Isn’t it nice when old friends turn up suddenly out of the blue? An old friend and colleague of giornaledibarganews arrived in Barga this week for a very short visit before once again disappearing into the distance -- the piper and pipemaker Hamish Moore, who has been nurturing affiliations with Barga since he was musician-in-residence there in 2008. (articles here).
As you can hear in the interview at the bottom of this article he was actually out of Scotland visiting the South of France to the establishment of Franco and Daniele Rigotti where he chooses and purchases his cane that he uses to make the reeds for his world-famous Scottish small pipes.
He is apparently the last pipe maker in the world using natural canes for his reeds, the rest of the makers having moved over to the far easier to find, use and play, synthetic reeds.
A short train ride from Nice brought him to Barga for a couple of days or so allowing him to time to scout for accommodation for his upcoming Barga School of Scottish Music Song and Dance 2013.
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The first Barga School of Scottish Music Song and Dance with more than 50 students and tutors first took place in Barga in 2010 ( article here) Last year it was cancelled as there were problems in sorting out the accommodation but according to Hamish for 2013 it’s all systems go once more.
The final dates have still to be fixed but it is looking as though the school will take place during the first three weeks of September 2013.
While Hamish was recording his interview in the giornaledibarganews office, in came the composer Michael Stimpson who just like Hamish has been profoundly affected by the sound of the Barga bells.
Both have composed music based around the sound of the bells.
Hamish’s first public performance of the Barga bells back in 2008 ( article here ) and Michael Stimpson’s world premiere will be on October 14th at the Teatro in Barga as part of the concert of music to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the death of Giovanni Pascoli. ( article here)
Two totally different musicians and type of music, one classical the other folk but both totally captivated by the sound of the bell echoing through the streets of Barga.
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David Blake composed a violin concerto in 1976 inspired by a visit to Barga. It was performed at the BBC Promenade Concert that year.
David Blake made two trips to Italy and, on his first visited Florence, Arezzo and the hills above Lucca. He describes how his concerto is a generalised response to the campagna and the sculpture of Michelangelo in particular. “A light-hearted foil is provided by elements of Italian bel canto to which I was exposed in the idyllic town of Barga, where a festival of opera was taking place”.
He continues at some length “Barga has a beautiful Romanesque Duomo which looks right over the town and surrounding hillsides. Late one night I stood in front of it and let the beauty and stillness of the place work on me. The first movement of the concerto begins with an evocation of that experience”.
Everyone visiting Barga should, imho, do as Mr Blake did and take time to stand as darkness falls in front of the Duomo. A scene that stays in the mind for ever. Would that I was also a composer!
Thank you John for pointing this out –
DAVID BLAKE – My two trips to Italy were firstly to Florence, Arezzo and the hills above Lucca and secondly to Rome. I found I had an insatiable appetite for the artistic treasures of the cities and was affected most profoundly by the beauties of the countryside. My Concerto, then, is a generalised response to the campagna and the work of the artist whose greatness and power seemed to dominate me wherever I went: Michelangelo, in particular his sculpture. A light-hearted foil is provided by elements of Italian bel canto, to which I was exposed in the idyllic town of Barga, where a festival of opera was taking place.
Barga has beautiful Romanesque duomo which looks right over the town and surrounding hillsides. Late one night I stood in front of it and let the beauty and stillness of the place work on me. The first movement of the Concerto begins with an evocation of that experience. The mood is broken into by the soloist, a passionate, voluble, nervous creature who doesn’t quite know where she is, until, unable to resist the prevailing atmosphere, she ‘sings’ with the orchestra. An abrupt change of mood and a short, perplexed recitative leads to what is, in many respects, a traditionally conceived concerto allegro, using sonata-principle thematicism as a way of approaching the tension and drama of Michelangelo’s figures. Those which made the greatest impression on me were the David in the Florence academy, led to by a corridor containing the series of Captives – an incredible experience; the four figures of the Medici tombs, Night, Dawn, Day and Evening, a sequence which underlies my piece; and the early Pietà in St Peter’s. Talking of one art in terms of another is invariably so misleading that to try to explain how these works gave rise to musical ideas is of dubious value. It might be helpful, however, during the heavy tuttis of the first movement, to have the David in mind. Again, halfway through the first movement, the sighing glissandi of the orchestral violins and the lyricism of the soloist may express a fraction of the beauty and poignancy of the St Peter’s Madonna.
I call the first part of the second movement Scherzo because the element of humour is important. The orchestra begins seriously, the strings busy and chromatic, the brass thudding ominously. The woodwind propose a raucous alternative. The soloist now adopts unequivocally the pose of an operatic prima donna, persuading the orchestra to accompany her in a quasi cabaletta and then indulging in a cadenza, oblivious to the fact that the accompaniment has reverted to the Presto scurryings. Another recitative woos the orchestra into offering another accompaniment, which the soloist approves of delightedly, and a deeply felt aria con intimo sentimento ensues. The orchestra once again reverts to its original material, and after another cadenza the soloist conforms, forcing the orchestra, however, to become more and more scherzoso. Elements of the first movement Allegro are recalled and a climax winds down to a return of the opening nocturne. Into this is incorporated an instrumental setting of lines from one of Michelangelo’s sonnets: ‘O night, o sweet but sombre time’.
This is hardly a programmatic work in the Liszt, Strauss or even Mahler sense – merely one in which the musical logic and dramatic shape has been influence by extra-musical ideas (something which is more normal than composers usually lead us to believe). Although a versatile instrument, the violin is best at singing, and since I have no desire to deny it its basic character my Concerto is fundamentally a lyrical work. It was composed between November 1975 and April 1976.
http://schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2420&State_2874=2&workId_2874=8088#
… and you can listen to a couple of minutes of ‘Lento molto, notturnale by clicking on this link: Allegro deciso’ from Violin Concerto by David Blake