Tyler Cowen On Choral Music

Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton.

I have several reasons for being especially interested in choral music. The first is I think a lot of it is much harder to comprehend. So if you're there singing it or in a hall nearby, it makes perfect sense. You see and hear all the voices. But when you listen to it on recordings, I find it harder to decipher, no matter how good the sound quality is. And thus the gains to talking some of it through maybe are higher. You listen to Beethoven's Fifth, in a sense, it's always hitting you over the head with what's going on. Choral music very often doesn't do that. But there's another deeper, more historical reason why I'm interested in it. I think if you study choral music, and I mean now 20th century choral music, you will understand the 20th century artistically and historically in very different terms. So we often think of the 20th century as a pretty secular century or a secularizing century. But so many of the top composers were deeply religious, or they were into religious music and religious ideas. And you hear that most clearly in their choral music. So it changes how you view, I think, all music and our own history. And you will think of music and culture and religion all tied together much more closely when you study choral music. And it gives you some ways of thinking about why maybe in some ways there's not as much truly great classical music today, because we're more secular would be one reason.. And we don't have so many very active composers right now doing the same. Though some of the people we'll listen to are still alive, and we'll talk about that.

I think of all music as spiritual, but there does seem to be an obvious direct spiritual component in Carl music that we don't always see in the other music we listen to. Also the fact that there are no instruments involved. We all have a voice. It becomes music for everyone.

And this is related to our topic of Finland. Choral music in Finland is especially important, and this relates to what you just said. Finland is a somewhat culturally collectivistic place. People do things together. I think on average it makes them happier. For my tastes, it makes them a bit too socialistic. But forget about that. You walk around Helsinki, you just see people playing in parks. They're always in groups. There's communal activity. And if you ask what's the best form of music for a culture obsessed with communal activity, it's choral music. So there's a lot of very good Finnish choral music. Also, they're almost completely Lutheran, so there's a strong Lutheran tradition of being interested in choral music. And it tends to be a kind of stripped-down choral music, unlike some of the Catholic traditions, which are more jubilante, exultant. And so on. So there's a soberness to the Finnish national temperament, I think, and also to their choral music. Their churches can be quite plain, and that's reflected in the music. And it's just a wonderful place for thinking about very serious forms of music. And it's maybe, other than Japan, the place in the world today where classical music is still taken the most seriously and done actively as a thing, including by young people.

When you hear choral music sung in a church, is it uncommon for people to sing along?

People sing along.

People do sing along.

In Finland in particular, the distinction between professional and amateur singers is blurred, which I think is very healthy. So Southern Europe, it's more likely sort of who is a professional singer and who's not. You're one or the other. But the notion that everyone participates is again, not just the music, but in the culture more generally. And another interesting thing about Finnish music, Finland, of course, is a pretty small country and it hasn't even been a country for that long historically, often ruled by what we now call Russia, very open to Germanic influences, musics from all over the world. So it's both extremely national and nationalistic, but also cosmopolitan. The first piece we're going to listen to, it's by a composer named Rautavaara, who died about 10 years ago. And it's a choral piece, but in this we'll see the influence of Spanish music. So he did something called the Lorca Suite. We're only going to hear parts of it. It's about 6 and a half minutes long, typically. And Federico García Lorca was a poet from the Spanish Civil War. He was executed, I think, 1936. A heroic figure to Rautavaara, and his poems are full of blood and tragedy and passion. So you have a Finnish composer, Rautavaara, who you would think of as lush and romantic and earlier in his career, a kind of cool, remote sound, but mixing that with something pretty rhythmic and also Spanish.

I believe Lorca was a big influence on both Leonard Cohen and Donovan.

That's right. A brilliant poet. And of course, a tragic case that he was killed. Rautavaara's first name, it's E-I-N-O-J-U-H-A-N-I. Finnish names, very non-intuitive for us. And even Rautavaara, to remember where to put the double A's. So it's R-A-U-T-A-V double A-R-A. But you want to put the double A's at the beginning, at the end, No, the double A's go in the middle. Finnish names, I never remember properly how to spell them, how to say them. Just an occupational hazard. But it shows what a distinct language and culture they have.

Do we know why the Finnish language is so distinct?

It's most closely related to Hungarian, which is also distinct. There are basically no cognates in either Hungary or Finland. Hungarian and Finnish are pretty different, but they're at least related. Many people think it has indirect ties to Turkish, and some people say even Japanese, some of the far north indigenous languages of Russia, some have claimed. I don't know the whole arrangement here, but it's not like a Romantic or Germanic language at all. I think the only cognates are like hotel and taxi, and the rest you're on your own. You know, use GPT, buy a guidebook, whatever. But in fact, they all speak great English. More people in Helsinki speak good English, say, than in New York City.

Wow.

Anyway, this piece is a little more than a minute. This is the Spanish movement. It's called Malagueña, which of course relates to flamenco and Spanish guitar. Any reactions?

It reminds me of certain dramatic movie music that uses Carl, but it doesn't feel as connected to the church as I'm used to in this music.

It's a bit hard to place, isn't it?

It is. It's also very dynamic, quickly dynamic, which seems to be more unusual. It doesn't do a slow build to a big crescendo. It's loud, soft, loud, soft all the way through.

I'll play you a little snippet from movement 2 of the same piece. This movement is called "El Grito," which means in Spanish, "the scream." And it will be a scream. It's a disconcerting movement and not obviously very Finnish, but it is. Anyway, you heard the scream, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Beautiful. How important are the words in choral music?

They are, but it's very hard to get a handle on them. That's one reason why it's more difficult to love it or come to terms with it. Often you can know the themes but not the words. And a lot of Finnish choral music is in Finnish. A lot of other choral music is in Latin, which I don't understand. I pick up some bits through Spanish. A good thing to do is just ask a large language model what's going on in this verse, and it will tell you. It's very good at interpreting music for you. But to follow it all word for word, it can be tough. On YouTube, there's a lot of choral pieces where there's subtitles, and that's useful. But then, of course, you have to read also, and you're not just listening.

Yeah.

So it's one of the problems.

How would you describe the particularities of Finnish music as opposed to other traditions?

More serious, extremely deep, often influenced by Wagner. Sibelius is this overarching influence, the most important cultural figure in all of Finland. You know, the Sibelius and the Kalevala, which is a written text. And if you know those two things, you're so centrally culturally located in Finland with only two items. Because they dominate so much of Finnish cultural life. And it demands your attention, Finnish music.

Do you know when Sibelius was? What was his time?

His first pieces are done in the 1890s. I think he's born in the 1860s, when, by the way, Finland was still a part of Russia. And he helped build a Finnish national identity. His first symphony, I think, is 1899. An interesting story, his last one, I think it's 1926. But he lives till 1957.

Wow.

So there's 30 years. It's sort of like Stevie Wonder where he doesn't really do anything. There's talk of alcoholism. He had sketches for an 8th symphony. He published 7. He destroyed the sketches for the 8th symphony. Nothing is left of it that we know of. And he just was the grand old man for decades and did not create music. And there were no signs of that as a pattern earlier, he was pretty prolific, did a lot of works. I would say he peaked in his 20s. So I think his late symphonies, 4 through 7, and the violin concerto, that's his most important work, totally central to 20th century music and to Finland.

Do we think of Sibelius as a Finnish composer or do we think of him as a Russian composer?

Finnish, absolutely. And he thought of himself that way., and you could say he rebelled against Russia. And the main late symphonies, they open with Wagnerian motifs. You hear it, like one knows enough at this point, but if you didn't know better, you just think, oh, this is some weird Wagner I hadn't heard before. And then it morphs into other things. But if anything, he's more influenced by German music than anything from Russia.

Is that the case with much Russian music or no? Is Russian music traditionally rooted in Germanic music or no?

It's highly influenced by Germanic culture and music, but it takes its own directions and it's less orderly, I would say, as a whole. So you can't follow a Tchaikovsky piece in the same way you can a Beethoven piece. And it becomes maybe weirder and more mystical by the time you get to Scriabin and just dreamy. And then after the Bolsheviks come, There's so much suppression. And you have some great composers, Shostakovich, Schnittke, but they're fighting very hard to compose at all. And Schnittke leaves for Germany, of all places. Schnittke actually was a Volga German. He grew up speaking a language called Volga German, which is a weird dialect of German. He tried to compose under the Soviets. He did quite a bit. It was often out of fashion. He faced a lot of risks, and he ended up being able to leave the country. And Shostakovich paid heed to Stalin, which he was criticized for, but we learned later on he was not so patriotic after all and actually secretly viewed a lot of the music as being critical of Stalin. But the fact that he had to do that shows you what a tough environment it was. So Soviet/Russian music dies out somewhat with the Bolsheviks. Estonia, small country, but it becomes an important place. I'll play you a piece of Estonian music, which is cheerier. Than a lot of Finnish music. And this is a female composer. She's still alive. Galina Grigorieva. She was born in what is now Ukraine, though then was just Soviet Union. Spent most of her composing time in Estonia. This is a series of pieces she composed to celebrate Russian— getting to the point of what's Russian— Russian holidays ranging from, you know, Christmas to Epiphany. And there are different pieces for different holidays. I enjoy her music quite a bit, and this is a good recording. Paul Hillier, who does great choral work. Here we go, a little bit shorter than 2 minutes. They're basically singing "Glory." Fun piece, isn't it?

It's beautiful. It seems like it's two notes back and forth. It's less melodic.

And less complex.

Yes. And it sounds more traditional.

Yes. And it's based on a lot of old Russian polyphony and church music more than the Finnish is, which is more through the Germanic classical tradition.

It's beautiful that music like this is still being written.

It is, yeah. And I don't know how old she is, but she's not very old. She's more or less at her peak now. And that's Galina Grigorieva.

Fantastic.

Let's go back to a somber piece. And this is something from the Jewish tradition. This is Arnold Schoenberg. You could call him the father of atonal music. And he did a choral piece. It's called Dreimal tausend Jahre.

Did he do much choral work?

There's two CDs worth is how I think about it. He was not an incredibly prolific composer. So two CDs worth is a fair amount. And he cared about the choral music a lot. It was many of his most emotional pieces. And this is in Hebrew. And it's a historical set of memories about sufferings of the Jewish people over time. And here we go. This is, I think, 2 and a half minutes. I'm not sure. It's fairly short, but it will have very little melody. It's close to purely atonal, though, like a lot of Schoenberg, it's never quite just the 12 tones. There's always hints of melody and he pulls it away from you and teases you a bit. And it goes on and it keeps on morphing into different things. And I find it very, very sad. Very haunting.

Yeah. Where did he live and work?

Well, he was from Vienna, but he had to leave. He was Jewish, for one thing. And he wrote that piece, I think he was in Los Angeles, but he was in the United States. And he lived in Los Angeles the latter part of his life.

And what year is this approximately from?

The '30s, mid-'30s, I think. And he was already in LA by then.

Was there a philosophy associated with the atonal movement?

The idea that a new music would be built from scratch based on new principles and that he was the one to do it. And like all such system builders, he was never that consistent. And in part, he was great because he was not totally consistent. That piece, as you heard, it's not completely atonal, but it teases you. Yeah. And this, it's hard to follow., but you're always in pursuit of it in an interesting way.

There are moments in it where I'm pulled in, but I don't feel like I can remember how it went. You know, it's not memorable.

That's right.

But it does create a feeling.

And it's short enough that I think it works in those terms. Another famous Schoenberg choral piece is Survivor from Warsaw, which is— we're not going to listen to, but his choral pieces, they're very historical and emotional. And related to Judaism and his own life.

Are they more cultural or spiritual pieces?

I don't know whether he believed in God. He identified with being Jewish very strongly. So spiritual and cultural. I'm not sure they're truly theological at all. And to me, they don't sound theological. They sound cultural.

And that seems unusual for choral music.

That's right. And that's one of my favorite pieces of 20th century choral music. I think it's just perfect in how much it tries to do and how much it accomplishes.

It does feel very efficient. A lot happens in a short period of time.

That's right. Like most of his best pieces.

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Now let's try something English. Benjamin Britten, after the Beatles, England's greatest composer. And this is related to World War II. These are two pieces. I believe they're from 1942. And we're going to go back to something a little cheerier. The first one is called "A Little Babe," and that refers, of course, to Christ. So this is 1942, very grim wartime years for England. The Blitz is on. It's not yet obvious who's going to win the war. Britten is on some kind of ship, and I think he's writing cheery pieces for the people back home, is my guess. So there's a bunch of Christmas carols. They're all short. We're going to hear two of them. The first is "This Little Babe," which I think is the most interesting one. And after that, we'll hear what I consider to be the cheeriest one.

Here's "This Little Babe." How popular was she in the UK?

He was their composer for decades. Very talented man. He was an incredible conductor and also pianist. His recordings of other people's music, like he conducted the Brandenburg Concerti, they're fantastic. He did Schubert's Winterreise with Peter Peers, who was his male lover. He was gay and that shaped his life in a number of ways. It's maybe still the best version of Winterreise, and as a pianist, He just had everything perfect for Schubert. So the depth of his musical understanding across genres was fantastic.

And you said these pieces are Christmas pieces?

Yes.

It's funny, as we were listening, I felt like this sounds a little bit like a jingle, and I never made the connection before. Is there any connection between the idea of a jingle and Christmas music?

Of course. And the piece we're about to hear, you'll hear this even more clearly. And he's taking the lyrics and maybe even some of the ideas from medieval or Renaissance English tunes that were never quite codified, but they're in the culture, maybe as Christmas songs in some way. And that's what he wanted to build out his own version of, because he thought, I believe, that people would recognize them, respond to them, feel comfortable again. So this one is called "Welcum Yoll," which is medieval English. What it really means is "Welcome, Yule," but like reading Chaucer in medieval English, it's different. So it's spelled W-O-L-C-U-M space Y-O-L-E, but it's just saying, "Welcome, Yule. Welcome, Christmas." And this is his most melodic Christmas carol, I think. Also a pretty short piece. You know, these are best with harp accompaniment, but not everyone has a harp, so some recordings it's piano. To me, that's worse. This is with harp done properly. Here goes. Clearly a jingle of sorts, right?

Yeah, very unusual note choices, unexpected notes.

Yeah, it reminds me of a lot of popular music.

So far of everything you've played, he sounds the most contemporary.

The most normal.

The music is the most contemporary.

Yes.

It also has elements that sound like what you might hear on Broadway today.

That's right. I also have this vision in my mind. I imagine Paul McCartney hearing that and thinking, I can do this. And as I'm sure you know, Paul wrote 3 big choral works, and we'll hear an excerpt from one of them. Great. This is Eke Chord Mium. It's a very accessible work. It's not sung by Paul. It reminds me a bit of the earlier Wings song, My Love, just in the mood. But he wrote this, it's about 25 years ago. It was after Linda passed away and it was a memoriam to her. And it's sort of like, you know, of my heart, from my heart is the underlying theme of the whole choral work. And it will sound a bit like some British choral music. You'll hear a little bit of Britten in it, but it's also McCartney.

Ja.

And singing here is Kate Royal, who I think does a nice job with it.

—Jesus Christ, my Lord, is of the same old race.

How unusual is it to have a solo voice in a choral work?

It's common, and we'll hear some more of that as we go on. But religiously, it's a very distinct choice. And this was actually controversial in history because you're elevating an individual over maybe the message of the church or the Bible. And that became very complicated. I'll play you a cut in a moment that gets at some of those points. How much McCartney do you hear in that? Not so much, honestly. I hear a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber, some Britten. The soaringness, there's a McCartney element in it, and some of the modulations in the melody, like I said, reminds me of "My Love." But Paul did something different. To me, very impressive.

It's a beautiful song. When I think of Paul's songs, they're so classically structured pop songs, and this doesn't do that. So that's something I look for in his work that he's the master of. Yes. And it's not a part of this form. So I guess that's what I'm looking for from him.

Just impressive that he can do it at all. I would say.

It's incredible that he can do it.

Yeah. We'll get back to contemporary in a moment, but let's go back in history and just see some of the roots of all of this. And this also gets to the point about church dogma. So there's an Italian composer, Palestrina, who's maybe the most important figure in Renaissance polyphony and counterpoint. And he did a lot of his key works in the 1580s. There's one called Secret Service we're going to hear. I think it's from the 1580s. But Palestrina, he also was responding to the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent was a Counter-Reformation movement from Italy. And people were worried that the church music was getting so jubilant and so glorious and so much fun that it was obscuring the underlying messages of the texts. So historians have written that he considered himself faced with these strictures, that he had to keep the texts very clear and also be musical. So some of his music from this period is interpreted as an attempt to do those two things. But if you want to know who's the great-grandfather of all these different choral traditions, if you had to pick a person, Palestrina would be a pretty good pick. And let's hear some of that. It will be very different, of course, and not at all contemporary. Secret Service, one of his better-known pieces. I love that.

Incredible.

So much of Western music is built on those foundations also. I can hear the Beach Boys.

Yeah. And Bach. The moving bass line and the, um, strength of the harmony. And I suppose the more avant-garde pieces that we've listened to make more sense if we've been saturated in music like this. Then the anomalies of the modern are interesting. But if we're not so well-versed in this, the modern music seems less important. The modern music works in contrast to this being ubiquitous.

Yes, exactly. It all makes more sense when you study a bit of this.

Yes. I love hearing this. Yeah. I'd love to hear more.

And Palestrina, he's a very consistent composer. You don't have to know which is the best piece, really. You can just put it on and it can play for hours. And he composed a lot and it's all excellent.

Can we hear another piece of his? Sure.

Let's try one a little more exuberant. How about Jubilate, Dio. And these are in Latin, of course, but the texts are very traditional. Whether or not he wanted to do it that way, it was forced upon him. Motet for 8 voices.

Were pieces like this sung in church, or were they sung in concert halls? Church.

Completely church. I mean, churches were concert halls in a sense.

And it was part of the church service.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at that time, you know, there would have been, I think by then, opera houses in Venice, but basically no concert halls to speak of. And even in Venice, I'm not sure exactly when those places are opening for concerts. Music was church music in this sense.

And are the words directly biblical?

I think they're usually the church processing biblical texts and making them more repetitive and ironing them out and of course turning it into Latin. And it's for mass services, so they're typically boring, the lyrics.

Do you think the lyrics were thought of as meditations?

Maybe, but I think a lot of the process was pretty bureaucratic. So the church had a lot of the money, The church would tell people, here's what you have to do. They would pay you more than anyone else. Here is your chance to write some great music, get paid for it. You just had to follow the rules. You probably believed in God. You didn't mind the words they were making you use, and you didn't know really that much else. So why not do it, would be my hypothesis.

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What are the oldest known choral works? I don't know.

We can go back earlier, do some Perotin. We know the ancient Greeks had choral music, but we don't have any record of what it was. But this is medieval. We'll hear just a little bit from this piece, Fides Romana Omnes.

Pretty amazing, isn't it? Yeah. When is it from?

That would have been, I'm guessing, 1200. So turn of the 13th century. And he worked in Notre Dame, like the same one that, you know, we still visit. So people would go to Notre Dame, an earlier version of it, and they would perform that, sing it or hear it. Let's just hear a little more, but it's incredible music. He's the first major composer I find interesting. And some of it verges on being a little bit atonal even. Not this part right here, but— Incredible, isn't it?

I love it. Yeah. Do we think of that period as the Dark Ages, or is this after the Dark Ages?

It's after the Dark Ages, and it's a kind of proof that it's after the Dark Ages. And the fact that it's in Notre Dame, which is a truly beautiful church, is further proof I think of the Dark Ages as definitely over by the year 1000, but that's debated. But think of the Dark Ages as sort of the 5th through the 9th century or a bit more at their peak. And then medieval times start. People use water power, wind power more. There's more economic growth. People start returning to cities. The church does a lot more things. Activities become more businesslike. So much of the great early music, it's centered in northern France. It's sometimes called Franco-Flemish because it can border, you know, with Belgium. A bit later, you know, Italy is significant. So Palestrina, that's in Rome, but that's the Renaissance. But great medieval music is Franco-Flemish. And northern France is such an important place for the revitalization of Western civilization and all of music history. It comes from northern France. It sounds cosmopolitan. And it is. And my wife and I did a trip this summer. We visited a bunch of the churches in northern France, like Reims and Amiens and Notre Dame, where this music was created and sung and the churches were built. And those churches to this day are among mankind's most beautiful creations. Many are quite intact. And the music is incredible. And that this all happened at once, coming out of the Dark Ages, just this amazing power of how the world can change and for the better.

Any other pieces from this era that we can listen to?

Let's try some Michel. Forgive my pronunciations of all these foreign names. They're never good. Anyway, he's born in 1300 in Reims, France, which is where I visited this summer. Even saw the cathedral where he worked and wrote. I find Perotin more interesting, but he's still quite good and extremely important. And again, it's the northern France thing for the early music.

Do we know when polyphony first came into existence? The Franco-Flemish.

So people like Josquin, who was the very first, I don't know, it's one of these try Google or GPT questions. I don't know that we would know the very first, and it's maybe somewhat a matter of degree, but it's late medieval times in the Franco-Flemish regions.

I just think about what a revolution that must have been because before that, I imagine it was all singing together and unison. Playing song and— Probably much like the discovery of perspective in painting. Yes. It's a revolutionary shift like that. It makes everything else possible.

Yeah. And we're still running with it, right? It's not at all exhausted. Not at all.

Yeah. Not at all. It almost feels like it's a key to something bigger that we don't fully understand.

Well, we never really understand music, but it's the key. To most of the music we listen to, and that they did it for the first time. And you can still go see the places. Blows my mind.

Did you get to hear any music in these places? Yeah, absolutely.

And choral music. Wow. Yeah. Beautiful. It was incredible. Several times. Let's do a bit of Monteverdi since we're in the past. Now he's leading into Baroque, but he would be also one of the most important composers of all time.

When was Monteverdi?

He's before Bach, so he's very much a transitional figure between Renaissance music and Baroque. He's unique, but he's more Baroque than Renaissance. Is Bach the beginning of Baroque? He's the peak of Baroque, you could say. Peak of everything, maybe, but not the beginning. He's building on a lot of other people. And Monteverdi is working in northern Italy, so he's in residence at Mantua, and the Duke pays his salary, and he composes some of the world's greatest music. And it's interesting because a lot of what he does is secular. So he does a 2-hour opera, L'Orfeo, based on the myth of Orpheus, which is the ancient world, so that it's acceptable for the top composers to not just be doing religious music, is part of Monteverdi's revolution. And his works were played in the opera houses in Venice, which is an economic powerhouse at the time. And he was really a big deal. And he was sort of a protected man because of his patronage. He did a 2-hour work called Vespers, which I once heard in the Spanish church in Santiago de Compostela live. One of the best concerts I ever heard. We'll just hear Small excerpt from the beginning, but it's one of his greatest works, and this is choral and religious rather than secular. This is Raphaël Pichon, the French conductor.

A— we— Jesus—

Let's fast forward a bit. So beautiful. I'm going to revise my earlier answer and say that's more Renaissance than Baroque. Let's hear a tiny bit from his secular opera, L'Orfeo, just so you get a sense of his range. It's drawing on some medieval modes, but it's in some ways more complex than Palestrina. It's more modern. It's exuberant. It's entertaining. It's only 30 years later. Wow. So this is like 1610 or so.

It sounds more narrative-based. It's telling a story. And it's an opera.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is a story. And it's a work for the stage. It's theater. But Monteverdi, you can always listen to. Let me see if I can find one of the soprano Duets for you. Uh-huh. Kirkby. Those are lovely pieces.

We're lucky that this stuff exists.

Yeah.

Secular again. This sounds really English. And modern.

Leading into Vivaldi and Bach, the Stylen part. Beautiful. And it's like pop music, isn't it? It really is. There's a bit of Indigo Girls in those vocals. So Monteverdi is one of my go-to composers. You can put on virtually anything. The madrigals are incredible. You know, I still buy CDs. I think it's 8 or 9 volumes of them. Every piece is gorgeous. Just can't miss with him.

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Shall we try something contemporary again? Okay. This is maybe my favorite active contemporary composer. Her name is Caroline Shaw, and this was her breakthrough piece. It's a partita for 8 voices. And she's still at her peak. Let's hear some— the piece is too long, but some of the partita. For 8 voices. And this is, I think, from 2014, not long ago. Mm-hmm.

Ah! Ah! Oh!

What strikes you? What strikes me is the use of silence. And from a technical standpoint, the kind of silence that we hear in that is a very modern silence because it's a digital silence. In the days of recording with tape, you would never get a silence that silent in between music. You could view it as an advantage. It's less natural., but it's very dramatic in this piece.

Eastern influence, Buddhist influence, the whole Om is in there, Schoenberg influence. She's not afraid to challenge your ears and do things that some people won't like. Not afraid to go into the higher registers that not everyone likes. The low end is really dramatic and powerful. In a funny way, it's like techno, that there's a lot in the high and the low. I wonder if there's Some metal influence in there even, the way it just pushes on you. It's a great work. It's about 20 minutes long, I think. Beautiful. And that's the opening of it. She mostly does things for chamber music, but a very versatile composer. And she's one of these people, like everything she does is interesting. And it's all, each piece is different from the other, which is very hard to pull off, I think. Do you know who Colleen Malone is? I do. And do you know Stephen O'Malley? I do not. Well, that's her husband. You know the group Sunn? S-U-N-N? Yes. They're amazing, right? Yeah. Well, she's married to Stephen O'Malley.

I didn't know that.

And a lot of what she does is very organ-heavy, very serious music, just goes at you. But she has a choral piece that I like, quite recent, and we'll hear just a bit of it.

She tours the world playing on the great organs. Playing music that is not typically played in these places that have these organs.

This is called Passage Through the Spheres. It's a choral piece, and you'll see a lot of influence from these earlier musics, which she's making more current. This is, I think, 7 minutes. We'll just hear a minute or two of it.

Fantastic. Isn't it great? Yeah, I've only heard her organ work before. That's spectacular. She did it a year or two ago.

Super current. I forget when, but it's very recent. Fantastic. Yeah, all her work is great, I think, but that's one of my favorites. Now, given the connection between contemporary, Renaissance, medieval, Arvo Pärt, we need to discuss and play a little of. So he's Estonian. And what's interesting about listening to him, I'm never quite sure if he's pulling my leg or not. So it's early music, but it's also minimalism. And it goes back and forth between the two. Super influential composer. And a lot of, People who listen to electronica like him. He's been very influential, I think, on contemporary electronic music. Or people play this, you know, at the end of a rave or something.

He's one of my favorites.

There's a piece we'll hear a bit, Nunc Dimittis. It's one of his best-known pieces. And this is from the Gospel of Luke. It's a very positive piece. And there's a moment in the Gospel of Luke where Simeon meets the baby Jesus and basically says euphemistically, you know, now I can die, now I can diminish because I've seen what there was to see. We'll hear just a little bit of him. This is from Voces 8. They're a great group, a choral.

Ugly piece, isn't it?

I could listen to that all day, and it's one of the best performances of vocal music. Such an incredible group. Spectacular. Just the quality of the singing, maybe the best thing we've heard so far, I feel.

Yeah. Transcendent.

Spectacular. Yeah. There's like a 12-CD box set of Part that I have. I just keep on listening to different parts. If I recall, he started in the Soviet Union and he managed to get out. I think it was either to Sweden or Finland. And then went back to Estonia when it was later free.

I love his music.

Now that was a serious piece. Let's do a short bit of a non-serious piece just for contrast. This is also Finnish. Kaja Sariaho. She died, I think, just 2 or 3 years ago. She's best known as an opera composer, encompassed a lot of styles, and she wrote this one piece for children, short piece, choral piece. It's just called something like Clock Stop. Not really one of her better-known pieces of music, but I think contrast is important in such enterprises as doing what is in essence a mixtape. Again, this is a piece for kids.

T'as qu'à me rappeler que le temps s'écoule et que beaucoup de monde croient que je bosse. Tic tac, tic tac, il faut regarder en grand jour que je bosse. Tic tac, tic tac, oh.

Kid singing it. Fun piece, you know. It's like tossing in Yellow Submarine on your mixtape or something.

Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, she's very talented. Do you have any Meredith Monk?

I like her a lot.

What do we know about her?

Part of the New York avant-garde for a long period of time. Let's try Ghostlight Chorus. I don't know if I know it. But it must be a choral work. Here we go. African Balinese, right? Yeah, tribal. Yeah.

And active. Probably the most active thing we've heard.

Yeah. Fun piece. Beautiful. Yeah. I'm sure the visuals are good when you're there seeing it. We heard some Meredith Monk. Want to hear just a snippet of Philip Glass? Please. Choral piece. Why not? This is quite famous. Maybe too famous for our purposes, but it's always good to throw in.

It's such a fringe part of the music world that even the best known pieces are relatively unknown.

This is from Satyagraha, which is about Gandhi, of course. Act 1, Tolstoy Farm. We'll hear some of the choral sequence, and I'm sure you'll recognize this. It goes on and on. But of course, that's incredible music. Great. Yeah. I once saw that in the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I was in the second row. I looked in front of me and the guy in front of me was Philip Glass. Wow. Yeah. I got such a kick out of that. Yeah. I didn't disturb him or anything, but he was enjoying it. I bet.

Yeah. It's an interesting thing. I wonder what it's like concocting something in your head and then getting to see it in a big room full of people performed on a stage, that leap. Yeah. Because I imagine until that happens, you don't really know what it's like.

Yeah. There's two very, very great choral pieces. Let me play you bits from each. You mentioned before about, you know, solo voices over chorus. So Fauré, the Requiem, one of the best choral works ever. This is French. I think it's 1888, but around then in any case. And there's a soprano solo in the middle of it, P. Jésus. And this is a very beautiful requiem. Like Brahms' German Requiem is stormy and death-obsessed and like longing for death and passionate. And Fauré, it's beautiful and lovely. And it's saying you can surrender to death. It's sad of course but it's— In a way it's saying death is a bit okay. And give yourself up to Jesus moment.

He is Lord over me. Do I listen? Sally Tyler Cowen. Sally Tyler Cowen.

I love that.

Isn't that incredible? Incredible. Perfect performance. It's the Vosses Eit Group again, which is one of my favorites. And it's drawing on the earlier Renaissance, other Franco-Flemish traditions, but it's also late 19th century romantic music. And it's sweet.

Very easy to listen to, and it sounds more filled with wonder than sadness. That's right.

Another great French choral composer is Poulenc. We'll do a short bit of his. Same era? No, this is 20th century, so he is composing this during the German occupation of France. So it is not released. Until after the war's over. So there were these poems written by Paul Édouard, who was a French poet. I think it's 1943. And there's a series of choral pieces. The last one is just the word "Liberty" with an exclamation mark, the message of which being obvious in 1943 in occupied France. And here's one of the movements of it. It's about 2 minutes long. Poulenc, I find a very difficult composer to describe, very eclectic. A lot of different influences, very aware of the Renaissance, but also quite modern, doing many different things in the music. Great opera writer. And this is again is from Figure Humaine. I think it's the second movement.

When you listen to music, do you sit and listen or do you do other things? Both.

You need to do both because if you had to always sit and listen, you couldn't listen to enough music. And a lot of times you'll do something, or I will listen to music. It's just like an investment for your real listen, which will come later. I see. But you know what's coming, so you're not trying to figure it all out on the fly either.

Understood. Yeah. So you might listen to it while you're reading or while you're working on something else.

And maybe I've heard it 20 times and then I'll sit down and listen properly using AI, of course. And I'll ask GPT, what should I listen for? Or what's the historical background here? Really? Every time it makes it much better.

Wow. Should we try that for the next piece?

Well, for the last piece, when I told you it was these poems written in 1943. I hadn't known that until recently. I knew I was coming here. Oh, I better learn about this Poulenc piece. Yeah. Knowing that, it makes it entirely different. Wow. And the last movement, Liberty, makes complete sense when you know that. Otherwise it's like, well, you can think of many reasons he might have done it, but the piece falls into place.

And what the AI tells you might be true.

Yeah, you can always double-check. But that's true. Yeah, for sure. Everything I listen to, I try to do that.

Wow. I've never done that. That sounds like a fun practice to get into.

Yeah. We could try it. Let's see. For the next piece, Janáček. This is maybe the greatest choral work of the 20th century. It's not that easy to excerpt, but it's Czech. It's from 1926, '27. It's called "Glagolitic Mass." It's huge. There's a double choir, there's an organ, there's stuff going on. He's throwing the kitchen sink at you. It's a very Dionysian work. It was a statement of Czech nationalism because we're coming out of World War I and who will be a country and for how long? Well, it's still somewhat of an open question, but he's writing this piece. In that environment. And the Glagolithic Mass, I don't know, it's 40 minutes, I'd guess. And this movement, it's called "Feruho," which I suppose is a Czech word, and it's just saying, "I believe." But it's very passionate. It grabs you. The Mass as a whole has just so much diversity. It covers so many different parts of music. Hard to excerpt, but we'll hear just a little bit. A piece I strongly recommend. That's going to go on and on. But very powerful piece. I'd love to see it in concert someday. I think it just costs a lot to put on. Sounds very theatrical. It is. And it's based on folk melodies like a lot of Eastern European music from that time was. Very, very famous piece in Czechia now. Shall we close with the Palestrina piece? Let's do. This is almost 5 minutes long, but we'll just let it run for the close. Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

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