September 3, 2018.  Bruckner and more.  Anton Bruckner was born on September 4^th of 1824.  We’ve written about several of his early symphonies; this time we’ll focus on the Sixth, which was written between September of 1879 and September of 1881.  At that time, Bruckner, who had lived in Vienna since 1868, was teaching at the Conservatory; he was also on the faculty of the Vienna University, teaching harmony and counterpoint.  In addition to teaching, Bruckner was one of the organists in the Hofkapelle, so he hadn’t much time left for composition.  Bruckner started working on the Sixth symphony after the period marked by the disastrous first performance of his Third (the one dedicated to Wagner) which he so ineptly conducted.  For three years he didn’t write anything new, revising his older compositions (we’ve written about Bruckner’s insecurities and his tendency to revise his own music based on the sometimes uniformed opinion of others many times, for example here).  The Sixth isn’t performed very often, clearly not as often as either the Fourth or the last three (Seventh through Ninth).  Still, it’s a magnificent work, with most beautiful themes throughout the composition.  Sergiu Celibidache was a champion of this work, but in the spirit of the recent centenary, we’ll play it in the performance by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.  The symphony consists of four movements: Majestoso (here); Adagio: Sehr feierlich (Very solemnly), here; Scherzo: Nicht schnell (Not fast) — Trio: Langsam (Slowly), here; and Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell (With motion, but not too fast), here.

August 27, 2018.  In the afterglow of Bernstein’s centenary.  Bernstein was unique – a composer, conductor, pianist, educator, a communicator par excellence.  No musician before him has occupied such a position on this country’s cultural scene, and we can safely assume that nobody ever will again.  And here is one lessons we learn as we celebrate his life.  While we don’t want to over-generalize, one thing becomes clear when you look at Bernstein’s life: the importance of classical music within our culture has diminished.  Bernstein was the most important classical music figure when classical music itself was important.  Today, we also have stars, but they are dimmer and not as significant.  We even have the hard numbers that concur with this assessment.  There was a time in the history of this country when owing a piano was a must.  It was one of the major purchases Americans made, right after the house and practically on par with the purchase of a car.  In 1956, 210,00 pianos of different kinds – verticals, grands, even some pneumatic instruments – were sold in this country.  In 2007, the last year for which we have statistics – 62,500 pianos were sold.  In 1956 the population of the US was just over half of that in 2007.  In other words, seven times more pianos were sold per person in 1956 than in 2007.  We can assume that things have only gotten worse in the last 10 years.  We don’t want to over-dramatize the situation: while people clearly are not making music the way they were doing it in the middle of the past century, they still listen to the classical music.  They do it differently, thanks to the development of the Internet: they download it, or, what is more common, listen to streaming music.  And they don’t just listen, they express themselves – one could find millions of opinions on YouTube, for example.  This is wonderful, but this doesn’t change the basic notion of the diminishment.  As we mentioned in our previous post, in 1960 Bernstein could talk to kids about Gustav Mahler and play his music.  Today Mahler is established as one of the most important composers of all time (in large measure thanks to Bernstein), but you rarely hear him on major radio stations.  Classical music is in troubled waters; Leonard Bernstein’s inspirational example is helpful, but it will be up to us and future generations of musicians and listeners to make things right and prevent it from becoming a relic like kabuki. 

August 20, 2018.  Bernstein 100.  August 25^th will mark the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, American composer, conductor, pianist and music educator.  Musical America has been celebrating this event for the past 12 months, and for good reason: Bernstein’s influence on American culture cannot be overestimated.  He was one of the most important American composers of the 20^th century; his tenure as the music director of New York Philharmonic was probably the most significant in the orchestra’s history.  He wrote wonderful musicals, such as Candide and West Side Story, the latter being made world famous when he adapted it to the film (everybody remembers the tunes but it’s worth listening to it again – for all its simplicity it’s amazingly sophisticated music).  And of course, his long series of Young People’s Concerts remain one of the great examples of music education: he didn’t condescend to kids, didn’t try to dumb-down the approach (in his very first concert in 1958 he played a piece by Anton Webern) but shared with them his love and understanding of music in his own, communicative and contagiously enthusiastic way.  Bernstein was a Renaissance figure, and much was written about him, especially in preparation to the centenary.  We’ll address one small aspect of his creative work: the (re)introduction of the music of Mahler into the American culture.  Mahler is so ubiquitous these days that it’s hard to imagine that up to the late 1950s his music was rarely heard in concerts.

It’s not quite true that Mahler wasn’t performed at all.  Bruno Walter, Mahler’s assistant and friend, programmed his music into some concerts and made several recordings, including Das Lied von der Erde with Kathleen Ferrier and Julius Patzak. 

August 13, 2018.  Two Italians.  Nicola Porpora, a prolific opera composer, was born in Naples on August 17^th of 1686.   He was 10 when he enrolled in the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo.  In 1708 he received his first opera commission but had to wait several years to get another, as the Neapolitan opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti who had  returned to Naples from Rome that year.  In the meantime, Porpora was earning money at the Conservatorio di S Onofrio and giving private lessons.  In 1719 Scarlatti went back to Rome and that opened the stage for Porpora.  One of the operas composed during that period was Angelica, on the libretto by the young Pietro Metastasio.  The role of Orlando was sung by Porpora’s star pupil, the 15-year old castrato Farinelli, who would become one of the most celebrated singers in the history of opera.  Among Porpora’s pupils was also Gaetano Majorano, known as Caffarelli, also a castrato, second only to Farinelli; he became one of Handel’s favorite singers.

August 6, 2018.  Three French composers.  Cécile Chaminade, one of the few French women composers, was born on August 8^th of 1857 in Paris.  Her first music lessons came from her mother, a pianist and a singer.  Later she studied composition with Benjamin Godard. She started composing very young (when she was eight, she played some of her music for Georges Biset) and gained prominence with the publication of Piano Trio in 1880.  An excellent pianist, she toured England many times, playing mostly her own music and became very popular there.  In 1908 she went to the US, the country of “Chaminade fan clubs” and played in 12 cities, from Boston to St Louis.  Between 1880 and 1890 Chaminade composed several large orchestral compositions and music for piano and orchestra.  In the following period she scaled down, limiting herself to piano character pieces, of which she wrote more than 200.  Many of them are charming though they became dated even during her time (Chaminade lived till 1944).  Here ’s her short piano character piece, Scarf Dance. It’s performed by Lincoln Mayorga.

André Jolivet was also born in Paris and also on August 8^th but in 1905.  In his childhood he studied the cello but never went to the conservatory (he did study composition with Paul Le Fem, a composer and critic).  In his youth Jolivet was influenced by Debussy and Ravel, but it all changed when he became familiar with atonal music: in December of 1927 he attended a concert at the Salle Pleyel during which several Schoenberg pieces were performed and that changed his life.  Soon after he became a pupil of Edgard Varèse, an influential French-American avant-garde composer.  He also befriended Olivier Messiaen, who was better known at the time and helped Jolivet by promoting his music.  After the war Jolivet served as the musical director of the Comédie Française and composed a number 14 scores for plays performed at the theater. 

July 20, 2018.  Pre-Mahlerite: the tragic story of Hans Rott.   Hans Rott’s name is practically unknown these days.  Usually when a composer, especially one born in modern times, is rarely performed, there’s a reason for it: it’s probably because his (and it’s almost invariably “his,” not “her”) music is not very interesting (the numerous minor Italian late-Baroque composers come to mind).  We think Rott is an exception, even if we don’t expect his music to join the classical cannon any time soon.  Rott’s life was both short and tragic.  He was born on August 1^st of 1858 in a suburb of Vienna.   His father’s original name was Roth, which means that Hans was most likely Jewish, although we don’t know whether he, like Mahler some time later, had later converted to Catholicism.  Rott attended the Vienna Conservatory, where his organ teacher was Anton Bruckner.  His composition teacher was Franz Krenn, who also taught Mahler.  Mahler, two years younger, and Rott even shared a room for a while.  But it was Bruckner, and also Wagner, who influenced Rott the most.  In 1878 (he was 20) Rott decided to participate in a composers’ competition, submitting the first movement of his Symphony in E Major.  Everybody on the jury, except for Bruckner, was highly negative.  Two years later, Rott presented the complete symphony to Brahms.  He should’ve known better!  Brahms intensely disliked both composers whose influence he could discern in Rott’s music: Wagner and Bruckner.  Brahms’s criticism was vicious: he told Rott that he had no talent and should look for a different vocation while he was still young.  We can assume that at that time Rott was already mentally ill, because just several months later while traveling to Mülhausen by train (he had reluctantly applied for and received a position of the director of the Alsatian choir association) he pointed a revolver at a fellow passenger who was trying to light a cigar.  The previous encounter with Brahms was probably on his mind, as in his madness he claimed that Brahms had planted dynamite on the train and he, Rott, was just trying to save his fellow travelers from being blown up.  Rott was brought back to Vienna and institutionalized.  He spent the rest of his short life in a lunatic asylum.  Rott died of tuberculosis on June 25^th of 1884, at age 25.