Friday Soirée IV: Eureka!
With tonight's program we're out for some thrilling exoticism and discovery — in an intimate setting: harpsichord music by one of my favorite Baroque guys and stimulating conversation with a great scientist and thinker.
Soler: Sonata in F-Sharp Major
Padre Antonio Soler (1729–1783) was a Catalan composer who studied music from the time he was six. When he was 23 he took holy orders with a Hieronymite in Madrid, where he spent the rest of his life. While he was in Madrid he managed to study with Domenico Scarlatti, so think of him as slightly post-Scarlatti. He managed to write some 500 pieces, of which his 150 keyboard sonatas, similar in form but markedly different in musical material from Scarlatti's, are particularly noteworthy. They also are a diverse and exciting lot that I generally prefer to those by Scarlatti, which seem rather staid in comparison. (A fuller appreciation of Soler's keyboard sonatas.)
I expect most musicians to cringe at the notion of a piece in F-Sharp Major–a really irritating key, perhaps slightly less so for keyboard players than for string and wind players, but still not pleasant. Most composers avoid it except for those like Bach or Chopin who felt it was necessary to write in every available key, or for impressionists for whom an abundance of sharps is somehow the key to their shimmering beauties.
Anyway, although it starts out in F-Sharp Major, this sonata certainly demonstrates Soler's fascination with the art of modulation (i.e., changing keys) and it doesn't spend all that much time hanging out in F-Sharp. With such an outlandish key it's no surprise that the musical gestures are on the outlandish side, too.
This performance is by a favorite performer of ours, the late Canadian keyboard master Scott Ross.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Edward O. Wilson: "Eureka!"
Famed sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, Pelegrino University Research Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard, hardly needs an introduction from me; google his name and take your pick of 6 million references. Somehow I've only read one of his books so far: The Creation (my book note), which I liked. I've heard him speak some and I thought he might be a good person to give us a few remarks tonight.
This 10-minute segment is called "The Eureka Moment". One of the subjects he discusses is that feeling, the "eureka" feeling–or "Aha!" moment, as I often think of it–that is the scientist's high, the thing that many of us experience once when we're young, after which we are destined to seek out more by devoting our lives to science.
This is a subject close to my professional heart, too, since trying to create little "Aha!" moments for nonscientists, adults or children, is a goal of current and planned Ars Hermeneutica projects. I want to create a spark with some sort of first-hand experience in people's minds that breaks through that alienating barrier they've put up between their everyday life and science.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Soler: Fandango (in d minor)
Samuel Rubio (1912-1986), the man who cataloged Soler's music (hence the "R" numbers), was of two minds about this extraordinary "Fandango". He attributed it to Soler, then he changed his mind. I once heard the story, probably apocryphal, that he found it too scandalously sensuous to believe that it might have been written by the pious father. To me the whole thing sounds about as silly as wondering "who wrote Shakespeare" or complaining about "real names" on the internet. I also think that whoever wrote all the Soler sonatas undoubtedly had a hand in the "Fandango": I think there are too many gestural similarities.
Regardless, it's a remarkable piece. I find myself trying to choose between words like "hypnotic", "mesmerizing", "sensuous", etc. When we get to the end of its breathtaking 10 minutes (you'll find some variability between performances because the original was fragmentary), I usually discover that I've been holding my breath.
This performance is by Polish artist Magdalena Maria Rainko, about whom I know little, but here's her Myspace page. The sonics on this recoding are not the best, but you'll overlook (overhear?) that because her performance is vigorous and exciting, and great fun to watch.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Bonus: E.O. Wilson talks with Bill Moyers
I know many of you need to leave after the main program, but for those of you who can stay we have a special, extended treat. In the episode of "Bill Moyers Journal" for 6 July 2007, Moyers devoted part of the program to a wide-ranging discussion sort of loosely centered on Wilson's "Encyclopedia of Life" project. The page of resources for the show, with a link to the video, is here.
In: All, Eureka!, Friday Soirée, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art