August 28, 2017.  Pachelbel and Locatelli.  Before we turn to our birthday boys, two composers born in the 17^th century, we’d like to mention a much younger musician.  Yoo Jin Jang was born in 1990 in South Korea.  After studying in her native country, she moved to the US.  At the New England Conservatory, she studied with Miriam Fried and is currently pursuing her Doctorate at that school.  Ms. Jang has won a number of competitions, among them the 2013 Munetsugu Violin Competition in Japan, for which she was loaned the 1697 “Rainville” Stradivari violin.  In 2012 Ms. Jang founded the Kallaci String Quartet.  She recently played a Dame Myra Hess concert in Chicago, and here’s her performance of a rarely-played Violin Sonata by Felix Mendelssohn.  The sonata was never published during Mendelssohn’s time, then got lost and was discovered by Yehudi Menuhin only in 1953!  Renana Gutman is on the piano.  And as a little encore of sorts, here’s a Tango-Étude No. 3 for Solo Violin, again performed by Yoo Jin Jang.

Pietro Locatelli was also a violinist, and a pretty good one: he toured across Europe and his compositions, which we assume he could play well, present technical challenges even to modern violinists.  Locatelli was born on September 3^rd of 1695 in Bergamo.  At the age of 14 he became a member of the cappella musicale at the local church of Santa Maria Maggiore.  In 1711, he went to Rome where he studied with students of Arcangelo Corelli and maybe even with the master himself.  He came under the patronage of Camillo Cybo, a major-domo of the Pope Clement XI (Cybo, a great grandnephew of Pope Innocent X, was later elevated to Cardinal).  Locatelli dedicated his Opus one, Twelve Concerti Grossi, to Cybo.  He also became one of the favorite musicians of that famous patron of arts, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni.  Locatelli left Rome in 1723 and during the following five years traveled across Italy and Germany.  He performed at major courts – in Berlin for the Prussian court, in Dresden for Augustus II of Saxony.  Most of Locatelli’s compositions also come from this period.  In 1727 Locatelli moved to Amsterdam, where he was to live for the rest of his life (he died on March 30^th of 1764).  There he played mostly for the rich music lovers and traded in violin strings.  He composed very little.  Here’s one violinist who wouldn't be stymied by Locatelli’s technical challenges: Leonid Kogan.  He’s playing the Violin Sonata in F minor, op. 6 No. 7 "At the tomb."  Andrej Mytnik is at the piano.

August 21, 2017.  Debussy, Krenek and Stockhausen.  We have a bit of a challenge: on the one hand, Debussy, one of the most popular composers ever, was born this week.  On the other, this same week brings the anniversaries of two very significant composers, who strongly affected the development of 20^th century Western music.  The problem is that their music is challenging and with few exceptions not easy on the ear.  These composers are Ernst Krenek and Karlheinz Stockhausen.  As for Debussy: here’s something that’s performed not as often as the Préludes or Suite Bergamasque: the first act from his opera Pelléas & Mélisande.  Pierre Boulez conducts the Royal Opera House Orchestra.  With Donald McIntyre and Elisabeth Söderström.  And now to things more adventuresome.  

Ernst Krenek was born in Vienna on August 23^rd of 1900.   His father was Czech (“r” in Krenek was originally an ř, as in Dvořak and pronounced as “rzh”).  He studied with Franz Schreker, who these days is almost forgotten but back in the early 20^th century was the second most popular opera composer (after Richard Strauss).  In 1920 Krenek moved to Berlin, met many musicians and became part of a very active musical scene.  In 1922, he met Alma Mahler and her daughter Anna.  Alma introduced Krenek to Alban Berg, and Anna asked him to complete her father’s Tenth Symphony.  Anna Mahler and Kreken got married in 1924 but the marriage lasted less than a year.  In 1923 the premier of Krenek’s Second Symphony, which doesn’t sound too daring today, created an uproar.  In the aftermath, Krenek moved to Switzerland, where he met Stravinsky (they had a contentious relationship).  In 1925 Krenek went to Paris, where he became involved with the composers of Les Six; under their influence he decided that his music should be simpler.  From the neo-Romantic period that followed come several operas, including Der Diktator based on the life of Mussolini.  In 1927 Krenek wrote the opera Jonny spielt auf, about a black jazz violinist.  Here’s an excerpt (A Hotel Room in Paris) from the recording made in 1964 with Lucia Popp, other soloists and the Vienna Volksoper Orchestra conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser.  Jonny spielt auf was a tremendous success (even though it sounds somewhat dated now) and afforded Krenek financial freedom.  Several years later the opera would be banned by the Nazis.  Krenek moved to Vienna where he resumed his friendship with Berg and Webern.  In Vienna, he wrote a 12-tone opera Karl V, but the German premier was cancelled by the Nazis.  In March of 1938 Germany annexed Austria and shortly after Krenek emigrated to America.  In the US, Krenek taught in several music schools; his longest tenure was at Hamline University, from 1942 to 1947. 

August 14 2017.  Ibert, Porpora, Enescu.  The French composer Jacques Ibert was born in Paris on August 15^th of 1890.  His father was a successful trader and his mother an amateur pianist who studied with the Conservatory professors.  Jacques started studying the violin at the age of four and later took piano lessons.  In his youth, he supported himself as an accompanist and a cinema pianist.  He took several courses at the Paris Conservatory and attended private classes with André Gedalge, a teacher and composer.  There he met Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud, two young composers who would later, together with Poulenc, Auric, Durey and Tailleferre form a group called Les Six.  Ibert never joined in as during those years he stayed mostly away from Paris: during the Great War, he was a naval officer and then, returning to Paris, he won the Prix de Rome on his first attempt and went to Italy.  This was a remarkable achievement considering that Ibert was absent from practically any music studies for almost four war years.  The first concert of Ibert’s works, in 1922, was conducted by Gabriel Pierné (his birthday is also this week, on August 16^th; he was born in 1863).  In 1937, he was made the director of the Académie de France at the Villa Medici, a position he held till 1960.  Ibert died in Paris on February 5^th of 1962.  Here’s Ibert’s Flute Concerto, with Emmanuel Pahud as the soloist.  

August 7, 2017.  Jolivet and Biber.  A very interesting French composer, André Jolivet was born on August 8^th of 1905 in Paris.  In his childhood, he studied the cello but never went to the conservatory (his parents encouraged him to become a teacher).  For a while he studied 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 Pierrot lunaire and several other Schoenberg pieces were performed.  That concert changed his life.  Soon after he became a pupil of Edgard Varèse, an influential French-American avant-garde composer, whose Amériques was another strong influence.  He also befriended Olivier Messiaen, who was very helpful in promoting Jolivet’s music.  During the war Jolivet moved away from the atonality, saying that he strives for “evasion and relaxation,” understandable goals during the difficult time but ones that were not shared by his friend Messaien.  Jolivet wrote a comic opera, Dolorès, and the ballet Guignol et Pandore.  After the war Jolivet became the musical director of the Comédie Française but continued to compose till his last days.  He died in Paris on December 20^th of 1974.

July 31, 2017.  Granados and Schuman.  We got so involved with the masters of Renaissance music, especially the great Spaniard Tomás Luis de Victoria, that we missed a very special anniversary: July 27^th marked the 150^th anniversary of the birth of another Spanish composer, Enrique Granados.  More than three centuries separate Victoria and Granados, and during that period the music in Spain didn’t develop in a straight line.  To be fair, arts never develop in a constant progression, even Italy and Germany at some point or other experienced periods of decline.  (Flemish music dissolved completely, but that was more a matter of political rearrangements than cultural trends).  In the 15^th and especially16^th century Spain was one of the musical centers of Europe, close to the Franco-Flemish school since Charles I was not just the King of Spain but the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  His possessions included Burgundy, the Netherlands and parts of Italy, and Spanish musicians traveled across the realm, learning from the locals while the Flemish and the Italians gravitated toward the courts of Spain.  The following Baroque period was still quite productive (Domenico Scarlatti spent much of his life in Spain) but by the end of the 17^th century musical culture was in a decline.  This decline continued longer than in any other country of major cultural significance.  And it stopped only with the arrival of a brilliant group of composers in the second half of the 19^th century, Isaac Albéniz, Manuel de Falla, Joaquin Turina, and of course Enrique Granados.  We’ve written about Granados many times (for example, here), so we’ll address some of his works (his output was not very large as he tragically died at the age of 50).  While his piano pieces, such as Twelve danzas españolas, Goyescas Eight Valses Poéticos are among his most popular pieces, Granados also wrote many wonderful songs.  One cycle is called Tonadillas al estilo antiguo (Little tunes in ancient style).  We’ll hear three of them, El tra la la y el punteado, El majo tímido and La maja dolorosa.  They are performed by one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of the 20^th century, Teresa Berganza, with Félix Lavilla at the piano (at the time of the recording, 1961, Berganza and Lavilla were married).

July 24, 2017.  Tomás Luis de Victoria.  A week ago, when we presented three great composers of the High Renaissance, we gave Tomás Luis de Victoria short shift.  We’ll try to correct it in this post.  A younger contemporary of Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso, Victoria was born in 1548 in a small town of Sanchidrián near Ávila‎.  We know some unusual facts about him, for example, that his mother was from a converso family, that is a family of Spanish Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism.  Victoria went to school in Ávila, sang as a choirboy in the local cathedral and probably learned there to play the organ.  The cathedral of Ávila was one of Spain’s musical centers, and Victoria’s teachers were prominent composers and musicians. Some speculate that while in Ávila, he met Antonio de Cabezón, the famous blind composer, second in fame only to Cristóbal de Morales.  Somewhere around 1563, once his voice had broken, Victoria was sent to Rome, to the Collegio Germanico, a preeminent Catholic school known for its excellent music education.  As we mentioned last week, while at the Collegio, Victoria almost certainly met Palestrina, who at the time was maestro di cappella at the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, and very likely was his pupil.  In 1569 Victoria became a singer and the organist at Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli, the Spanish national church in Rome.  Such was his reputation, that a couple years later he was invited to teach music at the Collegio Germanico and eventually was appointed maestro di cappella.  In 1574, he was ordained a priest.  A year later he was appointed maestro di capella at Sant'Apollinare alle Terme, the church of the Collegium.  By then Victoria was already a widely known and well-published composer.