SKU: A0.799581

In 1722 J.S. Bach published his Prelude in C major to begin a collection of works now commonly known as the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I. Over a century later, the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod composed a melody to go with Bach's prelude, and in 1859 Jacques Léopold Heugel published a version of this melody to be sung with the familiar Latin text for Ave Maria. Matthew C. Weiss continues this tradition by adding another independent line that beautifully intertwines around Gounod's timeless melody, creating a wonderful duet for two solo instruments and piano.

SKU: A0.799579

In 1722 J.S. Bach published his Prelude in C major to begin a collection of works now commonly known as the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I. Over a century later, the French Romantic composer Charles Gounod composed a melody to go with Bach's prelude, and in 1859 Jacques Léopold Heugel published a version of this melody to be sung with the familiar Latin text for Ave Maria. Matthew C. Weiss continues this tradition by adding another independent line that beautifully intertwines around Gounod's timeless melody, creating a wonderful duet for two solo instruments and piano.

SKU: A0.1018881

Programme Notes:

 Icarus Also Flew takes its title from the first line of the poem Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert. He is referring to the classical myth of Daedalus and Icarus, an inventive father and son who bravely escape from their imprisonment in a tower by collecting the disposed feathers of seabirds, then fashion wings out of them and fly away. While the story is often treated as a morality tale--listen to your elders, don’t get cocky like the young man, Icarus, who, in such an understandable state of elation, ascended too close to the sun thus causing the wings to melt and his tumbling to his Mediterranean death--what Jack Gilbert reminds us is how regardless of one’s failure, the sheer transcendental experience of mortal flight remains glorious and unforgettable. Icarus’s fall was not into a legacy of disdain and oblivion, but in truth, he had come to the end of his triumph.

 This piece was the first of a series I composed during the Covid-19 quarantine conditions of 2020, to serve as potential contemporary preludes for each of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies--his two hundred and fiftieth anniversary was this year!--though they can all stand on their own on any program. The connection, in this case, is with his celebrated fifth symphony in C minor--the Fate symphony, as it is commonly known. I’ll let the listener find their own connections.

About the Composer:

Benjamin Sajo (b. 1988) is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music, as well as an educator. Since developing a fiercely independent creative voice upon the completion of his studies at Western (2010) and McGill Universities (2013), he continues to find inspiration from the intersection of mythology, art, and nature upon the contemporary human experience. In 2019, he released his premiere album of original music, The Great War Sextet: Canadian War Poetry with Trombone & Strings, with support from the Ontario Arts Council. He is a member of SOCAN and the League of Canadian Composers.

SKU: A0.1034899

Abeba, in the title Swing Abeba, means flower - part of the name of the Ethiopian capital city where modern Ethiopian music took root.  Abeba is also a common refrain in their vocal music.  True to its title, this work is influenced by Ethiopian popular music, which in turn was strongly influenced by swing rhythm in American big band jazz transmitted from an army radio station in neighbouring Eritrea in the 1950s. 

 Ethiopian music – essentially song-based – consists of pentatonic melodies which tend to be deeply embedded in copious melismata, progressing in an improvisatory manner, similarly to jazz. 

 Accordingly, Swing Abeba begins with an Ethiopian, pentatonically melismatic treatment of an un-Ethiopian theme.  (Whispers of Gondar…. – were words used to characterize this opening section, Gondar being a highland region in the North of Ethiopia.)  The music then breaks into a jazz-swing scherzo.  The call-response nature of this scherzo recalls this feature of Ethiopian music.  The second section begins with a slow, heavily melismatic ad lib passage marked molto espressivo e pensivo, which leads into a second swing scherzo, the opening themes reappearing in a different guise in the closing section.