The Melvins have prepared a remix album entitled Chicken Switch. Rather than enlist remixers to tackle one song apiece, the Melvins gave a full album to each collaborator and asked them to create a remix using songs from the entire disc. “We knew the songs would be very strange,” admits singer Buzz Osborne, “and we weren’t wrong.” [Spinner.com]
Songwriter Kara DioGuardi will return to the judging panel for another season of American Idol. Meanwhile, Paula Abdul continues to negotiate her own return. If her contract is not renewed, American Idol’s ninth season will mark its first run without Abdul, who joined the show for its inaugural run in 2002. [People.com]
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy …” Besides being so memorably beautiful, Clara’s lullaby from George Gershwin’sPorgy and Bess resonates with listeners because we understand just what she’s singing about — a time when life can open up and slow down, when the heat requires us to relax and shift into a lower gear. Because of that, summer may be the season that’s friendliest to music. It’s the time when kids (and more and more, adults) go off to music camps to spend their vacation doing what they love best. It’s the season of music festivals, where music lovers can indulge in daily concerts, operas, or recitals. Some lucky communities still have civic bands or orchestras that offer open-air concerts in gazebos or bandshells under the stars. Summer is the time when composers with busy on-season schedules have a chance to spend time on the music that’s been percolating on the back burner throughout the year. For example, Gustav Mahler’s day job was conducting, and the concert season kept him so busy that he wrote primarily in the summer.
There are plenty of pieces that give equal play to all the seasons — Antonio Vivaldi’s famous cycle of violin concerti, Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s suite for piano, and the ballet by Alexander Glazunov — but among the seasons, summer seems to have generated the largest outpouring of music. These are just a few of the pieces inspired by the warmest, most easy-going season.
One of the earliest examples of summer music is the English round, Sumer is icumen in, which was most likely written in the middle of the 13th century. The round is to be sung in four parts, and there are two harmony parts that repeat throughout the song, making this the earliest surviving example of six-part polyphony. The bright, perky melody and its effectiveness as a round have made this one of the most memorable and familiar pieces of medieval music. It also served as inspiration for Ezra Pound’s blustery poem, Ancient Music, which opens with the line, “Winter is icumen in.” (But let’s save that dreary thought for another time, shall we?)
Antonio Vivaldi’s four violin concertos, The Four Seasons (1723) are among the most popular and beloved pieces of classical music in the world. For each concerto, the composer also wrote a Petrarchan sonnet, to be read as part of the performance of the music. For summer, the text for the first movement describes a shepherd and his flock on a miserably hot summer day, and the atmospheric change that suggests a storm is on the way. The second movement illustrates the gathering winds as the storm approaches, and the final movement depicts the fury of the storm itself, driving the man and his flocks to shelter and destroying the crops.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Creation had been such a success that he was encouraged to write another large-scale Classical oratorio in the English Baroque tradition of George Frederick Handel,Die Jahrezeiten (The Seasons), completed in 1801. The text, a German translation of an English narrative poem, concerns a farmer, his daughter, and her suitor as they pass through the seasons of the year. The excerpts include a pastoral song, complete with horn calls, a hymn to the rising sun, and the beginnings of a summer storm.
Rene Jacobs, cond. - Haydn: The Seasons Aria and Recitative. Der munt’re Hirt versammelt nun Trio and Chorus. Sie steigt herauf, die Sonne Trio and Chorus. Die düst’ren Wolken trennen sich
The Romantic era produced its share of great summer music, and the arch-Romantic composer Hector Berlioz paid homage to the season in his song cycle on poems by Théophile Gautier, Les Nuits d’été. Although little in the texts connects the songs thematically, their emotional intensity and soaring lyricism portray summer as a time of passion and deep mystery. Berlioz composed the songs in 1832 and completed their orchestration by 1856, and this atmospheric work proved highly influential to the generation of French song writers who followed, including Gabriel Fauré,Henri Duparc,Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel.
Felix Mendelssohn was one of the greatest composition prodigies of all time. As a teenager, he was enamored with the plays of William Shakespeare, and his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written at the age of 17, is one of the most striking and witty compositions from the Romantic period. Sixteen years later, in 1842, when he had the opportunity to write complete incidental music for a Berlin production of the play, his music matched the youthful vitality and inventiveness of the Overture. The selections from the score have become, along with Edvard Grieg’sPeer Gynt, the most successful examples of incidental music entering the core repertoire of orchestral favorites. The exuberant Wedding March is certainly one of the most recognizable classical themes in the world.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn’s older sister, also wrote a cyclical work spanning a year, Das Jahr (1841), a suite of character pieces for piano. Fanny has been overshadowed by her brother’s fame, but her music is notable for its originality, and Charles Gounod cited her as a significant influence in his musical development. Her family discouraged her from promoting her music, considered an un-ladylike practice at the time, but she stood up to them and published several works, with much critical success, and after her death in 1847, Felix arranged for the publication of others. Das Jahr contains autobiographical elements, particularly reflections on a trip to Italy the previous year, as well as depictions of the characteristics of the various months.
Much as Fanny Mendelssohn’s character pieces did not revolve around the four established seasons but focused instead on the months, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons is a collection of 12 keyboard pieces named after the months and devoted to particular themes associated with celebrations, moods, or natural events. The seventh piece in the series, July - The Song of the Reaper, is gentle and rustic, and represents a cheerful farmer at his work. This, and the somber, hymn-like eighth piece, August - The Harvest, symbolize the peak of the summer activity in agrarian Russian life.
Alexander Glazunov’s 1900 ballet The Seasons, Op. 67 has no clear-cut storyline, but it is divided into four fanciful tableaux with dances that correspond symbolically to seasonal activities. Summer’s tableau is a sequence of dances representing corn, cornflowers, and poppies, which wilt under the sun’s heat but are rejuvenated by water-bearing spirits. The lush score features many memorable melodies, and it became one of the most popular Russian ballets of the period between the Romantic and Modern eras.
The English composer Frederick Delius was virtually a fountain of summer-themed music — his catalog lists dozens of works about summer or warm climates. He lived for a while in Florida, where he “experimented” with running an orange plantation, and it was there that he began to study music in earnest and became certain of his call as a composer. Although he returned to Europe to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, and eventually settled in France, he returned again and again to the warmth of the south in his compositions. Delius’ lush impressionism is ideally suited to expressing the heat and the languid moods of summer.
Felix Mendelssohn wasn’t the only composer fascinated by A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There have been numerous operas based on the Shakespeare play, the most successful being Benjamin Britten’s1960 version, which has established itself as a standard in the repertoire of contemporary opera. Britten and Peter Pears devised a dramatically concise libretto by making judicious cuts and rearranging some of the scenes. Like Mendelssohn, Britten created three distinct sound worlds for the various groups of characters — the fairies, the lovers and nobles, and the rustics. The opera contains some of Britten’s most humorous, colorful, and orchestrally luminous music.
Britten’s compatriot and contemporary Michael Tippett also wrote an opera on the subject of summer romance, The Midsummer Marriage, which many consider his masterpiece. The plot of the opera is similar to that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’sThe Magic Flute, insofar as a noble couple must undergo trials and transformations before they are able to marry. There is an evil father who parallels the Queen of the Night, an order of mystical Ancients, and a secondary plebian couple — she’s a secretary and he’s a mechanic — who dream of the simple pleasures of domestic life together. Tippett’s eclectic but essentially lyrical score is notable for its vocal coloratura and the inventiveness of its orchestration.
Even though Anton Webern is most often remembered for his spare and angular twelve-tone compositions, one of his youthful works is a lush, late Romantic tribute to the beauty of summer. Im Sommerwind was composed in 1904, and Webern styled it an idyll for orchestra, though it really is a tone poem in the manner of Richard Strauss — lavish orchestration, rich tonal harmonies, and rapturous chromatic melodies are in abundance, quite unlike anything Webern composed before or after. Inspired by a poem by Bruno Wille, Im Sommerwind depicts the peacefulness of nature, which was especially dear to Webern’s heart and perhaps the reason he preserved this work when he rejected most of his early efforts.
No survey of summer music would be complete without Summertime, the song that opens Porgy and Bess, as well as this article. For many people, its limpid melody, shimmering accompaniment, and generous, optimistic lyrics epitomize all that’s best about summer. Let the languor linger longer!
This week we have a bunch of really good, really interesting stuff. Just like we always do! In fact, if you can find hotter jams anywhere else, please let us know so we can start stealing as soon as possible. Yeah, we’re not above resorting to petty larceny or crossing ethical boundaries in order to bring you the Hot Damn Jamz. We do it because we care. We care about new music, we care about new bands and, most of all, we really care about you the loyal HDJ faithful. So keep those cards and letters coming in, remember that your donations add up no matter how small the denominations, and above all, keep on jamming!
The Black Eyed Peas have set a record for the longest successive No. 1 chart run by a duo or group in the Billboard Hot 100’s history. “I Gotta Feeling” is entering its fifth week at the top of the chart, immediately following “Boom Boom Pow”’s 12 week run at number one. This 17-week domination by the Peas tops the previous record Boyz II Men set in the mid-’90s, when they had two 16-week stays at the top of the chart. [Billboard.com]
Michael Jackson’s personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, is the lone target in the investigation into Jackson’s death last month. Murray was the only one with Jackson when the call to 911 for an ambulance was placed; Murray’s lawyer also admitted that the doctor waited up to 30 minutes after discovering Jackson with a faint pulse before placing the call. [RollingStone.com]
Blur - Midlife: A Beginner’s Guide to Blur
Released in conjunction with their 2009 reunion, the double-disc career retrospective Midlife: A Beginner’s Guide to Blur emphasizes Blur’s early psychedelic grind — halfway between Syd Barrett and shoegazing — along with their post-Brit-pop indie makeover, giving somewhat short shrift to the band’s pop prime, cutting out four of the band’s big hits (”There’s No Other Way,” “Country House,” “End of the Century,” and “Charmless Man”) in favor of album tracks that play into the thesis that Blur were as somber and serious a guitar band as Radiohead.
Kelly Clarkson is purportedly peeved with RCA for including her new Ryan Tedder-produced single, “Already Gone,” on her latest album All I Ever Wanted, seeing as Tedder lent the same backing tracks to Beyonce’s “Halo”. [Popeater.com]
BBC is selling two U2 films to international broadcasters. In addition to documentary and interview material, the footage also includes the Irish band’s concert on top of London’s BBC Broadcasting House in February 2009. [Billboard.com]
With the entertainment world shaken to the core by the sudden plethora of celebrity deaths this July, one late entry is particularly devastating to the world of dance. Merce Cunningham was the crown prince of modern American dance, a choreographer whose pedigree ran back to Ted Shawn, the legendary dance pioneer who founded the Jacob’s Pillow Festival during the Depression, through Shawn’s protégé Martha Graham, and finally to his own company, which Cunningham founded at Black Mountain College in 1953. As a dancer, Cunningham was tall, thin, and strong as an ox, but light as a feather in leaps and could seemingly turn innumerable tight spins without growing dizzy or breaking out of the pattern abruptly. At the most, Cunningham’s Dance Company never employed more than 14 dancers, and a spot in the ensemble was a hard won prize, as Cunningham’s standards for agility and perfection — even in the face of critics who accused his choreography of constituting chaos — were at the premium level.
Jazz icon George Russell died on Monday at age 86. Although celebrated for his work as a composer, arranger, and bandleader, Russell also developed the Lydian concept, which stressed the playing of jazz music based on scales rather than chord progressions. The theory influenced a number of artists, from Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Michael Jackson (who used the Lydian scale in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”). [JazzWiseMagazine.com]
The Pixies will tour the U.S. this fall to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Doolittle, which will be played in its entirety during all fourteen American shows. A recent press release also promised some “Doolittle-related surprises” for the tour, which launches on November 4th in Los Angeles. [RollingStone.com]
The Melvins have prepared a remix album entitled Chicken Switch. Rather than enlist remixers to tackle one song apiece, the Melvins gave a full album to each collaborator and asked them to create a remix using songs from the entire disc. “We knew the songs would be very strange,” admits singer Buzz Osborne, “and we weren’t wrong.” [Spinner.com]
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy …” Besides being so memorably beautiful, Clara’s lullaby from 
No survey of summer music would be complete without 
This week we have a bunch of really good, really interesting stuff. Just like we always do! In fact, if you can find hotter jams anywhere else, please let us know so we can start stealing as soon as possible. Yeah, we’re not above resorting to petty larceny or crossing ethical boundaries in order to bring you the Hot Damn Jamz. We do it because we care. We care about new music, we care about new bands and, most of all, we really care about you the loyal HDJ faithful. So keep those cards and letters coming in, remember that your donations add up no matter how small the denominations, and above all, keep on jamming! 
The Black Eyed Peas have set a record for the longest successive No. 1 chart run by a duo or group in the Billboard Hot 100’s history. “I Gotta Feeling” is entering its fifth week at the top of the chart, immediately following “Boom Boom Pow”’s 12 week run at number one. This 17-week domination by the Peas tops the previous record Boyz II Men set in the mid-’90s, when they had two 16-week stays at the top of the chart. [
Blur - 
Kelly Clarkson is purportedly peeved with RCA for including her new Ryan Tedder-produced single, “Already Gone,” on her latest album All I Ever Wanted, seeing as Tedder lent the same backing tracks to Beyonce’s “Halo”. [
With the entertainment world shaken to the core by the sudden plethora of celebrity deaths this July, one late entry is particularly devastating to the world of dance. 
Jazz icon George Russell died on Monday at age 86. Although celebrated for his work as a composer, arranger, and bandleader, Russell also developed the Lydian concept, which stressed the playing of jazz music based on scales rather than chord progressions. The theory influenced a number of artists, from Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Michael Jackson (who used the Lydian scale in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”). [
