September 23, 2019.  Rameau and more.  We have a large group of celebrants this week, and we’ll try to address all of them, even if only cursorily.  Jean-Philippe Rameau is the oldest of them, he was born on September 25^th of 1683 in Dijon.  If Jean-Baptiste Lully created the grand French opera, it was Rameau, half a century later, who perfected it.  One of many great examples of his art is Castor and Pollux, his tragédie en musique, musical tragedy as it was called at the time, similar to the Italian opera seria.  Castor and Pollux was Rameau’s third opera (he started writing them only at age of 50 – before that he wrote mostly music for the harpsichord, much of it of the highest quality, and some choral music).  Castor was premiered on October 24^th of 1737 by the Académie Royale de Musique (the Royal Opera, founded in 1669 on the orders of Louis XIV and lead by Lully) at its theatre in the Palais-Royal (in our time the Opera performs at the Opéra Bastille and the Palais Garnier).  Here’s Agnès Mellon in the aria Tristes Apprêts, with the ensemble Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie.

Two composers, who worked under the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, were born this week: Dmitry Shostakovich in St.-Petersburg, Russia, on September 25^th of 1906, and Andrzej Panufnik, on September 24^th of 1914, in Warsaw.  The very talented Shostakovich became the national Soviet composer, even though during his long composing career he was threatened many times, and his music was occasionally banned; Panufnik, on the other hand, defected from Poland to the UK (you can read more about him here).  

September 16, 2019.  Walter.  We just missed the birthday of Bruno Walter, one of the greatest conductors of the 20^th century.  Walter lived a long life: in his youth, he assisted Gustav Mahler, whose work he later helped to establish as the standard orchestral repertory; his last live concert was with Van Cliburn.  Few people have influenced the world of music more than him.  Walter was born Bruno Schlesinger in Berlin on September 15^th of 1876 into a middle-class Jewish family.  He initially studied the piano, but, after hearing Hans von Bülow lead an orchestra, decided to switch to conducting.  From 1894 to 1896 he worked in Hamburg, assisting Mahler, who was then the chief conductor at the Hamburg State Opera.  Mahler’s influence on Walter was enormous, but the composer also valued the talent of his assistant and in 1896 helped him to find a conducting position at the opera theater in Breslau, Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland).  The theater director requested that the young conductor changes his name (Schlesinger means “Silesian” in German); eventually, the name Walter was selected.  In 1901, after working in several cities, Walter accepted Mahler’s invitation to come to Vienna, were Mahler held the position of the Director of the Hofoper.  Walter stayed in Vienna till 1912, two years past Mahler’s death.  He gave the premieres of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (in 1911) and Ninth Symphony (in 1912).  From 1913 till 1922 Walter lived in Munich, were he was appointed the General Music Director.  He conducted a lot of Wagner (Bayreuth was suspended during that time) and, in addition to the standard classical repertoire, some contemporary music. 

August 26, 2019.  Pachelbel and Böhm.  Johann Pachelbel was born on September 1^st of 1653 in Nuremberg.  These days he’s known mostly for his Cannon in D, which is unfair and unfortunate, as Pachelbel was an interesting composer working in many different genres.  In one of our previous posts we referred to one of his most important clavier pieces, Hexachordum Apollinis ("Six Strings of Apollo"). “… a set of six arias followed by variations, which, according to Pachelbel himself, could be performed either on the organ or the harpsichord.  Variations were a somewhat new musical form in the 17^th century, and Hexachordum was by far the most interesting set of variations written to date.”  Hexachordum was published in 1699 while Pachelbel was again living in Nuremberg where he moved from Erfurt (in Erfurt he became good friends with Ambrosius Bach, Johann Sebastian’s father; Ambrosius even asked Pachelbel to be the godfather to his daughter Johanna Juditha.  Pachelbel also taught music to his son Johann Christoph, who in turn became a music teacher of his younger brother, Johann Sebastian).  In Nuremberg Pachelbel was the organist at St. Sebaldus Church, the most important church in the city.  He held this position till his death in March of 1706.  Pachelbel is noted mostly for his organ works, but he was a wonderful composer of vocal church music as well.  Here, for example, is one of his two settings of Magnificat (this one is in D Major).  It’s performed by the ensemble Cantus Cölln under the direction of Konrad Junghänel.  And speaking of the Magnificat, Pachelbel wrote 60 so called Magnificat Fugues – we’ll talk about them another time.

Karl Böhm, one of Austria’s most interesting but controversial conductors, was born on August 28^th of 1894 in Graz.  He made his conducting debut in 1917 in his hometown; in 1921 Bruno Walter invited him to the Staatsoper in Munich.  He stayed there for six years; in 1927 he was invited to lead the opera in Darmstadt.  There he performed several modern operas, including Berg’s Wozzeck.  After serving in Hamburg he was invited to the Vienna Philharmonic. His 1933 staging of Tristan und Isolde was a huge success.  While continuing his engagement in Vienna, one year later  Böhm was made the music director of the Dresden Staatsoper.  There he replaced Fritz Busch, who was forced to resign by the Nazis.   Böhm’s  career flourished under the Nazis, even though he never formally joined the Nazi party. 

August 19, 2019.  Going for the unpopular.  Claude Debussy was born this week, on August 22^nd of 1782.  We love Debussy and he remains one of the most popular composers, both among listeners and performers (in our library we have more than 230 recordings of his works, some pieces are played over and over again).  While our listeners have many ways to celebrate Debussy, we will turn to the interesting, but not very popular, composers of the 20^th century.  Ernst Krenek (pronounced Krzhenek; like Dvorak, pronounced Dvorzhak), Krenek was Czech by birth, and his name originally was spelled Křenek.  (The second letter, pronounced Rzh, was replaced with “R” when Krenek moved to the United States).  Krenek was born in Vienna, son of a Czech soldier.  He studied with the then-famous composer Franz Schreker.  During the Great War he was drafted into the Austrian army but spent most of the time in Vienna, continuing his studies.  In 1920 he followed Schreker to Berlin where he was introduced to many musicians; there he met Alma Mahler and her daughter Anna (by the time they met, Alma had already divorced her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius and was living with the poet Franz Werfel; Krenek fell in love with Anna and married her in 1924, though their marriage fell apart a few months later).  The time in Berlin was very productive: Krenek wrote 18 large-scale pieces between 1921 and 1924.  He also worked on parts of Gustav Mahler’s unfinished 10^th Symphony but dropped the project as he felt that most of it was too under-developed.  In 1925 Krenek traveled to Paris where he met the composers of Les Six; under their influence he decided that his music should be more accessible and wrote a “jazz-opera” Jonny spielt auf(Jonny Plays), which became very popular.  Krenek followed with three more one-act operas, one of them, Der Diktator, based on the life of Mussolini.