On with adagio, this is it!

The composers represented here, Samuel Barber, Edward Elgar, and Gustav Mahler, are not ones I normally listen to. I don't own any of their music, and I'd be unlikely to stream it either. Not my cup of tea. But each of them has composed a piece for strings that speaks to me in a very direct way. If I happen to hear even a few bars, the music grabs me and pulls me from whatever I'm doing, makes me pay attention.

Different kinds of music evoke different responses from listeners. There's music of song and melody, music of dance and rhythm, music of drive and determination, and others. The three pieces here are harder to classify. There's no hummable melody line, no lyrics, certainly no urge to dance or swing. And yet, they're not abstract classical structures like fugues or etudes either. What I hear is music with as much feeling in it as Fado or the songs of Edith Piaf.

Can I be more specific about that mood? The three pieces each have their own identity, but they share a lot too. Yeats said that Elgar's music was "wonderful in its heroic melancholy" and I think that's on the right track. But melancholy might be a bit weak for the pieces here; I'd say something more like grief or nostalgia, especially for the Barber and Mahler. (But note that the Elgar was recently played at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth.) It's a particular kind of grief, however. It's not for private feelings of sadness or heartbreak; to me, it's for a whole community sharing in a great loss. And to my ears, it's not for breaking down and sobbing; it's for standing tall and trying to hold it together. That's the heroic part.

The Adagio for Strings by Barber began its life as the slow movement of a string quartet, which was then adapted for string orchestra (and later for choir). But one would be hard pressed to find other parts of that quartet with anything like the same resonance. The movement is somewhat of an anomaly in the quartet and, as far as I can tell, in Barber's entire output. Except for dedicated fans of 20th century American classical music, Barber is pretty much a one-hit wonder. But what a hit it is! It starts quietly in the low registers of the strings, but slowly works its way upward in pitch and volume to a dramatic climax. The director David Lynch used the piece to great effect at the end of the movie The Elephant Man. I think the emotional wallop of that movie (nominated for 8 Oscars) is due in large part to the use of this music.

The Nimrod Variation by Elgar is one of 14 variations making up what is called The Enigma Variations. Each of the variations was supposedly inspired by individuals known to the composer, and most of the discussion about the piece involves speculations about who those individuals might be. It's an enigma. But maybe a more interesting question is why the Nimrod Variation, number 9 in the list, stands out so distinctly from the others. The Enigma Variations is performed regularly, but as far as I know, none of the other variations is ever performed as a stand-alone piece. Nimrod uses a simple childlike melodic phrase that repeats, modulates and builds in strength and intensity. It starts quietly, but within a few minutes, the entire orchestra is playing full bore. It's insistent, steadfast, resolute, a stiff upper lip at its most British. This is the mood that director Christopher Nolan captured so well in the movie Dunkirk using this music in a wonderful modern arrangement by the composer Hanz Zimmer.

Finally, the Adagietto. Mahler is a composer best known for gargantuan symphonies, with massive orchestras and choirs, and some lasting nearly two hours. So the Adagietto, the 4th movement of his 5th, which is scored for strings and lasts a mere 9 minutes or so, is again an anomaly. It features a slow, intense, achingly tender melody, offset somewhat by a more meandering middle section. The piece is known mainly due to the movie Death in Venice where it plays a central role. The director Luchino Visconti changed the story to make the dying protagonist a composer rather than a writer. The Adagietto was used to express the character of the protagonist right up to his death. In a different vein, the composer John Williams adapted the piece and combined it brilliantly with "When you Wish Upon a Star" (with which it shares melodic elements) for the finale of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters movie.

What makes performing these three pieces so challenging for me is that they are well outside my home base, my comfort zone. It's not quite like trying to perform Klezmer or Gamelan or Conway Twitty say, but in that general direction. Those who know the composers well no doubt hear the pieces the way a native speaker would. My performances might sound a bit more like Yves Montand reciting Shakespeare. C'est la vie!

So why am I bothering then, when the music has already been performed by musicians who know the language so much better than me? Well, you might ask: Why bother trying to interpret any well-known, well-performed piece of music? The answer is that it's incredibly rewarding for the performer. We all get a lot by listening to the music we love, but there's nothing quite like going in deep, getting inside the music, and putting the pieces together yourself. Listen to that phrase here; what if we slowed it down and highlighted the oboes? This is why the cooks of the world don't just eat the food they love; they want to dig in and make it their own. And note: Even if your name is Dubeau or Zhou, you might still want to prepare Aloo Gobi. Yes, the food might be foreign to you, but you love it and want to put your own slant on it. You want to perform it. (Is this a type of cultural appropriation? I don't believe it is, unless almost everything is, but that's a longer story to tell.)

To conclude, a note about instrumentation. The three pieces are scored for strings (although the Elgar uses brass and woodwinds to fatten up those chords). My job was to make the strings hold up on their own out there in the open. One challenge was getting a suitable legato sound out of them. Some notes have to play as a continuation of other notes, without a fresh stroke of the bow. Some fancier (and pricier) sound libraries have special legato sound files to use, including a range of intervals from previous notes. I tried to make do by allowing sound files to start playing mid-file. Mahler called for other special effects like a two-octave glissando, which was also problematic. In the end, you have to prepare your food with the ingredients you have.

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