Music for your Chamber

Fancy a spot of chamber music?

This is music written for small groups of players, where there is only one instrument per part. (A chamber orchestra, such as The Bathurst Chamber Orchestra is a much smaller orchestra than the Sydney Symphony, and may have only two instruments playing each line of music.)

A good place to start is with Schubert, one of the most amazing composers in music history. He composed an enormous amount of music in his short life of 31 years, including symphonies, operas, over six hundred songs, and quite a bit of chamber music.

Let's begin with his terrific song, The Trout, here sung by Ian Bostridge.



Schubert wrote an interesting set of variations on this tune in the fourth movement of his very popular Trout Quintet.



This piece of music was written for an unusual combination of
Piano
Violin
Viola
Cello
and
Double Bass.

(It is unusual because double basses do not usually feature in small string ensembles (though they are used in chamber orchestras).

The string quartet usually consists of two violins, a viola, and a cello as seen in this article and photo of Bella Forte, a group of four Mitchell Conservatorium students who play for weddings, parties, anything.

We'll finish this introduction to chamber music with the beautiful Nocturne movement from Borodin's Second String Quartet, performed by the distinguished Jerusalem Quartet.

Beautiful solo flute performance

Here is a great solo flute performance by Jane Rutter, to be heard in Bathurst on Friday, 3rd June at All Saints Cathedral

Jane Rutter Hits The Central West

This winter, the Central West will play host to Australia’s Flute Queen, #1 Adventurous Classical Artist and Concert Soloist Jane Rutter. Throughout June, Jane will tour Lithgow, Bathurst, Forbes and Young performing her most romantic, classical and popular pieces from her repertoire. Her concert program includes virtuosic favourites Donizetti, Ravel, Debussy, da Falla and Gershwin played on her many gold, silver and wooden flutes. The flute is the instrument of the heart and spirit, the oldest musical instrument known to man...these concerts are a love affair with the flute. Bring that someone special and fall in love all over again.




Thursday 2 June, 7.30pm Hoskins Church, Lithgow
Friday 3 June, 7.30pm All Saint’s Cathedral, Bathurst
Saturday 4 June, 7.30pm Forbes Town Hall, Forbes
Sunday 5 June, 5.00pmSouthern Cross Hall, Young




Tickets at the door
For further information www.mitchellconservatorium.edu.au or call (02) 6331 6622

Try Before You Buy

This coming weekend, two great local performers will be touring Lithgow, Mudgee and Bathurst with some interesting and engaging music for you to enjoy.

Aaron and Rob are two of the popular guitar teachers at Bathurst campus of Mitchell Conservatorium. The samples below are from recordings they have made with their own groups, Stringmansassy and The Straight Back Fellows.

In Stringmansassy, Aaron Hopper combines his special stylings with vocalist Kasey Patrick.



Rob's group, The Straight Back Fellows, combines clarinets, saxes and flutes with a wide range of percussion instruments and of course Rob's guitar. You can hear short excerpts of Rob's music with the band here, but if you sign up with Myspace, you will be able to hear the full versions.


Friday 20 May 7.30pm Secret Creek Sanctuary Café & Restaurant, 35 Crane Rd, Lithgow

Saturday 21 May 7.30pm Baptist Church & Community Centre, 70 Bruce Road, Mudgee

Sunday 22 May 3pm Mitchell Conservatorium, Russell Street, Bathurst

Tickets: Adults $30, Concession $20, U3A/CPSA $10 Enquiries 6331 6622

Explaining the strange notation

This piece of music, which looks like one note on a strange musical stave, is actually 4 notes, spelling the name BACH.

There's no H in the musical alphabet in English, but there is in German. Germans call our B flat B and our B H.

Reading the music anticlockwise, also known as widdershins, you have the well-known treble clef, then a tenor clef (used by cellos, bassoons and a few other instruments), an alto clef (mainly used by violas) and another treble clef.

The notes are then
B flat = B
A
C
and
B =H

But the source of this ingenious musical curiosity is unknown. Musicologists would love to find that it comes from Bach himself, but so far its origin is undetermined.

A musical curiosity

This image is a piece of music with four notes and spells the name of a well-known composer?

Do you know what it spells and can you explain how it spells this composer's name?

Cafe of the Gate of Salvation

The Cafe of the Gate of Salvation has been called Australia's premier a cappella gospel choir. If you haven't yet heard them, you have the opportunity to hear them in Bathurst on Saturday evening at 7.30 PM in All Saints Cathedral, a great venue in which to hear their voices resounding.

And if you love singing, concert ticket holders can join in their workshop at 3 PM.

For more details, please phone Mitchell Conservatorium on 6331 6622 during office hours.

A Lady Gaga Fugue?

As far as I know, Lady Gaga hasn't written any fugues. She may not even know what a fugue is... Do you?

Giovanni Dettori's Lady Gaga Fugue shows you what a fugue is and, if you read music, you can follow along as you listen. It is based on a part of the song Bad Romance



Do you notice how the tune from Bad Romance keeps coming back in different ways? It takes a lot of skill to write a fugue. Giovanni Dettori teaches people about counterpoint, which is the discipline of writing a piece of music that has several tunes going at the one time. Sometimes, as in a fugue, the tune is being harmonised with itself.

Composer, Giovanni Dettori has kindly published the sheet music for you to download and play as a free pdf file.