy and delightful evening." – Walter Kerr, N. Y. HERALD TRIBUNE

"A two-man revue continuously bubbling with offbeat pleasure... wit, charm, heartsease, and immaculate timing... There is nothing on Broadway I would rather see twice." – Kenneth Tynan, THE NEW YORKER

"Utterly delightful... beautifully civilized entertainment. The songs are a joy, the commentary is sparkling." – Richard Watts, Jr., N. Y. POST

"Outrageously funny... merry, sharp and adult." – Frank Aston, N. Y. WORLD TELEGRAM & SUN

"As engagingly funny a pair as any nation need ask for or any theatre season expect... Sharply satirical... gaily whimsical... sophisticated. They can be most lively when most deadpan, and most deadly when most daft." – TIME

"Fun from London... highly funny... Two for a fine show." – NEWSWEEK

A Transport Of Delight

Song Of Reproduction

Greensleeves

In Teh Bath

A Gnu

Songs Of Our Time

  Philological Waltz

  Satellite Moon

  A Happy Song

A Song Of The Weather

The Reluctant Cannibal

Design For Living

Tried By The Centre Court

Misalliance

Maderia, M'Dear?

The Worn Pom

Hippopotamus

Sun Goddess - Ramsey Lewis

 

Gemini Rising

Sun Goddess

Ramsey Lewis

Produced by Teo Macero & Ramsey Lewis

Cover Design: John Berg

Cover Photo: Herb Breuer

Back Cover Photo: David Gahr

Columbia KC 33194

1974

SIDE ONE

SUN GODDESS

Maurice White: Timbales, Drums, Vocals.
Phillip Bailey: Congas, Vocals
Verdine White: Bass, Vocals
Johnny Graham: Guitar
Don Meyrick: Tenor Sax
Charles Stepney: Fender Rhodes Electric Guitar and ARP Ensemble

LIVING FOR THE CITY
Cleveland Eaton: Upright and Fender Bass 

Maurice Jennings: Drums, Tambura, Conga, Percussion

LOVE SONG

Cleveland Eaton: Upright and Fender Bass 

Maurice Jennings: Drums, Tambura, Conga, Percussion
Byron Gregory: Guitar

SIDE TWO

JUNGLE STRUT (Obirin Aiye MirelleKoso)
Derf Rehlew Raheem: Weeah, Congas, Drums, Vocals

Cleveland Eaton: Upright and Fender Bass 

Maurice Jennings: Drums, Tambura, Conga, Percussion
Byron Gregory: Guitar
Ramsey Lewis: Freeman String Symphonizer (courtesy of Dick Hahn of Nodin Music)

HOT DAWGIT
Maurice White: Timbales, Drums, Vocals 

Phillip Bailey: Congas, Vocals 

Verdine White: Bass, Vocals
Johnny Graham: Guitar
Charles Stepney: Fender Rhodes Electric Guitar and ARP Ensemble TAMBURA†
Cleveland Eaton: Upright and Fender Bass 

Maurice Jennings: Drums, Tambura, Conga, Percussion
Byron Gregory: Guitar

GEMINI RISING

Cleveland Eaton: Upright and Fender Bass 

Maurice Jennings: Drums, Tambura, Conga, Percussion

We And The Sea - Tamba 4

 

Iemanja

Tamba 4: We And The Sea

Produced by Creed Taylor

Cover Photographs by Pete Turner

Album Design by Sam Intuit

Recorded at Van Gelder Studios

Engineer: Rudy Van Gelder

Recored September 5, 6, 7, 11, 12 and 14, 1967

A&M Records / CTI SP 3004

Luiz Eca - Piano & Organ

Dorio - Bass & Guitar & Percussion

Ohana - Drums & Jawbone & Conga

Bebeto - Flute & Bass (Bebeto plays bass on The Hill and Chant Of Ossanha)

From the inside cover: The Tamba 4 has brought us a new thing. Ever since its beginning in 1960, when bossa nova still really meant "the new thing," this group has been traveling a different road. Their music starts with bossa nova all right – the first hit recording of Girl From Ipanema in Rio in 1963 was theirs – but it takes off from there with an excitement, inventiveness, and swing that is absolutely their own. It is something that has come to be known simply as the sound of Tamba. This record, their first in the States, is alive with that new sound.

The Tamba sound is a composite of the sensitive talents of four gifted Brazilian musicians, and the mixer of that blend is leader, arranger, composer, and pianist, Luiz Eça (soft "c"). An ebullient 31 year old Carioca who studied classical piano in European conservatories, Luiz' piano arrangements glow with echoes of Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Gershwin. ("We are very friendly with Gershwin," says Luiz.) His playing usually sparkles with wit and delicate rhythm, but when he is driving it can be an aggressive, hell-for-leather stampede. On flute and bass is Bebeto, who has been with Luiz since the beginning. He started making music when he was nine and hasn't bothered to stop since to learn to read a note. He also sings. A few years ago, João Gilberto, the oracle of bossa nova, was asked who, after him, was the best bossa nova singer. "Bebeto," said Gilberto, who weighs his compliments, "but not after me – before me."

Playing drums, and all the other percussion tools that speak the language of samba, is Ohana. He, too, studied music formally in Europe, though there is nothing formal about his approach to his drums. Youngest of the Tamba 4 is Dorio, who joined up in 1966. (The group had been a trio until then.) Dorio plays classical guitar and bass. "He's our baby," says Luiz. "He is only 21 years old, but he has been playing the guitar for 22."

Incidentally, the quartet's name goes back to the first drum- mer of the group, who invented an instrument designed to help him make the dozens of percussive sounds of the batu- cada any group of Brazilians making samba. He called it a tamba partly because that is an African rhythm and partly because it is also a Brazilian plant, but mostly because it sounds like samba, which is the mother of Brazilian music. The drummer left, but the name stuck-and now Ohana is a batucada all by himself.

There is another very important ingredient in the Tamba sound and it goes back four centuries to the time when the cultures of the African slaves and Portuguese missionaries began mingling with that of the Brazilian Indian. The musical outcome was an exotic mixture of the profoundly melancholy airs of the Indian with the insistent, structured beat of the African and the loose, Moorish melodies of Portugal. This music is still alive in north-eastern Brazil (where most of Brazil's negroes live) and the Brazilian composer, Baden Powell, has drawn deeply from it for his own music. Three of his songs are on this record. This music of the north is some- times, and confusingly, called Afro-samba, but perhaps bossa norte "the northern thing" – would be more descriptive. It is darker in hue than bossa nova, more somber, more gutsy, and more authentic. Baden Powell is its prophet, and the Tamba 4 are its disciples.

So that's where the Tamba sound comes from. It is artfully distilled on this album, which gives a shimmering cross section of the group's musical evolution. We And The Sea is a smooth, sinuous piece of early bossa nova, and it appeared on their first recording in 1960. Flower Girl, dating from the same period, is a moving vignette of a girl's first bittersweet taste of love-and Bebeto justly earns Gilberto's praise in telling it. Dolphin is new, composed by Luiz and never recorded before. It is a gentle mood piece that soothes the spirit and seduces the ear with rich, modern harmonies. The three "bossa norte" numbers, lemanjá, Chant of Ossanha, and Consolation are all haunted by the lonely flute of Bebeto. The first two, particularly, are troubled by glimpses of the pagan deities of voodoo and macumba who have never been forgotten by the fishermen of the northeast coast (lemanjá is goddess of the sea; Ossanha of storms). All three works have splendid moments in their arrangements: listen for Ohana's dainty syncopated tick tick tick continuo that runs almost all through lemanjá; or his provocative conga prelude to Ossanha; or the intricately filigreed trio with piano, flute, and percussion about half-way through Consolation, and the agile bass lead that comes not long after. Finally, though it comes first on the album, is The Hill, which is something of a trade mark of the Tamba 4. It was written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, the pair who collaborated with Luiz Bonfa on the movie Black Orpheus (all three are close friends of Luiz'). In the original, The Hill is a touching, colorful tune that tells of the hope and tears and music of the shanty-covered hills around Rio. In the hands of the Tamba 4 it becomes a swinging 8-minute tour de force. Here, especially, are Luiz' echoes of Ravel, Debussy, and Gershwin; and right alongside is pure samba in the final barrage of Ohana's drum solo; and sandwiched in here and there are moments of humor, intro- spection and lament. This is the dazzling blend that is the sound of the Tamba 4. – Harvey Loomis

The Hill (O Morro)

Flower Girl (Moca Flor) - Portuguese vocal b Bebeto

Iemanja - Voices by Tamba 4

We And The Sea (Nos e ou Mar) - Voices by Tamba 4

Chant Of Ossanda (Canto de Ossanha) - Voices by Tamba 4

Dolphin - Voices by Tamba 4

Consolation (Consolacao)

Le Voyage - Pierre Henry

 

Le Voyage

Le Voyage

Pierre Henry (b. 1927)

An Electronic Score based on The Tibetan Book Of The Dead

A Panorama of Experimental Music 

Volume 2

Photo by Ferdinand Boesch 

Cover Design by Rolf Bruderer

Mercury STEREO SR90482

1968

From the back cover: Pierre Henry is undoubtedly the most important com- poser of tape-music in France today. Born in 1927, he studied at the Paris Conservatory under Nadia Boulanger and Messiaen, and he was the first "conventional" composer to become interested in the possibilities of -electroacoustics. With Pierre Schaeffer, Henry was a charter member of the "Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète," which was established in 1948 under the auspices of Radiodiffusion- Télévision Française (R.T.F.). The term "musique concrète" was coined by Schaeffer to describe the music that he and Henry were creating from natural sources; such sounds as industrial and traffic noises, sounds of nature, sounds produced by musical instruments and the human voice, etc., were tape-recorded and then altered by re-recording them backwards, through filters, at different speeds, with echo effects, and so on. While Henry and Schaeffer were producing their first experimental works, the West German Radio founded a similar research studio in Cologne. This studio differed from that of the R.T.F. in that sinetone generators were installed to produce "sinusoidal" sound – i.e., pure tones, without any overtones. This variety of tape-music, employed by such composers as Eimert and Stockhausen, became known simply as "electronic music."

By 1958, when Henry left the R.T.F. to set up his own studio (the Studio Apsome), the terms "musique con- crète" and "electronic music" were beginning to fuse, as electronically produced sounds were being mixed in various ways with "concrète" sounds both in France. and Germany and in the new Italian and American studios.

In 1955 Henry met Maurice Bejart, a choreographer who was using "musique concrète" to accompany the experimental ballets he created. Encouraged by Bejart, Henry composed for him "Le Voyage" (The Voyage), based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The work was first heard on April 15, 1962, in Cologne; but Henry produced another version in the church of St. Julian-le-Pauvre in Paris on June 25, 1963, and it is the second version that we hear on this recording.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which first appeared in English in 1927, is used in Tibet as a breviary, to be read or recited on the occasion of death to help the dying man concentrate on the experience he is about to undergo, and to give him instruction in the cycle of events after death which leads either to liberation or reincarnation. In highly symbolic language, the deadman's spirit is told what to expect in each of the three stages between death and rebirth. The first stage describes the psychic happenings at the moment of death; the second stage describes the dream-state which follows and the "karmic" illusions which occur; and the third step describes the beginnings of pre-natal feelings. 

Henry, in his aural interpretation, has bracketed these three stages with "Breath 1" – the last breath of the dying man – and "Breath 2" – the first breath of the reincarnated spirit. He divides the three stages between death and rebirth as follows: "After Death 1 and 2" (stage one); "Peaceful and Wrathful Deities" (stage two); and "The Coupling" (stage three). It is as if we die with the man and accompany him on his journey through a strange icy world which is in turn hypnotic, bewildering and terrifying. As soon as the threshold of death is crossed, the sounds of this world cease, and the unfamiliarity of another world can only be conveyed by the use of the infinite possibilities of electronic sound.

Breath 1

Hearing is perhaps the last faculty to remain. The ears of the dying man are filled with the final clamorings of earthly life: thousands of whispering voices, motor cars, marine trumpets, torture applied to the teeth, the hands, the sudden agony of the radio. And a wind, a wind that comes nearer, and which he recognizes as the sound of his own breathing. By his side is the lama, the priest, or the friend. Then comes the slow cessation of breathing.

After Death 1

At this moment the Clear Light appears, which, accord- ing to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, if immediately recognized liberates the spirit from the cycle of reincarnation. Helpless, the spirit strives to attain it. The strivings become weaker, and black clouds surge around him, blind him, and slowly engulf him in darkness.

After Death 2

In a half-dream, he sees his relatives, his friends, his house. He rushes forward, crying out and pleading, and dashes himself against an invisible wall. As sounds and lights surround him he becomes aware of the other world. Strange reverberations strike terror into him. Alarming shapes seem to want to devour him. He is brushed against by shrill-voiced spirits. The wind of karma carries him away and drives him on towards sheer precipices. Violent flashes cause him to lose his reason.

Peaceful Deities

However, along the wayside the gods of light and of wisdom smile on him and await his coming. Paralyzed with abject terror the spirit proceeds through a series of visions which are creations of his own imagination.

Wrathful Deities

Even the awful goddesses of wrath conceal behind their terrifying cries a call to ultimate liberation.

The Coupling

When he has become a complete wreck, when he has refused all opportunities of escape from the wheel of life and death, the spirit is condemned to be reborn. The wind of the karma drives him towards the doors of six lokas, or wombs, the color of each of which indicates a state of spiritual life on earth. Colossal forms rise up in the act of coupling. Male and female beings surround him. An irresistible force draws him. The atmosphere becomes hostile. Finally, he throws himself into the loka which corresponds to his desire for life. Male and female come together. The doors close.

Breath 2

The ear once again perceives the sharp wind of reality. The spirit rediscovers the hostile and hard world. Breath takes possession again of flesh and blood. The memory vanishes.

–––

The following excerpts from The Tibetan Book of the Dead* would be read while the spirit is undergoing the various stages described above:

Breath 1. "O nobly-born, the time hath now come for thee to seek the Path. Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy guru hath set thee face to face before with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its Reality in the Bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference or center."

After Death 1. "O nobly-born, listen. Now thou art experiencing the Radiance of the Clear Light of Pure Light. Recognize it. Thine own consciousness, not formed into anything, in reality void, and the intellect, shining and blissful, – these two, – are inseparable."

After Death 2. "Thou seest thy relatives and speakest to them, but receivest no reply. Then, seeing them and thy family weeping, thou thinkest, I am dead! What shall I do?' and feelest great misery, just like a fish cast out of water on red-hot embers. O nobly-born, when thou art driven by the ever-moving wind of karma, thine intellect, having no object upon which to rest, will be like a feather tossed about by the wind, riding on the horse of breath. Ceaselessly and involuntarily wilt thou be wandering about."

Peaceful Deities. "O nobly-born, five-colored radiances, which are the purified propensities, vibrating and dazzling like colored threads, flashing, radiant, and transparent, glorious and awe-inspiring, will issue from the hearts of the five chief Knowledge - Holding Deities and strike against thy heart, so bright that the eye cannot bear to look upon them."

Wrathful Deities. "O nobly-born, on the outer Circle of these Wrathful Deities, Herukas, the twenty-eight various headed mighty goddesses, bearing various weapons, issuing from within thine own brain, will come to shine upon thee. Fear that not."

The Coupling. "The visions of males and females in union will appear. If at that time, one entereth into the womb through the feelings of attachment and repulsion, one may be born either as a horse, a fowl, a dog, or a human being. O nobly-born, in whatever continent or place thou art to be born, the signs of that birthplace will shine upon thee then."

Copyright 1927 by W. Y. Evans-Wentz. Quoted with the permission of The Board of Trustees of The Leland Stanford Junior University.

Breath 1

After Death 1

After Death 2

Peaceful Deities

Wrathful Deities

The Coupling

Breath 2

Rated X For Excitement - Ron Frangipane

 

Venus

Rated X For Excitement

Ron Frangipane and His Orchestra

Mainstream - A Red Lion Production

Produced by Bob Shad

Recording & Remix: Dave Green

Mastering: Dave Crawford

Cover Design: Bob Flynn

Cover Illustration: Carole Jean

MRL-300 STEREO

1970

Violins

Mac Ceppos

Peter Dimitriades

George Ockner

Sylvan Shulman

Joseph Malignaggi

Driving Spice 

Harry Katzman

Juliua Brand

Henri Aubeng

Violas

David Sackson

Harold Furmansky

Al Brown

Seymour Berman

Celli

Seymour Barab

George Ricci

Harps

Eugene Bianco

Margaret Ross

Reeds

Joe Grim

Phil Bodner

Leon Cohen

George Berg

French Horns

Donald Corrado

Joseph DeAngelis

Trumpets

Joe Shepley

Bernie Glow

Irvin Markowitz

Burt Collins

Trombones

Allan Raph

Mickey Gravine

Eddie Hart

Guitars

Vinnie Bell

Al Gorgoni

Charley Macey

Williard Suyker

Bass

Joseph Mache

Pianos

Frank Owens

Dean Christopher

Percussion (Tuned Bongos, Casbasa, Tabalas, Orchestra Bells, Hairy Drums, Tambourine & Cowbell)

David Bullman

William Storandt

Drums

Robert Gregg

Moog Synthesizer

Ron Frangipane

From the inside (gatefold) cover: Combine thrilling interpretations of some of today's best songs and you really have an album "Rated X For Excitement." How can this recording be anything but! Ron Frangipane has a solid musical background as performer, arranger and orchestrator. He has gathered a full orchestra of highly capable musicians and even has made extensive use of the Moog Synthesizer, which, more and more, is becoming a key ingredient of today's sound. And, sound is the keynote of this recording. Here is the richness of the highest quality of instrumental sound, which brings a new light to these songs, which have been mainstays of such performers as the 5th Dimension, The Grassroots, The Archies, The Beatles, Neil Diamond and Bobby Sherman. The Beatles' "Something," composed by George Harrison, kicks off the album and also is aided by a Moog to go along with this sterling orchestra. The Beatles have contributed so much to the world's popular music and they're still going strong as composers as well as interpreters and innovators as "Something" handily reveals. This 37-man orchestra, with its admirable blending of strings, winds, brasses and percussion, also adds luster to the next exciting tune, The Shocking Blues' "Venus." The unique Moog sound also raises this big song to new heights.

Neil Diamond's "Holly Holy" gracefully follows. The winds glow here followed by equally brilliant work by brasses, then the luxuriant strings. Ron Frangipane's extensive studio work includes playing for Diamond and such other musical luminaries as Judy Collins, Peppermint Rainbow, Laura Nyro, B. J. Thomas, Leslie Gore, Al Kooper, The Happenings, Arlo Guthrie, Dick Gregory and Mandrake Memorial. Important solos were supplied by Frangipane for Don Costa, Al Caiola, Vinnie Bell, The Cuff Links and major rock groups. This rock work seems a far cry from his musical study with major classical composers, including Igor Stravinsky, Paul Creston, Peter Mennin, Burrill Phillips, Bernard Rogers, Howard Houson, Louis Mennini and John La Montaine. However, this classical background, including study in conservatory, has solidified Frangipane's musical knowledge and awareness. Frangipane brilliantly demonstrates his familiarity with what the different instruments can do and how best to produce the exciting sound that is a touchstone of this instrumental series of valuable recordings.

The Grassroots have a knack of coming up with true agreeable music as this sumptuous version of "Heaven Knows" witnesses. "Early in the Morning," which served the Vanity Fare so well, is the next gracious number, building in the soft rock that's such a cheerful element in today's music.

Another group with a knack for finding some of the most glowing of contemporary songs is the 5th Dimension and "Wedding Bell Blues" is a clearcut winner, even more winning as Ron Frangipane and his Orchestra interpret it memorably. Speaking of winners, it's difficult to top the Flying Machines" "Smile A Little Smile For Me," in this glowing version of musicians' musicians.

"Jingle Jangle" has a special place in Ron Frangipane's affections as it is a current winner for The Archies, who our conductor worked with as performer and arranger as he did with Andy Kim and Wayne Newton. He also arranged the Rolling Stones. The inventive treatment given "Jingle Jangle" deserves the "X for Excitement" description.

Billy Joe Royal's "Cherry Hill Park" is today's sound in a fascinating performance, which clearly offers a fit testimonial as to why today's music has such wide appeal. The orchestra sparkles in this selection with the brasses especially thrilling. This performance can be played over and over as can all of the exceptional material here. The beauty of this album is that its wholesome impact grows with each listening.

"Is That All There Is" proved a big one for Peggy Lee, an artist as popular today as she ever was. In addition to her distinctive stylings, a major reason for this popularity is her choice of material. "Is That All There Is" is just such a beautiful tune, that it is admirably suited to Ron Frangipane and his large group of complete musicians. It's a real beauty!

Bobby Sherman is a young singer who's making a big mark today. This album's irresistible excitement is obligingly capped by Sherman's "La La La (If I Had You)." This is a vibrant version of a topflight song. The orchestra soars with melodic and rhythmic magnitude. Here indeed is an album of superb songs brilliantly played by an exceptional orchestra under a young, but experienced conductor who has arrived with a program of stunning performances to remember.

Something

Venus

Holly Holy

Heaven Knows 

Early In The Morning

Wedding Bell Blues

Smile A Little Smile For Me

Jingle Jangle

Cherry Hill Park

Is That All There Is

La La La (If I Had You)

Igor Stravinsky Chamber Works 1911 - 1954 - Columbia Masterworks

 

Chamber Works 1911 - 1954

Igor Stravinsky 

Chamber Works 1911 - 1954

Conducted by The Composer

Cover: "Vase Of Flowers" by Pablo Picasso courtesy Ramond & Raymond Inc., New York

Columbia Masterworks ML 5107

In Memoriam Dylan Thoms - 1954

Three Shakespeare Songs - 1953

Septet - 1953

Four Russian Songs for Flute, Harp, Guitar and Soprano - 1953

Two Balmont Songs - 1911 and Three Japanese Lyrics - 1913

Three Souvenirs

Four Russian Choruses - 1941 - 1917

From the back cover: In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954). (Richard Robinson, Tenor; Lloyd Ulyate, Hoyt Bohannon, Francis Howard, Seymour Zeldin, Trombones; Israel Baker, Sol Babitz, Violins; Cecil Figelski, Viola; George Neikrug, 'Cello).

Stravinsky's memorial for Dylan Thomas was com- posed in February and March, 1954, and performed for the first time by the Monday Evening Concerts, Los Angeles, September 20, 1954, the present writer conducting.

In January, 1952, the English producer Michael Powell had secured the in-principle agre ement of both Thomas and Stravinsky to collaborate in a film of the Odyssey. Stravinsky's idea was rather for a kind of masque of some single episode in which formal pieces, songs and dances, would be used purely and incidentally and not as accompaniment, in a verse narrative or verse drama. Though Powell later abandoned the project Stravinsky and Thomas wanted to go through with it as a stage work, even unsponsored as it was likely to remain. When they met in Boston, May 22, 1953, to discuss it, they decided that Thomas, who was returning to England, would come to the Stravinsky home in Hollywood in November and live there until the work, whatever it was to be, had been finished. The Stravinskys used some money that had just been received from an Italian prize for composers to build a guest room especially for the awaited poet. Then in New York, where he had paused en route to do poetry readings, Dylan Thomas died, November 9th.

The opera plot described in the book "Dylan Thomas in America" was indeed the plot Thomas outlined to Stravinsky in Boston and subsequently in three very beautiful letters, but Stravinsky had another idea in mind for a subject. Thomas was quick to understand the composer's approach (though to Stravinsky's remark about a certain opera that it is between two chairs Thomas said that that is the best place to be) and showed a certain knowledge of opera and an intimate knowledge of The Rake's Progress.

Stravinsky's In Memoriam consists of a prelude of dirge-canons for four trombones and string quartet, a setting of Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" for tenor and string quartet, and a postlude of dirge canons for the four trombones and string quartet. All of the music is derived from a basic row of five notes stated at the beginning as theme and inversion by the second and fourth trombones in canon at the octave, and in retrograde and retrograde inversion by the third and first trombones in canon at their octave. The chorale-like canon of the trombones is answered by the strings – the same music doubly slow. The canons of the trombone chorale follow, in a different order and with a different tonal center, are relieved by the same string music, then complete the prelude giving the tonality of E to the whole. The song is composed with the same canonic strictness and adherence to the forms of the basic series. It would be silly to list all of the obvious devices, but another equally obvious event must be mentioned: how Stravinsky's five-note row allows him the same cadences, the same tonal frame, the same melodic structure that we might have expected-row or no row- from the line of his earlier music. Also, the form of Thomas' poem, with its many repetitions, would have appealed to Stravinsky, apart from any other reason, when one remembers his setting of the second ricercar in the Cantata. Here the 'Rage, rage' music is repeated four times, the two-bar string interlude six times, etc. The use of trombones and strings as equal antiphonal voices is an interesting coincidence in the light of the Canticum Sacrum that Stravinsky was to compose for San Marco's in Venice two years later.

Three Shakespeare Songs (1953). (Grace-Lynne Martin, Soprano; Arthur Gleghorn, Flute; Hugo Raimondi, Clarinet; Cecil Figelski, Viola).

The Three Shakespeare Songs were composed in the early Fall of 1953 and performed for the first time, the present writer conducting, March 8, 1954, by the Evenings-on-the-Roof of Los Angeles, to which organization they are dedicated.

The first song is a setting of the sonnet 'Musick to Heare'. Stravinsky has treated it as words to be heard', and the accompaniment is therefore bare. Only a single line of counterpoint is passed from instrument to instrument until the end where second and third parts are added. The vocal line is a kind of recitative, the recitation in musical pitches of a Shakespeare sonnet. The instrumental introduction concludes in the open fifth C to G, sustained like a caesura. So are the fourth, eighth, twelfth, and fourteenth lines of the sonnet sustained, each at its last word, though the harmonic fifth has moved to B-F sharp at the end of the eighth line, and to G-D the dominant, at the end of the twelfth line. Besides musical and textual pune- tuation we feel by these divisions or places of rest during the reading, by the three C-G cadences and the two others, definite tonal relationships.

The material of the song is exposed in the instrumental introduction where the flute's eight-bar melody is a tone row with six different tones and six repeated tones played in direct order and then by inversion. The clarinet and viola accompany, sharing the notes of a diatonic scale from C to G. The first four lines of the text are sung to exactly the same music of the introductory flute melody. The second four lines begin with the same row in the voice, then give the intervals in retrograde, which acts on the ear as a harmonic change. Then with the exception of a few notes derived by inverting the intervals of the melody, the vocal line stays to the original order of the row, with rhythmic and octave alterations. The instrumental accompaniment is also made up entirely of row tones in different orders or transpositions. It may or may not be by design that the row order of two notes is upset at the words 'offend thine ear'.

The second song, 'Full Fadom Five,' is as rich in texture and instrumental color as the sonnet is bare. The seven-tone bell motive is played and sung at the beginning in canon: at the fifth in diminution, and at the octave in double diminution. The seven tones are then sung in a new sequence, which sequence is followed by its retrograde. Various canons are introduced and developed, always from the four orders of the bell row. The quiet sonorities of viola and clarinet, the bell effect of the D-natural pizzicato with the words Ding Dong (the D has been saved elsewhere in the piece except for once as a passing tone), and the quiet, harmonically ambiguous cadence are appro- priate to Ariel's magical air.

The vocal melody of the third song, 'When Dasies Pied,' is diatonic. Derived from the bell motive of "Full Fadom Five', to which it adds passing tones, it is stated in direct and then in retrograde order. Joining the fun, the instruments add sound effects suggested by the verse: in the 'piping' viola harmonics, in the 'cuckoo' motive, in the concluding flute solo over a clarinet tremolo. The music of the two stanzas is repeated exactly.

Septet (1953). (David Oppenheim, Clarinet; Loren Glickman, Bassoon; John Barrows, Horn; Ralph Kirkpatrick, Piano; Alexander Schneider, Violin; Karen Tuttle, Viola; Bernard Greenhouse, 'Cello).

The Septet was composed between July, 1952, and February, 1953, and performed for the first time January 23rd, 1954, at Dumbarton Oaks in Wash- ington, D. C., the composer conducting.

Stravinsky's first purely instrumental chamber work since the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto of 1938, the Septet begins with a diatonic theme of an octave's span, and as in the Concerto this theme is developed by imitation. The Septet theme is first stated in A, and simultaneously against itself in augmentation. After seven bars of statement a contrasting developing episode begins with a new rhythmic figure in the dominant minor. This twelve-bar episode leads to a new section, marked 'tranquillo' in the score, whose rhythmic and accompaniment figures are in Stravinsky's lightest, most divertimento manner. This section also serves as prelude to a fugato which, like the fugato in the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, becomes the principal episode of the movement. A two-note figure bridges into the fugue and forms part of the fugue subject. The bridge itself will remind many listeners of the beginning of the fugue in the Symphony in Three Movements: the two notes – F and G in both works – are introduced in the same kind of breathy, tentative rhythm.

The first six notes of the fugue subject are the first six notes of the first theme, but in reverse order and with transposed octaves. This relationship may or may not be aural but it must be remarked because the entire Septet is engendered by the leading melodic idea in a way that is unique in Stravinsky: no earlier Stravinsky work derives its formal and harmonic structure so closely from a single theme. The fugue is confined to an exposition, a brief developing episode, and a stretto which leads at the climax of the move- ment-as in the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto – to the recapitulation. Again as in the Concerto, the move- ment ends in a pianissimo coda. The coda projects the theme in slow note values over a harmony whose final resolution to a chord which expresses both A and E and which-built from the bass E in fourths with an augmented fourth from G to C sharp and with A on top is the frame of the tonal history of the whole movement.

The first five notes of the passacaglia (second movement) theme are a transposition of the first five notes of the first movement's leading melodic idea. It is not supposed that this is aurally evident on first hearing, but repeated through nine variations and then turned around and upside down in the last movement the aural identification will be made. These five notes bear a great share in the unifying of the three movements.

The eight-bar passacaglia theme is treated as a tone row, in inversion, in retrograde, and in retrograde in version. However, there are not twelve but sixteen tones, and only eight of them are different. The theme is divided in its first phrase between viola and bassoon – divided in the manner of a klangfarbenmelodie. Eight variations follow, and a final variation in which the theme is heard against its own retrograde inversion (starting with the last note and moving backwards, but reversing the direction of the intervals so that a fifth up becomes a fifth down, etc.). In many of the variations the five notes are heard in their original form as the leading melodic idea. The plan of the variations is so simple and the figurations and textures are so little dense that the movement is accessible at first hearing. It might take several hearings, however, before the ear has analysed the many canons: second variation: canons at the octave (violins), the fifth (viola), minor seventh (clarinet) which because they are in short note values and end before the theme require new canons at the minor seventh (bassoon), octave (clarinet), and by inversion (horn) to finish the variation; third variation: two-part canons in the piano, straight and by inversion, by retrograde motion and retrograde inversion, etc.; then finally the violin and viola play the retrograde form and its inversion; fourth variation: at the octave (violin), inversion at the minor second (viola); fifth variation: all four forms of the theme are in the accompaniment; sixth variation: strings play a canon at the octave; eighth variation: there are seven real parts: piano, 'cello, and bassoon and clarinet play the row in straight form but in different rhythms, while the horn has the inversion, the viola the retrograde, and the violin the retrograde inversion.

The Gigue (third movement) is another completely contrapuntal movement. It is comprised of four almost equal-length parts, where each part is a fugue based on a different form of, or combining forms of, the same original subject. The subject is the passacaglia theme and therefore the leading melodic idea in different rhythm, and with altered octaves.

Again the derivation may not be determined aurally, yet will be if such things ever are.

The first fugue is played by the three strings, the second by the three winds and piano, the third by the strings, and the fourth by the winds and piano. Thus a dialogue of instrumentation is set up as complement to the dialogue of the fugues. Only at the final cadences of each fugue are the strings and winds mixed, and only at those cadences is the strict tempo retarded and the single dynamic level relaxed.

Like the passacaglia, the gigue is composed entirely with the sixteen-tone row. The fugue subject presents the eight different tones in such a way that the tonalities of E and A are expressed. Now though Stravinsky's use of tone rows in the Septet may have proceeded from the example of Schönberg and Webern it does not tend toward their kind of twelve-tone atonality. But whereas in the Cantata (1952) harmonic movement is restricted to safely Copernican revolutions around strong tonal centers, in this gigue the vertical aspects of tonality are made to function with a more radical latitude than ever before in Stravinsky's art.

Four Russian Songs for Flute, Harp, Guitar and Soprano (1915-1919). (Marni Nixon, Soprano; Arthur Gleghorn, Flute; Dorothy Remsen, Harp; Jack Marshall, Guitar).

Composed in 1915-19 for voice and piano and in- strumentated in 1954, these four songs were performed for the first time in Los Angeles, February 21, 1955, Robert Craft conducting.

Two Balmont Songs (1911) and Three Japanese Lyrics (1913). (Marni Nixon, Soprano; Shibley Boyes, Piano; A. Gleghorn and A. Hoberman, Flutes; H. Raimondi and W. Ulyate, Clarinets; I. Baker and D. Albert, Violins; C. Figelski, Viola; Howard Colf, 'Cello).

Two Balmont Songs were composed in 1911 and instrumentated in 1954. They were performed for the first time in the instrumental versions in Los Angeles, November 29, 1954.

Three Japanese Lyrics were composed in 1913. The titles of the poems are the names of their authors- Akahito, Maztsumi, and Tsaraiuki. The three pieces are dedicated to Maurice Delage, Florent Schmitt, and Maurice Ravel, in that order.

Three Souvenirs (1913). (Soprano, Marilynn Horne; with chamber orchestra).

These three songs (from the recollections of childhood) were composed in 1913 and orchestrated in 1930 for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons in pairs, and four violins, three violas, and two 'cellos. They were performed for the first time in the orchestrated version in Los Angeles, November 29, 1954.

Four Russian Choruses (1914-1917). (James Decker, Sinclair Lott, George Hyde, H. Markowitz, Horns; first chorus soloist: Marni Nixon; fourth chorus solo- ist: Marilynn Horne).

These four Russian peasant songs for female choir were composed in 1914-17 and revised and instrumentated for four horns in 1954. The first performance took place in Los Angeles, October 11, 1954, Robert Craft conducting. – Notes by Robert Craft