SEXTET FROM LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

Love Songs In Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning

In my next blogs I will be writing about some of my favorite books, starting with Edwin Stringham and Barbara Tuchman (“The March of Folly: from Troy to Viet Nam”).

For music appreciation the best book I know of is Edwin Stringham’s 1959 “Listening to Music Creatively.”  Stringham’s  summary of the famous sextet in Lucia di Lammermoor is typical of his clear, incisive writing.

Here’s what he writes:

“Although the broadly flowing melody is known to all the world, it requires some knowledge of the opera to realize how well the music expresses the dramatic situation of the play, and how adroitly each of the six voices reveals the conflicting emotions of each character. The sextet is sung in the second act, when Edgar returns to the castle of his enemy, Lord Henry, to find that his beloved Lucy (sister of Lord Henry) has just married another. Edgar is swept…

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The delicacy of the trumpet

Love Songs In Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning

It is perhaps a sign of the times that a lot of young (and not so young) trumpet players are fixated on playing the highest notes possible the loudest they can. I once attended a jazz workshop put on by Hugh Fraser, a local jazz trombonist of note here in Victoria. In my opinion the performance was marred by the trumpeter, whose super-loud (and high) playing was nerve-wracking. It also upset the equilibrium of the group by drowning out all the other musicians. This trumpeter was not only disrespectful, in my opinion, he was unmusical. You could maybe say his playing was physiologically impressive, but not musical. It was like a primal scream emanating from the brass.

I would like to share two examples of fine trumpet playing on Youtube. One is the solo from El Concierto de Aranjuez (google “Brassed Off” and “Concierto de Aranjuez”). The young woman auditioning…

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