Berceuse - Music Of Peace And Calm

Various

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Cat No: 8553843

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099484329

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BERCEUSE - MUSIC OF PEACE AND CALM

Description
BerceuseThecradle-song or lullaby is found in every civilisation. In its French romantictransmogrification as Berceuse ittakes on a more formal existence. Here the simple cradle-song to lull a childto sleep becomes the careful product of art, with the title used by Chopin,Liszt and their successors. A general feature of the form, even in its naturaland primitive state, is that it is imbued with a mood of maternal tendernessand has, as the French title suggests, a rocking rhythm. The German Wiegenlied has a similar connotation. InChristian tradition, of course, there are also associations with theChrist-child, so that a lullaby may sometimes take on a new significance, as insome Renaissance painting of the Madonna and Child.In fact theAir from Johann Sebastian Bach's Third Orchestral Suite lacks the rhythmof a cradle-song but certainly possesses its soporific quality. Written forstrings, the melody is heard over a gently repetitive bass pattern. Anineteenth-century arrangement by the violinist August Wilhelmj earned it thepopular name Air on the G String.Bach wrote the third of his four OrchestralSuites, between 1729 and 1731 in Leipzig,where he served from 1723 until his death in 1750 as Thomascantor, responsible for music in the principal city churches.The titleschosen by the eccentric French composer Erik Satie for many of his works arecharacteristic enough. His Gymnopedies,a word that suggests the naked ritual games of Spartan boys in ancient Greece, are anexample of this, since the music, with its gentle lilt, seems to have nobearing on the title. There is tranquilly undulating rhythm throughout, underthe poignant and essentially simple melody, suggesting something statuesqueabout the games or their representation.The Finnish-borncomposer Armas Jarnefelt enjoyed a career as a conductor and composer in Sweden,eventually taking Swedish citizenship. His Berceuse,scored for small orchestra, is among his better known compositions.Relativelylittle is known of the German amateur composer Bernhard Flies, who was probablyborn in Berlinabout the year 1770. He was a doctor and wrote some piano pieces and somesongs. Of the latter the lullaby Schlafemein Prinzchen (Sleep, my little Prince) is the best known and was onceattributed to Mozart.GabrielFaure, who achieved a recognised place in the official world of French music inthe 1890s, as Satie was beginning his strange career, wrote a very well-known Berceuse of his own, familiar in manyarrangements. Less familiar is the Nocturnefrom his music for Shylock, a playbased on the work of Shakespeare by Edmond Haraucourt staged in Paris in 1889. The Frenchviola-player and composer Benjamin Godard was slightly younger than Faure,although the latter outlived him by nearly thirty years. His Berceuse is taken from his opera Jocelyn, based on a poem by Lamartine,and represents the only element in it that found any popular favour.The Wiegenlied (Cradle-Song) by JohannesBrahms was written in 1868. It is based on a Ger
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