Happiness… Music to make you feel good.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you. And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And for today it is… Happiness.

If that sounds a little… I don’t know, low-brow or maybe even banal then my argument is that sometimes music can just be for pleasure and if that is the composer and the performer’s intention then good for them… and good for us as listeners. If the intention of most music is to make you ‘feel’… then some music can just be written to make you feel good. And then there is music where the composer may have had no particular intention but just a need to create a particular collection of sounds that then happen to, for at least one listener, (and that would be me) bring joy and delight. Because if there was ever an episode of Classical For Everyone where the selection of music is entirely subjective… then this is the one. I hope the music I am going to play will make you happy too but all I can say with confidence is that it makes me extremely happy. And, for all of us… sometimes happiness can be in short supply… and if that is the case then I hope the music I am going to play you over the next hour can at least give you a smile. In service of that objective in this episode will be music by Beethoven, Rossini, Bach, Schubert, Westlake, Bizet, Mozart, Gershwin and Vivaldi.

First of all is the opening section of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony from 1808. Beethoven himself gave it the additional name of ‘Pastoral Symphony or Recollections of Country Life’ and it has become known simply as the ‘Pastoral Symphony’. He gave the section I am going to play a separate title as well… Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside. Here it is performed by the Belgian orchestra Anima Eterna conducted by Jos van Immerseel. The opening section of Beethoven’s 6^th symphony. It is about 11 minutes long.

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That was the Belgian orchestra Anima Eterna conducted by Jos van Immerseel. With the opening section of Beethoven’s 6^th symphony.

It will probably be the subject of another episode of the podcast but to put it briefly…not all operas are about the untimely deaths of women who deserved better. Some are intricately put together comedies where the music does much to enhance the antics of characters who are frequently determined to undermine class and social conventions. They can be very, very funny. And such an opera is Gioachino Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’ from 1816. The overture is about seven minutes long and I think it does all the right things to put you in the mood for a good laugh. Here it is performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner.

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I hope the music I am playing you is living up to this episode’s theme of… Happiness. That was the overture from Gioachino Rossini’s opera ‘The Barber of Seville’ performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner.

Next up is something a little less exuberant but still I think a source of happiness. It is the slow section of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins from about 1730. And this was one of those instances where Bach used the term ‘concerto’ the way it is still commonly used today… a work where one or a handful of virtuoso soloists are accompanied by an orchestra.  And generally, like this one, concertos are in three sections with a slow one placed between two faster ones. And frequently these ‘slow’ sections can be a place where a composer explores darker emotions.  But that is not the case here. I think this is just a six minute exercise in almost pure beauty. It makes me pretty happy and I hope it does the same for you. Here is the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the violin soloists are Helena Rathbone and Richard Tognetti who also directs the orchestra.The slow section of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Concerto for Two Violins’. And this is for Bob… a fan of Bach and a source of much happiness.

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That was the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the violin soloists were Helena Rathbone and Richard Tognetti who also directed the orchestra with the slow section of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Concerto for Two Violins’.

It is a mistake to conflate a composer’s biography with expectations of what the emotional content of their music is going to be. Even though Franz Schubert died at the age of only 31; in his short life he wrote some gorgeously happy music and… this I think suits that description… the opening section of his fifth symphony from 1816. And it is performed here by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm.

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That was the opening section of Franz Schubert’s fifth symphony from 1816. And it was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm.

Some music benefits from the imagery of a subject it attempts to describe. And that is especially the case for music written to accompany moving images… like Nigel Westlake’s music for John Weiley’s 1991 IMAX documentary, Antarctica.  This is the section Westlake titled ‘Penguin Ballet’ and as you’d imagine the footage is of penguins happily frolicking under the ice. Here is the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Porcelijn with Timothy Kain playing the solo guitar… Nigel Westlake’s ‘Penguin Ballet’.

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That was the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Porcelijn and Timothy Kain playing the solo guitar… with Nigel Westlake’s ‘Penguin Ballet’ from the music he composed for the film ‘Antarctica’.

Alright if music for penguins playing under the ice didn’t bring you the happiness I promised with this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’ then perhaps a fast ride in a horse drawn carriage through the snow drifts of the Russian countryside wrapped in furs will do it. And again it is music for the screen… In 1934 Sergei Prokofievwas asked to compose the music for a film called ‘Lieutenant Kije’. Like so much Soviet art of the time it was about how much worse everything was back in the days before the communist revolution. The film was a satire about bureaucrats being so terrified of the Tsar that they invented a fictional soldier to take the blame for various palace stuff-ups… the Lt Kije of the title. In one of the scenes the characters ride through the snow in a carriage drawn by three horses called a ‘troika’ and that is what the section of music is called. And this is Claudio Abbado conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. ‘Troika’ by Sergei Prokofiev from ‘Lt Kije’.

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That was Claudio Abbado conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Troika by Sergei Prokofiev from the music he wrote for the film ‘Lt Kije’.

Next, to continue the theme of happiness I am going to play you what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could do in under 90 seconds to set a mood of expectation for a very big party. With the words by Lorenzo Da Ponte the character Don Giovanni from the opera of the same name sings…

Fin ch' han del vino

Calda la testa

Una gran festa

Fa' preparar

Which very roughly means…

As long as the wine

Warms up their heads

A great party

Can be arranged.

Ruggiero Raimondi sings Don Giovanni and Lorin Maazel conducts the Paris Opera Orchestra. Mozart and Da Ponte’s Fin ch' han del vino from ‘Don Giovanni’.

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That was Ruggiero Raimondi singing Don Giovanni and Lorin Maazel conducting the Paris Opera Orchestra with Mozart and Da Ponte’s Fin ch' han del vino from the opera ‘Don Giovanni’. And whilst I hope you agree with me that that is particularly happy music, for all the right reasons Don Giovanni’s happiness does not last.

But ours can hopefully continue for at least another 14 minutes with what I am going to claim is the happiest classical music to come out of America in the 20^th century… George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. Commissioned in 1924 by Jazz Band leader Paul Whiteman for a concert in New York he called ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’; Gershwin wrote the piece in about five weeks with the orchestration done by Ferdie Grofé who had been arranging works for the Whiteman group for several years. Several elements combine to create the sense of happiness and exuberance in the piece.

Gershwin blends jazz rhythms and harmonies with classical structures. The syncopated rhythms and swing feeling create an inherent energy and forward momentum that feels joyful and liberated. There's also a distinctly urban American quality to Rhapsody in Blue…the energy of 1920s New York - a time of economic prosperity, cultural liberation, and technological progress. The piano's percussive qualities, combined with moments of orchestral swagger, evoke city life in all its exciting possibilities. Here is André Previn as piano soloist and conductor with the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra. George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’.

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That was André Previn as piano soloist and conductor with the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra. George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net. There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is almost everything in Italian?’.

And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you…  some more happiness… the opening of an Antonio Vivaldi concerto for guitar and orchestra. Paul Keuntz directing his chamber orchestra with the guitar soloist Narcisco Yepes. Thanks for listening.