TELEMANN: Polonaise from "Suite in A Minor For Recorder" at the PROM

OK, students…for those of you who only know chamber music if it's "Bouree" on a flaming Jethro Tull record, listen up. Really. This is NOT going to hurt. Have a listen to what was the 3-minute hit single of a bygone era.

One of my favorite little baroque ditties is "Polonaise," the last movement in Telemannn's "Suite in A Minor for Recorder." It's a bit sad and minor key for flouncing around in lace at a party celebrating the decapitation of Marie Antoinette, but over the years, it was more a dance piece than something to just hear in concert. It was probably in the Top 10 back in 1763, or whenever it was that Casey Kasem first announced it.

"Polonaise," as you must've suspected, has something to do with Poland and mayonaisse. It originated as a dance popular at the annual studniówka (prom) where the idea was to clutch your partner just a little bit, but not dance too close or slow. I'm sure the hall contained tables of refreshments including Polish sausage and mayonaisse, and that with very little coaxing (shoving a sausage in some mayonaisse) a fellow was able to convince a girl on what to do after the dance. How a polonaise differs from a mazurka…I'm not sure, but I think the mazurka is something you do by yourself if you didn't find a girl for a polonaise.

You'll rarely find a delicate little jewel like this containing such dignity and emotion. Consider it part of the soundtrack to some errant episode of "Masterpiece Theater," or one of the less comic moments in Bob Hope's "Monsieur Beaucaire," of which there was about 80 minutes. But do consider it.

Yes, this is from a budget Victrola vinyl, but back in the day, Victrola, Nonesuch and other cheap labels offered excellent chamber music at a nice price. There were (and still are) a lot of brilliant quartets and quintets preserving this kind of thing out of passion over profit. So here's a jaunty little jaunt back to when people first discovered that an attention span for music was limited to three minutes. All they wanted was a catchy little melody the kids could dance to.

Let's Dance! POLONAISE at the PROM

10 PIECES FOR CHILDREN - Dmitri Kabalevsky

10 songs in about six minutes?

That shouldn't tax anyone's attention span, even a child's. What you'll hear may sound more like piano for a Charlie Chaplin short than "classical music." No wonder. Kabalevsky began his career at the keyboard in St. Petersburg theaters, adding music to silent movies!

The reason for an all-classical set this time? Well, the blog IS designed to shine a light on obscure stuff that is actually worth hearing in any category. Well, any category I care about. This entry may also have nostalgia appeal as well. For many piano students, Dmitri (not Dimitri) Kabalevsky was the first composer they could master.

While the guy couldn't exactly compete with past masters Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky, neither could anyone else. By the last half of the 20th Century, "classical" music was done. Along with painting and sculpture, all that most moderns could do was fuck things up with discord, bizarre shit and experimentation. No way could they add to the perfection of previous centuries, so they just pushed Darwin on his ass and began doing stuff that had observers grumbling, "hey, even a child could do that!" It's called "art" but rarely is. Kab, at least, who passed away fairly recently for a great master (1987) tried something more creative. He composed a lot of legitimately good classical music FOR a child to play. Or even more advanced students. These are probably the most popular things he composed, along with "The Comedians Suite." But the days of attempting a symphony that could compare with the masters…that was over. (With a nod to Kab's contemporary Prokofiev, best known not for any symphony or concerto but accessible suites involving "Three Oranges" and "Lt. Kije.")

There was never a shortage of classical pieces for kids to practice with, but before Kabalevsky most of this was simplified versions of "The Moonlight Sonata" or bare-bones arrangements of symphonic melodies. While it was nice to be able to fool some relative with what sounded like Mozart, it was a little more satisfying to play something not so well known, and a bit more fresh and contemporary. I know this from experience…as I enjoyed playing some of the Kabalevsky pieces in the download below….along with things like "The Wild Horseman" and "The Happy Farmer," both from Robert Schumann, one of the few major composers to give his pupils some exciting but easy compositions to play.

The ten easy pieces below (and Kab wrote dozens more of them) starts with a favorite of mine, "A Sad Tale," which is far sadder the way I play it. There's just a brief pause between each 40 or 50 second tune, most intended to educate a kid on a particular music form (like "Rondo" or "Scherzo," which seemed the same to me). Some little songs led potential kiddie-composers to perhaps try and illustrate an emotion or activity with their own tune, though the result was probably more "Clowning" than anything else. The complete rundown:

A Sad Tale, Old Dance, Cradle Song, Little Fable, Clowning, Rondo, Toccatina, A Little Prank, Scherzo, and March.

Once we all mastered this stuff, we either gave up, or moved on to "real" piano playing, seeking out the actual manuscripts a Horowitz or Brendel used in the recording of a "real" sonata. And along with Vladimir and Alfred, we somehow never thought to play our sweet Kiddie Klassics ever again in front of an audience. That's why it's not easy to find Kabalevsky's student-oriented piano studies on vinyl or compact disc. The ten here come from an old Musical Heritage 12 inch, as performed by Armenian-Turkish pianist and Victor Borge sidekick Sahan Arzruni.

TEN EASY PIECES Dmitri Kabalevsky

INKI AND THE MINAH BIRD - BIRD-BRAINED MENDELSSOHN

Banned by broadcast TV and not on official DVDs, the Warner Bros. "Inki" cartoon series is often dimly remembered as some kind of hallucination. No words. Some strange philosophy behind life and death or thought and action. And...that music...the trademark loping classical refrain any time the grim minah bird hopped into the scene. Unfortunately his co-star was "Inki," a little African native boy that in name and features some find politically incorrect. It's kept the meager "Inki" cartoon series a cult item for decades now.

Some seventy years ago, "Inki and the Minah Bird" was received well enough to sputter a few sequels, years apart, before being abandoned entirely in favor of the more popular Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck stuff. Nothing remotely as baffling, intellectual or mysteriously appealing would come out of the Warners cartoon mill till "One Froggy Evening" many years later. That one, ironically, was also memorable in part for the music, including the original 20's-flavored song "Michigan Rag."

With no dialogue (or dialect, fortunately), each "Inki" cartoon was a meditation on the frantic violence of a savage world (usually a ferocious lion chasing Inki) and the stoic attempts of the bird, like Poe's Raven, to ignore it with "NEVERMORE" determination and eyes cast downward. Looking more like a distant crow relative of Heckle and Jeckle, he was one of the more intriguing and subtle characters in the Warners stable, especially considering a minah is known as a good talker and they had Mel Blanc ready at the microphone. But…whether to get some peace and quiet, or to see to it that good triumphs over bad, the minah bird would silently choose when to turn from stoic observer into a violently active participant. There was also some question over whether he was on one side or the other, or a total misanthrope bearing allegiance to nobody but himself.

For some, the Warner Bros. cartoon soundtracks were early introductions to classical music. Their music department brilliantly adapted Mendelssohn's "Hebrides Overture," for their minah bird.

It's ironic that a composer who is alternately claimed as both Jewish and Protestant/Lutheran (converting made life less stressful in Hamburg) and sometimes listed as Jakob Felix Mendelssohn or Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, should have several titles associated with his best symphonic work. It's still known alternately as both "The Hebrides Overture" and "Fingal's Cave."

Barely out of his 20's, Hamburger Felix was already a sophisticated composer and a world traveler. In 1830 he visited the Hebrides in Scotland, and was awed by the sight of Fingal's 35 foot high cave. He sketched a tone poem that he called "The Lonely Island." The moody, roiling turbulence in the piece seemed to capture some of the seasickness that made getting to the island less than fun.

By 1832 the finished, more substantial work was now called "The Hebrides." It ended up being categorized as an "overture" even though it isn't. Just to confuse things further, when the piece was actually published for orchestras around the world to play, it was printed up as "Fingal's Cave," apparently due to Felix once again revising the title. No less a genius than Brahms himself declared his love of this salty suite: "“I would gladly give all my works if I had succeeded in composing a piece like the Hebrides Overture."

Below?

I've created a four minute version of "Inki and the Minah Bird" from the original soundtrack, editing out some of the dead air, and sound effects that are just noisy and wouldn't mean anything.

You also get a "real" version of the original "Hebrides Overture" for comparison.

Felix cartooned: Four Minute "Cartoon Audio" Single: INKI AND THE MINAH BIRD by Ill Folks

HEBRIDES OVERTURE - FINGAL'S CAVE Bamberg Symphony Orchestra