Inaugural Chamber Music

If you missed hearing the lovely piece John Williams wrote for the presidential inauguration, you can hear it here. It's posted on one of my favorite blogs, The Rest Is Noise. The blogger is Alex Ross, NY Times classical music critic and author of a wonderful book by the same name about music in the 20th century.

The piece, Air on Simple Gifts, is based on an old Shaker song that was also used by Aaron Copland in his ballet, Appalachian Spring. The instrumentation of violin, clarinet, cello, and piano was used most famously by French composer Olivier Messaien for Quatour pour le fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) which he wrote while in a German POW camp during WWII. He used the instrumentation because those were the musicians he had as fellow prisoners.

Williams' arrangement was, in my opinion, a wonderful addition to the ceremony. The many faces of America were represented by the performers: Itzhak Perlman, a white, Jewish, differently-abled senior citizen; Yo Yo Ma, a middle aged Asian man; Anthony McGill, a young African-American; and Gabriela Montero, a young Latina. What a wonderful tribute to American diversity!

If you get a chance, listen to the piece and post your own comments below.

Update: It turns out that the music heard live over the speakers and on television was a recording the musicians made earlier. They were playing the piece live on the stage along with the recording, but because of the sub-freezing temperatures, they did not want to risk breaking a string and ruining such a solemn occasion. Those people who were close enough to the musicians heard both the live and recorded versions, but the rest of us only heard the recording. Read the details here.