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Keywords:
Persian (7)
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Description:
I seriously believe that commercial recording has degraded music. Before recordings became widely available, every home had musical instruments in it, and people made their own music. Many homes had a piano, usually a loud upright, and in the piano's bench there was always a stack of sheet music --songs and easy piano pieces. This old style of music is a guilty pleasure of mine. I collect old sheet music, and although much of it is obviously kitsch, I still marvel at its harmonic complexity.
A popular style of the 18th and 19th centuries was music that was supposed to sound exotic. The Song of India by Rimsky-Korsakov remained so popular that it was a hit for Tommy Dorsey's big band in the 1940s. Both Mozart and Beethoven wrote popular "Turkish" pieces. Since the market for Turkish marches is thus saturated, I wrote a Persian March in the style of the 19th century.
It's an easy piece to learn and the sheet music is available for a nominal fee at my SibeliusMusic page where you can also watch the music go by as the tune plays.
Immediately following my Persian March is an example of the type of music I was trying to mimic. It's the Marche Tartare written in about 1912 by Louis Gaston Ganne (1862-1923). For many years he was the orchestra leader at the Grande Casino at Monte Carlo, and he wrote numerous popular songs, operettas, and marches. If you see news footage of a ceremonial event in France, chances are you'll hear Louis Ganne's Father of Victory march being played in the background.
Hardware:
Dual G4 -- "Mirrored Doorway"
Software:
Sibelius 3.1.5
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Candy for the ears and brain &mdash 12/21/05 - 10:24:02 AM
I knew I'd like this from the moment I saw the title in the "Rate Me" section. This is, quite simply, a lovely piece of work. It took me to a far-off place (and that far-off time that you mention in your description, when piano was king) and I was so disappointed when it was over. How did you enter this into Sibelius? I only heard perhaps two notes that seemed a little truncated in rhythm, other than that - just a gorgeous selection. I'm a new fan, and will be definitely be keeping my eyes open for new entries from you!
D/L 9-9-9-9 [ Reply to This ]
thanks for sharing &mdash 12/21/05 - 04:06:58 PM
this gem!
Good work! Very interesting. Nice to hear terrifc piano here at MJ.
Lots of great stuff going on here!
Nice ending to the first one.
Like the Ganne tune as well! Like zip to it, interesting accentuations in the
dancing old timey feel.
Interesting stuff, like this type of nostalgia classical stuff.
Good going! Thanks for sharing these gems of the past. [ Reply to This ]
Nice &mdash 12/21/05 - 04:53:17 PM
Nice &mdash 12/22/05 - 09:01:17 PM
Thanx, all, for your kind comments. After I had written the piece and posted it at the SibeliusMusic site with little notice (14 plays), I wasn't even going post it here, because no one at this site would be interested in 19th-century-style piano music. I guess I was wrong. Whodda thunk it?
I noticed the skip at the beginning after the piece had gone up. I guess Mail was checking for messages during the recording -- it's always sumthin'-- but if I re-record it, I plan on keeping the skip and adding a track of surface noise -- in the manner of Portishead -- to make it sound authentic.
At another site, someone pointed out to me that Johann Strauss the younger already wrote a Persian March, and Albert Ketèlby wrote In a Persian Market. I had never heard of the Strauss piece, but Ketèlby's music was popular during my childhood. It has since fallen out of favor and is now regarded as hopeless kitsch, but if you like this music, Ketèlby's faux-orientale pieces are the greatest. I'd like nothing better than to do an electric version of Ina Persian Market, (1920) but Ketèlby died in 1959, so his works don't enter the public domain until 2029. I can wait. [ Reply to This ]
How Cool! &mdash 12/30/05 - 09:54:54 PM
I think you've got the style down! My dad played a lot of this stuff in jr
high, I'm told, but then got into JAZZ in the late 1930's and by the time I
was around, he was playing Floyd Cramer all the time. However, we've still
got a bunch of the sheet music & etude magazines from grandma's music
cabinet. You're right - a lot of it is very kitchy, but there are some real
nuggets of gold, too. This is just great. I missed it when you first posted,
but I'm glad I finally got here to listen to it. [ Reply to This ]
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D/L 9-9-9-9
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