When André Previn began his classical career in the late 1960s, he committed himself to conducting only works he loved, which on its face seemed a severely limiting choice. Fortunately for his many fans, Previn’s repertoire turned out to be quite large, and he established himself as one of the world’s leading conductors as director of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1968 to 1975. Starting in 1972, and continuing at two year intervals, Previn and the LSO released recordings of the complete ballets of Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky –The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty — which became extremely popular titles for EMI. The same service was rendered for Sergey Prokofiev’s great ballets, Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella, in 1973 and 1983 respectively. As LPs and later as CDs, these recordings enjoyed multiple reissues, and their place in EMI’s catalog has ensured them longevity and seems secure.

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Thought usually to be an English vocal genre that was popular in the Renaissance, the madrigal actually has roots in Flemish music, and going further back, appears to have been a descendant of the Italian frottola, a form noted for chordal accompaniment to a melodic line. Whatever its true origin, examples of the madrigal in all its variety can be found in music from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, and England, and they offer an ease of style and communicability that keeps them popular with vocal groups today.

For a broad collection of madrigals in three, four, and five parts, sung with energy and charm, The Book of Madrigals by the Leipzig-based ensemble Amarcord is a good place to start. Below are samples from this 2006 release from Raumklang, which presents some of the most famous madrigals.
 
Thomas Morley: Now is the month of maying

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Orlande de Lassus: Bon jour et puis quelles nouvelles

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Orlande de Lassus: Bon jour mon Coeur

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John Dowland: Come away, come sweet love

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Cipriano de Rore: Anchor che cor partire

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Ludwig Senfl: Ach Eislein, liebes Eiselein

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Anonymous, Scottish: Remember me, my deir

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Thomas Weelkes: Since Robin Hood

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Thomas Weelkes: Strike it up, tabor

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Adrian Willaert: Vecchie letrose non valete niente

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Heinrich Isaac: Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen

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Thomas Morley: I love, alas, I love thee

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Pierre Passereau: Il est bel et bon

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John Dowland: Come again, sweet love doth now invite

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Hans Leo Hassler: Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret

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John Bennet: Weep, O mine Eyes

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Henry VIII, King of England: Pastyme with Good Companye

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Adriano Banchieri: Contrapunto Bestiale

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Antonio Scandello: Ein Hennlein weiss

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Juan del Encina: Cucú, cucú, cucúcu

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Juan del Encina: Fata la parte

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Josquin Desprez: El grillo

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Anonymous, Canciero de Montecassino: Dindirindin

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Jacques Arcadelt: Il bianco e dolce cigno

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Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi: La bellezza

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Nicolas Gombert: Triste depart

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Josquin Desprez: Mille regretz

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Thoinot Arbeau: Belle qui tiens ma vie

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Alonso de Alba: La tricotea

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Juan Vasquez: Gentil senora mia

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Baldassare Donato: Chi la gagliarda

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Anonymous, French: Quand je bois du vin clairet

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Ludwig Senfl: Das Gläut zu Speyer

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For everybody who decries the state of contemporary pop music as a vast wasteland of disposable, commercial junk, and for anyone who longs for the days when composers like George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Hoagy Carmichael wrote beautifully crafted songs with hummable melodies and clever, story-based lyrics with real characters in them, I present to you the soundtrack to the film Synecdoche, New York.

Featuring music by journeyman producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist and Los Angeles man-about-town Jon Brion, the soundtrack also showcases two tracks — “Little Person” and “Song for Caden” — co-written by Brion and the film’s director Charlie Kaufman, sung by jazz vocalist Deanna Storey. Both of these songs are superbly crafted tunes in the tradition of the American Popular Songbook style as well as being reminiscent of the storied ’60s Brill Building sound of writers like Carole King and Burt Bacharach. Furthermore, Storey’s georgeous, subtly emotive voice brings to mind a young Barbra Streisand, who herself made a mark with such Broadway soundtrack hits as “People” from the musical Funny Girl.

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Famous for opposing the bloated forms of late Romanticism, and notorious for describing the works of contemporary British pastoral composers as “cowpat music,” Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-1983) was one of the first English composers to adopt rigorous serial methods and join the international avant-garde. Even though her career did not take off until after World War II, Lutyens had planned to be a composer since the age of nine. Her determination carried her through study in France and a teaching position at the Royal College of Music in London, until success came in 1947 with her commissioned setting of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem, O Saisons, O Châteaux. While she had setbacks — she was obliged to compose for television and horror films, and she rented out rooms to support her family — Lutyens eventually found an audience for her lean, angular music and earned the nickname “12-Note Lizzie” from the conservative classical establishment.

Below is a small selection of Lutyens’ adventurous music, to have a taste of her work before deciding to binge.

Endymion; Exaudi, James Weeks, director – Elisabeth Lutyens
Présages, Op. 53

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Motet, Op. 27

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Wind Trio, Op. 52

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Magnificat

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Nunc dimittis

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String Trio, Op. 57

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Verses of Love

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Fantasie Trio, Op. 55

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The Country of the Stars, Op. 50

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Brunel Ensemble, Christopher Austin, director – Red Leaves
O Saisons, O Châteaux, Op. 13

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Six Bagatelles, Op. 113
No. 1

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No. 2

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No. 3

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No. 4

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No. 5

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No. 6

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Born on the 50th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth , Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga y Balzola (1806-1826) was actually known as the “Spanish Mozart” for early displays of his prodigious musical talents. But his reputation fell into decline after his premature death, just ten days before he would have turned 20 years old. Yet despite his short life and small output, Arriaga left enough of an impression that his cause was taken up in the late 19th century and his music has had periodic revivals ever since. Part of the attraction of Arriaga’s tragically short life and career involves speculation over what he might have accomplished, had he the time to mature. Certainly, we know less of Arriaga’s potential directions than of Mozart’s, who achieved total mastery over his art, whereas Arriaga had just emerged from the Paris Conservatoire and was still developing his style. In any event, his elegant music holds attractions sufficient to please casual listeners and rigorous critics alike; and though his music strongly resembles the styles of Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and at times even anticipates Franz Schubert, there is a unique and youthful voice in Arriaga’s works that has considerable power to charm and move.

 
Cuarteto Casals – Arriaga: String Quartets
 
String Quartet No. 1 in D minor
I. Allegro

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II. Adagio con espressione

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III. Menuetto (Allegretto)

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IV. Adagio – Allegretto

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String Quartet No. 2 in A major
I. Allegro con brio

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II. Andante con variazioni

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III. Menuetto (Scherzo)

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IV. Andante ma non troppo. Allegro

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String Quartet No. 3 in E flat major
I. Allegro

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II. Andantino (Pastoral)

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III. Menuetto (Allegro)

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IV. Presto agitato

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Il Fondamento, Paul Dombrecht, conductor РM̼sica para orquestra, 1818-1824
 
Overture, Op. 20

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Symphony in D major
I. Adagio – Allegro – Presto

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II. Andante

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III. Menuetto. Allegro – Trio

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IV. Allegro con moto

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Los Esclavos Felices, Overture

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Overture for Nonet, Op. 1

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Binchois (ca. 1400-1460), also known as Gilles de Bins, was born in Belgium and was a Renaissance composer who provided music for various ecclesiastical and court appointments in Burgundy, Paris, and Soignies. Skilled in both sacred and secular music, Binchois composed choral works as a lay musician to the Burgundian dukes, as well as numerous popular chansons, and probably sang his own songs to harp accompaniment. Binchois did not join the clergy, unlike most 15th century musicians, nor was he awarded a university degree. Yet he was credited with reviving interest in music in Europe, after the long period of creative stagnation following the plague years, and his works were held up as exemplars for the next generation of composers to follow. His influence on his contemporaries was strong, and after his death he was commemorated in laments by Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem.

One of the best groups to turn to for Binchois’ mellifluous chansons is, somewhat unsurprisingly, the exquisite Ensemble Gilles Binchois, founded and directed by Dominique Vellard, whose 1998 album, Mon Souverain Desir, gathers some of the best chansons in one collection for greater ease of binge listening. Dig in!
 
 
Ensemble Gilles Binchois: Mon Souverain Desir
 
Triste plaisir et doulereuse joie

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Amours merchi de trestout mon pooir

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Je me recommande

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En regardant vostre tres doulx maintieng

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Se la belle n’a la voloir

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Je vous salue ma maitresse

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Adieu mes tres belles amours

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De plus en plus se renouvell

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L’une tresbelle clere lune

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Les tres doulx ieux du viaire ma dame

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Amoreux suy et me vient toute joye

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Adieu, adieu, mon joyeux souvenir

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Jamais tant que je vous revoye

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Adieu m’amour et ma maitresse

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Deuil angoisseus rage demesurée

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Pour prison ne pour maladie

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Filles a marier ne vous marier

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One of the members of the famed Les Six, Georges Auric (1899-1983) never achieved a reputation equal to those of his compatriots and fellow composers Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, or Arthur Honegger, yet he always seemed to be lumped with Louis Durey and Germaine Tailleferre, less fortunate colleagues who are usually overlooked and almost completely forgotten but for a few works. Yet Auric’s standing has improved steadily over the years, thanks to growing attention to his film music. The composer of lavish scores for such films as La Belle et le bête (1946), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), and The Innocents (1961), Auric has at last come into his own through some highly regarded all-digital recordings that restore his music to better sound and wider distribution than ever before.

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Though next to nothing is known of the life of Martin Codax (fl. early 13th century), we have six attributed Portuguese-Galician poems set to music, and a seventh whose music is missing, in a collection called Cantigas de Amigo. (The parchment manuscript was accidentally discovered by the antiquarian bookseller Pedro Vindel in Madrid, lining a copy of a book by Cicero.) Of course, this is scant material from which to deduce any facts of a life, but that doesn’t stop the speculation. Because the songs of the Cantigas de Amigo are about love, it may be reasonable to assume that Codax (also known as Martim Codaz) was a composer at a Medieval court, possibly that of Ferdinand III, the Spanish king of Castille and León. Codax may also have been a Galician troubador.

In any event, the music speaks for itself, and the suave performances by Ensemble Alcatraz are among the most sensitive and attuned to the period. So for this diminutive body of work, this is Binge Listening at its finest and most selective.

Ensemble Alcatraz: Cantigas de Amigo

Ondas de mar de Vigo

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Mandad’ ei comigo

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Mia irmana fremosa

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Ai Deus, se sab’ ora meu amigo

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Quantas sabedes amare amigo

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Eno sagrado en Vigo

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Ai ondas que eu vin veere

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