November

Otra de nuestras canciones inspirada en un poema de Sara Teasdale.
Another song of ours inspired by one of Sara Teasdale's poems

November

The world is tired, the year is old,
The fading leaves are glad to die,
The wind goes shivering with cold
Where the brown reeds are dry.

Our love is dying like the grass,
And we who kissed grow coldly kind,
Half glad to see our old love pass
Like leaves along the wind.
 

Noviembre

El mundo está cansado, el año es viejo,
Las hojas marchitas se alegran de morir,
El viento sopla tiritando de frío
donde los juncos pardos ya están secos.

Nuestro amor está muriendo como la hierba,
Y nosotros, que una vez nos besamos, 
nos volvemos fríamente corteses,
a medias contentos de ver como nuestro ajado amor pasa
cual hojas arrastradas por el viento.

Día Internacional de la Música 2016

You'll never hurt me again from Nonchalance on Vimeo.

Dia Internacional de la Música 2015

Un año más, participamos en la celebración del Día Internacional de la Música tocando en la calle con algunos otros grupos de Valladolid. A diferencia del año pasado, en esta ocasión el lugar del concierto era una tranquila placita que invitaba a sentarse en la terraza del bar y tomarse algo mientras escuchabas la música en vivo y charlabas con los amigos. Una tarde-noche realmente agradable.


















Mad Girl's Love Song from Nonchalance on Vimeo.

And then there were five....

Spring Rain

    

     Sara Teasdale es una autora cuya obra ha inspirado algunas de nuestras canciones. Spring Rain es la primera que hemos terminado, pero vendrán más. Los críticos en su momento consideraron que mucha de la poesía de Teasdale era demasiado sencilla o poco sofisticada, pero no obstante, llena de un lenguaje musical y evocador. Uno de estos críticos, escribiendo sobre su obra Love Songs, afirmaba que "La Señora Teasdale es en primer y último lugar, y sobre todo, una cantante". Bueno, quizás es por esto que su poesía resulta tan inspiradora desde un punto de vista musical. 

     Si queréis conocer algo más sobre su vida, podéis encontrarlo aquí.

     Obviamente, este poema nos habla de algo más que de una simple tormenta. Los recuerdos a menudo se desvanecen, pero siempre permanecen con nosotros. El tiempo pasa y nuestras vidas siguen adelante, pero un pequeño incidente sin importancia puede traer de vuelta todos esos sentimientos, envueltos quizás en un cierto aroma de nostalgia, que no necesariamente implica tristeza o añoranza.

      

     Sara Teasdale is a writer whose work has inspired some of our songs. Spring Rain is the first to be finished up, but there are more on the way. Critics found much of Teasdale's poetry to be unsophisticated but full of musical language and evocative emotion. One of these critics, writing about the 1917 edition of Love Songs, asserted that "Miss Teasdale is first, last, and always a singer." Well, perhaps that's the reason why her poetry is so inspiring from a musical point of view.

     If you'd like to learn more about her life, you can find it here

     Obviously, this poem is about more than just a rainstorm. Memories often fade, but they stay with us forever. Time passes and our lives move on. However, it can just take one event to bring all the feelings back, maybe wrapped up in a slight cloud of nostalgia, which doesn't necessarily imply sadness or melancholy. 

Spring Rain

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
in a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motors buses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say...

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
in a rush of rain.

Lluvia de primavera

Creía que ya lo había olvidado,
pero todo volvió de nuevo anoche
con el primer trueno de la primavera
como un repentino aguacero.

Recordé un portal oscuro
en donde nos refugiamos mientras pasaba la tormenta,
los truenos atenazando la tierra
y los relámpagos haciendo garabatos en el cielo.

Pasaban los autobuses balanceándose,
la calle ya era un río de lluvia
quebrado en pequeñas ondas doradas
en el cristal tintado de las farolas.

Con la desatada lluvia primaveral y los truenos
mi corazón estaba salvaje y feliz;
Tus ojos aquella noche me dijeron más
de lo que tus labios jamás habrían de decirme...

Creía que ya lo había olvidado,
pero todo volvió de nuevo anoche
con el primer trueno de la primavera
como un repentino aguacero.

Sgt Pepper and Santana added to music GCSE curriculum

Pupils on AQA course will study three tracks from Beatles album as well as Grammy-winning Latin rock and Haydn symphony

     Students taking music GCSE are to study the Beatles’ groundbreaking album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as well as the Latin rock band Santana, as part of an updated curriculum. Though now almost 50 years old and ancient history to the teenagers who will embark on the course, three Sgt Pepper tracks will be at the core of the new AQA GCSE, including the Lennon/McCartney collaboration Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

     Pupils will be required to study melody, harmony, structure, rhythm and the meaning of lyrics such as “Picture yourself in a boat on a river/ With tangerine trees and marmalade skies/ Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly/ A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”

     Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was widely thought at the time to allude to the drug LSD, but according to Lennon’s son Julian was in fact inspired by a childhood picture with the same title that he drew of his nursery classmate Lucy O’Donnell.

     The other Beatles tracks included in the curriculum will be With a Little Help from My Friends – later memorably covered by Joe Cocker – and Within You, Without You, written by George Harrison. The three Fab Four songs will form a quarter of the “understanding music” part of the course.

For “traditional music”, students will study songs from Santana’s 17th album, Supernatural, which won nine Grammy awards after its release in 1999. The “western classical tradition since 1910” part of the curriculumwill focus on the American composer Aaron Copland’s Saturday Night Waltz and Hoedown, from his 1942 ballet, Rodeo. Going back further, the course will also look at Haydn’s Symphony 101 in D Major, known as The Clock, which premiered in March 1794.

     Students will still have to write two compositions and give a performance as part of their exam, but as well as choosing cello, clarinet or piano, they will have the option to demonstrate their DJing and “scratching” skills. They can also sing – anything from Beyonc’s Single Ladies to Puccini’s Nessun Dorma.

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     Seb Ross, head of AQA’s music department, said: “Pop music began in this country with the Beatles in the swinging 60s, so what better band to look to for the study of contemporary music than the Fab Four? We’ve chosen the Beatles because John, Paul, Ringo and George helped to define popular music and the iconic Sgt Pepper album has taken on a life of its own, so it’s an exciting addition to AQA’s music GCSE.”

Alexis Petridis, the Guardian’s head rock and pop critic, said of the new curriculum: “I’m all for the music GCSE trying to get students to engage with rock and pop music as well as classical, but with all due respect to the makers of Sgt Pepper, I wonder if a Beatles album knocking on 50 years old is any more relevant to a teenager than Haydn is. But at least I can understand why they picked it: classic album, high watermark of a legendary band’s career.

     “I’d like to have been in the meeting where, with the whole rich and brilliant history of pop and rock from which to choose something for students to dissect and examine in depth, they came to the conclusion that the obvious answer was Supernatural by Santana. I’ve literally got no idea whatsoever why anyone would think that was a good idea. It’s a bloody awful record.”

     One 15-year-old currently studying Les Misérables as part of his GCSE music course was also unimpressed. “The Beatles? That’s a very bad plan. I like the Beatles, but they’re used so much,” the student said. “Always at primary school it was the Beatles. They’re so prominent. Santana? No, I’ve not heard of them.

     “I enjoy my course. I feel it should be based more on performance rather than tons and tons of theory, but I like the composition aspect. We’ve not actually done much classical. The first unit we did was handbells, then we did minimalism, now we’re doing musical theatre, which everyone hates.”

But Ernie Sutton, treasurer of the British Beatles Fan Club, was delighted. “It’s a great tribute to the Beatles that their music is being studied for the new AQA music GCSE,” he said. “The Beatles changed the face of popular music and songwriting in a very short space of time, which future musicians benefited from. It is fantastic that young people can study their groundbreaking and influential Sgt Pepper album, which changed recording techniques for ever.”

     In the current curriculum, pupils explore different strands of music rather than concentrating on specific pieces or albums. The new GCSE, which will be available for teaching from September next year, has been submitted to the exam regulator Ofqual for approval.

     AQA has also developed a new dance GCSE, which it says has won backing from key figures in the dance world. Contemporary dance training in the UK was recently criticised by three leading choreographers including Akram Khan, who complained about declining standards at UK auditions and a lack of “rigour, technique and performance skills” among UK-trained dancers.

Sean Gregory, director of creative learning for the Barbican Centre and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, one of the world’s leading conservatoires, welcomed the new GCSE and the inclusion of artists like the Beatles and Santana.

     Carlos Santana was, he said, “a fantastic musician” and a pioneer in his time, who drew on a wide variety of Latin and African influences which would help students open doors to other genres and creative influences.

“The musical landscape has changed,” said Gregory. “Young people’s motivations for learning music is shifting. A lot of this is to do with unlocking creativity for young people so they can start realising music in different ways.”

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