The Essay - Janacek etc.

[Roger Webb]

I dread to think what Judge Judy used.

'A Garland () for the Queen ('s council)?

[mopsus]

I wonder if it's in the Cambridge series, to complement this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Janacek-Glagolitic-Cambridge-Music-Handbooks/dp/0521389011/ref=sr_1_1?crid=8XZ7111MF7F2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iqevQB5i6jdpJEo3029254C9o5u7maS2tWIcM-IMxr7GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.a9IgrotSVSDcHZ5KL8NUsG971ZLo7zbYcAI4ghpty7s&dib_tag=se&keywords=Cambridge+glagolitic&qid=1741794298&s=books&sprefix=cambridge+glagolitic%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1-catcorr

I found that volume very useful when I sang the Mass a decade ago. It even contains a complete list of performances (can't remember up till what date). I sang in what I believe was the first one in Bristol.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Crown Court was a popular (lunchtime) TV program in the early 70s which attempted a 'realistic' dramatisation of a different case each day. The 4th movt. 'Allegretto' from Janacek's Sinfonietta was the music used for the opening credits.

It’s cropped up before but who wrote the cheesy end music ? I’m determined not to Google it. It’s about as far removed from Janacek as can be imagined.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Crown Court was a popular (lunchtime) TV program in the early 70s which attempted a 'realistic' dramatisation of a different case each day. The 4th movt. 'Allegretto' from Janacek's Sinfonietta was the music used for the opening credits.

da da da da ditter dar dar ditter etc
the amount of time I spent off school in the sixth form
listening to that..

[Roger Webb]

da da da da ditter dar dar ditter etc
the amount of time I spent off school in the sixth form
listening to that..

I had a temporary job in a TV servicing workshop where we had a TV on just about all the time.....programmes like CC came as a relief from hours of staring at the 'girl and blackboard' test card!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I had a temporary job in a TV servicing workshop where we had a TV on just about all the time.....programmes like CC came as a relief from hours of staring at the 'girl and blackboard' test card!

test card ‘f’

[Roger Webb]

...I hope you weren't enduring unutterable anguish....

.

Actually I was, having not had sufficient sleep. The nice enough restaurant (menu only in Czech!) which did rooms turned out to be the bakery as well....and they bake very early (3.30am) in Hukvaldy. I got up at 4.00 and walked up the castle hill......absolutely magical as the sun rose with 'Vixon' on the 'Walkman'!

[Pulcinella]

Ah - the question of what sort of bells (glock/tubular bells) remains a vexed one, though there's not much doubt that Janáček meant a glockenspiel (as Jaroslav Vogel wrote in his biography – he was also present at the 1926 premiere and reviewed it). The terminology is only uncertain because of the translation of the instruments from Czech to Italian. I'm actually writing a whole book about the Sinfonietta at the moment which goes into things like this in detail. But in the little 'Essay' talk, what I talk about is more the possible inspiration for the bells – as you'll hear. I think you must be right about it being the only work in the repertoire to require two bass trumpets and two tenor tubas.

My pocket score (Universal, so German but Italian instrumentation) calls them Campane; but I see that they are unpitched, which I would have thought odd for a glockenspiel. I don't have a score of Sibelius 4 so don't know how the Glocken (as I think they are called there) are notated.

[oliver sudden]

But for the full effect you must play it on the actual Overgrown Path!

My wife thinks I'm nuts, but if I know we're going to a place with musical associations I load up on music to be played appropriately.

I was in Toblach for a little while a decade or so and certainly made sure to take my iPod when I visited Mahler’s composing hut…

[Roger Webb]

I was in Toblach for a little while a decade or so and certainly made sure to take my iPod when I visited Mahler’s composing hut…

I have always wanted to do the Mahler komponierhäuschen, especially the Toblach one.... associated with the late works, and the one at Steinbach-am-Attersee where Mahler composed the 3rd, possibly my favourite symphony...but then there's 6th, 9th and Das Lied!

On the above trip we did visit the Jihlava house, Mahler's childhood home, where they had a special exhibition on....in Czech only though.

[Roger Webb]

test card ‘f’

Yes that was it. That test card contained all the elements necessary to set up the early colour TVs...'convergence', grey scale setting, centering, pin cushion correction....it's all flooding back, even though I haven't touched it for 52 years! I chucked it in to move to Bristol to work for a subsidery of BAE who designed test equipment for Concorde......at least colour TVs are still around!!

[makropulos]

I wonder if it's in the Cambridge series, to complement this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Janacek-Glagolitic-Cambridge-Music-Handbooks/dp/0521389011/ref=sr_1_1?crid=8XZ7111MF7F2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iqevQB5i6jdpJEo3029254C9o5u7maS2tWIcM-IMxr7GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.a9IgrotSVSDcHZ5KL8NUsG971ZLo7zbYcAI4ghpty7s&dib_tag=se&keywords=Cambridge+glagolitic&qid=1741794298&s=books&sprefix=cambridge+glagolitic%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1-catcorr

Not that series – but hopefully a similar one. I'll be able to say more in a few weeks' time.

[makropulos]

My pocket score (Universal, so German but Italian instrumentation) calls them Campane; but I see that they are unpitched, which I would have thought odd for a glockenspiel. I don't have a score of Sibelius 4 so don't know how the Glocken (as I think they are called there) are notated.

It's quite a can of worms, this. They're unpitched in the third movement but pitched (A flats) in the fourth. Vogel speculated that Janáček might have wanted a triangle in the third movement and a glock in the fourth, but against that, Janáček was perfectly capable of specifiying a triangle (as in Taras Bulba)... The usual solution to the unpitched notes in the third movement is to play E flats. This is what was done by two conductors (Klemperer and Bakala) who were in a position to ask Janáček what he meant and it has been followed by pretty much everyone else – whether on a glock or a tubular bell. The big problem is that 'camp.' was (understandably) expanded to 'campane' in the first printings of both the full score and the miniature score (two quite separate editions in this case). This has been corrected in post-1980 reprints of the UE/Philharmonia score ro 'campanelli' – i.e. little bells = glock –, and the same is true in the critical edition published in 2017 (UE 36503) – a completely new engraving with numerous corrections and helpful things like written-out repeats. Janáček didn't do a lot to help here: he just asked for 'zvonky', i.e. 'bells'. But the eye-witness evidence from Vogel (and other compelling indications from other sources) is that he probably meant a glockenspiel rather than tubular bells. But it's by no means cut and dried– as you'll know from comparing recordings – and there's no definitive consensus about this (let alone a definitive answer).

Sorry for such a convoluted comment! The question of the timpani sticks is much clearer: Janáček actually specified wooden sticks but for some reason that marking never made it into the printed score or the parts. But it's been correct in most editions since about 1980, so people should now get that right (but in several cases, they don't).

[Pulcinella]

It's quite a can of worms, this. They're unpitched in the third movement but pitched (A flats) in the fourth. Vogel speculated that Janáček might have wanted a triangle in the third movement and a glock in the fourth, but against that, Janáček was perfectly capable of specifiying a triangle (as in Taras Bulba)... The usual solution to the unpitched notes in the third movement is to play E flats. This is what was done by two conductors (Klemperer and Bakala) who were in a position to ask Janáček what he meant and it has been followed by pretty much everyone else – whether on a glock or a tubular bell. The big problem is that 'camp.' was (understandably) expanded to 'campane' in the first printings of both the full score and the miniature score (two quite separate editions in this case). This has been corrected in post-1980 reprints of the UE/Philharmonia score ro 'campanelli' – i.e. little bells = glock –, and the same is true in the critical edition published in 2017 (UE 36503) – a completely new engraving with numerous corrections and helpful things like written-out repeats. Janáček didn't do a lot to help here: he just asked for 'zvonky', i.e. 'bells'. But the eye-witness evidence from Vogel (and other compelling indications from other sources) is that he probably meant a glockenspiel rather than tubular bells. But it's by no means cut and dried– as you'll know from comparing recordings – and there's no definitive consensus about this (let alone a definitive answer).

Sorry for such a convoluted comment! The question of the timpani sticks is much clearer: Janáček actually specified wooden sticks but for some reason that marking never made it into the printed score or the parts. But it's been correct in most editions since about 1980, so people should now get that right (but in several cases, they don't).

Not convoluted at all; thanks.
(But oops on my part; having seen that they were unpitched in the third movement I didn't look any further.....)
Mine is an early edition: Philharmonia 224, Copyright 1927 by Universal, renewed 1954.
Bought in Oxford on 3 May 1971.

[smittims]

Two slight digressions:

Crown Court , currently repeated on TPTV (channel 82) is a regular favourite in our house. It was a brilliant idea, and probably cheap to make. Just one set and non-'star' actors, though a few faces became famous later (Richard Wilson for instance). Three twenty-four-minute episodes per case.

L'Isle Joyeuse: my gripe is that it's often rather unimaginatively played . In one recording which seems to be repeated often, the pianist sounds as if he or she were sight-reading cautiously, especially in the 'grand-slam' last page, where I'm used to Walter Gieseking's barnstorming August 1953 Abbey Road recording, where Geraint Jones made him do it again and again till he got it exactly right.