Today we propose a little study by British flutist and composer John Clinton. It was first published in London in 1843, as part of his A Theoretical and Practical Essay on the Boehm Flute.
This jig is taken from Francis O'Neill's celebrated collection Music of Ireland, published in 1903. His source was Chicago Police Sergeant James O'Neill, a fiddler originally from County Down.
This wonderful symphony was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 during his three-year visit to the United States. It is by far his most popular symphony, and one of the most popular in the modern repertory.
Dvořák was interested in the Native American music and African-American spirituals he heard in America. However, as the Composer himself explained: “I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies. I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, counterpoint, and orchestral color.”
At the Ninth Symphony's premiere in New York the reception was one of perpetual cheering: the end of every movement was met with thunderous clapping and Dvořák felt obliged to stand up and bow.
This is the opening movement of a sonata in F minor for 3 flutes by the German Baroque composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson. It was published in Amsterdam in 1708.
This is étude No. 8 from the first book of Ernesto Köhler's Progress in Flute Playing. It is in ABA form, and features a stormy central section marked “più vivo”, which is Italian for “more lively”.
This beautiful jig appears to be unique to Chicago Police officer Francis O'Neill's early-20th-century collections Music of Ireland (1903) and The Dance Music of Ireland (1907).
This choral song was written by British composer Sir Hubert Parry in 1916, based on an 1804 poem by William Blake. It is often assumed that the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during his unknown years. In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake asks whether a visit by Jesus briefly created heaven in England, in contrast to the “dark Satanic Mills” of the Industrial Revolution.
Edward Elgar's 1922 arrangement for large orchestra contributed to the song's popularity. King George V even said that he preferred “Jerusalem” over the British national anthem “God Save the King”, and there have since been calls to give it official status. To this day, England has no official anthem, and uses the British national anthem “God Save the King”, also unofficial, for some national occasions. However, some sports, including rugby league, use “Jerusalem” as the English anthem.
Often described as the most prolific composer in history, Georg Philipp Telemann was a contemporary of J.S. Bach, Vivaldi and a lifelong friend of Handel. While in the present day Bach is generally thought of as the greater composer, Telemann was more widely renowned for his musical abilities during his lifetime.
In 1727, Telemann published his Sonates sans Basse à deux Flutes traverses, ou à deux Violons, ou à deux Flutes à bec, or “Sonatas without Bass for Two Transverse Flutes, or Two Violins, or Two Recorders”. These six sonatas for two melody instruments follow the common custom of leaving some latitude in the choice of instrument, providing the possibility of wider sales, particularly for the flourishing amateur market.
“Dolce” (Italian for ‛sweet’) is the first movement of what is usually called Sonata No. 2, although sometimes it is referred to as Sonata No. 1. It is also often found transposed to F major.
Today we propose a little study by British flutist and composer John Clinton. It was first published in London in 1843, as part of his A Theoretical and Practical Essay on the Boehm Flute.
You may recognize the melody as that of Haydn's “Deutschlandlied”, which for over a century now has served as the national anthem of Germany.
This lively jig is taken from Chicago Police officer Francis O'Neill's celebrated collection The Dance Music of Ireland, published in 1907.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed his Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068, for his patron Prince Leopold of Anhalt sometime between the years 1717 and 1723.
The name “Air on the G String” comes from violinist August Wilhelmj's late 19th-century arrangement of the piece for violin and piano. By transposing the key of the piece from its original D major to C major and transposing the melody down an octave, Wilhelmj was able to play the piece on only one string of his violin, the G string. The name “Air on the G String”, however, has today more or less taken the meaning of any arrangement of Bach's Air.
This Andante is the second movement of a sonata in F minor for 3 flutes by the German Baroque composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson. It was published in Amsterdam in 1708.
This third étude from Giuseppe Gariboldi's Twenty Studies starts off with a joyous 6/8-time theme marked “con grazia”, which is Italian for “with grace”. Within the piece you will find a very lyrical passage in E minor, and even three “hidden” 3/4-time measures in which quavers are to be thought in three groups of two instead of two groups of three. The theme is then repeated, but at the end the composer decided to speed things up, and inserted a run of sixteenth notes!
This jig appears to be unique to Chicago Police officer Francis O'Neill's early-20th-century collections Music of Ireland (1903) and The Dance Music of Ireland (1907).
This allemanda is the second movement of the third of the six Op. 7 flute sonatas with bass accompaniment by French flutist and composer Jean-Daniel Braun, published in Paris in 1736.
This simple, extremely well-known waltz for piano was written in 1877 by Euphemia Allen, a 16-year-old British girl, who published the tune under the pseudonym of Arthur de Lulli. As far as we know, she never wrote anything else.
On page 3 of the original edition for piano duet were these instructions: “This part [primo part of the duet] must be played with both hands turned sideways, the little fingers lowest, so that the movements of the hands imitate the chopping from which this waltz gets its name.”
Some people think the name of the waltz comes from the Chinese eating utensil, because the piece is sometimes played with just the forefingers and this looks like someone spearing a morsel of food with chopsticks.
In the UK however, although this piece of music is well-known, it is not usually referred to as “Chopsticks”. The piece of music known as "Chopsticks" in the UK is actually a different piano piece, elsewhere known as “Der Flohwalzer”.
Today we propose a little study by British flutist and composer John Clinton. It was first published in London in 1843, as part of his A Theoretical and Practical Essay on the Boehm Flute.
This jig is taken from Francis O'Neill's Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903. Although this was its first appearance under the title “Finerty's Frolic”, the tune is closely related to “Bliven's Favorite”, which was published 20 years earlier in Ryan's Mammoth Collection.
The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often considered as three suites, composed by German-English composer George Frideric Handel. It premiered in the summer of 1717, when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed by 50 musicians playing on a barge close to the royal barge from which the King listened with some close friends. George I was said to have loved it so much that he ordered the exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.
Many portions of the Water Music have become familiar. The D major movement in 3/2 meter titled “Alla Hornpipe” is particularly notable and has been used frequently for television and radio commercials.
This tiny Adagio is the third movement of a sonata in F minor for 3 flutes by the German Baroque composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson. It was published in Amsterdam in 1708.
This study in octaves is taken from Ernesto Köhler's 25 Romantic Studies, Op. 66. It may look a bit complex at first, but it's an excellent piece to develop a better embouchure. You can start out by playing only the first note in each slurred group, so that you can better focus on the melody and phrase it musically. Then add in the octaves, always marking the first of the slurred notes (that's the meaning of the direction at the beginning of the piece, “marcando sempre la prima delle note legate”). Try not to vary your embouchure too much when changing octaves, or you won't be able to speed things up later on.
This Irish jig is taken from Francis O'Neill's celebrated collection Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903.
This Largo is the third movement of the third of the six Op. 7 flute sonatas with bass accompaniment by French flutist and composer Jean-Daniel Braun, published in Paris in 1736.
This and four other pieces surfaced after Beethoven's death, bringing with them several very puzzling mysteries. Most challenging of them all was the instrument for which they were written. Piano, strings, harp and most other common instruments were instantly ruled out, building on the perplexing mystery and adding to the frustration. Eventually, Albert Kopfermann set forth a convincing argument that their strange scoring seemed a perfect fit for the Flötenuhr or Spielühr, a mechanical clock.
While the musical clock of the eighteenth century might seem like a toy to the twenty-first century ear and eye, its owners (usually members of the aristocracy) regarded it as a quite sophisticated device, not least because it was the only way to hear music away from the concert hall and parlors. Its chime-like tones may have limited its expressive range, but it seems that famous composers like Beethoven took compositions for the musical clock quite seriously.
Today we propose a little study by British flutist and composer John Clinton. It was first published in London in 1843, as part of his A Theoretical and Practical Essay on the Boehm Flute.
This jig is taken from Police Captain Francis O'Neill's celebrated collection Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903.
Catherine ‛Kit’ O'Mahony (c. 1812–1900) was O'Neill's mother. Raised in a musical household by her parents, Donal and Mary O'Mahony, she later transmitted the melodies she learned during her childhood to her own children.
In this well-known song, Schubert sets a poem by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart about a man catching a trout in a stream. It is perhaps the most celebrated of all Schubert's Lieder, even though there are well-known and much loved songs which are more profound and more moving. There is a freshness, a zest, an innocence about this music which has hooked its listeners since the song was composed. It has the memorability of a folksong, a type of melodic inevitability that only the great tunesmiths can achieve.
This gigue is the fourth and final movement of a sonata in F minor for 3 flutes by the German Baroque composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson. It was published in Amsterdam in 1708.
Here is another étude from Giuseppe Gariboldi's Twenty Studies, this time in E minor. It is marked “mezza voce eguale e delicato”, which can be translated literally as “half voice (i.e. quiet), even and delicate”.
This Irish jig is taken from Francis O'Neill's celebrated collection Music of Ireland, published in Chicago in 1903.
Drinagh is a small village (about 360 souls as of the last census) in County Cork, Ireland.
Today's piece was kindly contributed to our collection by guest composer Paul Merkus. This straightforward yet elegant melody for flute (possibly accompanied by piano) was composed earlier this year. The form is a simple ABA structure: after the introduction of the melody there is a small intermezzo in shorter notes, after which the melody returns.