Quiz: Mystery scores

[BWV 1080]

Interesting, did not know that about Hill Runes.   While the excerpt I posted was dedicated to John Williams, there is a Julian Bream connection as well


Don't think there is a PMD connection to a Sean Connery movie

[classicalgeek]

Interesting, did not know that about Hill Runes.  While the excerpt I posted was dedicated to John Williams, there is a Julian Bream connection as well

Don't think there is a PMD connection to a Sean Connery movie

I think I have the answer... not through any familiarity with the music in question, but through working through BWV 1080's many hints. Wikipedia definitely helped...

The composer (I'm pretty sure) is Toru Takemitsu. I don't know the specific piece, but everything else fits:

-Even though he was only 14 years old, Takemitsu was drafted into the Japanese army in 1944.
-He wrote the music to the film Rising Sun... starring Sean Connery.
-John Williams championed Takemitsu's guitar works, and recorded some of them for Sony Classical in 1989, so it's only fitting that Takemitsu would dedicate a piece to Williams.
-Upon closer examination, the orchestral snippet you posted certainly looks like Takemitsu, though I was thrown off by the English indication 'soloistically'. 

I initially ruled out Takemitsu knowing he was born in 1930 - surely too young for military service during WWII. But apparently not... 

[Luke]

Based on all that it sounds very likely, well done! And the orchestral pieces looks very Takemitsu-like which pretty much confirms it. I had considered Takemitsu but this snippet didn't appear to be in any of the pieces I looked at (the Folios, All In Twilight, the Piece for Solo Guitar and In the Woods). But if it is his last guitar piece then it is In the Woods and I missed it. Which is pretty shoddy work!

[Luke]

It is. It's the first movement. I was listening to the third by mistake. 

[BWV 1080]

Yes that's it.  Was a challenge to drop clues without giving it away

[Luke]

Clues to my remaining one, Mystery location 2

Firstly, remember that these pieces are all linked by a connection which, though personal to me, can be grasped by plotting them on a map. Remember we have the following locations:

Tintagel

Egdon Heath

and locations (three of them, I'll give you that) connected to RVW symphonies 9, 3 and 5. The odd ordering I've just given is the order in  which, in my estimation, these connections are generally known about.

Mystery location 2 is an orchestral piece by a composer who also wrote a great piano concerto and some other fine orchestral scores but who was mostly a specialist in piano music, a miniaturist, and a great composer of songs and chamber music. No symphonies, though, which is another very specific hint around these parts. Previois guesses as to its composer  have been in the right area. 

[Roasted Swan]

Clues to my remaining one, Mystery location 2

Firstly, remember that these pieces are all linked by a connection which, though personal to me, can be grasped by plotting them on a map. Remember we have the following locations:

Tintagel

Egdon Heath

and locations (three of them, I'll give you that) connected to RVW symphonies 9, 3 and 5. The odd ordering I've just given is the order in  which, in my estimation, these connections are generally known about.

Mystery location 2 is an orchestral piece by a composer who also wrote a great piano concerto and some other fine orchestral scores but who was mostly a specialist in piano music, a miniaturist, and a great composer of songs and chamber music. No symphonies, though, which is another very specific hint around these parts. Previois guesses as to its composer  have been in the right area. 

Duh.... ireland's Mai-Dun

[Luke]

Duh.... ireland's Mai-Dun

Woz Dun. 😁

[Luke]

So, the personal connection: these were all amongst the locations that I visited in a single day during the journeying I made for my book. I made a great number of enormous drives, and in total my Scottish expedition was the most epic, but no single day's drive was longer, more varied or more eventful than this one. All these locations are in the south west of England; I am in the east, so it took a few hours even to get to the first destination. I left at 11.30 pm, had to make a detour that cost me an hour or so, and arrived a mile north of Stonehenge in the deep darkness before dawn. I was here because it was an important location to RVW, whose Stonehenge-Tess of the d'Urbervilles usage in the 9th Symphony is only the last of a series of occurrences of it in his thought. In Tess, Stonehenge is where, at the end of the book, Tess is arrested for murder at dawn. I walked to it in the pitch dark, so that it was invisible without night filters on my camera.  Suddenly, in the darkness, a light accusingly swung towards me, too - a security guard on his rounds... [photo 1]

This part of the world was somewhere RVW returned to often. He found it both inspiring and a good place to work. in peace. On the next day, among other destinations, I visited the house in Oare where he wrote Flos Campi. But on this day, after Stonehenge and only a few miles away I visited the village of Stapleford, where the 5th symphony was forming in his mind. [the house he stayed in: picture 2]

Then another 15 miles or so, to open countryside between the villages of Sutton Veny and Longbridge Deverill. [picture 3] This is where Private Vaughan Williams was stationed in 1916, immediately before leaving for France. It is - runs one version of the story - where he heard the practising bugler whose inability to hit the octave accurately inspired that moment on cosmic melancholy in the 3rd.

Then I visited Whitesheet Hill, which was Birtwistle's favourite place, and the house in Mere where he had lived, and died, last April. [no picture]

Then south to Holst's Egdon Heath, an imaginary location in Hardy's Return of the Native based on some very definite places, of which this one - the Rainbarrows, a walk away from Hardy's birthplace - is the most definite of all. It was about 10 in the morning by the time I got there. I got utterly soaked, but over the succeeding months it felt more and more like it had been a pivotal moment in my year of journeys. [picture 4]

Not done yet, I drove, via Hardy's house in Dorchester, to the gigantic earthworks at Maiden Castle, Hardy's Mai-Dun. As I walked around it, the previous downpour was already imperceptible. The whole place was bone dry and enormous. [picture 5]

Then - it was about 1.00 by now, I think - another long drive, all the way to Tintagel, on Cornwall's north coast. I did quite a lot here, and afterwards drove even further south to try to find the viewpoints where Bax would have tried to commune with Harriet Cohen, but they weren't viable in the weather. This picture [picture 6] is taken in Rocky Valley, where Elgar and Alice Sturt-Wortley went for a mysterious walk that seems to have been pivotal in the composition of the 2nd Symphony.

By the time I'd finished my Cornwall visits, it was about 5 or 6. But I had a lot more driving to do as I headed west again so s to be as near as I could get to my next day's destinations. So another long drive followed, before stopping at Glastonbury, where I wanted to see the rooms in which Boughton's The Immortal Hour was first performed [picture 7 - I didn't do a clue for this one, maybe I should have] and where I finally fell asleep in the back of the car in Glastonbury, only a hedge between me and the supposed grave of King Arthur.

[classicalgeek]

That sounds like quite the adventure, Luke! I like how the pieces of music fit in to the story.

Meanwhile, here's my latest submission. Hopefully, even though it doesn't show the instrument names, you can see that this is a conventional orchestral score with a conventional layout:



I've blanked out the date at the bottom of the score... 

[BWV 1080]

That sounds like quite the adventure, Luke! I like how the pieces of music fit in to the story.

Meanwhile, here's my latest submission. Hopefully, even though it doesn't show the instrument names, you can see that this is a conventional orchestral score with a conventional layout:



I've blanked out the date at the bottom of the score... 

No key signature?

[classicalgeek]

It's E minor. I suppose I could repost the score with the instrument names (and thus the key signature.)

[classicalgeek]

Here's the score from above, with instrument names, key signature... and a rehearsal letter:

[krummholz]

Here's the score from above, with instrument names, key signature... and a rehearsal letter:

Tempo?

Seriously, this should be easy for anyone who has heard it as it's a quite distinctive and easily read passage. But I'm pretty sure it's not from anything I'm familiar with or have heard recently.

(But it's almost certainly 19th century, and my guess would be one of the Russians, perhaps Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff.)

[classicalgeek]

Tempo?

Seriously, this should be easy for anyone who has heard it as it's a quite distinctive and easily read passage. But I'm pretty sure it's not from anything I'm familiar with or have heard recently.

(But it's almost certainly 19th century, and my guess would be one of the Russians, perhaps Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff.)

The last tempo indication is 'Molto meno mosso' which I don't suppose is all that helpful.... the tempo goes through many modifications; the tempo at the outset of the movement is 'Allegro con fuoco'.

The composer isn't Russian, though that's a very good guess! I can see it being Tchaikovsky; it certainly has the same white-hot passion!

Look at how the instruments are labeled - specifically, in what language?

[LKB]

Sigh...

Hundreds of hours of music memorized between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five, yet it apparently wasn't enough! 

[BWV 1080]

The harmony is not right for 19th cent, no leading tone (D#) on the page, the penultimate chord in the strings is D-F#-C-E-A, its more of a modal minor sound, maybe Ravel or one of Les Six or perhaps a wrong-note neoclassical work

[Mapman]

Here's the score from above, with instrument names, key signature... and a rehearsal letter:

I've figured it out, but through searching the internet (there's some interesting text on the score) instead of musical knowledge. I'll give people more time to figure it out before ruining the surprise.

[Luke]

It's the end of Howard Hanson's First Symphony

[Luke]

I've figured it out, but through searching the internet (there's some interesting text on the score) instead of musical knowledge.

That's perfectly within the (unwritten) rules. It's all about nosing out those clues and knowing how to follow them up!