Category Archives: Romantic era

by | December 21, 2014 · 6:00 am

Michael Tilson Thomas and Mahler

 

In 2007, as he neared the completion of his recordings of the full cycle of Mahler’s symphonies with the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas discussed what makes these performances unusual.

“My perspective has always been to encourage sections of the orchestra—as well as soloists with the orchestra—to feel a great deal of freedom of inflection in the music, with a great awareness of the source of the music’s inspiration.”

“[That source] might be cabaret music or military music or Jewish music or folk music from different parts of the world. Or religious music, maybe, or something very beautiful and burnished or something quite rangy and grotesque.”

“Artists in an orchestra can sometimes feel, in their relationship to the general situation of the orchestra or even to some conductor who is there, that they must show a certain amount of restraint….So it has been part of a larger process—a process of their having the confidence that I was, indeed, asking them to do something that was ‘outside the lines’—which involves the artists taking the lead in creating the particular color or the particular direction or the particular sound of the music.”

Quoted from “Outside the lines” by David Templeton (Strings XXII/3:152 [October 2007] pp. 52–59).

Today is Thomas’s 70th birthday! Below, he leads the SFS with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in the Urlicht movement from Mahler’s second symphony.

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by | August 2, 2014 · 1:00 am

A new Otakar Zich edition

Otakar Zich

The opera Vina (Guilt) by the Czech composer Otakar Zich (above, 1879–1934) was one of the most highly anticipated—and hotly debated—musical premieres at Prague’s National Theatre in 1922.

Composed between 1911 and 1915, Vina’s three-act score reflects many trends of its time, including a post-Wagnerian motivic web, lush Straussian orchestration, and quasi-tonal harmonic content derived mostly from a linear, contrapuntal texture.

Zich compiled the prose libretto from Jaroslav Hilbert’s 1896 play of the same name, an Ibsenesque parlor tragedy that retained its popularity for over a quarter-century. His compositional technique reaches its height during the heroine’s “letter without words”, a scene accompanied by a brilliant polytonal fugue for full orchestra.

Despite its many accomplishments, Zich’s Vina met with critical controversy after its premiere, provoking opposing forces to support or oppose musical modernism, which with this opera had firmly taken root in the Czech lands.

A new critical edition (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2014) increases Vina’s availability, enhancing the possibility of future performances of this historic work.

Below, Josef František Munclingr, Otakar Zich, Marie Veselá, Otakar Ostrčil, Emil Pollert, Marta Krásová, Jan Konstantin, and Miloslav Jeník preparing for the premiere of Vina.

Zich et al.

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by | July 3, 2014 · 1:00 am

Janáček and speech melodies

Janacek

Leoš Janáček based vocal melodies in his operas on the concept of nápěvky mluvy (speech melodies)—patterns of speech intonation as they relate to psychological conditions—rather than on a strictly musical basis. He used such melodic motives, characterizing a specific person in a specific dramatic situation, in both vocal and orchestral parts, enabling him to integrate the two parts into a compact unit for the utmost dramatic effect.

This according to “Význam nápěvků pro Janáčkovu operní tvorbu” (The significance of speech melodies in Janáček’s operas) by Milena Černohorská, an essay included in Leoš Janáček a soudobá hudba (Leoš Janáček and contemporary music; Praha: Panton, 1963, pp. 77–80).

Janáček found the source of speech melodies in spoken phrases of people of various social and cultural backgrounds, recorded in real-life situations. During his ethnomusicological research in Moravia and Slovakia in 1920s, Janáček not only recorded songs and music, but also wrote down the melodies of dialogue fragments and of singers’ comments on specific songs.

Recently discovered autographs of Janáček’s fieldwork notes in the collection of the Etnologický ústav AV ČR, pracovišťě Brno with transcriptions of nápěvky mluvy were published in Janáčkovy záznamy hudebního a tanečního folkloru. I: Komentáře (Janáček´s records of traditional music and dances: I. Commentaries) by Jarmila Procházková (Brno: Etnologický ústav AV ČR, 2006).

Today is Janáček’s 160th birthday! Above, examples of nápěvky mluvy that he transcribed in Čičmany, Slovakia, on 20 August 1911; below, the finale of his Jenůfa, a work often cited for its use of the speech-melody concept.

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by | June 24, 2014 · 1:00 am

Schubert and the Nonsense Society

Archiv des menschlichen Unsinns

A hitherto unknown newspaper, Archiv des menschlichen Unsinns (Archive of human nonsense) provides a lively picture of Schubert’s circle. The newspaper is full of allusions to political events as well as parodies of classical works.

Most of his friends were artists. The Unsinnsgesellschaft (Nonsense Society), of which  Schubert was a leading member, also included August von Kloeber, Johann Nepomuk Hoechle, August Kopisch, and Josef and Leopold Kupelwieser.

This according to Die Unsinnsgesellschaft: Franz Schubert, Leopold Kupelwieser und ihr Freundeskreis by Rita Steblin (Wien: Böhlau, 1998), which presents all 29 editions (1817–18) of the newspaper along with biographies of all the members of the society.

Above, Leopold Kupelwieser’s watercolor Neueste Erfindungen: Schubert als strenger Schullehrer mit Rohrstaberl und Kaleidoskop, Kupelwieser als Schulbube mit Draisine (Latest inventions: Schubert as strict teacher with Rohrstaberl and kaleidoscope, Kupelwieser as schoolboy with draisine). Below, a lighthearted scherzo.

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by | June 22, 2014 · 1:00 am

Spektrum Musiktheorie

Spektrum Musiktheorie

In 2013 Are Musikverlag launched the series Spektrum Musiktheorie with Die vier Symphonien von Friedrich Gernsheim by Sandra Maria Ehses. The series presents publications of selected dissertations accepted by the Hochschule für Musik at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz.

Below, the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland‑Pfalz performs Gernsheim’s fourth symphony under the direction of Siegfried Köhler.

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by | April 5, 2014 · 1:00 am

Spohr and German opera

 

Spohr

In 1823 Louis Spohr’s article “Aufruf an deutsche Komponisten” appeared in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. He wrote it to encourage young German composers to contribute to the genre of German opera, but he may have had other intentions as well.

Spohr was determined to promote his latest opera, Jessonda, which he mentioned as a model for his ideas of German opera—but a closer look at that work reveals that Spohr did not think along nationalist lines. In a way its dramaturgy depicts Kant’s definition of Enlightenment and aims at a united and enlightened mankind; so did the composer in his personal life.

Indeed, Spohr’s liberal and enlightened ideas are so prominent in his operas that they became increasingly neglected in the 1870s, when chauvinistic tendencies became more widespread. This development culminated in the 1940s, when the Nazis banned Jessonda from the German stage. As Spohr’s original resisted attempts to align it with the Nazi idea of German opera, the Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitungen commissioned an amended version; the end of World War II curtailed this effort.

This according to “Zwischen nationalem Anspruch und lokalpolitischen Zwangen: Entstehungs- und Rezeptionsbedingungen der Kasseler Opern Louis Spohrs” by Wolfram Boder (Studia musicologica LII/1–4 [March 2011] pp. 311–321).

Today is Spohr’s 230th birthday! Above, the composer’s self-portrait; below, some excerpts from Jessonda.

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by | March 23, 2014 · 1:00 am

A new Coleridge-Taylor edition

samuel coleridge-taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor began his only symphony when he was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford, as his major project for the 1895–96 season.

A new edition by John L. Snyder of Coleridge-Taylor’s symphony in A minor, op. 8, includes the finale later added in 1900, as well as the two surviving discarded finales from 1896 and the revision of the slow movement issued in 1901 as Idyll, op. 44 (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2013).

The edition of the symphony is based on the autograph MSS, including autograph parts, now in the Royal College of Music Library and in the British Library. The extensive critical notes document the changes made by the composer, both in the score and in the process of copying parts. Coleridge-Taylor was concerned to make his symphony cyclic and struggled with how to accomplish that most effectively, as evidenced by the three finales.

The Idyll is edited on the basis of a copyist’s score formerly in the Novello rental library and now in the Fleisher Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Above, Coleridge-Taylor around the time he wrote the symphony; below, a brief tribute to the composer, narrated by his daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor.

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by | February 8, 2014 · 1:00 am

German-Jewish organ music

German-Jewish organ music

German-Jewish organ music: An anthology of works from the 1820s to the 1960s, edited by Tina Frühauf (Madison: A-R Editions, 2013), traces the main phases of the history and stylistic development of organ music in the Reform Jewish communities in Central Europe, as well as in the German-influenced communities of Königsberg (Kaliningrad) and Odessa, and works by German-Jewish composers who emigrated to the U.S. and Israel after World War II.

The small but respectable body of compositions for the organ in the synagogue is represented by fourteen exemplary works; the pieces span the period beginning with the Reform movement in the early 19th century to post-Holocaust works in the mid-20th century.

Initially oriented predominantly toward Christian models, a specifically Jewish style of organ music emerged in the late 19th century, made up from elements of both Jewish and Western musical cultures. The selected repertoire featured in the anthology, although all emanating from the same cultural milieu, is based on a wide variety of musical thematic material, including biblical cantillation, 19th-century synagogue song, Yiddish folk song, and the musical traditions of various Jewish cultural groups (Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Yemenite).

Some of the selected repertoire corresponds to detailed analyses published in the editor’s monograph The organ and its music in German-Jewish culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Below, music by Louis Lewandowski, with an assortment of relevant images; he is represented in German-Jewish organ music by his Fünf Fest-Präludien (1871),

Related article: American cantorate

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by | February 6, 2014 · 1:00 am

Brahms and the “cremation cantata”

Wesendonck

Mathilde Wesendonck (above) is known to music historians for her romantic entanglement with and artistic influence on Wagner in the 1850s. What is less commonly known is that once her relationship with Wagner had cooled she became an admirer and personal acquaintance of Brahms, and began a correspondence with him that was to last for several years.

A little-known oddity is the poetic text she composed and sent to Brahms in 1874 in the hope that he would set it to music as a work for chorus and soloists. The remarkable subject matter of her poetry: cremation.

The practice of modern cremation, demonstrated at the Vienna Exposition of 1873, had begun to attract much attention among the medical community and press in Europe and U.S., but it was new, controversial, and generally unavailable. In appealing to Brahms to write a work on the subject, Wesendonck’s intention was to encourage the movement’s growth.

Upon receiving her ode to cremation, Brahms, much amused, immediately forwarded it to his friend Theodor Billroth, who likewise derived from it much unintended humor. Word of the would-be “cremation cantata” spread to other friends, including Wilhelm Lübke and Julius Stockhausen.

This according to “Brahms, Mathilde Wesendonck, and the would-be ‘cremation cantata’” by Jacquelyn E.C. Sholes (The American Brahms Society newsletter XXX/2 (fall 2012) pp. 1–5). Below, Brahms’s Begräbnisgesang, op. 13, which explicitly evokes a conventional burial.

More posts about Brahms are here.

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by | December 11, 2013 · 1:00 am

Liszt in Paris

Liszt_1824

Liszt and his parents first arrived in Paris on 11 December 1823, 190 years ago today.

He was refused admittance to the Conservatoire because he was a foreigner, but within a few months the 12-year-old prodigy was the darling of Parisian musical circles.

After his father’s death in 1827 Liszt taught piano lessons to the titled and socially connected, and several of his female students fell in love with him; when he was thwarted in his wish to marry one of them he fell so ill with despair that the newspapers published his obituary.

Liszt cultivated friendships with Hugo and Berlioz, but when his illicit relationship with Marie d’Agoult threatened to ignite a scandal in 1835 the couple eloped to Switzerland. Although he made many subsequent trips to France to perform, Liszt never lived there again.

This according to “Liszt in France” by Julien Tiersot (The musical quarterly XXII/3 [July 1936] pp. 255–361).

Above, Liszt in 1824, not long after he moved to Paris (click to enlarge). Below, his variations on a theme by Paganini from 1831, two years before his relationship with d’Agoult began.

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