June 2011:
Ode to a City
This month finds me writing about Vancouver again. Just last year we were the poster child for Olympic host cities as we pulled off a nearly flawless Games. Back then, our streets were most noted for sidewalks so pristine you could eat off of them, and for the peaceful fervor that filled all our city’s corners, incident-free. But sadly, our recent run for the Stanley Cup tarnished all that. The world now knows us for the image of a kissing couple, fallen to the tarmac, with their city’s backdrop awash in flames and rioters. So many of us who love this place were sickened by these acts of disrespect and destruction. And, of course, the international media has only chosen the photos of burning cars, looted stores, and police bashers in their reports of this post-Game 7 disgrace. But it’s what happened just hours after a handful of hoodlums slandered our global reputation that has moved me most. In a truly poetic reaction to the riots, citizens throughout the region mobilized to take back our streets. Thousands were downtown by dawn with brooms and trash bags to lend a hand. And the plywood that boarded up dozens of shattered storefront windows became platforms for love letters to Vancouver.
There are rebel rousers everywhere. And only what is exceptional is considered newsworthy. So, I think it is this rare and passionate outpouring of hometown support that the press should actually be splashing across their Page One’s. Throughout history, cities have inspired artistic tributes. And appropriately, I thought I’d include a list of classical pieces that urban spaces have inspired.
Aaron Copland Quiet City, ironically written about New York City, is an ode to this great American composer’s native city. Scored for the unusual combination of trumpet, English horn and orchestra the trumpet player represents a troubled soul calling out to the many other different characters that might live in his diverse city. The piece originated as incidental music to a Irwin Shaw play.
Haydn, Symphony No. 104 (otherwise known as the London Symphony) was one of 12 symphonies this prolific composer wrote over the span of two, 1-year residencies in the Royal city. The adulation and handsome compensation he received for his work there contributed to his love for London. You can listen to six of them by Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra here:
Ottorino Resphighi Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome & Roman Festivals are this Italian composer’s most well-known works. Children’s songs, bird calls, military music, and Gregorian chant come together to paint a vivid portrait of this ancient city. Though you can not listen to these tracks, I have to recommend this recording of the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Eiji Oue, my very first youth orchestra conductor, with whom I had the privilege to actually perform Pines myself, in what was a formative musical experience for me as a passionate young Italian-American musician.
George Gershwin's An American in Paris, featured in the 1951 same-named Gene Kelly film, captures both the French impressionist styles of Debussy, as well as American blues, representing the composer’s homesickness when he visited the City of Light. You can hear an example of this work alongside other Copland classics by the Chicago Symphony here:
Johann Strauss Tales from the Vienna Woods & his operetta, A Night in Venice. This composer, known for his Viennese waltz music, also wrote an opera portraying the romantic setting of Venice, with its canals full of serenaded lovers to its pigeon-littered St. Mark’s Square.
