July 10, 2017.  Recent anniversaries: Gluck and more.  We missed several significant anniversaries and will make up for at least some of them.  The great reformer of the opera,  Christoph Willibald Gluck was born in a small town of Erasbach in Bavaria on July 2^nd of 1714.  He was four when his family moved to Bohemia (Antonio Salieri, his pupil, wrote in his memoir that Czech was Gluck’s native language and that he expressed himself in German with difficulty).  Gluck studied mathematics at the university of Prague but probably never graduated.  In 1737 he went to Milan to study music with Giuseppe Sammartini.  Gluck’s first opera was Artaserse, on the libretto of the famous Metastasio, composed for the Carnival of 1742 and performed in the Teatro Regio Ducal (the theater, one of the largest in Milan, burned down in 1776 and as his replacement Nuovo Regio Ducal Teatro alla Scala was built; we now know it as La Scala).  In 1745 Gluck traveled to London.  There he composed an opera, but more importantly, became familiar with the operas of George Frideric Handel.  Handel was not terribly impressed with Gluck’s compositions: the music historian Charles Burney wrote in his “Life of Handel” that the great master said of Gluck “he knows no more of contrapunto, as mein cook, Waltz” (an interesting mixture of three languages that is).  Gluck didn’t stay in London for too long; in 1747 he was back in Vienna, writing an opera to celebrate the Empress Maria Theresa's birthday.   The opera was La Semiramide riconosciuta, again on Metastasio's libretto, and the assignment was very prestigious: Gluck got it ahead of the much more established Johann Adolph Hasse.  The opera was a popular success but Metastasio called it “archvandalian music, which is insupportable’” and Gluck left Vienna shortly after. 

July 3, 2017.  Mahler, Symphony no. 5.  Gustav Mahler was born on July 7^th of 1860, and to celebrate his birthday we will again turn to one of his symphonies, this time the Fifth.  The time of its composition, the years of 1901 and 1902, is closely linked to Mahler’s marriage to Alma Schindler.  In 1897 Mahler was appointed the music director of the Vienna Hofoper, one of the most important opera theaters in Europe, whose orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, was (and still is) one of the best.  Mahler’s early years as the director were rather turbulent.  As he was mounting new opera productions (the first two were Wagner’s Lohengrin and Mozart’s Zauberflöte), Mahler required utter discipline and precision.  Very demanding, he was not too sensitive toward the singers and orchestra players, whose feelings he often hurt.  The atmosphere within the opera house was difficult but results were of a very high quality.  Problems of a different sort accompanied Mahler as the conductor of subscription concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic.  To many conservative music critic, he appeared not sufficiently felicitous to the classical scores.  And indeed, Mahler often altered the orchestration and was known to amplify musical dynamics beyond the generally accepted practices of the day.  Things were exacerbated by the partisan, and often very hostile, critics.  A large section of the society was deeply anti-Semitic (the Mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, was the leader of the anti-Semitic Austrian Christian Social Party), and even though Mahler converted to Christianity to take a position with the Hofoper, they never forgot his Jewish roots.

June 26, 2017.  Beethoven, Symphony No. 7.  Below is the article by Joseph DuBose on Beethoven’s Symphony no.7.  As always with Beethoven’s symphonies, our problem was in selecting a recording to illustrate it: there are myriads in existence, many of superb quality.  We chose a remastered live recording made by Carlos Kleiber with the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra in 1976.  You can listen to it here.  ♫

Symphony No. 7 in A major

Beethoven completed the Symphony No. 7 in 1812. Four years separated it from the “Pastoral”—the longest span between any of the symphonies thus far. Yet, that interval does not mark a period of lesser creativity in Beethoven’s career. Many important works appeared during that time, including two string quartets (opp. 74 and 95), the music for “Egmont,” “King Stephen,” and the “Ruins of Athens,” the Choral Fantasia, and the F-sharp minor and “Les Adieux” piano sonatas.

Beethoven’s style continued to advance during this period. With each decisive step he brought music closer to embodying the deepest expressions of the human soul. Thus far, his music had embodied the grand, the lofty, the profound, and, quite remarkably, was largely uninfluenced by the day-to-day events of the composer's life. What Beethoven had not yet explored, at least in his symphonies, was humor. Beethoven had always indulged in coarse jokes, puns, and nicknames, but in his later years, his humor became even more pronounced. He even had a special word for his unique, off-putting behavior: aufgeknöptf, or “unbuttoned.” In one such instance of this behavior, Beethoven, when visiting his friend Breuning, would, if having just come in from the rain, take off his hat and dash water off it in all possible directions, without the slightest regard for what furniture or people may have been nearby. Another example involved his brother. When Johann left a card for Beethoven that read, “Johann van Beethoven, Landed proprietor,” Beethoven quickly responded with his own: “Ludwig van Beethoven, Brain proprietor.” Though brief glimpses of this rough humor can be found as early as the Second Symphony, Beethoven had not yet allowed it an outlet in his music until the composition of the A major Symphony.

June 19, 2017.  A Stamitz and a Bach.  Johann Stamitz was born on this day in 1717 in a small town of Německý Brod (German Ford in the Czech) in Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire.   He studied in the Jesuit Gymnasium in Jihlava known across Europe for its high quality of musical education.  He then studied at Prague University and then, it’s assumed, embarked on a career of a violin virtuoso.  Sometime around 1741 Stamitz was hired by the Mannheim court of the Elector of Palatinate.  At the time, the court had an excellent orchestra.  In June of 1742 he played at a concert and, according to the advertisement, was to perform on the violin, viola d’amore, cello and double bass.  His rise was very quick: a year later he became the first violinist of the court orchestra, in 1745 – the Konzertmeister and in 1750 – director of instrumental music.  As such he was responsible for both composing and performing music for the court.  Under the leadership of Stamitz the orchestra improved even further, both technically and musically, becoming the most renowned orchestra in Europe.  In 1754, Stamiz went to Paris and stayed there for a year.  He performed, to great acclaim, in private residences of the nobility and also at the Concert Spirituel at the Tuileries Palace, the first ever public concert series.  Stamiz returned to Mannheim in the fall of 1755.  Two years later, on March 27^th of 1757, he died at the age of 39.  Johann Stamitz, had two composer sons who became as well known as their father, and is mostly famous for his symphonies (he wrote 58 of them) and his orchestral trios.  Here is his Pastorale Symphony.  Virtuosi di Praga are conducted by Oldřich Vlček.

June 12, 2017.  Stravinsky, Pleyel.  Igor Stravinsky, one of the most influential composers of the 20^th century, was born on June 17^th of 1882 in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov) outside of Saint Petersburg.  For years, as we celebrated Stravinsky, we were traversing his life in its amazing transmutations.   We’ve mentioned it before, but one can think of only one other artist who could change his creative styles so drastically and succeeded so enormously in every one of them – and that’s Picasso.  Last year we wrote about one of Stravinsky’s most successful neoclassical pieces, his ballet Apollo.  Apollo was composed early in 1928.  Stravinsky was living in France and leading, at least on a personal level, a double life: while still married to Catherine (Katya) Nosenko, mother of his four children, he had since 1921 been carrying on an affair with Vera de Bosset, then the wife of the painter Sergei Sudeikin (Vera would leave Sudeikin a year later).  Stravinsky bought a house in Anglet just outside of Biarritz and moved his family there.  When not visiting Anglet, he lived in Paris with Vera.   Katya knew about the affair but didn’t do anything about it.  Stravinsky stayed married to Katya for the remainder of her life; the last years were very unhappy.  Some years earlier Katya had contracted tuberculosis, which had developed slowly, but in 1938 she infected both Igor and their daughter Lyudmila.  Lyudmila died in 1930 at the age of 30, Catherine – three months later, in March of 1939.  Igor spent several months in a hospital but recovered.