The end of an era

Thank you for joining us this week. It was a really beautiful farewell event for us and I’m very thankful for having such great people as friends.

For this final post you can read my final conclusions and the message of our Artistic Director, Melinda Beasi.

Today, on (Friday) May 13th (2022), Musica in Extenso is saying goodbye to it’s community and friends with the following (really impressive) statistical numbers:

It’s hard to believe we’re finally here at the final entry for Musica in Extenso. It’s been such a spectacular run here, and I think I can speak for everyone in saying that this ending is bittersweet. While it seems clear to us that the blog has run its natural course, I know I’ll miss the camaraderie between our whole staff and our wonderful followers. 

 We hope we’ve brought you some joy and perhaps introduced you to some piece of beautiful, thought-provoking music you hadn’t heard before. We also hope we’ve entertained you and given you something special to listen to every day, either new or familiar. Best wishes from all of us to all of you! - Melinda Beasi, Artistic Director

Editor-in-Chief, @cantationem​, @cherryboie & @mikrokosmos​

Hello to everyone who’s followed MiE over the years,

I was just thinking of how long I’d been a returning guest editor here. I appreciate this project because Krisztián’s planning and scheduling helped motivate me to write even when I didn’t want to. And writing about music is my favorite thing to do. My most frequent contributions here were for Russian Composers series, so I thought I’d share this gorgeous miniature from Scriabin. His early period is popular among pianists but overall kind of gets sidelined for being too much “like Chopin”, and his later works are more historically significant and influential. Of course that doesn’t mean the more ‘conservative’ pieces are dull or not worth listening to. His musical personality is strong throughout his career, and in this Prelude he creates a dreamy and languid atmosphere with a simple floating melody, and the constant wave of triplets makes each hand sound free from each other. Thanks for tuning in with us!

- Nick O, @mikrokosmos​

Hello MiE world, 

Long time no see and I just realized that’s the last time I write that for this blog. Damn, I just went to read my description and wow, so much has changed! 

I’m eternally grateful for this project cause it broadened my taste and my way of perceiving music that I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I think one of the things that this journey has taught me is that I can be multiple and enjoy various genres and presentations of music. 

So, as a part of my musical evolution I want to share with you an artist that brings together many things that I enjoy now: bringing technology, harmony, instrumentalization, the visual production and of course the feelings and soul that goes into this performance I’m sharing. I’d like to think of it as how I’d like to approach music in my life cause I’m starting that Dj/Producer journey.

So, thank you Kriz, thank you Melinda for making me a much more educated musician. I leave you with this beautiful concert, I hope you really enjoy it. - Juan M. Orozco

I hardly know what to say today. It’s time for my own farewell post to Musica in Extenso, and the truth is, I really don’t know how to say goodbye. It took me a while to track down my very first post here in April of 2014, after a Romanian college student contacted me on Tumblr out of the blue to ask if I’d like to join his blog (then called “The Nob”) as a contributor twice a week. I don’t know why he invited me. I don’t know why I said yes! I’m usually very protective over my time and reluctant to commit to things that require a regular schedule. But he did invite me, and I did say yes. And here we are, eight years later, saying goodbye to the blog, but with eight years of friendship between us, across oceans and generations. I’ve felt honored to witness our editor-in-chief’s journey from college student to fully-grown adult with a beautiful wife and a bona-fide career and one of the kindest, most generous hearts I have ever known.

Here’s what I said on my personal blog the day I reblogged my first post here:

I do still love that joke. Thank you, Krisztián, for everything. And to all the co-bloggers who have contributed along with us for the past eight years. I feel so lucky to know you.

I never wanted to make an epic finale… If I want to be very honest with you, I never thought that Musica in Extenso and this blogging experience will get its final moments. But as I said earlier… everything comes to an end… eventually. Why I’m saying this? Because that’s true. After all these years, after all these experiences in my personal life, in my career… there is always an ending. Not always in an epic way and it’s not always about a happy ending… but as they say, an ending is maybe a new beginning and I really believe in this one. 

Today on Musica in Extenso (wow… maybe this is the very last time I’m writing this) we will not have some dramatic music or something sad, nostalgic. No, today I want to celebrate the end of an era. Yes… the end of an era, because here, on Tumblr I had something constant, a permanent schedule: for 11 beautiful years I had a nice place where I posted music, I shared my thoughts, my happiness, my musical preferences. I was growing up here… when I registered my account I was a student. Well now I’m a grownup man. Seriously… 11 years. I can’t believe this. 

I had a wonderful community here with amazing people, friends from all over the world and that is truly awesome, right? I mean, that’s how I met our only and one Artistic Director, Melinda Beasi. That’s how I met the wonderful Juan M. Orozco. That’s how I met the fantastic Nick Olinger. I mean… seriously… without them, this blog would be so boring (boring as hell). I’m so grateful for their contribution and I’m a very lucky person to have such nice friends. We never met in real life, but I hope that one day we will have the chance to sit down, drink a coffee and to have a nice chit-chat, about music, about art, about us. I was growing up here

That’s our short story! If you want the longer version… well, you will have to read all our posts. All of the posts will be saved here and you will find anything you want (for example: musicainextenso.com/tagged/femalecomposers). 

I hope you will enjoy reading and listening. I hope you will find some happiness when you will visit this blog in the future. As is said, today on Musica in Extenso: the sparkling music of Gioachino Rossini with the finale of The Barber of Seville. 

Thank you for everything! Thank you for being here with us, thank you for every like and reblog! Thank you for reading and following us through all of these years! 

All the best! ❤️ - Editor-in-Chief

____________________

Join us this week for the farewell event! Stay tuned!

Make me cry, why don’t you? 😭😭😭😭💜

Everything comes to an end... eventually.

Dear Friends, dear Followers, dear Musicians! After 11 years of classical music blogging, Musica in Extenso and it’s amazing editorial board will present next week the very last event. 

The farewell event - entitled as “The Finale” - will be presented between 9-13 May, so if you liked our blog or if you’re a classical music fan, we invite you - one more time - to join us and to say goodbye, together. 

Stay tuned! - Editor-in-Chief, Melinda Beasi, Juan M. Orozco & Nick Olinger

@cantationem​, @cherryboie​, @mikrokosmos​

As I reach the final post in this series finale, I’m filled with a sense of nostalgia I can hardly describe. When Krisztián, our illustrious Editor-in-Chief, first invited me to join what was at the time a “lifestyle” blog, did either of us ever guess it would result in a years-long friendship, spanning some of the most important and tumultuous periods of both our lives? I certainly didn’t. Did either of us imagine blogging this long? Again, I did not. Yet here we are, and here I am, wrapping up the 15th installment of my Female Composers series as we head into the final moments of this blog. I’m thrilled by how popular this particular series has been, how much I’ve personally taken away from it and how much it matters to me. Thank you, Krisztián, for encouraging me to go forward with this series and helping me discover so much wonderful music, both for our followers AND for myself.

It seems absolutely necessary that I end this series by giving one final shout-out to Germaine Tailleferre, who is without a doubt the composer I’ve featured the most over the course of this series. It also feels right, after years of focusing on her chamber works, that I finally give some air to the work she did on a grander scale, specifically this Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1924), commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac who, like me, had a special appreciation for Tailleferre‘s perfect marriage of neo-classical and 20th-century sensibilities. I’m a particular fan of the concerto’s second movement, but the whole thing is truly delectable, and I offer it up to you all as my final gift of this series.

Thank you all for following along with me on this journey celebrating the works of female composers. I appreciate you all! - Melinda Beasi

I’d just barely begun digging into women composing for film and video game soundtracks last time this series came around, but through all the searching and listening I did during that installment, I haven’t been able to let go of the work of Yuki Kajiura, mainly in anime soundtracks. One of the gems I discovered on YouTube was this live recording of “A Song of Storm and Fire” from the Tsubasa Chronicles anime. So with the end of this series coming so soon, I thought I’d throw it out here as a gift to all the Kajiura fans in the house.

Tomorrow will be the final installment of this series, and it also happens to be my birthday. So expect EMOTIONS, friends. Until then… enjoy. - Melinda Beasi

One of the composers I discovered for myself while researching for my Female Composers series was Caroline Shaw, and though that discovery first happened back in 2017, I clearly remember the time, two years later, when I discovered the wealth of her work for strings, beginning with everything on the album Orange, recorded by the Attacca Quartet. That was the real beginning of my love affair with Caroline Shaw’s music, and it carries on to this day. Since then, I’ve included her work in our Random Contemporary Music series as well, and now that all these series are coming to a close, I want to be sure to take the opportunity to highlight her one last time. Here she is playing solo piece, In nanus tuas, on “Articulate with Jim Cotter.” So beautiful and haunting.

Please enjoy! More to come as the series finale continues! - Melinda Beasi

One genre I’ve never really touched upon in my Female Composers series here is musical theater, despite the fact that it played such a large role in my life and in my career. So as part of this series finale, I’d like to acknowledge the enormous wealth of talent that’s made its way to the Broadway stage over the past few decades. There have always been women writing for the theater, but it felt like a bit of a turning point in 1991 when the musical adaptation of The Secret Garden became the first Tony-nominated best musical with an entirely female creative team. I saw this musical multiple times when it first ran and was overwhelmed by its beauty across the board. With so much music in the piece overall, I never thought it was shown off to its best advantage in its original cast recording, which could not include all of it, but here is one of my favorite selections from that album, “A Girl in the Valley,” sung by Mandy Patinkin and Rebecca Luker, Lyrics by Marsha Norman, music by Lucy Simon.

More to come as the series finale continues! - Melinda Beasi

Today is bittersweet, as I begin what will be the series finale of my Female Composers series here at Musica in Extenso. When I began this series, I wrote about how I believed it would be an education for me as much as for our followers, and I was not wrong. I talked a lot in my first post in January of 2015 about the realization that my own list of favorite composers was male-dominated by a lot, and as I’ve sought out music to include for the series, that has radically changed. Today, though, I’d like to remind myself of what I wrote back then and once again share the very first piece I ever posted in this series.

I wrote: “I was once asked on Facebook to name one dead person in the music world to bring back to life.  After much consideration, my choice was Clara Schumann—not because her life was cut short (unlike Mozart or John Lennon, or any of the other musical figures I saw named who died tragically young)—but because, despite her renown as a pianist, her creativity and true potential were painfully stifled due to her gender. Given the quality of the works she put forward even under those circumstances, I would so love to have the opportunity to hear what she could have written with a real sense of legitimacy and agency.”

Here’s the piece I shared that day, Andante molto, the first of her Three Romances for violin and piano, written in 1853 and dedicated to violinist Joseph Joachim. Played by Yuka Matsumoto, violin and Tadashi Imai, piano.

More to come as the series finale continues! - Melinda Beasi

Today is bittersweet, as I begin what will be the series finale of my Female Composers series here at Musica in Extenso. When I began this series, I wrote about how I believed it would be an education for me as much as for our followers, and I was not wrong. I talked a lot in my first post in January of 2015 about the realization that my own list of favorite composers was male-dominated by a lot, and as I’ve sought out music to include for the series, that has radically changed. Today, though, I’d like to remind myself of what I wrote back then and once again share the very first piece I ever posted in this series.

I wrote: “I was once asked on Facebook to name one dead person in the music world to bring back to life.  After much consideration, my choice was Clara Schumann—not because her life was cut short (unlike Mozart or John Lennon, or any of the other musical figures I saw named who died tragically young)—but because, despite her renown as a pianist, her creativity and true potential were painfully stifled due to her gender. Given the quality of the works she put forward even under those circumstances, I would so love to have the opportunity to hear what she could have written with a real sense of legitimacy and agency.”

Here’s the piece I shared that day, Andante molto, the first of her Three Romances for violin and piano, written in 1853 and dedicated to violinist Joseph Joachim. Played by Yuka Matsumoto, violin and Tadashi Imai, piano.

More to come as the series finale continues! - Melinda Beasi

⏳ COUNTDOWN TO GOODBYE! ⏳ 🌼 Next week: series finale of Female Composers 🌼 with MELINDA BEASI, @cantationem

Nikolai Kapustin: 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op 82

Nikolai Girshevich Kapustin (1937-2020) was an Ukranian composer. In his oeuvre, he merged classical forms with jazz music in a unique way. For the last day of Piano Music Week, I decided to write about the Preludes and Fugues op. 82, which were published in 1997. I love how preludes an fugues are meaningful to composers of all eras, and never fail to reflect on the actual musical inventions these very different times.

Unlike Bach and Shostakovich, Kapustin chose a different order for the pieces of this cycle. Every prelude and fugue in a major tonality is followed by one in a minor tonality (so far, this is true for the composers mentioned before), and the major and minor pieces follow two paralel sequences. The pieces in major tonality are descending from C major to G major descending on the circle of fifths. The minor tonality pieces follow the same rule, but starting from g sharp minor and ending on e flat minor.

The only thing common with Bach’s music is the polyphonic structure which is hidden beneath jazz harmonies. It is an interesting thing to hear how the freedom of jazz music fits the improvisatory character of the preludes. Contrary to this, Kapustin manages to mix the strict form of the fugue with jazz, keeping the traditional ways of voice leading and imitations but still sounding like an improvisation.

We are lucky to have a recording of Kapustin himself playing this cycle, because he was a brilliant pianist as well.

Noémi Baki-Szmaler, guest editor, @une-barque-sur-l-ocean

Dmitri Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in e minor Shostakovich composed his set of 24 preludes and fugues between 1950 and 1951. Originally, he wanted to write a cycle of finger exercises, but he aspired to create something of deeper meaning. According to the composer’s own words, he played Bach every day, so it is not surprising at all for him to compose something inspired by the two books of WTC. The cycle was dedicated to and premiered by pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva.

For Shostakovich, non-programmatic music meant the last refuge for expressing his own thoughts and emotions freely, without the fear of censorship and being accused of formalism.

The prelude is short, only 44 bars long, a lamentation orignating from a deep sorrow. This might be the reason for using the classic sigh-motif so frequently in this short movement. It is interesting how the diatonic structure turns into something harmonically experimental, creating the illusion of instability. 

The fugue written for four voices follows the prelude attacca, and uses similar structures as Bach did in his own fugues. We have two different subjects, which meet at the final part of the fugue, Another interesting fact about this movement is the peculiar way how Shostakovich balances between classical tonal conventions and an archaic, modal musical language.

For authenticity, I chose a recording by Tatiana Nikolayeva, who was not only the best interpreter of Shostakovich’s music, but a master performing Bach’s works too.

Noémi Baki-Szmaler, guest editor, @une-barque-sur-l-ocean

✨COUNTDOWN TO GOODBYE! JOIN US!✨ ➡️ with @cantationem​, @cherryboie, @mikrokosmos and @une-barque-sur-l-ocean

Clara Schumann: Prelude and Fugue in f sharp minor Clara Schumann, according to the manuscript that I have found online, composed this piece in 1845. I did not find any literature about this specific work of hers, despite this was not the first time when Schumann composed piano pieces in this genre. Her set of three preludes and fugues (Op. 16) was published in the same year. Strangely, the Prelude and Fugue in f sharp minor was only published in 2015.

This prelude and fugue is another Romantic era echo of Bach’s music, though composed in a more conservative character than Mendelssohn’s piece from my previous post. The prelude begins (and stays) in a heartfelt atmosphere, contrasting with the rational and well planned manners of the fugue. Both movements end on an F sharp major chord.

My favourite recording of this piece is from 2001, by Jozef De Beenhouwer (born 1948), who is a Belgian pianist, musicologist and teacher.

Noémi Baki-Szmaler, guest editor, @une-barque-sur-l-ocean