S2. E80. Harmony with Rossini and Rameau, melodic discord with Prokofiev

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Welcome back to Perfect Pitch with Nick Healy Hutchinson and his fresh approach to the world of classical music. Whether you're an expert or a beginner, old or young, Perfect Pitch has something for everyone.

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In a period of just over 20 years, ending in 1829, Rossini knocked up 39 operas, and then decided to call it a day in that particular field. When you write that many, it's inevitable that an element of repetition is going to find its way into the overture. And I suspect Rossini would have been the first to say, well, so what? That aside, the most commonly played boil down to just a handful of the Barbara Seville, the Thieving Magpie, Cinderella, and William Mattel. I'm not, I admit, the biggest fan of his music, but there are times when his freshness goes a long way. And we've only listened to one before, The Italian Girl in Algiers. So maybe it's a time for another. The Silken Ladder is a one act of art with an overture which oozes likeness and comedy of a very early story. I'm turning, as previously, to the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Mariner. It began to really flourish in the 17th century with the work of Handel and Bach, the latter you might recall being hailed by Beethoven as the immortal god of harmony. But there were others too who take far less credit than they are due. And one such was Jean-Philippe Rameau, born in France just a couple of years before Handel and Bach in 1683. In one not in a substantial reference book our God, he manages nothing more than a single footnote. His output was fairly prodigious across most disciplines, especially in opera, but it was his writings about harmony which had the greatest impact on contemporary and future composers. Their harmonies are joyful with a delightful delicacy, combining a convincing portrayal of their subject with a clear wit. I'm surprised we don't hear more of them. So here are four miniatures Le Rappel des Oiseaux, La Joyeuse, La Poule, and Les Sauvages, and I'm not sure. If I ever have trouble nodding off at night, I do occasionally put on my podcast. Not because I want to listen to me, none of us, I suspect, like the sound of our own voice, but because I know I'm going to enjoy the music. And it works perfectly, by the way. Because I only rarely get to the end of an episode before sleep intervenes. But it also alerts me to other thoughts as well as the occasional boo-boo. When I listened to Clara Schumann's Remote for Violin and Piano again recently, I kept thinking to myself, I've heard this expressiveness of allocational urgency somewhere before. And then it hit me how similar star they are to one of the greatest of all sonatas with this pairing, namely Cesar Franck, which we listened to all the way back in episode 30. Schumann and Franck were almost exact contemporaries, and there is no record of them ever having met. But the car is a pieces predate Frank by nearly 30 years on the underlying groundbreaking talent. In the debit column, I noticed that I said the march for the Grandidia Guard was nearly 400 years old. Or math, if you prefer, it was never my strong suit. But since the music's origin dates back to the early 1700s, 300 years would have been closer to the mark. Now for a complete change of mood and a huge departure from those exactly harmonic norms, but no less melodic for it. From the tender love story at his heart to the tensions that were the romantic relationship inevitably brought with it. Here are two examples of those extremes. The innocence of the young lovers in the balcony scene, with his lovely expansive theme, yet with the risks never far away. And then the occasionally discordant broken rhythm to convey the death of a devil.

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