The Corsican File

On the first of March, 2020, John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster, aka the Mountain Goats band, visited legendary studio Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN. Darnielle armed his band with new songs and reunited with producer Matt Ross-Spang who engineered last year’s In League with Dragons. In the same room where the Cramps tracked their 1980 debut album, the Mountain Goats spent a week capturing the magic of a band at the top of its game. The result is Getting Into Knives, the perfect album for the millions of us who have spent many idle hours contemplating whether we ought to be honest with ourselves and just get massively into knives. Getting Into Knives includes guest performance on Hammond B-3 organ by Charles Hodges (of numerous Al Green records) and guest performance on guitar by Chris Boerner (of the Hiss Golden Messenger band).

The genesis of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony Number 3 in E-Flat Major, the “Eroica”, has long been brought into connection with the composer’s early admiration for Napoleon. Indeed, Beethoven had initially intended to entitle the work “Bonaparte”, but he withdrew the dedication when the Corsican, as First Consul of a military-backed republic, crowned himself emperor on 2 December 1804. Nonetheless, Beethoven did complete the composition, which is influenced by both French Revolution music and Bachian polyphony, and the first movement is indeed heroic in character. As such, we may assume that Beethoven, while torn between cosmopolitan notions and Austrian patriotism, still held fast to the revolutionary ideals of “liberty, equality, fraternity”. At the same time, the second movement, a funeral march, shows that he equally wished to commemorate the victims of conflict and war, thus giving form to the dark side of the “heroic” story.

Ne m'oubliez pas! This new release features music for piano and for piano and violin by the Curaçao composers Jan Gerard Palm (1831-1906), Jules Blasini (1847-1887), Joseph Sickman Corsen (1853-1911) and Miguel Senior (1877-1975). Pianist Ketevan Sharumashvili and violinist Jeroen Dupont are both young and exceptionally talented musicians who have won several first prizes at international music competitions. The title of the album is a piece composed by Jules François Blasini. Born to Maria Elizabeth Leon of Curaçao and the Corsican Jean Blasini. His father was then serving as the French consul to Curaçao. Blasini's adagio, Ne m'oubliez pas! (Do not forget me!), has a classical, touching and tender beauty.

Martha Angelici (22 May 1907 – 11 September 1973), was a French operatic soprano of Corsican origin, particularly associated with the French lyric repertoire.