"All roads lead to Rome"; or so it was said
in ancient days when the Roman Empire encompassed all the lands surrounding
the Mediterranean Sea, plus a good chunk of Western Europe and the British
Isles. Rome fell from its pre-eminent position under pressures both internal
and external, but the idea of "empire" persisted in European history for
centuries - not dying out entirely until the end of World War I in 1918. From
the early Middle Ages onward, many nations were at least nominally part of the
Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne.
By the 18th century, imperial power had
become consolidated in the Hapsburgs, the dynasty that ruled Austria-Hungary
from the city of Vienna. And although the Vienna of the Hapsburgs was not the
political colossus that Rome under the Caesars had been, it became true that
virtually all roads led there, especially for musicians. The emperor's court
and chapel, plus the smaller but no less music-loving households of the Viennese
nobility, were magnets drawing composers, instrumental virtuosos, and singers
from provincial capitals and remote villages to find work, sell their scores,
and make a name for themselves in the most musical city on earth.
Of the great Classical-Romantic "Viennese"
composers, only one, Franz Schubert, was actually born there. Haydn and Mozart
came from smaller Austrian towns, Beethoven from the German city of Bonn,
Brahms from Hamburg. There were others: around the turn of the 19th century
many successful composer-performers migrated to Vienna from what is now the
Czech Republic, then a province of the Empire known as Bohemia. Their names -
Leopold Kozeluch, Anton Reicha, Johann Vanhal, Jan Vorisek, the brothers Anton
and Paul Wranitzky - are not terribly well remembered today, but they held
important posts in their adopted city, made a good living, served their patrons
well, and left behind a wealth of music that is worth hearing. One of these
Bohemian emigrés was Franz Krommer - Frantisek Kramár in the original
spelling.
Krommer was born in 1759 in the town of
Kamenice, where his father was both innkeeper and mayor. His uncle, church
choirmaster in a nearby town, taught him to play the violin and the organ. He
was in his early 20s when he first went to Vienna, but found it hard to gain a
foothold in the city's competitive environment. He spent several years in
Hungary, employed by princes and churches as a violinist, composer, and choir
director. When he returned to Vienna in 1795, he was a seasoned professional.
After some years of theatre work, he entered the emperor's service in 1815, and
three years later won the coveted post of imperial court composer: the job neither
Mozart nor Beethoven ever achieved. The successor to his countryman Kozeluch and
before him, Antonio Salieri, Krommer was the last to hold the official
court-composer position. By the time of his death in 1831, musical economics
had changed such that even emperors stopped employing composers as personal
staff members.
A biographical essay by Othmar Wessely notes
that "Krommer was one of the most successful of the many influential Czech
composers in Vienna," and that he wrote over 300 works. "Krommer's reputation
is attested by the rapid spread of his compositions in reprints and
arrangements by German, Danish, French, English, Italian and American
publishers," Wessely says, "and equally by his honorary membership of the
Istituto Filarmonico in Venice, the Philharmonic Society in Ljubljana, the
Musikverein in Innsbruck, and the conservatories [of] Paris, Milan and Vienna.
With the exception of piano works, lieder and operas, Krommer cultivated all
the musical genres of his time, and was regarded (with Haydn) as the leading
composer of string quartets, and as a serious rival of Beethoven. The present
view, however, places his solo concertos for wind instruments as his most
individual accomplishments."
Krommer was fond of wind instruments in other
contexts too: he produced several scores for the nine- or ten-member wind
ensembles that the Viennese called Harmoniemusik, and combined flutes and
clarinets with strings in chamber music. His list of concertos includes several
for his own original instrument, the violin, plus pieces for flute, clarinet,
and two for solo oboe, written in 1803 and 1805.
The late Classical era boasted quite a number
of virtuosic oboe players, some of whose names have survived. Mozart wrote oboe
works for his colleagues Giuseppe Ferlendis and Friedrich Ramm; Krommer's first
concerto was dedicated to a fellow Bohemian emigré, Josef Czerwenka,
first-chair oboist in the Vienna Court Orchestra. The oboe began to develop
its solo potential during this time, as Alex Klein has explained, because
technical innovations made it possible to keep the instrument in better tune,
and a new type of central bore greatly extended its range of high notes. "For
Mozart and for Krommer, this meant greater freedom to write interesting,
challenging music for the oboe," Mr. Klein says.
The solo parts in both Krommer concertos are
notably virtuosic, featuring rapid passage-work and wide leaps from high notes
to low and back again that are reminiscent of Mozartean opera arias.
Stylistically, the first concerto very much recalls Mozart, while the second
leans toward Beethoven. They are laid out using the basic pattern those
composers favored for their concertos: an opening movement in sonata form,
with a long orchestral introduction before the soloist enters; a lyrical
Adagio; and a Rondo that brings each work to a dramatic conclusion.
Discussing the nearly-forgotten life and work
of an Austro-Bohemian composer named Ignaz Brüll, a friend and valued colleague
of Brahms, the German musicologist Hartmut Wecker recently wrote: "From today's
perspective, the musical history of the 19th century appears to reduce itself
to a few big names whose works still continue to dominate our concert halls and
opera houses. But appearance and reality are far apart: the everyday music of
the epoch, and contemporary taste, were in fact shaped by a large number of
finely-trained composers, most of whom have left little behind but their name,
even though in their own time they ranked as artists of international stature."
... The performances on this CD deliberately
seek to replicate the bright, open, high-volume sound that Classical-era
composers desired, according to Mr. Klein. It is a mistake, he believes, to
produce a delicate tone-color in music from this time. With Baroque music, the
sound ideal for the oboe is a mellow, softer tone, but that is because the
instrument known to Bach and Handel had a different type of bore, and thus a much
different timbre. "The Baroque oboe is analogous to the viola," Mr. Klein says,
"the Classical oboe, to the violin: brighter and higher. All three works on
this CD provide excellent examples of Classical oboe writing."
Mr. Klein also comments on the ornamentation
practices appropriate to concertos from the Classical period. "Ornaments, and
ornamentation opportunities, come less frequently in Classical compositions
than in Baroque ones, but the practice was still favored," he tells us. "Ornamentation
is especially appropriate when motives and phrases are repeated, in the variation
passages of the finale of the first Krommer Concerto, for example. This
movement provides a perfect opportunity for the performer to add something
new." In the Baroque period, ornamentation was a regular feature of slow
movements, which were notated very sparingly by Bach and his contemporaries,
in the expectation that the artist would create his own elaborations. By the
Classical era, Mr. Klein points out, composers were expressing their own
thoughts in slow movements, and performers were not expected to add much
ornamentation.
Mr. Klein has added cadenzas to the first
Krommer concerto and to the Hummel Variations, neither of which included
cadenzas in their original versions. His ornaments and additions present a
couple of notes, including a high G and a low A, that were not common or even
possible on oboes of the early 19th century. Mr. Klein believes that if those
notes had been available to performers of the time, they would have used them
in their own interpolations of the basic scores. "Ornaments must fit the style
of the music," he says, "but as long as an artist keeps the style of the
composer's time in mind, he should feel free to play the music in the way he
thinks it sounds best."
Andrea Lamoreaux is
Programming Executive at Fine Arts Station WFMT-FM in Chicago.
Classical Music | Music for Oboe
Franz Krommer
Oboe Concerto No. 1 in F major, Op. 37 Play
Recorded on 06/17/1998, uploaded on 03/25/2009
Musician's or Publisher's Notes
Oboe Concertos of the Classical Era
notes by Andrea Lamoreaux
"All roads lead to Rome"; or so it was said in ancient days when the Roman Empire encompassed all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, plus a good chunk of Western Europe and the British Isles. Rome fell from its pre-eminent position under pressures both internal and external, but the idea of "empire" persisted in European history for centuries - not dying out entirely until the end of World War I in 1918. From the early Middle Ages onward, many nations were at least nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne.
By the 18th century, imperial power had become consolidated in the Hapsburgs, the dynasty that ruled Austria-Hungary from the city of Vienna. And although the Vienna of the Hapsburgs was not the political colossus that Rome under the Caesars had been, it became true that virtually all roads led there, especially for musicians. The emperor's court and chapel, plus the smaller but no less music-loving households of the Viennese nobility, were magnets drawing composers, instrumental virtuosos, and singers from provincial capitals and remote villages to find work, sell their scores, and make a name for themselves in the most musical city on earth.
Of the great Classical-Romantic "Viennese" composers, only one, Franz Schubert, was actually born there. Haydn and Mozart came from smaller Austrian towns, Beethoven from the German city of Bonn, Brahms from Hamburg. There were others: around the turn of the 19th century many successful composer-performers migrated to Vienna from what is now the Czech Republic, then a province of the Empire known as Bohemia. Their names - Leopold Kozeluch, Anton Reicha, Johann Vanhal, Jan Vorisek, the brothers Anton and Paul Wranitzky - are not terribly well remembered today, but they held important posts in their adopted city, made a good living, served their patrons well, and left behind a wealth of music that is worth hearing. One of these Bohemian emigrés was Franz Krommer - Frantisek Kramár in the original spelling.
Krommer was born in 1759 in the town of Kamenice, where his father was both innkeeper and mayor. His uncle, church choirmaster in a nearby town, taught him to play the violin and the organ. He was in his early 20s when he first went to Vienna, but found it hard to gain a foothold in the city's competitive environment. He spent several years in Hungary, employed by princes and churches as a violinist, composer, and choir director. When he returned to Vienna in 1795, he was a seasoned professional. After some years of theatre work, he entered the emperor's service in 1815, and three years later won the coveted post of imperial court composer: the job neither Mozart nor Beethoven ever achieved. The successor to his countryman Kozeluch and before him, Antonio Salieri, Krommer was the last to hold the official court-composer position. By the time of his death in 1831, musical economics had changed such that even emperors stopped employing composers as personal staff members.
A biographical essay by Othmar Wessely notes that "Krommer was one of the most successful of the many influential Czech composers in Vienna," and that he wrote over 300 works. "Krommer's reputation is attested by the rapid spread of his compositions in reprints and arrangements by German, Danish, French, English, Italian and American publishers," Wessely says, "and equally by his honorary membership of the Istituto Filarmonico in Venice, the Philharmonic Society in Ljubljana, the Musikverein in Innsbruck, and the conservatories [of] Paris, Milan and Vienna. With the exception of piano works, lieder and operas, Krommer cultivated all the musical genres of his time, and was regarded (with Haydn) as the leading composer of string quartets, and as a serious rival of Beethoven. The present view, however, places his solo concertos for wind instruments as his most individual accomplishments."
Krommer was fond of wind instruments in other contexts too: he produced several scores for the nine- or ten-member wind ensembles that the Viennese called Harmoniemusik, and combined flutes and clarinets with strings in chamber music. His list of concertos includes several for his own original instrument, the violin, plus pieces for flute, clarinet, and two for solo oboe, written in 1803 and 1805.
The late Classical era boasted quite a number of virtuosic oboe players, some of whose names have survived. Mozart wrote oboe works for his colleagues Giuseppe Ferlendis and Friedrich Ramm; Krommer's first concerto was dedicated to a fellow Bohemian emigré, Josef Czerwenka, first-chair oboist in the Vienna Court Orchestra. The oboe began to develop its solo potential during this time, as Alex Klein has explained, because technical innovations made it possible to keep the instrument in better tune, and a new type of central bore greatly extended its range of high notes. "For Mozart and for Krommer, this meant greater freedom to write interesting, challenging music for the oboe," Mr. Klein says.
The solo parts in both Krommer concertos are notably virtuosic, featuring rapid passage-work and wide leaps from high notes to low and back again that are reminiscent of Mozartean opera arias. Stylistically, the first concerto very much recalls Mozart, while the second leans toward Beethoven. They are laid out using the basic pattern those composers favored for their concertos: an opening movement in sonata form, with a long orchestral introduction before the soloist enters; a lyrical Adagio; and a Rondo that brings each work to a dramatic conclusion.
Discussing the nearly-forgotten life and work of an Austro-Bohemian composer named Ignaz Brüll, a friend and valued colleague of Brahms, the German musicologist Hartmut Wecker recently wrote: "From today's perspective, the musical history of the 19th century appears to reduce itself to a few big names whose works still continue to dominate our concert halls and opera houses. But appearance and reality are far apart: the everyday music of the epoch, and contemporary taste, were in fact shaped by a large number of finely-trained composers, most of whom have left little behind but their name, even though in their own time they ranked as artists of international stature."
...
The performances on this CD deliberately seek to replicate the bright, open, high-volume sound that Classical-era composers desired, according to Mr. Klein. It is a mistake, he believes, to produce a delicate tone-color in music from this time. With Baroque music, the sound ideal for the oboe is a mellow, softer tone, but that is because the instrument known to Bach and Handel had a different type of bore, and thus a much different timbre. "The Baroque oboe is analogous to the viola," Mr. Klein says, "the Classical oboe, to the violin: brighter and higher. All three works on this CD provide excellent examples of Classical oboe writing."
Mr. Klein also comments on the ornamentation practices appropriate to concertos from the Classical period. "Ornaments, and ornamentation opportunities, come less frequently in Classical compositions than in Baroque ones, but the practice was still favored," he tells us. "Ornamentation is especially appropriate when motives and phrases are repeated, in the variation passages of the finale of the first Krommer Concerto, for example. This movement provides a perfect opportunity for the performer to add something new." In the Baroque period, ornamentation was a regular feature of slow movements, which were notated very sparingly by Bach and his contemporaries, in the expectation that the artist would create his own elaborations. By the Classical era, Mr. Klein points out, composers were expressing their own thoughts in slow movements, and performers were not expected to add much ornamentation.
Mr. Klein has added cadenzas to the first Krommer concerto and to the Hummel Variations, neither of which included cadenzas in their original versions. His ornaments and additions present a couple of notes, including a high G and a low A, that were not common or even possible on oboes of the early 19th century. Mr. Klein believes that if those notes had been available to performers of the time, they would have used them in their own interpolations of the basic scores. "Ornaments must fit the style of the music," he says, "but as long as an artist keeps the style of the composer's time in mind, he should feel free to play the music in the way he thinks it sounds best."
Andrea Lamoreaux is Programming Executive at Fine Arts Station WFMT-FM in Chicago.
More music by Franz Krommer
Oboe Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 52
Clarinet Concerto E flat Major, Op. 36 (Adagio and Rondo)
Performances by same musician(s)
Phantasy Quartet, Op. 2
Introduction, Theme, and Variations in F minor, Op. 102
Concerto for Two Flutes in G Major
Concertino in G Minor for Oboe and Orchestra
Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra
Modinha
Oboe Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 52
Sonata in E-flat Major, BWV 1031
Schilflieder: Five Fantasy Pieces for Piano, Oboe, and Viola, Op. 28
Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola, and Piano
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