PIECE: “DANZA FINAL (MALAMBO)” FROM DANZAS DEL BALLET ESTANCIA OP. 8

COMPOSER: ALBERTO GINASTERA

DATE: 1941

ERA/GENRE: 20TH CENTURY, NATIONALIST

GOOD FOR: PARTYING, DANCE-OFFS

Warning: I am going to use the word nationalist in this post. It is not …anything to do with our current orange menace…It’s about the movement in classical music where composers used the folk music of their own culture rather than feeling like they had to write something that sounded like the dominant trend of French/German/Italian classical music. It was very popular in the 20th century, and often associated with independence movements. Popular nationalist composers include Aaron Copland (U.S.A), Antonín Dvořák (Czech Republic), Charles Ives (U.S.A), Ralph Vaughan Williams (U.K), Edvard Grieg (Norway), Jean Sibelius (Finland), and Hector Villa-Lobos (Brazil) among others. And hey, those are all video links to their “nationalist” works if you want to go down a cool, folk-inspired, listening wormhole! Anyway, just needed to clarify that works we refer to as nationalist in classical music weren’t written point out how much other cultures suck, but rather to celebrate their own, usually under-represented, culture.

PIECE: Danse macabre

COMPOSER: Camille Saint-Saëns

DATE: 1874

ERA/GENRE: Romantic / Tone poem

GOOD FOR: Witchy dance parties in the woods, inviting ghosts to make their presence known in your home.

Camille Saint-Saëns was a French composer who lived a very long life over the very happenin’ and cool span of history from 1835 to 1921. He basically lived through the entire romantic period of music and into early jazz-influenced classical music and atonality. I mean just as an example of how much music changed over his lifetime, here is an aria from Meyerbeer's 1831 opera Robert le diable (Robert the Devil) which caused a scandal for its weird "ballet of dead nuns" scene, but harmonically-speaking it's all pretty conventional.

Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin features unquestionably his most famous music, the wedding march from Act III (aka THE wedding march from every standard wedding music playlist). Today we're focusing on the little gem right before that wedding march, where Wagner condenses a whole wedding party into a less-than-five-minute prelude. So yeah, we're gonna focus on the party today.

PIECE: Prelude to Act III from Lohengrin

COMPOSER: Richard Wagner

DATE: 1850

ERA: Romantic

GOOD FOR: Hasty weddings , excessively fancy processions

PIECE: Porgy and Bess: Selection for Orchestra

COMPOSER: George Gershwin, arranged by Robert Russell Bennett

DATE: 1935 (Gershwin), 1961 (Bennett arrangement)

ERA: 20th century, opera

GOOD FOR: Really feeling like it's the 1930's again but not always in the fun parts of the 1930's? Wait, were there any fun parts of the 1930's? Well, it's a complicated work...

Let's start with a little background on George Gershwin. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1898. His family members were Russian Jewish immigrants and he grew up near the Yiddish Theater District, where he and his brother attended shows and even appeared as an extra occasionally. Gershwin.com provides this nice back-handed compliment: "As a boy, George was anything but studious, and it came as a wonderful surprise to his family that he had secretly been learning to play the piano."

Listen...Gone with the Wind, like so many other period films, is a more accurate depiction of the time it was made than the time it tries to depict. It's pretty uncomfortable to watch in 2017. But, this film score influenced generations and it's part of the reason we even have film composers instead of just mix-tape like compilations in the background. The complete score is #2 on the American Film Institute's "Greatest American Film Scores" (Star Wars took the top spot), but today we're just going to look at the theme that opens, closes and totally saturates the film. Speaking of which, here's the whole movie in gif form in case you don't have 4 hours.

The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are two of the greatest movies ever made. The films have won Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys, and BAFTAs, and are featured on pretty much every single one of AFI’s countless lists of the best films ever made. And while the films feature incredible performances by stars like Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola’s extraordinary direction, and some of the best, most quotable lines in film history (“Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”), the incredible score by Nino Rota elevates the pair of films to modern-day opera. As Awesӧme Orchestra prepares to perform The Godfather Suite on Sunday, October 8, allow Canon Fodder to be your guide through this epic story about family, power, vengeance, loyalty, and a whole lot of food. (For the purposes of this post, we’re just going to go ahead and skip Godfather Part III, which we wish Coppola had done, too.) In case it’s not already clear, I love these movies like I love a good Bolognese, so let’s dig in!

Well, it's September. A chill is in the air, kids are going back to school, and spooky stories are starting to come up in conversation. In that spirit, we're jumping into one of my all-time favorite film scores because nothing says "fall" quite like Vertigo…

PIECE: Vertigo Suite

COMPOSER: Bernard Herrmann

DATE: 1958

ERA: 20th century, film music

GOOD FOR: Creeping yourself out, creating dramatic irony, obsessing about bad relationships

I try not to pick favorites, I really do. But the first time I heard this piece of music I just kept yelling "What IS this? "WHO is this?" which tells you a lot about how much fun it is to hang out with me. This piece is so exhilarating and exciting and incidentally, my number 1 pick for classical music pieces to run to. Are you ready for Bacchus?

PIECE: Cortège de Bacchus (Procession of Bacchus) from Sylvia

COMPOSER: Léo Delibes

DATE: 1876

ERA: Romantic

GOOD FOR: Pump-up jams, power hours and running.

Howdy y’all! We’re jumping right into Copland’s Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo today so put on your cowboy boots, saddle up and let’s wrangle this great piece of American music!

PIECE: Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo
COMPOSER: Aaron Copland
DATE: 1942–43ERA: 20th C
GOOD FOR: Long road trips across the American West/Dancing in cowboy boots alone in your apartment.