Hidden Notes: Recent Episodes
Bjorn Arntsen and Michael F Williams
Hidden Notes - Your music analysis podcast. Each month, your hosts Bjorn Arntsen and Michael F. Williams will dissect a piece from the classical music archives. They will discuss the pieces background, talk about harmonic progression, form analysis - even share some of their own compositions and how they came into being!
Du’a (Prayer) for Broken Shelter, a work which traces one family’s survival amidst the devastation of the global refugee crisis.
In this episode of Hidden Notes, your musical analysis podcast, you get to meet New Zealand composer, Michael F Williams, who also happens to be one the hosts of this show.
Music composed by Michael F Williams that is featured in the episode:
Spirit Flies, Sun Rises
Behind the parapet
The Void Between Heartbeats
The Prodigal Child
The Juniper Passion
Symphony No.1 - Letters From the Front
All above pieces are available to listen to on Apple Music and Spotify.
Also featured:
Du'a For Broken Shelter - excerpts from Act 1 Hamilton, NZ performance April 2021.
About Michael:
Michael Williams is a well-known figure in New Zealand composition. He has received commissions from most of the country's major musical institutions including the NZSO, NBR New Zealand Opera and Chamber Music New Zealand and his music is regularly broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert. He has recorded a number of works through the Atoll label.
About Du'a For Broken Shelter:
From the maelstrom of the refugee crisis stretched across our globe, one Afghan family find themselves delivered to the shores of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Transplanted to a strange homeland, its members navigate challenges of belonging, sing of the traumas they have fled, sustain each other with ties of family and memory that withstand all loss, and strive to reclaim a sense of shared future from fragile new beginnings.
Struggling to adapt to their new landscape, they find themselves face to face with fresh tragedy: having crossed a world to find safe haven, they find the threat of hate still stalking the country they’ve sacrificed everything to reach. Du’a (Prayer) for Broken Shelter follows the plight of one refugee family who must rise above the wreckage of unthinkable hate-crime, weaving their voices through a shattered chorus of national grief.
In this episode your hosts, Michael F. Williams and Bjorn Arntsen discuss Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony "Resurrection". The Resurrection Symphony, was written between 1888 and 1894, and first performed in 1895. This symphony was one of Mahler's most popular and successful works during his lifetime. Bjorn and Mike discuss the symphony's background, Mahler's obsession with death and much more. Bjorn takes apart the symphony's first movement, "Totenfeier".
Please note that this episode contains discussions on the effects abuse.
Check out Leonards Bernstein's markings in the score here: https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/025bb654-e56f-4243-9b82-67bccdfa0b2b-0.1
In the first episode of Hidden Notes, your hosts Bjorn Arntsen and Michael F Williams discuss Michael Nyman's chamber opera "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" - based on the case study by Oliver Sacks from the book of the same name.