August 12, 2019.  From the 17^th century to the 20^th.  This week we’ll commemorate three 17^th century composers, Biber, Porpora and Greene, but will skip the ones born in the 18^th (Salieri), 19^th (Godard and Pierne) and the 20^th (Ibert and Foss) centuries.  Heinrich Ignaz Biber is the oldest of the three, he was born on August 12^th of 1644, 375 years ago.  On the musical timeline this places Biber between Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Pachelbel (or, going outside of Germany, between Jean-Baptiste Lully and Arcangelo Corelli).  Germany wasn’t as musically developed as, for example, Italy, so the period during which Biber was active (he died on May 3^rd of 1704) may be considered Early to Middle Baroque.  Biber was a violin virtuoso (you can read more about Biber here), and his main opus was The Rosary Sonatas, a set of 15 sonatas for violin and continuo, which are usually played on a harpsichord or an organ; (sometimes the violin is accompanied by a small string ensemble).  The final piece of the cycle, Passacaglia, is for the violin solo.  The sonata cycle is also known as Mystery Sonatas – we don’t know the real name of it, as the title page of the only manuscript copy, kept in the Bavarian State Library, has been lost.  The Rosary Sonatas were completed somewhere around 1676 but were first published only in 1905.  The sonatas are organized into three cycles, following the standard Catholic “15 Mysteries of the Rosary”: five Joyful Mysteries, five Sorrowful Mysteries and five Glorious Mysteries.  In the manuscript, each sonata is preceded by the appropriate engraving.  The first cycle (The Joyful Mysteries) starts with the Annunciation (Sonata 1), following by the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple and ends with The Finding in the Temple (“After three days they found him in the temple”).  Here’s Sonata 2, The Visitation, performed by the ensemble Musica Antiqua Koln under the direction of Renhard Goebel.

August 5, 2019.  More on the Music in Ferrara.  Today we’ll continue exploring the music at the court of the dukes of Ferrara at the end of the 16^th century and its famous ensemble, Concerto delle donne.  Last week we mentioned the name of Laura Peverara, the lead singer, and said that it doesn’t tell us much.  Turns out that with very little effort one can find a lot about this fascinating musician.  Laura Peverara (her last name is sometimes spelled “Peperara”) was born in Mantua in the summer of 1563.  Her mother, Margherita Costanzi, was a lady-in-waiting to Margherita Paleologa, the wife of Federico II, Duke of Mantua.  Her father, Vincenzo Peveraro, was a scholar at the service of the Gonzaga family.  Laura received a good education in Latin and music, probably studying with the children of Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, a big patron of arts and composer himself.   Giaches de Wert was then the maestro di cappella in Mantua, so it’s likely that he heard the young Laura singing and maybe even taught her.  Laura was also known as an exceptional harp player.  It’s clear that by 1580 Peverara was already famous: the poet Muzio Manfredi dedicated a sonnet to her.  Later that year a remarkable collection of sonnets and madrigals was dedicated to her; among the composers who wrote the music for this collection were such luminaries as Orlando di Lasso, Luca Marenzio, Claudio Merulo and  Giovanni Gabrieli (in one of the sonnets Laura is praised as “the second, after Virgil, most famous citizen of Mantua”).  Alfonoso II, Duke of Ferrara, visited Mantua in 1580 and, taken by Laura’s beauty and singing, asked his wife (!), Margherita Gonzaga to write to her father, Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, asking for his permission to hire Laura Peverara.  The permission was given, and Laura, accompanied by her father, moved to Ferrara, to the consternation of the ladies of the court.  In Ferrara, she found success immediately: Giovanni Battista Guarini, a poet and father of Anna Guarini, who would later join Peverara in Concerto delle donne, wrote a sonnet in which he praised her singing.  Duke Alfonso had wanted to have an ensemble of female singers since he heard Tarquinia Molza, the famous singer and composer, in Modena in 1568. 

July 29, 2019.  Concerto delle donne.  There are not many musicians and composers to be celebrated this week (we continue to be fascinated with Hans Rott, born on August 1^st of 1858, but we’ve wrote about him a year ago).  On tweeks like this we often go back to composers of the Renaissance and early Baroque, but to do justice to their talents we should write about them more often.  Music flourished during the Renaissance, especially in its later years.  The church served as the main catalyst, but by the late 1500s more and more secular music was being written and performed.  We know the names of the composers – they left a record of published music, but only rarely do the names of the performers of that music come up.  We know, for example, that Girolamo Frescobaldi was famed as a great organ player, but we know him much better as a composer.  History retained few names of the musicians, and of course we know little of their musicianship, as we cannot reproduce the music the way they played or sung it (with composers we at least have sheet music, but even then the matter of interpretation is quite controversial).   Of all the performers, one name that stands out is Concerto delle donne.  I was indeed famous during its time, and that’s why we know a little bit about it. Concerto del donne was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, a great patron of arts, around 1580.  At that time the court of Ferrara was the music center of Italy, and, by extension, of the world.  Orlando di Lasso, Carlo Gesualdo and Giaches De Wert spent time there, and so did Alessandro Striggio, lesser known these days but considered a progressive composer back then, at the end of the 16^th century.  Luzzasco Luzzaschi, a fine composer, was the court organist (and also Frescobaldi’s teacher).  Concerto del donne’s origins go back to an informal ensemble of female courtiers who sung to entertain each other.  Luzzasco Luzzaschi was probably the one to organize them into a more formal and eventually professional ensemble.  Regular concerts were given for the Duke, and Concerto del donne became one of the featured performers.  This was the only ensemble of female singers in all of Italy, and the quality of their singing, according to witnesses, was extraordinary.  We know the names of some of the singers, such as Laura Peverara, the lead singer, Livia d'Arco and Anna Guarini, but they don’t tell us much, although the composer Francesco Manara compiled a number of madrigals in honor of Lauda Peverara.  We also know about the people closely associated with the Concerto.  One of them was Tarquinia Molza, a singer, poet, composer, and philosopher, and also a lady-in-waiting to Duchess Margherita Gonzaga d'Este, Alfonso’s wife.  She was considered a virtuosa, both as a singer and as a violist, so much so that her performances were depicted in books.  Molza most likely didn’t sing in Concerto herself but rather coached the singers.  A widow, Molza had an affair with Giaches De Wert; as a lady-in-waiting she was considered a nobility, and De Wert,though a well-known composer, was of a servant class.  Such a liaison was scandalous, and in 1589, when it was found out, Molza was banned from Ferrara.  Court composers Lodovico Agostini and Ippolito Fiorini wrote madrigals for Concerto and so did Luzzasco Luzzaschi. 

July 22, 2019.  Pianists and singers.  Three pianists were born this week: Americans Leon Fleisher and Alexis Weissenberg, and a Portuguese, Maria João Pires.  Leon Fleisher will turn 91 tomorrow, he was born on July 23^rd of 1928 in San Francisco, into a family of poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Fleisher started his piano studies at the age of four.  He had several piano teachers but eventually became a pupil of the great German pianist Artur Schnabel, who by then emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States.  In 1942, the 14-year-old Fleisher played Liszt’s Piano Concerto no. 2 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pierre Monteux (Monteux called Fleisher “the pianistic find of the century”).  A year later they performed the Brahms D Minor piano concerto (no. 1).  The following year, now 16 years old, Fleisher played his first concert at Carnegie Hall; again, it was Monteux conducting and but this time the orchestra was the New York Philharmonic.  In 1952, Fleisher won the Queen Elisabeth competition, the first American to do so.  He was performing and recording extensively (for example, with the Cleveland orchestra under the direction of George Szell he made the famous recordings of all Beethoven and both Brahms’s piano concertos).  He was considered one of the greatest young pianists of his generation when a disaster struck: in 1965 Fleisher lost control of his right hand due to the focal dystonia, an illness which makes the muscles of the fingers contract involuntarily.  All he could do was play a very limited repertoire for the left-hand, its central pieces being piano concertos by Ravel and Prokofiev. In 1981 he had surgery which didn’t help much; further treatments followed, and Botox seemed to have helped the most - eventually Fleisher managed to return to the two-hand repertoire.  It wasn’t till 2004 that Fleisher released an album titled “Two Hands,” his first in almost 40 years, in which he played works by Bach, Scarlatti, Chopin, Debussy and Schubert.  He never recovered his former spectacular technique, and of course he was of a certain age when technique simply deteriorates - in 2004 he was already 76 years old.

July 15, 2019.  Mostly violinists.  The famous Belgian violinist and composer, Eugène Ysaÿe was born this week, on July 16^th of 1858 in Liège.  At the age of seven Eugène entered the Liège Conservatory, dropped out four years later but then returned to graduate with a silver medal.  After leaving the Conservatory, he took lessons with two of the greatest violinists of the time, with Henryk Wieniawski in Brussels and with Henry Vieuxtemps in Paris.  In 1879 he became the concertmaster of the Bilse orchestra in Berlin, that eventually evolved into the Berlin Philharmonic.  Anton Rubinstein, the famous Russian pianist and the founder of the Saint Petersburg conservatory, heard him play and helped Ysaÿe with his first contracts as a soloist.  After touring several countries, Ysaÿe returned to Paris, already an acclaimed virtuoso.  While in Paris, Ysaÿe met many contemporary composers, among them Saint-Saëns, Franck and Fauré.  He played at the prestigious Concert Colonne to great success.  In 1887 he returned to Brussels to teach violin class at the Conservatory.  He was also composing: a quartet and several violin sonatas were his first pieces.  Such was his fame that many newly-written compositions were dedicated to him, among them César Franck’s Violin Sonata, Ernest Chausson’s Concert and Poème, Vincent d'Indy's First String Quartet and Claude Debussy’s String Quartet.  In 1895 Ysaÿe formed a duo with the French pianist and composer Raoul Pugno which became world famous; he also played with Arton Rubinstein, Ferruccio Busoni, Alexander Siloti and other celebrated pianists of the time.  In 1914 Ysaÿe toured the US, again to great success; the time from 1900 to the beginning of WWI was the peak of his career.  Ysaÿe had health problems from the age of 50 (he had diabetes, his right foot would be eventually amputated), he also had problems with the right hand and bow control.  As his playing deteriorated (which happened rapidly), his performances became rare; he concentrated instead on conducting, composing and teaching.  As a teacher, he was extremely influential; among his students were Joseph Gingold, who himself became a famed violin teacher (Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell and Leonidas Kavakos are just three of Gingold’s students); one of the greatest viola players of the 20^th century William Primrose, as well as Nathan Milstein, and Jascha Brodsky.  Ysaÿe’s influence on the development of the modern style of violin playing is hard to overestimate.  Here’s Ysaÿe’s Sonata no. 2, op. 27 for violin solo, dedicated to Jacques Thibaud, Ysaÿe’s friend.  It’s performed by Frank Peter Zimmermann

July 8, 2019.  Carl Orff.  It’s quite strange, but we’ve never written about a popular, if somewhat controversial, 20^th century composer, Carl Orff.  Orff was born in Munich on July 10^th of 1895; his father came from a line of Bavarian military officers.  At the age of five Carl started music lessons, playing piano, cello and organ.  In his youth he became fascinated with two very different composers, Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg; one wouldn’t discern their influence on his mature works but apparently it was more obvious with his early operas, which Orff later dismissed.  In 1914 he became the conductor of the Munich Kammerspiele, the state theater.  During the Great War Orff was drafted, sent to the front and wounded, after which he spent the rest of the war working at the theaters of Mannheim and Darmstadt.  He returned to Munich in 1919 and immersed himself in the music of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  In 1924 Orff staged Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo; the German text was written by Dorothée Günther, who also did the choreography.  Günther, an artist and pedagogue, became Orff’s collaborator in many endeavors.  It was the first such production in modern German history.  Around that time Orff got interested in the concept of elementare Musik, or elemental music, understood as the synthesis of music, gesture/dance and spoken poetry.  In 1924 these ideas led Orff and Günther to establish the Güntherschule, a school for gymnastics, music and dance.  Orff composed a number of short simple pieces for the school, which in 1932-35 were published as Schulwerk: elementare Musikübung.  Here’s the easily recognizable Gassenhauer (it was used in many movies, including Terrence Malick’s Badlands).