William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony, performed by Paul Freeman and the Chicago Sinfonietta. The piece premiered in 1931, and it was the first piece by a Black composer to be performed by a major symphony orchestra. It’s filled with blues influences, and it was the most performed American symphony until 1950. However, though Still uses blues, the popular music of the time, he wrote he didn’t want to portray contemporary Black culture, but rather the “sons of the soil who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears.”

It’s an interesting anachronism, using contemporary music to depict scenes and people who existed 50 years before, and it reflects on a tragic disconnect of the 1920s.

It was the Harlem Renaissance. Black art and culture flourished and was rabidly consumed by white audiences. However, this consumption of Black culture didn’t directly translate to Civil Rights. We talk about the Cotton Club as this Jazz Age institution where artists like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Adelaide Hall, and Cab Calloway launched their careers, but the Cotton Club was a white-only venue.

While white audiences rabidly consumed the music of Black Americans that gave the Jazz Age its name, there was an explosion of racial violence against Black Americans. From the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, where the most prosperous black neighborhood in the country was razed to the ground, to the resurgence of the KKK, which had between 4 and 6 million members in 1925, to the falsely accused Scottsboro Boys who were sentenced to death, there were countless instances of violence against Black Americans, all concurrent with the Harlem Renaissance.

It’s this disconnect between the consumption of Black art and the well-being of Black people that makes William Grant Still’s explicit connection of Black music to the history of Black people so important.

This first movement is based around WC Handy’s St Louis Blues, sung here by Bessie Smith. Still uses this contemporary blues tune throughout the movement, yet the epigraph for the movement is from a dialect poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar about the antebellum South. This use of modern music with historical themes puts the two in dialogue with each other, forcing the audience to consider the two as one. It’s the same concept that Hamilton would use in 2015. Historical themes, contemporary music. It gives the past a present immediacy, and shows, in Still’s case, that the current racial violence of the 20s is rooted in the history of slavery.

Still continues this linking of contemporary music to the past in the third movement. Listen to this countermelody played by the trombones in the opening. Sound familiar? Both were written in 1930, but many claim both tunes were based off a riff that Still himself played in the pit of the hit musical Shuffle Along in 1921. Either way, this sound was completely contemporary with the popular music of the time. However, the Paul Dunbar epigraph for this movement is, “an antebellum sermon.” It’s yet another example of Still linking the past to the present by overlaying a historical moment  with contemporary music. But beyond that, he shows how the music is inseparable from the history of the people who create it.

The disconnect between the consumption of Black art and the well-being of Black people is unfortunately all too prevalent throughout the history of music. Many popular artists have taken on this disconnect, from Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam to Childish Gambino’s This is America. When we consume art, we’re consuming history. Music always exists in time, and that’s what is so poignant about this symphony. That while the music of this symphony is so rooted in the time of the 1930s, the legacy of slavery and institutionalized racism was and is just as much present as it is past. When we listen to this music today, written at the halfway point between the Civil War and the present day, we recognize that even though the music is firmly dated to 1930, the racist legacy of slavery unfortunately is far too contemporary.

Schumann Symphony No. 2, written in 1846, performed by Daniel Harding and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Robert Schumann faced a steep challenge when writing his symphonies. The most recent major symphony written by a German composer, was this one.

Yes, Beethoven 9. The shadow of Beethoven’s symphonies, particularly his 9th, stretched over all German composers in the mid 19th Century. Beethoven dominated the conversation around German classical music the way Michael Jordan dominates the conversation about the NBA. He left an incomparable impact. Every new German composer was viewed through the lens of how they compared to Beethoven. For Robert Schumann, among others, this provided a great deal of anxiety. Schumann was a fierce Beethoven devotee and wanted to be the steward of his legacy. For that to be true, Schumann had to write a triumph of a symphony. It’s here in his second symphony that he most explicitly stakes his claim to Beethoven’s symphonic legacy.

The music is bright and exuberant — truly building towards that triumphant conclusion that German listeners expected in the finale of a symphony. After the music cuts out, this gorgeous lyric theme emerges.

This music actually isn’t by Schumann: it’s by, you guessed it, Beethoven! Schumann quotes the last song from Beethoven’s song cycle, “An die ferne Geliebte,” or “to the distant beloved.” This is the first “song cycle” as we know it today, a set of individual songs that together make a single musical entity. (Essentially what an album or LP is today) Schumann loved this format — he wrote four song cycles, and he was a particular admirer of the last song from this cycle. Here’s a recording of this song, performed by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and Jörg Demus.

Accept, then, these songs

I sang for you, beloved;

Sing them again at evening

To the lute’s sweet sound!

The speaker asks the “distant beloved” to “accept these songs,” and this quotation isn’t accidental. Schumann wanted everyone to be certain that he saw himself and Beethoven as part of the same lineage, even offering his symphony as tribute. “Accept then, this song I sing for you.” As the symphony flies towards the finish, Schumann takes this Beethoven theme and morphs it into a triumphant finale.

This finale is both an homage and a claim to Beethoven’s legacy. It’s an unbelievable piece of music on it’s own, but in the context of Beethoven’s symphonic legacy it perfectly captures the anxiety and aspirations of the mid 19th century German symphony. I think the Schumann symphonies deserve more love than they get, so take a break from Beethoven today — listen to Schumann.

Why does Mahler start the third movement of his first symphony with Frere Jacques in a minor key?

There’s something morbidly ironic about using this tune for a funeral march — after all, the words “Frere Jacque, dormez vous?” “Brother Jacques, are you sleeping?” form a very morbid question for a funeral march. This is only the surface to a deeply ironic, thoroughly prescient movement.

The inspiration for this movement derives from this 1850 wood cutting, “The Hunter’s Funeral Procession.” It depicts animals conducting a funeral march for a fallen hunter. A strange scene, but it makes sense in conjunction with “Freres Jacques.” If you were an animal at the funeral of a hunter, you’d want to make sure he wasn’t just sleeping too. But even so, is there a deeper meaning behind these characters?

To answer that, let’s look at Vienna in the 1880s. In 1887, the year before Mahler wrote his first symphony, Karl Lueger, a populist councilman and eventual mayor of Vienna, advocated and passed a bill restricting the immigration and rights of Russian and Romanian Jews. Lueger discovered that by raising “the Jewish Question,” he gained enormous popularity which allowed him to undertake his massive public works projects. He was antisemitic to the point that Hitler, who lived in Vienna during Lueger’s tenure as mayor, saw him as an inspiration for his own antisemitic beliefs.

With that in mind, let’s listen to this next section.

This section is heavily influenced by klezmer music, a musical tradition of Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. Mahler was raised Jewish, so he was undoubtedly exposed to this music growing up. However, Mahler’s dream was to become music director of the Vienna State Opera, and by law, Jews were forbidden from holding that post.

While we’re on the topic of wanting what you can’t have, let’s focus on these ending bars of the funeral march. This is a quote from Mahler’s earlier “Songs of a Wayfarer.”

The song, titled “The Two Blue Eyes of my Beloved,” is a lament over how much grief two blue eyes can cause. Let’s listen to Thomas Hampson and the Vienna Philharmonic.

“O blue eyes, why did you look on me? Grief and sorrow shall now be mine forever!”

Lamenting over the blue eyes of someone who wants nothing to do with you. Almost like animals lamenting the death of a hunter.

Mahler was eventually allowed to become music director of the Vienna State Opera on the condition that he convert to Catholicism. He converted, and held the position for 10 years before being forced out by anti - semitism.

Mahler’s Vienna wasn’t Nazi Vienna, but the underlying current of hate was there. Karl Lueger tapped into it for political gain, and Mahler briefly avoided it by converting, but it soon came back and showed him the door.

For Jews in Vienna, even when they were at the funeral of the hunter, the question had to be, and still is, “are you sleeping?” “Dormez vous?”

Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, titled “The Year 1905,” performed by Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra.

Dmitri Shostakovich’s music is famously politically ambiguous. He spent his entire life in the Soviet Union, musically walking the line between propaganda and satire. One day he would be praised by the government and given a country house, the next he would be denounced and have his income cut off.

The 11th Symphony is a prime example of this ambiguity. The premiere was met with instant success, and it won him a Lenin Prize. It was Shostakovich’s first triumph since being denounced by Central Committee Secretary Andrei Zhdanov 10 years prior.

The symphony premiered in 1957 for the 40th anniversary of the October (or Bolshevik) Revolution, and Western critics largely dismissed the piece as a piece of Soviet propaganda. But the question to think about is: why did Shostakovich pick the failed 1905 revolution as the subject of a symphony commemorating the successful 1917 Revolution?

The 1905 Revolution began on January 9th, or “bloody Sunday,” when Tsar Nicholas II’s army fired on unarmed pro-democracy, anti-Tsarist demonstrators, led by Father Georgy Gapon. Vladimir Lenin, the future head of the Soviet Union, called the 1905 Revolution “The Great Dress Rehearsal” for the October Revolution. It’s an incredibly vivid moment in Russian history, yet it’s possible that Shostakovich was thinking of a different failed revolution — one that had just happened as he wrote his 11th Symphony.

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution began when pro-democracy, anti-Communist student protesters were fired upon by the State Security Police, the Hungarian extension of the Soviet Union’s secret police force. This led to a mass uprising and the fall of the Soviet government in Hungry.

However, less than two weeks later, the Soviet Union sent tanks into Hungary, re-established the Communist government, and executed the leaders of the revolution. Hungary remained under Soviet control until 1989.

So back to the 11th Symphony. It was written to commemorate the revolution which established the Soviet government that had just suppressed the Hungarian Revolution. Why does Shostakovich pick the failed 1905 Revolution as the subject of his symphony?

To answer that, let’s listen. This is the climax of the second movement — it’s the moment on Bloody Sunday when the Tsar’s army opens fire on the unarmed protestors.

It’s incredibly intense music. How often do you hear a full percussion section solo? That melody you hear is called “Bare Your Heads,” one of nine Russian revolutionary songs which Shostakovich quotes in this symphony. He’s actually quoting himself — Shostakovich wrote a choral setting of this melody 6 years prior, in his 10 Songs by Revolutionary Poets. The “Bare your heads” melody is from the 6th song, entitled “The 9th of January,” words by Arkady Kots.

“Bare your heads!/Bare your heads!/On this bitter day the shadow of a long night trembled over the earth/Hey you, father Tsar!/Look around you/We have nothing to live on/your servants give us no help.”

He brings this melody back for the conclusion of the symphony. This is a quintessential Shostakovich finale. It teeters on the edge between anxiety and triumph. It’s declamatory, but there’s something deeply sinister about it. Take a listen.

It’s such a powerful, evocative ending to a truly cinematic symphony. Check out a full recording here — it’s worth it.

“The Joke Quartet,” Op. 33 No. 2 by Franz Joseph Haydn. Haydn’s known as the “Father of the String Quartet,” and though he wasn’t the first to write for two violins, a viola, and a cello, he absolutely made the genre what we know it as today.

Haydn is known and considered himself to be an inventive and clever composer, this inventiveness most clearly shines through in his string quartets.

Let’s take a listen to the beginning of the final movement, played here by Cuarteto Casals. This opening is the set-up to the joke.

Innocent enough. Now, classical music has changed a lot since 1781, but if there’s one thing that’s stayed the same, it’s that the audience is never quite sure when to clap. So let’s play a game: here’s the ending of the Joke Quartet. When do you clap?

Hilarious. The performers do a great job selling the joke too. Check out the rest of Haydn’s quartets, they’re great — my favorite is Op 77 No 2, but there are 68 of them so you have lots of choices. Hope you enjoyed, and watch more Parlando Breakdowns here.

The Meditation from Thaïs by Jules Massenet — it’s a famous and gorgeous violin piece, and you hear it a lot as an encore, but in the context of the opera it takes on a much richer, profound meaning .

Thaïs premiered in 1894, at the height of La Belle Époque, a cultural golden age in France. (it literally means “the beautiful age”) From The World’s Fairs in 1889 and 1900, to cabarets, to the Eiffel Tower, the Belle Époque was largely peaceful and filled with culture and new technology.

However, there were underlying tensions. Among these, the Catholic Church and the French Government repeatedly clashed throughout La Belle Epoque, as the government sought to secularize France. It’s this tension that Massenet explores in Thaïs. This opera is a battle between religion and hedonism, spiritual vs earthly pleasures: think Notre Dame vs the Moulin Rouge.

So let’s dive into the opera — this is the 2008 Metropolitan Opera production. Thaïs, played by Renee Fleming, is a vivacious, hedonistic Egyptian courtesan. She’s visited by Athanaël, a very pious, very celibate monk played by Thomas Hampson. In the lead in to the Meditation, Athanaël has spent the entire scene trying to convert Thaïs and convince her to become a nun, and he gets close! She almost says yes and goes with him, but then…

That laugh that turns into crying is written in the score, so clearly there’s a lot going through Thaïs’s mind. Does she leave with Athanaël and turn to God? Or, does she stick with her life of earthly pleasures? This is the emotional crux of the opera, and it’s hard to put these powerful, deeply conflicting emotions into words, so Massenet gives it to the violin.

This is, in the most literal sense, “heavenly” music.” You have the angelic harp, the placid strings, and the solo violin, it’s very spiritual, religious, music. BUT, when the theme returns, Massenet writes a twist that seems to indicate there’s more going on than we might assume...

The theme returns with a harmonic and textural change, adding in two horns, and a C natural in the cello and bass, indicating that both harmonically and dramatically, we’re going somewhere we didn’t plan on before....

So where do you go when you’ve had a biblical epiphany?

The Egyptian desert!

Thaïs goes with Athanaïl through the desert to the convent, and just as she goes through the doors, he realizes he’s in love with her.

Very sad and deeply in love, Athanaël renounces his monkly vows, is sad about it, and goes to find Thaïs in the convent, who, surprise surprise, is dying. (It is opera after all)

Always with great timing, Athanaël confronts Thaïs, who is at peace with her fate and is frankly pretty excited to go to heaven. As she sees the light, Athanaël desperately tells her to reject God and everything he had believed before.

So in this incredibly dramatic moment of personal and interpersonal crisis, what music does Massenet bring back?

It’s absolutely incredible music and drama, this amazing interplay of religion, love, and lust. Check out a full recording of the opera here, my favorite recording of the Meditation here, and this playlist for all Parlando Breakdowns.