Music with Narratives

[Hornspieler]

Musical Narratives
Following on from the Blind Spots thread, which seems to have moved a long way off its original post, I wonder what members’ attitudes are to those narrations with music which surface from time to time.

Some examples:

“Peter and the Wolf”
“Carnival of the Animals”
“Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”
“Tubby the Tuba”
“Delilah the Sensitive Cow”
“The Seven Deadly Sins”
“Pierrot Lunaire”
“Façade”

The first three may be regarded as a useful introduction to musical appreciation for young people.

“Tubby the Tuba” (Danny Kaye) and “Delilah the Sensitive Cow” (Johnny Morris) may be regarded as lightweight entertainment for all.

Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins”and Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” may be regarded as entertainment for more mature listeners.

… and Walton’s “Façade” was written for the “smart set” and is now a bit dated.

For myself, I prefer to listen to the first three without the narration; the next two not at all and the final three works occasionally, provided that the narrator does not use them as an opportunity to show off (a certain well-known comedy film actress comes to mind).

Any “Blind Spots here?” Tell us what you think.

HS

[Belgrove]

Not so much a blind spot as an enthusiastic endorsement of Leslie Caron's narration in Debussy's Le Martyre de St Sebastian with Tilson Thomas and the LSO and Chorus. She gives a highly charged account, ecstatic and deeply moving, great vocal acting without hamming up. I'm inordinately fond of this piece despite it not being Debussy at his best, but then again, not his worst either.

I can certainly do without the narration in Britten's Young Person's Guide, but have fond memories of Tubby the Tuba! How about Sparky's Magic Piano?

[Tevot]

Hello there

Thanks Hornspieler for your post. As to your comments about the first three on your list - the Prokofiev, Saint-Saens and Britten - I feel that the narration would obviously work in and indeed be an integral part of a live concert performance / outreach / matinee - particularly aimed at a children's audience.

Listening at home as an adult - and once I can differentiate the strings from the brass section - I'd prefer there not to be a narrative !

There are other works where narration is integral and essential imho... Roberto Gerhard's La Peste (the Dorati recording with Alec McCowen) springs to mind...

http://www.amazon.com/Roberto-Gerhard-Plague-Antal-Dorati/dp/B000EQHV9I

That performance doesn't seem available on Youtube - but the following is :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n3JUoL8COg

So too the incidental music to Egmont - narrated I think splendidly by Bruno Ganz... with Claudio Abbado on the podium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjIhV1gfIow

and finally a piece by my dear RVW that I hadn't encountered until quite recently - " A Song of Thanksgiving"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOXub0tfglE

I think narrative can work - when all things fall into place But, of course, this is perhaps all subjective...

Best Wishes,

Tevot

[Ferretfancy]

I rather like RVW's An Oxford Elegy, based on Matthew Arnold's The Scholar Gipsy. I still have the LP with the King's College Choir and the Jacques Orchestra conducted by David Willcocks. John Westbrook is an excellent narrator in that rather self conscious "poetry voice" style. I'm not sure if there's a CD, the beautiful couplings are Flos Campi with the violist Cecil Aronowitz, and the Five Variants of'Dives and Lazarus"

Incidentally, I can't quite respond to Pierrot Lunaire as entertainment as Hornspieler does, must try harder!

[Ferretfancy]

Sorry to jump in again so quickly, but there are one or two works with narration that are a bit of a disaster on repetition. One such is Decca's attempt at the complete Kodaly Hary Janos with Peter Ustinov doing a range of not very funny voices. OK, it is a sort of singspiel rather than an opera, which I suppose is why Decca tried this approach, but it makes me cringe. It would have been better just to have the music.

[edashtav]

I have a Blind Spot for Copland's WWII piece "A Lincoln Portrait" unless its narration is handled with a touch of understatement it can sound pompous.

[Serial_Apologist]

I rather like RVW's An Oxford Elegy, based on Matthew Arnold's The Scholar Gipsy. I still have the LP with the King's College Choir and the Jacques Orchestra conducted by David Willcocks. John Westbrook is an excellent narrator in that rather self conscious "poetry voice" style. I'm not sure if there's a CD, the beautiful couplings are Flos Campi with the violist Cecil Aronowitz, and the Five Variants of'Dives and Lazarus"

I too love this piece, even though in my case the Kleenex has to be close to hand.

Incidentally, I can't quite respond to Pierrot Lunaire as entertainment as Hornspieler does, must try harder!

It does involve a somewhat self-flagellatory ideal of entertainment! Some do say it sounds better minus Sprechstimme.

[Don Petter]

My favourite narration (even though it was added later in place of the original) is that of Jean Cocteau in the Pears/Stravinsky Oedipus Rex. Incomparable declamation!

Perhaps my vote for the oddest is the 75 year old Dohnanyi introducing each of the movements of Schumann's Kinderszenen in his quaint English accent on his 1951 recording. Somehow, rather than being an annoyance, it all adds to a fascinating window on the past.

[Serial_Apologist]

My favourite narration (even though it was added later in place of the original) is that of Jean Cocteau in the Pears/Stravinsky Oedipus Rex. Incomparable declamation!

Perhaps my vote for the oddest is the 75 year old Dohnanyi introducing each of the movements of Schumann's Kinderszenen in his quaint English accent on his 1951 recording. Somehow, rather than being an annoyance, it all adds to a fascinating window on the past.

Some wonderful recordings of Hans Eisler introducing and then accompanying himself in his own ageing and very gravelly voice in "Die Rundkopfe und die Spitzkopfe" were played during the week this composer was COTW, many moons ago.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Carnival of the Animals doesn't really count. The narrations were added much later by Ogden Nash.

A few more:

The Reluctant Dragon (Rutter)
Brother Heinrich's Christmas (Rutter)
The Wind in the Willows (Rutter)
The Gates of Greenham (Tony Biggin)
Cry of the Earth (Tony Biggin)
Sinfonia Antartica (RVW)

[richardfinegold]

By coincidence I was playing a disc from one of the large Mercury boxes that features Gina Bachauer playing Ravel's Gaspard, with Sir John Gielgud narrating the poems that inspired Ravel before each of the 3 movements. The poems are brief and read without any trace of camp. I was struck by how successful Ravel was in capturing the mood of each poem, and the poems did increase my appreciation of a piece of music that I have listened to for many years.
Having said that, I will now burn the disc to a hard drive and omit the poems, as i would not prefer to listen to them very often, but I'll keep the original disc in case I ever wish to hear them again.

[Richard Barrett]

I wouldn't regard Pierrot Lunaire as spoken narrative in the sense of the other examples cited, since the declamation is notated with rhythms and pitches just like a sung part, and, though soloists have different ideas as to how literally to take the pitches, it's quite important that their rhythms be as accurate as in a "real" sung part.

An example of narrative in music I'm very fond of, which I don't think has been mentioned here, is Stravinsky's Perséphone, actually one of his most attractive pieces in other ways too I would say. As well as the spoken voice there's a tenor solo and a chorus (and some exquisite orchestration, especially the way the piano is used, sparsely but in a way which is central to defining the overall identity of the work).

There's also the whole romantic genre of "melodrama" with several examples by Schumann, Liszt and Strauss (after his retirement from singing, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau made a double CD of such works by these composers and by Viktor Ullmann, a highly moving recording I think).

[Ferretfancy]

It would seem that Vaughan Williams did not intend the poems heading each movement of the Sinfonia Antartica to be read aloud, although I must say that the old Decca recording with Ralph Richardson narrating and Boult conducting still works for me.

[amateur51]

I have a Blind Spot for Copland's WWII piece "A Lincoln Portrait" unless its narration is handled with a touch of understatement it can sound pompous.

I trust that this is not some sly political point-scoring concerning the truly awful version narrated by Baroness Thatcher - it;s a cracker of the wrong sort

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It would seem that Vaughan Williams did not intend the poems heading each movement of the Sinfonia Antartica to be read aloud, although I must say that the old Decca recording with Ralph Richardson narrating and Boult conducting still works for me.

I think Ralph Richardson was on the LSO/Previn. It was Gielgud on the early Boult and that was under the composer's general supervision, so it would seem he might well have thought well of the verses being spoken. However, in Barbirolli's even earlier recording, they were not.