Slipped Disc mentions the death of Rodion Shchedrin, whose 24 Preludes and Fugues are another cycle you should know because Soviet contrapuntalists included more than the usual suspect DSCH

https://slippedisc.com/2025/08/death-of-russias-doyen-composer-92/

Why the Carmen Suite got mentioned so early I don't know.  I became acquainted with the composer's work through his 24 Preludes and Fugues and Polyphonic Notebook.

Youtube being what it is someone has posted Book 1 of the cycle of preludes and fugues (which the composer recorded himself), and someone else  has posted a video-score of Book 2.

Speaking of which ... there's been a treatment of the composer's fugal work out there in the world since 2010 and it seems good to share a written entry-point for someone who might want to learn more about this composer.  

RODION SHCHEDRIN’S TWENTY-FOUR PRELUDES AND FUGUES: HISTORIC, ANALYTIC, PERFORMANCE, AND PEDAGOGIC 

PERSPECTIVES 

Igor Resnianski, January, 2010 

https://scholarshare.temple.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/69e662b8-60c1-464b-993c-fff00a94f26d/content

I realize that in the United States the Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues would be considered "the" or the "only" 20th century cycle of preludes and fugues that's even worthy of mention but I think that's a bit unfair to Shchedrin and Zaderatsky, both Soviet composers who wrote pretty good sets of 24 Preludes and Fugues themselves. Will their cycles supplant the DSCH?  No, that's pretty obvious, but I do think that they should be heard alongside the DSCH.

Take the A minor, I like it. I like the Shchedrin A minor and the Zaderatsky A minor, too.

This looks like a case where John Borstlap and I agree that if you're going to mention the passing of Shchedrin please don't lead with the Carmen Suite.  The composer wrote plenty of other music. 

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor setting of Psalm 137, a brief discussion of the setting musically and in terms of textual reception history

 Since I've been reading about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor lately, particularly his well-known Hiawatha cantata cycle, I felt like looking around for some other pieces he wrote I hadn't heard of before.

So he wrote other choral works and I found out he set Psalm 137.  If you just want to hear the performance and read the score stick with this. If you want to read a brief commentary read past the break.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_CLRWQ381Y&list=RDL_CLRWQ381Y

https://imslp.org/wiki/By_the_waters_of_Babylon_(Coleridge-Taylor%2C_Samuel)

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Naomi and Ruth, Op. 137

In that other post I just did where I mentioned I don't usually commend secular cantatas or oratorios much ... that's because usually I prefer choral music to be on Christian and Jewish biblical or liturgical texts.

Like this setting the Italian Jewish emigre composer Mario Castlenuovo-Tedesco did on Ruth and Naomi and, well, you better know who those two are if you're even reading this blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuWIITgWJ5k

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha is out, from the Oxford Keynotes series

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/samuel-coleridge-taylors-hiawatha-9780197649343
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha
Benedict Taylor
Published: 15 August 2025
152 Pages | 13
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches
ISBN: 9780197649343

I'm not far into it but this is the kind of book I think would have gotten an appreciative note from AfriClassicall, which has been dormant for years. The relevant page on the associated site is over here.

If Seattle Symphony staged a performance of the Hiawatha cycle like they did with Bartok's Bluebird's Castle I'd want to catch it.  I am not usually into opera and sometimes into oratorios. 

Youtube being what it is someone has posted the entire score and the old Malcolm Sargent recording of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast online

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S05Jd6iH0nI

So if you've never heard of this composer before or heard his music, you should know this is Victorian era choral music. There were people who called Coleridge-Taylor "the black Mahler", which I consider a shame because Coleridge-Taylor wrote some good tunes (I mean that in the best way) while Mahler kind of annoys me and seemed vastly overlong and ... I respect Mahler's influence but don't much enjoy him.  So for me Coleridge-Taylor gains nothing by a comparison to Mahler since I'm not a Mahler fan.  If you like Mahler ... alright.

It's probably my bias being a Haydn fan but I think this work is closer to The Creation, a real crowd-pleaser in the good sense of the term and a beautifully crafted, elegant yet sincere work. Now it's preferable to just hear the music on its own terms, if possible, but the way reception histories are that's functionally impossible.  I can't hear Fernando Sor as "the Beethoven of the guitar" as I understand Beethoven because Sor's writing is generally too square and insufficiently mercurial, and also I prefer Haydn to Beethoven as I've gotten older.  But the way music is, we can never entirely extricate it from extramusical and nonmusical or intermusical associations. 

I don't usually go out of my way to recommend secular choral works. Come to think of it ... 

a jaded little poem--thoughts on Protestant mainline exousiology of redeemable powers and principalities during the Clinton terms

Liberal Protestants just can't believe

that demons exist (who kill and deceive)

but this unbelief they quickly relent

when a Republican is President.

when a lament is written "to" one person but really "about" someone else, a thought on Ethan Hein's discussion of Pinkfloyd's "Wish You Were Here" in light of the reception history of Ezekiel 28 in Jewish and Christian interpretation

This probably couldn't be more literally academic a riff, despite my not being an academic, but I couldn't help thinking about a comment Ethan Hein made about the Pinkfloyd song "Wish You Were Here" in an article he published recently.  Hein mentioned that the lyrics for the Pinkfloyd song have formally been "to" Syd Barrett but he interprets them as really being "about" the failed relationship between Roger Waters and David Gilmour.  

The album Wish You Were Here is supposed to be about Syd Barrett, Floyd’s original frontman and main songwriter. Barrett had mental health problems, and as he became more erratic and unreliable, the band replaced him with Gilmour. While that was probably unavoidable, they felt intensely guilty about it afterwards – Gilmour included. However, I don’t hear the song Wish You Were Here as being about Barrett; I hear it as describing the failed bromance between Gilmour and Roger Waters.

This is the perfect opportunity to consider that "Wish You Were Here" is "to" Syd but "about" Gilmour. 

Now Hein didn't exegete the lyrics of the song because he was interested in the hypermetric ambiguity of the melodic line against the accompaniment, but for people who might consider it odd that he takes this interpretive stance about the lyrics, this is not unheard of.

In fact, in biblical interpretation Ezekiel 28, with its lament over the king of Tyre, has a literally biblical precedent for a text that can be interpreted as "to" the King of Tyre but has been interpreted "about" either Adam or Satan.  These are two dramatically different interpretations that reflect rabbinical and patristic differences of reception within Judaism and Christianity and there is literally a book on this topic that I've been reading lately by Hector Patmore.  

Adam, Satan, and the King of Tyre: The Interpretation of Ezekiel 28:11-19 in Late Antiquity

Texts that can seem straightforward to a casual reading can turn out to be either vague or invite extravagant variations in interpretation.  I am also, it doesn't quite just so happen, working through Andrei Orlov's Supernal Serpent: Mysteries of Leviathan in Judaism and Christianity.  Was Leviathan a monster representing the chaos of the sea; a dead-but-not-forever corpse who was the foundation of the cosmos; the devil; or, paradoxically, a theophany?  Each of these interpretations gained some traction in the Abrahamic religions.  Far be it from me to suggest that a Roger Waters lyric is on par with any biblical text from Ezekiel or Job, but I did want to mention that among biblical scholars the precedent of interpreting texts with an understanding of a contrast or ambiguity between the "to" and "about" has a pedigree going back thousands of years. 

Which is why I think Ethan Hein's use of this distinction is fine. It has plenty of scholarly precedent even if casual or ardent fans of Pinkfloyd who don't like that he didn't treat the lyrics of the song as really worth talking about in themselves don't necessarily know this. 

But if someone "did" want to discuss the lyrics ... this would be the kind of thing a scholar could bring up.  

links for the weekend

For fans of Spy x Family these links for this weekend could broadly be categorized under the theme of “Um … Yor?” Let the reader understand ... or not ...