Ipod shuffle #1

This is the first post of a new regular entitled 'Ipod shuffle'. The title is self-explanatory, and here are the rules I follow for each of these posts.

• I won't cheat and skip a track only because I don't like it
• I will skip any track of opera, because I don't like opera even when it's written by people like Stravinsky. I will also skip anything from a John Zorn documentary I have on the Ipod.
• I will write for every single track that comes up, and I will try as hard as I can with my limited musical knowledge. I'm not a musician, I'm a music lover.
  
• To avoid repetition, I will only have one artist per post. If an artist appears more than once in the shuffle, I will skip it.
• I will write about the music while hearing it.
  

1. Reflets dans L'eau - Claude Debussy

Solo piano playing subdued and restrained impressionist classical music. It is part of Debussy's Images. The track gradually goes building momentum and reaches the 'higher' notes prior to using the full scope and breadth of the piano. There is a tempo change at around 3:12 and the music becomes far 'slower'. The track beautifully withers away at the end. On the whole, the piano sonatas and chamber music by Debussy doesn't do as much for me as his orchestral works.

2. Vocalise, pour l'Ange qui announce la fin du temps - Oliver Messiaen

Another French composer. This is beautiful, beautiful music from one of the finest compositions in the history of music. When I first downloaded it years and years ago, I always thought this part was the first movement, but it's the second! Olivier Messiaen was a political prisoner at a camp, and he wrote Quartet for the End of Times for himself on piano, a clarinetist, a cello and a violin. The piece captivated the soldiers so much that they let them go... This part is one of my favourite moments of the piece and Messiaen, being a highly religious character, draws on ascetic themes for the title and the 'vibe' of the piece. This part if quite harmonious through the majority of its duration, but has quite a visceral opening and closure.

3. Against Constancy - Michael Nyman

Repetitive but highly effective sound patterns from a master of minimalism. This is a movement from his piece The Libertine. There are horns and strings playing this melody again and again, with a clarinet soloing quite a bit around it. Like the music of Steve Reich this achieved to emotional effect and produces this 'emotion' through quite technical procedures.

4. Collapse and Crush - Isis

In contrast to the three previous classical tracks, here we have a bit of sludge metal. This isn't, however, from their masterwork album Oceanic but from Celestial. The heavy guitars play repetitive patterns, and the screaming vocals are buried deep within the mix. Sadly, they disbanded recently and I won't be able to see them live again. The music, like the Nyman before, incites emotional responses from repetitive sound structures. But, unlike Nyman, this makes you move and mosh. No matter how much I love metal music, it can't be denied that a lot of it is quite stupid. Isis are an exception: this is intelligent metal.

5. Concert Romanesc IV: Molto Vivance - Gyorgy Ligeti

This is part of a piece written by Gyorgy Ligeti before he discovered modernism and the Viennese school, but it's written while he was still in Hungary. You can certainly hear the shadows of Kodaly and Bartok, and this piece does indeed draw a lot from Hungarian folk music. One can see in embryonic form Ligeti's 'micropolyphony' in the intricately assembled orchestration. This is less dense and substantial than Ligeti's later pieces, but it results in a highly enjoyable yet somewhat light-hearted piece.