The cause of a smile

by | 2 Oct 2023 | blog

  http://www.divertimento.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/YouCut_20231002_140930236-1.mp4 The beginning of Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters. What could possibly link this timeless 1970s song to Purcell’s timeless anthem Rejoice in the Lord alway, written almost three hundred years earlier?   When we focus on the downward travelling bass line in both, it soon becomes apparent. Carpenters: Purcell: – music written hundreds of miles and years apart but sharing the common musical device of the descending motif, giving the music a sense of direction and harmonic progression.  (The Carpenters’ For All We Know is very similar at the beginning.) In a DSQ programme that contains three works by English composers and one by Mozart, it is clear that there are many connections. Within the music there is evidence of the universality of origins and influences. There are several more descending lines integral to the works that we are playing. 1.Britten http://www.divertimento.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/YouCut_20231001_2039551752.mp4 2. Mozart http://www.divertimento.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/PXL_20230930_1548420513-2.mp4 Sometimes these descending lines give a strong sense of where the bass line is heading. At other times, it isn’t so obvious. In the beginning of the Elgar quartet, the cello (bass) line wanders down while the first violin heads upwards, in a way not dissimilar to the Mozart example above. 3.  Elgar (beginning) http://www.divertimento.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/YouCut_20231001_204932678-3.mp4     Later in the first movement the downward line is more thematic: http://www.divertimento.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/YouCut_20231001_2046314472.mp4 4.  Purcell Purcell’s downward lines roll out in profusion. http://www.divertimento.uk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/YouCut_20231001_2036397352.mp4 In some ways, Purcell’s music sounds more modern than any of the other more recent composers featured in our programme. Elgar definitely wanders off into new territory, for him at least. There are echoes of Wagner and Debussy but somehow it is...