English suites no. 2
Sep. 23rd, 2017 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThis is here to show that Gustav Holst could also write music that doesn't sound hearty-English. Many European composers have written "tourist music," assimilations of flavors from elsewhere in the world to the European idiom, inspired either by visits or sometimes just by a score collection of music from that country.
Holst really did visit Algiers; the Beni Mora Suite is his report on North African music, and my favorite of his out-of-the-regular-order music. An exotic and hypnotic piece, especially in its third and final movement, beginning at 10:24, which repeats a tuneless phrase that Holst heard a bamboo flute player perform nonstop for two hours. (Here it lasts less than 7 minutes.)
(Some critics have called this movement "proto-minimalism," proving only that they don't have the slightest idea what minimalism is.)
Holst really did visit Algiers; the Beni Mora Suite is his report on North African music, and my favorite of his out-of-the-regular-order music. An exotic and hypnotic piece, especially in its third and final movement, beginning at 10:24, which repeats a tuneless phrase that Holst heard a bamboo flute player perform nonstop for two hours. (Here it lasts less than 7 minutes.)
(Some critics have called this movement "proto-minimalism," proving only that they don't have the slightest idea what minimalism is.)
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Date: 2017-09-24 09:27 am (UTC)I do love Beni Mora however.
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Date: 2017-09-24 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 02:13 pm (UTC)