00:02 Movement I - The Death of the Mother of God 03:45 Movement II - Two Village Saints 04:33 Movement III - The Black Madonna of Blakernaya 07:17 Movement IV - The Baptism of Christ 10:00 Movement V - The Holy Women at the Sepulchre 12:34 Movement VI - Archangel Michael Fighting the Antichrist
The titles are very interesting for each movement. The texture ,modality and subtle nod to the given titles add together for a great work which deserves to enter the mainstream piano repertoire. Thank you for uploading. His vocal/ operatic writing is very interesting if you can upload too?
Einojuhani Rautavaara:Ikonok 1.Isten Anyjának halála (Maestoso - Tranquillo) 00:00 2.Két falusi szent (Giocoso) 03:45 3.A Blakernaya-i fekete Madonna (Lugubre) 04:33 4.Krisztus keresztsége (Presto - Maestoso - Tempo primo,delicatissimo - Come tempo II, tranquillo e meno mosso - Un poco rubato ,,alla recitativo'' - Presto) 07:17 5.A szent nők a Sepulcher-ban (Largo) 10:00 6.Mihály arkangyal az Antikrisztus ellen (Energico) 12:34 Laura Mikkola-zongora
Julian, you keep insulting people just because they (according to you) know less. Do you really not have anything to do with your time and musicology degree? If, though, you care so much about people’s wrong opinions, could you at least correct them instead of just attacking in an immature and totally counterproductive way? Thank you
@@Julian-nl9jm This just came to my attention as a result of another person replying to you. You've had two years to mull this over. Pehaps you can illuminate me as to exactly how and why I'm an idiot?
Was expecting something apocalyptic when I read the title "THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER OF GOD", that sounds like a title of something that would make even noise metal sound like a lullaby
@@Julian-nl9jm Not to be rude, but, uh, it sounds like they do. I hear some impressionism here. It's clearly _not_ Debussy/Ravel/Satie/Messiaen, but there's some similarities.
@@Julian-nl9jm you’re the type of person that makes people think classical music is pretentious. The last movement alone had figurations that resemble “jardins sous la pluie” from Debussy. That doesn’t mean it’s Impressionism, it means it was influenced by those composers. You can have your opinion, but you don’t need to be a dick about it.
druidmechanics the pianist’s hands are too small to reach a 10th (an octave plus a third, for example, C to E or D to F) on either black or white notes, and particularly can’t when there is a sustaining harmony inbetween (for example, C to E with a G, or any other note, held down in between). She must arpeggiate those chords, which is not ideally what the composer intended but is commonplace practice for performers. (Plenty of great pianists couldn’t reach more than an octave, so it’s not a slight.) I’m lfortunate to have hands as large as almost any great pianist you can name-I can reach an octave and a fifth, and have no trouble with the octave and a fourths that are part of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, which virtually EVERYONE arpeggiates... it’s almost as if Ravel had an “ideal” hand in mind when he wrote it. Anyway, Rautavaara also had an ideal player in mind, and I think probably did have big hands, although the tenths are intended to be played so slowly I think he himself had to stretch for each one. (I can play tenths in rapid succession but few composers have exploited that possibility in his or her work, because it’s fairly rare.) Meant to answer your question but came out bragging!! Sorry about that.
@@sebastientraglia1351 Yeah -- like the last section of Allegro barbaro. I found that piece unsatisfactory. The struggle didn't seem to grow or go anywhere: the piece was just the same sort of stuff all the way through.
deadeyes Well, technically his far away from being “ahead” of his time, in Music terminology. His works weren’t so experimental but his harmonical language was complex yet beautiful, with a lot of inspirations from Berg, Debussy, and others, forming his own musical language with his own voice.
@@deadeyes2803 how is he ahead of his time? I'd say this sort of ''post-romantic'', at times scriabinesque, style of piano writing (harmonically complex, virtuoso tableaux-pieces) is pretty conservative for the 1950's. I mean, it's very good music, but I don't see how it can be understood as innovative or groundbreaking in any meaningful sense?
And yet Rautavaara is somehow-also-all his own, in that every single composition of his (once you know his work) bears his unique fingerprint. And even as he travelled through stages of compositional style-a decade later, his work would be highly serial-it still contains in it his voice and that strong germ of spiritual insight which I can only say (not being Finnish, and not entirely familiar with the iconography invoked in these titles of the various sections) bears hallmarks of « a Northern perspective ». What’s immediately striking about the death of Mother Mary in the opening movement is that it is echoed again in the third movement with the Black Madonna of Blackernaya-one dies within the other-but the blackness preserves the mortal life of Mary, in a duality related to long days of summer and cold winter nights with blackness that lasts nearly all of the 24-hour cycle (and here, with his first flirtations with 12-tone serialism and major/minor inflections of each of the 12 chromatic notes, he gives us a 24-hour clock). What he says-very explicitly-is that Mother Mary must live the summer and must have all her faculties untapped and unmined by dark forces lest the winter come and the sun never return-it is a very specific and yet wary prophecy. But it is the sun that the darkness covets, and needs, lest the darkness become itself the permanent sunshine of a spotless mind, like a flower that blooms and reblooms and reseeds and lives every mindless floral life, because blooming is the thing to do. He spells out this prophecy again in his second piano sonata, his second cello concerto, and a dozen other works-but here with his early ‘Icons’, it is an obsession with coals and carbons that is particularly important to him. Black Madonnas are particularly revered in Eastern Europe and there is a famous one in Częstochowa, Poland, about which I know much more - it has also importantly informed generations of prophetic composers. The Black Maria merits the highest reverence, because its contemplation recognizes her mobile soul, her journey, her tribulation also within darkness but also guaranteed an arrival at a brighter place, illuminated and yet surrounded by walls which keep unwanted vermin away. It also foreshadows a life in which food is abundant and yet will not make you gain unnecessary weight; it foreshadows a life of leisure, with attendants and familiar companionship. It is the holiest of icons for this reason.
If you study each individual composer you'll see why their works sound the same (or works from the same period). They all have their own styles which entails chords, rhythms, motifs, melodic contours, structures, shapes, register, instrumentation etc. It's the same reason an AI can write music that sounds similar to whatever composer it learns from. If you fed an AI every single Chopin Mazurka, it would easily be able to write a new one. It's not that they're all literally the same, it's that there are patterns that appear in nearly all of them. I'd be interested to see an AI in the future that takes into account the development of a composer and uses that to make predictions for the future. With Chopin as an example, his music started to take a sharp turn in his final years. Way more adventurous harmony and very layered counterpoint on many levels
00:02 Movement I - The Death of the Mother of God
03:45 Movement II - Two Village Saints
04:33 Movement III - The Black Madonna of Blakernaya
07:17 Movement IV - The Baptism of Christ
10:00 Movement V - The Holy Women at the Sepulchre
12:34 Movement VI - Archangel Michael Fighting the Antichrist
The titles are very interesting for each movement. The texture ,modality and subtle nod to the given titles add together for a great work which deserves to enter the mainstream piano repertoire. Thank you for uploading. His vocal/ operatic writing is very interesting if you can upload too?
I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Rautavaara was just Messiaen but more Debussy-esque. This piece confirms it.
One of my favourite recent classical discoveries, this guys stuff is addictive!!
boi
Yo, it's John Appleseed.
For me too!
Can confirm, my Favourite is still his Passionale
boi
It says on the top "dedicated to the memory of my parents".
Great work
R.I.P. Einojuhani Rautavaara.
:c rest in piece
This guy is fantastic!
Большое спасибо - автору музыки и исполнителю❤ Прекрасно👏👏👏
I'd never heard of Einojuhani Rautavaara before discovering this channel, thanks!
Imagine Christ being baptized with this piece on the background
He actually was baptized with this piece on the background, among an infinitude of other art pieces.
0:02 4 dots? OMG!!! I haven't seen this before
Einojuhani Rautavaara:Ikonok
1.Isten Anyjának halála (Maestoso - Tranquillo) 00:00
2.Két falusi szent (Giocoso) 03:45
3.A Blakernaya-i fekete Madonna (Lugubre) 04:33
4.Krisztus keresztsége (Presto - Maestoso - Tempo primo,delicatissimo - Come tempo II, tranquillo e meno mosso - Un poco rubato ,,alla recitativo'' - Presto) 07:17
5.A szent nők a Sepulcher-ban (Largo) 10:00
6.Mihály arkangyal az Antikrisztus ellen (Energico) 12:34
Laura Mikkola-zongora
Some lovely chords in this. I'm definitely nicking some of those voicings. A bit like Mcoy Tyner meets Debussy. Amazing.
you're an idiot.
@@Julian-nl9jm calm down there now - no need for that
Julian, you keep insulting people just because they (according to you) know less. Do you really not have anything to do with your time and musicology degree?
If, though, you care so much about people’s wrong opinions, could you at least correct them instead of just attacking in an immature and totally counterproductive way? Thank you
@@Julian-nl9jm This just came to my attention as a result of another person replying to you. You've had two years to mull this over. Pehaps you can illuminate me as to exactly how and why I'm an idiot?
@@Julian-nl9jm No
Beautiful Music and great piano performance.
boi
Absolutely wonderful!
Incredible
Was expecting something apocalyptic when I read the title "THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER OF GOD", that sounds like a title of something that would make even noise metal sound like a lullaby
Cool piece and playning! 2nd movement reminds of Bartok.. like a miniature from Mikrokosmos
boi
so good...
Nice! Heavily influenced by French music. The sounds of the French impressionists and Messiaen everywhere!
you don't know what you're talking about
@@Julian-nl9jm Not to be rude, but, uh, it sounds like they do.
I hear some impressionism here. It's clearly _not_ Debussy/Ravel/Satie/Messiaen, but there's some similarities.
klop422 you don’t know what you’re talking about either. I have a doctorate in musicology
@@Julian-nl9jm Just listening to the piece tells you it sounds a touch impressionistic. You don't need a doctorate to hear.
@@Julian-nl9jm you’re the type of person that makes people think classical music is pretentious. The last movement alone had figurations that resemble “jardins sous la pluie” from Debussy. That doesn’t mean it’s Impressionism, it means it was influenced by those composers. You can have your opinion, but you don’t need to be a dick about it.
icon
Quadruple-dotted Half Notes? Is that how they're called?
Time stamp of what you're referring to ? Lol I'm not that exposed to that one, that's a new one for me
@@thatsEforEveryone Right at the beginning.
shut up
@@Julian-nl9jm lol
_Minims._
Nah, jk, half-notes is fine.
At 10:28, a gliss despite the "non arpeggiando". The chord must have been too much of a reach.
druidmechanics the pianist’s hands are too small to reach a 10th (an octave plus a third, for example, C to E or D to F) on either black or white notes, and particularly can’t when there is a sustaining harmony inbetween (for example, C to E with a G, or any other note, held down in between). She must arpeggiate those chords, which is not ideally what the composer intended but is commonplace practice for performers. (Plenty of great pianists couldn’t reach more than an octave, so it’s not a slight.)
I’m lfortunate to have hands as large as almost any great pianist you can name-I can reach an octave and a fifth, and have no trouble with the octave and a fourths that are part of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, which virtually EVERYONE arpeggiates... it’s almost as if Ravel had an “ideal” hand in mind when he wrote it.
Anyway, Rautavaara also had an ideal player in mind, and I think probably did have big hands, although the tenths are intended to be played so slowly I think he himself had to stretch for each one. (I can play tenths in rapid succession but few composers have exploited that possibility in his or her work, because it’s fairly rare.)
Meant to answer your question but came out bragging!! Sorry about that.
@@davidmehnert6206 Composers doesn't care about other pianists, If the composer himself can play it, he write It.
@@alejandrom.4680 Lol even if he can't play it... Cough cough Beethoven Hammerklavier, Scriabin's 9ths Etude cough cough
Alejandro M. Yeah not Scriabin xd
nice
boi
The last piece is the most insane thing I've ever seen!!!!
Insane in a alkan-like sense ahah
It's actually pretty easy
@@GUILLOM bruh you're so cool
@@IverBG97 what
@@sebastientraglia1351 Yeah -- like the last section of Allegro barbaro.
I found that piece unsatisfactory. The struggle didn't seem to grow or go anywhere: the piece was just the same sort of stuff all the way through.
the soundtrack for Breath of the Wild HAD to take inspiration from this
he is SUPER ahead of his time most composers today dont even sound this good his compositions remind me somewhat of animals as leaders
deadeyes Well, technically his far away from being “ahead” of his time, in Music terminology. His works weren’t so experimental but his harmonical language was complex yet beautiful, with a lot of inspirations from Berg, Debussy, and others, forming his own musical language with his own voice.
True, I also hear a bit of carl vine in BOTW
@@deadeyes2803 how is he ahead of his time? I'd say this sort of ''post-romantic'', at times scriabinesque, style of piano writing (harmonically complex, virtuoso tableaux-pieces) is pretty conservative for the 1950's. I mean, it's very good music, but I don't see how it can be understood as innovative or groundbreaking in any meaningful sense?
@@luihi9780 hmmm
What a title!
based Rautavaara
Rautavaara is so lit
Laura Mikkola sert très bien la musique de son illustre compatriote !
boi
suma dumattrew did you lose some kind of bet or why are you writing "boi" under almost every comment?
@@sebastianzaczek becuc
It's interesting music, but I cannot imagine any connection to any icon I have ever contemplated.
Death of the Mother of God?
Mistranslation? Should it not be Dormition of Assumption rather than death?
persichetti meets scriabin
Wouldn't have even noticed the Scriabin till you pointed it out, but it's certainly poignant.
Got any room left for Debussy?
I agree
And yet Rautavaara is somehow-also-all his own, in that every single composition of his (once you know his work) bears his unique fingerprint. And even as he travelled through stages of compositional style-a decade later, his work would be highly serial-it still contains in it his voice and that strong germ of spiritual insight which I can only say (not being Finnish, and not entirely familiar with the iconography invoked in these titles of the various sections) bears hallmarks of « a Northern perspective ».
What’s immediately striking about the death of Mother Mary in the opening movement is that it is echoed again in the third movement with the Black Madonna of Blackernaya-one dies within the other-but the blackness preserves the mortal life of Mary, in a duality related to long days of summer and cold winter nights with blackness that lasts nearly all of the 24-hour cycle (and here, with his first flirtations with 12-tone serialism and major/minor inflections of each of the 12 chromatic notes, he gives us a 24-hour clock). What he says-very explicitly-is that Mother Mary must live the summer and must have all her faculties untapped and unmined by dark forces lest the winter come and the sun never return-it is a very specific and yet wary prophecy. But it is the sun that the darkness covets, and needs, lest the darkness become itself the permanent sunshine of a spotless mind, like a flower that blooms and reblooms and reseeds and lives every mindless floral life, because blooming is the thing to do.
He spells out this prophecy again in his second piano sonata, his second cello concerto, and a dozen other works-but here with his early ‘Icons’, it is an obsession with coals and carbons that is particularly important to him.
Black Madonnas are particularly revered in Eastern Europe and there is a famous one in Częstochowa, Poland, about which I know much more - it has also importantly informed generations of prophetic composers. The Black Maria merits the highest reverence, because its contemplation recognizes her mobile soul, her journey, her tribulation also within darkness but also guaranteed an arrival at a brighter place, illuminated and yet surrounded by walls which keep unwanted vermin away. It also foreshadows a life in which food is abundant and yet will not make you gain unnecessary weight; it foreshadows a life of leisure, with attendants and familiar companionship. It is the holiest of icons for this reason.
03:45
Ahmed Adnan Saygun who was Turkish composer liked this. 😂
3:45
If this doesn't scream esoteric, I don't know what does
A homage to Orthodoxy.
This gives me Messiaen vibes
Undoubtedly an original and powerful voice, but his music doesn't speak to me. It lacks human warmth. Thanks for posting.
For fucks sake, wrong and dissonant never felt so right and harmonious to me HAHAHA
This is quite an accessible piece when compared to Rautavaara's earlier works
why does his music all sound the same?
No
Because
If you study each individual composer you'll see why their works sound the same (or works from the same period). They all have their own styles which entails chords, rhythms, motifs, melodic contours, structures, shapes, register, instrumentation etc.
It's the same reason an AI can write music that sounds similar to whatever composer it learns from. If you fed an AI every single Chopin Mazurka, it would easily be able to write a new one. It's not that they're all literally the same, it's that there are patterns that appear in nearly all of them.
I'd be interested to see an AI in the future that takes into account the development of a composer and uses that to make predictions for the future. With Chopin as an example, his music started to take a sharp turn in his final years. Way more adventurous harmony and very layered counterpoint on many levels
Too boring for me.