Saturday, September 22, 2012

One Hit Wonder

Today

The world of classical music has its "one-hit wonders" just as much as the pop world. One thinks of Padilla, Bruch, Pachalbel and Dag Wiren.

As I came into the kitchen this morning I heard on the radio the tail end of Dag Wiren's serenade for strings.

"That's Dag Wiren!" I said triumphantly "David used to play me this in my teens."

In My Day

Sometime in the mid '60s, I think, David and I decided that our basement bedrooms were too small and poky to support our desire for student parties and the like. So we were given adjacent bedrooms on the top floor of 4BH. These rather nice rooms had pointed roofed dormers containing rounded windows and had been occupied by Daddy's father-in law, Dawson Large until his death some years earlier. Daddy had used one of them as an office for some time but he cheerfully relinquished them to us.

The rooms were of a decent size and we certainly had more than one party there. David at that time worked as a tester for Decca records and he had a large and evolving collection of "test pressings" - vinyl discs which were precursors to the finished product. He probably wasn't strictly supposed to have them, but I don't suppose there'll be any repercussions at this distance.

He also possessed a record player, radio and reel-to-reel tape player. He rigged up speakers in my room and, with an undoubting faith in his own taste, played me musical selections of his choosing from the moment I woke up. I must say, I didn't doubt his taste either, and listened avidly to most of what he played me (although I never really, if I'm honest, got the hang of Turangalila).

One piece that cropped up regularly was the Dag Wiren serenade which was certainly rather energising to wake up to. We never seemed to hear anything else by this composer and he is indelibly linked in my mind with the jolly little tune with slightly soured harmonies that conclude the work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa7iD4MzaGs

A proper one-hit wonder. It's not that he never wrote anything else; it's just that the rest of his oeuvre never quite made it into the daily musical lexicon.

A few years ago I gave Beatrice a CD called "Pachalbel's Greatest Hit" which contained about 20 versions of his Canon - brass bands, The Swingle Singers, pop and jazz renditions as well as the standard version. If you're only going to have one hit, I suppose you would still want it to have maximum exposure even after 400 years.