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Post by jk on Jan 27, 2023 5:31:18 GMT -5
1713: Maria Margherita Grimani (1680–c.1720) has the distinction of being the first woman composer to have a dramatic work performed at the Vienna court theatre (see below). Although married and involved in court life, she may have been what they call a secular canoness, a nun living a simple life in a religious community but not bound to the Augustinian or other monastic Rule of Life like regular canonesses. Another in that position was Camilla de Rossi (coming up soon). Her oratorio Pallade e Marte was first performed at the imperial theatre in 1713 on 4 November, the name-day of Emperor Charles VI. Scored for two voices, oboe and string orchestra, the soloists adopt the roles of deities, taking it in turns to praise the emperor. From that work, this is the "Sinfonia", which I assume opens the work: 1903: Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was an Austrian-American musician, writer and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century and was the leader of what was later termed the Second Viennese School. He was also an influential teacher of composition, whose many prominent pupils included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, John Cage (all featured later) and Dave Brubeck. Well, the last time I heard Schoenberg's epic Pélleas und Melisande, Op. 5 was under trying circumstances. Back in the summer of 2001, we were at London's Royal Albert Hall in the Arena, a standing-only area during the BBC Proms season. The trouble was, I had a funny turn and spent most of the first half of the concert, devoted to Schoenberg's symphonic poem, lying on the floor. During the interval, a kind member of staff offered us an opera box for the remainder of the concert. But the concert hall's medical officer had other ideas: he and a colleague sat me in a chair and whisked me through the corridor over the heads of the bemused choristers waiting to perform Scriabin's Prometheus (dare I say it? coming up soon) and into an ambulance, instructing it to take us to the local outpatients' where they were expecting me. After waiting for hours at the hospital we said **** it and left for home.
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Post by jk on Jan 28, 2023 5:33:49 GMT -5
1712: We know that the Dutch composer Pieter Bustijn (bapt. 1649–1729) was also an organist, harpsichordist and carillon player but not much more than that. This lack of information can be attributed to the loss of the greater part of his home town Middelburg's archives in 1940. Only one of his works has been discovered, the IX Suittes pour le Clavessin, probably because it had been printed (by no means standard practice in NL in the late 17th and early 18th centuries). This is Suite No. 6 in A Minor (Preludio–Allemanda–Corrente–Sarabanda–Aria–Giga): 1904: I'm always confusing the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz (also Ferenc) Schmidt (1874–1939) with the Frenchman Florent Schmitt. Schmidt's studies at the Vienna Conservatory, from which he graduated "with excellence" in 1896, included a few lessons on counterpoint with the then already ailing Anton Bruckner [ 1894]. He then played cello, until 1914, with the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra, often under Gustav Mahler (up next), who habitually had Schmidt play all the cello solos, even though he wasn't the principal cellist. Schmidt and Arnold Schoenberg [ 1903] maintained cordial relations despite their vast musical differences. That said, Schmidt betrays the influence of Schoenberg's early, tonal works such as Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (linked here to compensate for Arnold S's shameful treatment in the previous post!), in whose Viennese première he participated as second cellist. This is the "Intermezzo" from Notre Dame, the first of Schmidt’s two operas:
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Post by jk on Jan 29, 2023 5:58:38 GMT -5
1711: Élisabeth Claude Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729) was one of the few well-known female composers of her time, and unlike many of her contemporaries, she composed in a wide variety of forms. Louis XIV took notice of her when she performed at his palace at Versailles aged five, which eventually led to her becoming a musician at the court of the Sun King. Ms Jacquet de La Guerre is well represented in recordings and live performances on YouTube. Her musical path was comparatively smooth, which is probably why so much of her work has survived, although her personal life suffered a series of blows in the years around 1700. Widely acknowledged as a formidable improviser at the harpsichord, Ms Jacquet de La Guerre was the first Frenchwoman to have a opera put into production ( Céphale et Procris, available in its entirety on YouTube). From Book II of Cantates françaises tirés de l’écriture, this is "Samson". According to the YouTube blurb, it divides into ten sections: I. Simphonie II. Récitatif: Samson qui fut long-temps l'effroy des Philistins III. Air: Que l'on est foible quand on aime IV. Récitatif: Le Philistin superbe insulte à l'esclavage V. Mouvement marque: Vous l'avez livré dans nos mains VI. Air: Tremblez, fiers Tyrans, tremblez VII. Récitatif: Deux colomnes portoient l'edifice éclatant VIII. Air: Ne souffre pas que ce Peuple joüisse IX. Récitatif: A ces mots, il rompt tout; & déjà l'edifice X. Air: Israël, chantez la victoire 1905: The first work I heard by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) was his Symphony No. 3. This was in the summer of 1962, the year I discovered "classical" orchestral music. I'd never heard anything remotely like this before: the sheer length of well over ninety minutes, the powerhouse opening motif on eight French horns, the relentless hammering of the timpani in the sixth and last movement... But I won't link any of it here, for the simple reason that I feel it needs to be heard in its entirety to make sense. So instead I chose his Symphony No. 7, whose movements seem to me to be able to stand alone. This is the fourth, marked "Nachtmuzik II". This and its companion movement probably gave rise to the symphony's popular subtitle The Song of the Night, as if it depicted a musical journey from dusk to dawn. Note the parts for guitar and mandolin (the latter best heard at 3:45 and 6:13):
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Post by jk on Jan 30, 2023 3:28:30 GMT -5
This landmark entry is the first of three (?) where both composers/artists are women, here separated by almost two centuries. 1710: Camilla de Rossi ( (fl. 1670–1710) was an Italian composer known for the oratorios she wrote in Vienna during the early 1700s, with more surviving works than any other woman composer in Northern Italy and Austria during this period. Her oratorios call for solo voices only, accompanied by various instruments ( chalumeaux, archlute, trumpets, oboe) with string orchestra (including continuo). Ms de Rossi is well represented by studio and live recordings on YouTube. From part one of her 1710 oratorio Sant'Alessio, this is the aria "Basta sol che casto sia" (You just need to be chaste), sung by Alessio's luckless bride (see here for a potted description of the work): 1906: Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was an English composer and writer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. (Her surname is pronounced with the y of Smythe and the th of Smith). Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas. She was also a keen horse-rider and tennis player and a passionate golfer. In 1910, she gave up music for two years to devote herself to the suffragette movement, writing what would become their anthem, "The March of the Women", which she once famously conducted with a toothbrush from her cell window for her sisters in the prison compound below. After the customary uphill struggle for acceptance in a male-dominated profession, Ms Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1922, becoming the first female composer to be awarded a damehood. Dame Ethel, who preferred the ladies, fell in love aged 71 with the writer Virginia Woolf who, both alarmed and amused, said it was "like being caught by a giant crab". Even so, the two became friends. The one work that immediately springs to mind at the mention of her name is the opera The Wreckers, of which this is the stirring "Overture":
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Post by jk on Jan 31, 2023 5:21:46 GMT -5
1709: Agostino Steffani (1654–1728), who was an ecclesiastic and a diplomat as well as a musician, stands somewhat apart from his Italian contemporaries such as Alessandro Scarlatti (two posts away) in his mastery of instrumental forms. His compositions, including opera overtures, show a combination of Italian suavity with a logical conciseness of construction attributable to a French influence. This is the opening "Introduzione al Dramma" from Steffani's late opera Amor vien dal destino: 1907: Another Italian, the multi-talented Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), was an outstanding pianist; his international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time. The following comes from a year-old post of mine at this forum: Busoni's haunting Berceuse élégiaque, Op. 42 was, according to the original YouTube blurb with the odd tweak from me, "originally written for solo piano, to be added as the seventh piece in his 1907 collection Elegies. Busoni adapted it for orchestra later the same year. This orchestral version was subtitled 'Des Mannes Wiegenlied am Sarge seiner Mutter' ('The man's lullaby at his mother's coffin'). The first performance of Berceuse élégiaque was in New York on 21 February 1911, and was conducted by Gustav Mahler [ 1905]." According to Wikipedia, Mahler "returned to New York in late October 1910, where [he] threw himself into a busy Philharmonic season of concerts and tours. Around Christmas 1910 he began suffering from a sore throat, which persisted. On 21 February 1911, with a temperature of 40 °C (104 °F), Mahler insisted on fulfilling an engagement at Carnegie Hall, with a program of mainly new Italian music, including the world premiere of Busoni's Berceuse élégiaque. This was Mahler's last concert." He died three months later. [ Source]
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Post by jk on Feb 1, 2023 4:23:36 GMT -5
1708: Needless to say, it was JH who introduced me to the music of the German composer and harpsichordist Christoph Graupner (1683–1760). A contemporary of J.S. Bach [ 1722], Telemann [ 1755] and Handel [ 1728], Graupner was hardworking and prolific, with about 2000 surviving works in his catalogue, most of them religious cantatas. In a momentous twist of fate, Graupner successfully applied for the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig in late 1722 but this was overruled by his employer in Darmstadt, so that the next candidate to audition, one Johann Sebastian Bach, got the job instead. From Act III of Graupner's Hamburg opera Antiochus und Stratonica, this is Scene 17, the closing "Chaconne": 1908: Charles Ives (1874–1954) is widely regarded as the father of 20th-century American art music; his experimental side foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during that century. In actual fact, Ives earned his living as a successful insurance executive and actuary, achieving considerable fame with his book Life Insurance with Relation to Inheritance Tax (1918), and wrote music in his spare time. Frank Zappa [ 1986] named an instrumental after him (best heard playing as the "backing" to Captain Beefheart's outrageous "The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)"). Although Ives composed his iconic The Unanswered Question in 1908, he would revise it considerably in 1930–1935. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, and was not performed until 1946. It's not essential to know the programme underlying it but it does make fascinating reading. I should add that you need to "TURN IT ALL THE WAY UP!!" (to quote FZ), otherwise you'll miss the beginning, which is incredibly quiet, one is tempted to say felt rather than heard (the strings play pianississimo throughout).
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Post by jk on Feb 2, 2023 5:18:39 GMT -5
1707: Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) was an Italian Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. Considered the most illustrious representative of the "Neapolitan School" of opera, Scarlatti brought the Italian dramatic tradition to its maximum development, designing the final form of the Da capo aria, imitated throughout Europe. He was also the inventor of the Italian overture in three movements (which was of the highest importance in the development of the symphony) and the four-part sonata (progenitor of the modern string quartet). One of his two sons, Domenico (coming up soon), has enjoyed similar lasting fame. From what is now considered Scarlatti's finest opera, Il Mitridate Eupatore, this is the aria "Esci oma", sung (I can only assume) by Mitridate's scheming mother Stratonica: 1909: The Englishman Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) is perhaps best known for the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), The Lark Ascending (1914) and the Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934). He also wrote nine symphonies, which run the gamut from serene (#5) to strident (#4) to downright perplexing (#6, whose brief pianissimo finale has been described as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken in music). The wonderfully wide-screen #2, entitled A Sea Symphony, doesn't lend itself well to being split up (cf. Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 [ 1905]), so I've linked it here complete. Setting words by Walt Whitman, its four movements are "A Song for All Seas, All Ships" (baritone, soprano and chorus), "On the Beach at Night, Alone" (baritone and chorus), "Scherzo: The Waves" (chorus) and "The Explorers" (baritone, soprano, semi-chorus and chorus):
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Post by jk on Feb 3, 2023 3:04:39 GMT -5
1706: The Italian composer and violinist Michele Mascitti (1664–1760) spent his younger years travelling through his homeland and later throughout Europe, spending time in Germany and the Netherlands. He dropped the second e from his name after settling in Paris in 1704. There, Mascitti published all nine of his sonata collections featuring that instrument. His compositions contained an abundance of novel harmonies for the period; during his lifetime, Mascitti enjoyed similar fame to Corelli [ 1714] and Albinoni (coming soon). This is the second of his 15 Chamber Sonatas with Violin and Cello, Op. 2: 1910: Alexander Scriabin (1872 [Old Style 1871]–1915) was first greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin [ 1873], being a virtuoso pianist himself, and later by the teachings of Helena Blavatsky and others. His music shifted accordingly from a late Romantic idiom to a hothouse ambience later presided over by what has become known as the "mystic chord" or "Prometheus chord", after its extensive use in the work linked below. As threatened several posts ago, here is Scriabin's Prometheus: the Poem of Fire. Once again, I would turn up the volume to catch the work’s brooding opening; I would also suggest you leave the volume up to experience the stratospheric climaxes and glorious washes of sound to the full:
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Post by jk on Feb 4, 2023 4:29:06 GMT -5
1705: Little is known of the life of the French harpsichordist Gaspard Le Roux (c. 1670–1706?); it doesn't help that the name Le Roux was common among musicians and dance instructors in Paris, where Gaspard was active. Le Roux is known only for his 1705 publication, Pieces de Clavessin. The book suggests that he was a natural teacher, giving practical advice such as to sing the melodies and accompany them using the trios' thorough basses before playing them; it is also demonstrational, providing differing examples of dances and styles. From what I can only assume is the part of the book entitled Pièces en sol mineur, this is "Sarabande diversifiée en douze couplets": 1911: The Frenchman Paul Dukas (1865–1935) is probably the most intensely self-critical composer in history, in terms of abandoning and destroying compositions. Of the few that survived, easily the most famous is his symphonic poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice, not least through its use in Walt Disney's animated film Fantasia (1940). In second place, as I see it, is his one-act ballet La Peri, which has been described as combining elements of Romanticism and Impressionism, although I detect a strong if subtle dose of what used to be called "Orientalism" in the mix. (The wiki page sets the scene.) The arresting brass fanfare that precedes it dates from the following year (1912):
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Post by jk on Feb 5, 2023 4:56:08 GMT -5
1704: The French composer and organist Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749) wrote mainly vocal works, amongst them more than 25 secular cantatas on subjects often inspired by Greco-Roman myths; indeed, he himself developed the genre of the "French cantata", of which he was considered the uncontested master. Suite in C minor comprises half of Pièces de Clavecin, a book of dance pieces for the harpsichord that sees Clérambault adopting the tradition of the "unmeasured prelude", in which the duration of each note is left to the performer. From that suite, this is "Sarabande grave": 1912: The Austrian Alban Berg (1885–1935) is generally regarded as the composer who humanized the twelve-tone system devised by his teacher Schoenberg [ 1903], as exemplified by his extremely moving Violin Concerto (1935), dedicated to the memory of Alma Mahler's daughter Manon Gropius and in effect a requiem for himself. His equally moving opera Wozzeck is considered one of the greatest operas of the 20th century. Five Orchestral Songs after Postcards by Peter Altenberg is a setting of some of the aphoristic poetry Altenberg used to write on the backs of postcards and scraps of paper. (We saw examples of these when we visited Vienna some years back and stayed at a hotel once frequented by Altenberg.) The riot caused by the inclusion of two of the songs at a March 1913 concert conducted by Schoenberg so affected Berg that the work had to wait until 1952 for its next performance.
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Post by jk on Feb 6, 2023 4:42:06 GMT -5
1703: Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) was the sixth of ten children of the composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti [ 1707] (his older brother Pietro Filippo was also a musician). An accomplished harpsichordist, Scarlatti is most famous today for his single-movement sonatas, 555 in all, most of which were written for harpsichord or the earliest pianofortes. Some display harmonic audacity in their use of discords and unconventional modulations to remote keys. I'm familiar with 17 of these gems from a CD of recordings assumedly made in the 1960s by the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. "Se l'alma non t'adora", an all-female duet between Poppea and Nero, comes from his opera L'Ottavia ristituita al trono, which was produced in Naples where he had secured an appointment as organist at the age of 15: 1913: Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) is generally regarded as Finland's greatest composer, not least because of the seven symphonies and the tone poems featured in the thread I dedicated to this wonderful music. Yet he is almost as well-known for what he didn't write. Sibelius composed prolifically until the mid-1920s, but after completing his Seventh Symphony (1924), the incidental music for The Tempest (1926) and the tone poem Tapiola (1926), he stopped producing major works in his last 30 years -- a stunning and perplexing decline commonly referred to as the "silence of Järvenpää" (the location of his home). Any work Sibelius did on a long-awaited eighth symphony most likely met its end at his hands during a manuscript-burning spree at his home in the mid 1940s. A brush with death in the mid 1900s (a potentially fatal throat tumour) coloured the music he composed in its wake. Like the enigmatic Fourth Symphony and the tone poem The Bard, Luonnotar has something otherworldly about it without needing to resort to atonality (I think it was Prokofiev who said that there was still so much to be said in C major):
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Post by jk on Feb 7, 2023 5:44:24 GMT -5
1702: André Campra (bapt. 1660–1744) was the leading French opera composer in the period between Jean-Baptiste Lully (to come) and Jean-Philippe Rameau [ 1741], writing several tragédies en musique and opéra-ballets that were extremely well received, as well as three books of cantatas and a requiem. While serving as maître de musique at the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, Campra added violins to the performance of sacred music, a controversial innovation in an era when they were considered street instruments! Ths is the "Ouverture" to Campra's tragédie en musique Tancrède: 1914: The German musician Max Reger (1873–1916) will forever be linked in my mind with his response (in German) to the umpteenth negative review of his music by Rudolf Louis, the music critic of the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten: "I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review in front of me. In a moment it will be behind me!" I've never understood why Reger's music is sometimes considered dry and academic. My first ever visit to a record-lending library (in London) yielded a somewhat scratched copy of Reger's sumptuous Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 132:
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Post by jk on Feb 8, 2023 4:41:01 GMT -5
1701: The English composer and organist Daniel Purcell (c.1664–1717) was the younger brother (or a cousin) of the much better-known Henry Purcell, of whom more later. He is perhaps best remembered for having completed the latter's semi-opera The Indian Queen, either for the first performance or because of Henry's failing health and subsequent death. This is the opening "Symphony" from Daniel's own opera The Judgement of Paris, his entry to a competition to set William Congreve's libretto of that name (it came third out of the four entries): 1915: The German composer and conductor Richard Strauss (1864–1949) is noted for his pioneering subtleties of orchestration, combined with an advanced harmonic style. Displaying a unique mastery of the tone poem, he earned international acclaim during the late 1880s with such works in this genre as Don Juan and Also sprach Zarathustra, although by the early 1900s he had shifted his focus primarily towards operatic composition. He was also apolitical, which got him into hot water during both world wars. As he wrote to Romain Rolland, "Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works." Thankfully he was cleared of any suspected wrongdoing during WWII by a denazification tribunal held in Munich in 1948, a year before his death. Strauss once said of An Alpine Symphony that with it he had finally learned to orchestrate. Calling for large forces including quadruple woodwind, a 30-strong brass section on- and offstage, an organ, and wind and thunder machines, this powerfully evocative depiction of an eleven-hour trek through the Alpine mountains is one of my favourites among Strauss's works (another is Death and Transfiguration). It was also the last "classical" LP I bought in the mid 1960s before moving on to pop albums. That LP, which I still own, necessarily ends side one with the same chord with which it begins side two (the work describes one gigantic unbroken arc), a state of affairs remedied by its rerelease on CD:
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Post by jk on Feb 9, 2023 5:23:12 GMT -5
1700: Johann Kusser or Cousser (bapt. 1660–c. 1727) was born in Pressburg in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary. When in France, the young Johann met the French court composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (next month, folks) and learned from him how to compose in the French style. He later held numerous musical posts in Germany and lastly Ireland, living and working in Dublin from 1707 to his death. Kusser's works are now rarely played, but he influenced the following generation of composers including the likes of Telemann [ 1755], Graupner [ 1708] and Handel [ 1728]. Suite No. 1 in G Minor is the first of the six suites comprising Festin des Muses, one of three collections of suites (all by Kusser) published in 1700, the others being Apollon Enjoüé and La cicala della cetra d'eunomio: 1916: The French composer, teacher and musicologist Charles Koechlin (1867–1950) took an interest in everything: medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling (which is how I first encountered Koechlin through his orchestral composition Les bandar-Log) Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars (especially Lilian Harvey and Ginger Rogers), travelling, stereoscopic photography, socialism, pantheism... His teachers at the Paris Conservatoire included Gabriel Fauré [ 1890], his biggest influence and the subject of a biography (Fauré's first) written by his grateful pupil. Among Koechlin's own numerous illustrious pupils was Cole Porter, who studied orchestration with him in 1923–24. Besides being an amateur astronomer and an accomplished photographer, Koechlin was an enthusiastic mountaineer, swimmer and tennis player. In short, he did it all. Koechlin began writing Vers la plage lointaine, nocturne, the second of his Deux Poèmes Symphoniques, Op. 43, in 1908:
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Post by jk on Feb 10, 2023 10:15:27 GMT -5
1699: Johann Pachelbel (bapt. 1653–1706) was a German composer, organist and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. His contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era. Although his music was hugely popular during his lifetime, these days his name is virtually synonymous with one work, the ubiquitous "Canon in D". After being appointed organist to St. Sebaldus Church in Nuremberg in 1695, Pachelbel lived the rest of his life in that city. The most important work of his to be published there was the Hexachordum Apollinis (the title is a reference to Apollo's lyre), a collection of six variations set in different keys, one of whose two dedicatees is my main Baroque man Dieterich Buxtehude (expect him some time next month). This is the final piece, subtitled "Aria Sebaldina", a reference to the church where Pachelbel was employed. Deviating from the common time prevailing everywhere else in the work, this sixth aria and its variations are in 3/4 time: 1917: With the exception of Guillaume Lekeu, who died aged 23, Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) is the youngest of the great composers to have been taken from us prematurely. Like Amy Beach [ 1896] she has a "first" to her name -- she was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome in musical composition, 110 years after that category's inception. Lili Boulanger has had an asteroid named after her, 1181 Lilith, discovered nine years after her death. Although a huge honour and a token of the regard in which she is held in enlightened quarters, a single-apparition comet might have been more appropriate. "The melody of Vieille Prière Bouddhique (Old Buddhist Prayer) undulates between the two poles of a tritone (G–D flat), while perfumed harmonies create an atmosphere of hazy incantation, exotic and antique. Stravinsky or Thelonius Monk might happily have plundered her collection of chords, in which notes plucked from distant keys are stacked in a polychrome harmonic Jenga, always threatening to fall apart. Eventually, those wayward dissonances converge on austere clanging fifths." [ Source]
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Post by jk on Feb 11, 2023 5:03:46 GMT -5
1698: The violinist and organist Giovanni Battista Bassani (c.1650–1716) was often called "Bassani of Ferrara" for his contributions to the musical life of that city. He became maestro di cappella there twice, first at the Accademia della Morte in 1683 and then at Ferrara Cathedral three years later. He wrote 76 liturgically ordered services, most with four solo voices, chorus and basso continuo, for use at Ferrara Cathedral between 1710 and 1712. Many of his works have been lost. One of his eight known masses to survive is this Messa per li defunti concertata, for which I can find next to no information: 1918: The Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) led a turbulent personal life. The defining moment seems to have been meeting Kamila Stösslová when in his sixties (she was 38 years his junior). His muse as well as the love of his life, she would inspire him to write his greatest work. Much of Janáček's music displays great originality and individuality, employing a vastly expanded view of tonality and using unorthodox chord spacings, with often just high and low voices and no middle. The orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba, based on Gogol's novel, was begun in 1915 and completed in 1918, bar a few later revisions. It has the dubious honour of being on one of the three LPs that accompanied me to these shores in the mid 1970s. Listen out for the organ in the third and last part:
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Post by jk on Feb 12, 2023 5:37:43 GMT -5
1697: Servaes de Koninck* (1653/54– c.1701) was a Flemish Baroque composer of motets, Dutch songs, chamber and incidental music, French airs and Italian cantatas. After training and starting his career in Flanders he moved to Amsterdam, where he was active in circles connected to the Amsterdam Theatre. Like Couperin [ 1717] and Clérambault [ 1704], De Koninck saw himself as an advocate of the so-called goûts réünis, a move among French-speaking Baroque composers to "reunite the tastes" of the French and Italian styles. This "Symphonie" comes from his incidental music for Jean Racine's final tragedy Athalie (I'm told he also set the play's choruses): * Or Servaes de Konink, Servaas de Koninck, Servaas de Konink or Servaes de Coninck. It took a while for spelling to become standardized in my part of the world!1919: Herbert Howells (1892–1983) is the only subject of this excursion I have ever met. Regrettably the circumstances of our meeting were not good. A well-meaning modern composer who was impressed by some of my compositions (which looked great on paper but were otherwise worthless) decided I should try to enrol at London's illustrious Royal College of Music, one of whose famous graduates had been Ralph Vaughan Williams [ 1909]. Besides the written exam, we were all interviewed in turn by Herbert Howells, a long-standing member of the RCM staff. After giving my cruddy stuff short shrift, he asked me what I thought of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Foolishly I told him I didn't like them, which was true at the time. I believe the interview ended there and then! Many years later, in one of life's curious twists of fate, I discovered Howells' own music and fell in love with it. I even rehearsed some of his pieces with a choir I worked with in the 1990s. One of them, A Spotless Rose, sets the first two verses, translated by Catherine Winkworth, of the German hymn "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen". Note the switches between 7/8, 5/4 and 5/8 time signatures, unconventional for a carol of this era:
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Post by jk on Feb 13, 2023 3:54:01 GMT -5
1696: The English composer and organist John Blow (1649–1708) had the honour of being named (in 1685) one of the private musicians of the newly crowned King James II. Between 1680 and 1687, he wrote his only stage composition of which any record survives; Venus and Adonis, a "Masque for the entertainment of the King", is thought to have influenced his former pupil and lifelong friend Henry Purcell's later opera Dido and Aeneas. Of the several odes composed in tribute to Purcell, who died aged only thirty-six, incomparably the finest is Blow's Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell ("Mark how the lark and linnet sing") for two countertenors (back then light tenors slipping into falsetto only for the very highest notes), two recorders (instruments closely associated with mourning) and continuo. Blow's music rises to the same lofty heights as its superb elegiac poem by John Dryden, the greatest poet of the age and another close associate of Purcell's: 1920: Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was the one non-French member of Les Six, a group of six composers who lived and worked in Montparnasse. A curious aspect of his personal life was that in 1926 he married Andrée Vaurabourg, a pianist and fellow student at the Paris Conservatoire, on the condition that they live in separate apartments because he required solitude for composing. Andrée lived with her mother and Honegger visited them for lunch every day! Pastorale d’été is one of my favourite 20th-century orchestral works by anybody. This is part of an imaginative and detailed description of this gem in Jonathan Coe's 2013 novel Expo 58: "[T]he main theme was by now beginning to take on the character of an old friend: once again, it rose and fell, rose and fell, a soft, endlessly renewable conversation between the different sections of the orchestra; until it too faded into nothingness, amid the dying flourishes of gossamer-bowed violins, the last twilit birdcalls of flute and clarinet."
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Post by jk on Feb 14, 2023 10:31:32 GMT -5
1695: The extant oeuvre of the Flemish composer and organist Lambert Chaumont (c.1630–1712) consists almost entirely of a single large collection of organ music. Although he seems to have spent most of his life in the Liège area of Flanders, Chamount's style in these pieces is entirely French. Pièces d'orgue comprises 111 pieces arranged in eight suites of 12 to 15 pieces each (to say nothing of a set of tuning instructions). The suites are united by mode and follow the eight church tones. Somewhat unusually, each ends with one or two dances, in the case of the second suite a "chaconne grave": 1921: Well, we've had "My Bonnie" and a Sousa march and now it's time for a dance orchestra. "Wabash Blues", with words by Dave Ringle and music by Fred Meinken, was the first major success for pianist, saxophonist and songwriter Isham Jones (1894–1956), who led one of the most popular dance bands in the 1920s and '30s. This million-seller stayed for twelve weeks in the US charts, six at #1, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA. To quote YouTube commenter nealbfinn, "the choppy, stilted phrasing ... was supposed to simulate 'jazz', which was starting to gain popularity in the '20s. We hadn't figured out 'swing' yet. Bands like [those of] Isham Jones, Paul Whitman and Gus Arnheim (just to name three) were popular dance orchestras that were adding a 'jazzy' sound to their performances to broaden their appeal, especially to young people." We'll be savouring the real thing in due course. That's the aptly named Louis Panico on laughing cornet:
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Post by jk on Feb 15, 2023 5:56:56 GMT -5
1694: Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751) was best known to his peers as a composer of operas, although these were left unpublished at the time and all except four have been lost. His instrumental music (which includes 99 sonatas for one to six instruments and numerous concerti, many for the oboe) attracted the attention of J.S. Bach [ 1722], who wrote at least two fugues on themes by Albinoni and frequently used his basses for harmonic exercises for his pupils. Albinoni wrote the first of his fifty-plus operas, Zenobia, regina de' Palmireni, when he was only 23 (he was the first composer to write an opera about the Queen of Palmyra). Its librettist Antonio Marchi gave it a happy ending that runs counter to recorded history (see the above link). Here is the overture: 1922: The Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) is a textbook illustration of Prokofiev's dictum that there were still so many beautiful things to be said in C major. His is one of the most original voices in late 19th-, early 20th-century music. My family and I were lucky enough to visit the museum named after him in Odense during our Scandinavian trip (see [ 1884]). I soon abandoned the practice of naming the performers of the "classical" works in this thread, as videos tend to get taken down at the drop of a hi-hat. This is perhaps the one exception -- for me there is just one version of this work and I shall shout and scream all over the place if it vanishes from YouTube. Incredibly, this legendary rendition of Nielsen's Symphony No. 5, recorded in 1969 for the Unicorn label by Jascha Horenstein and the New Philharmonic Orchestra, has yet to be transferred to CD! In this electrifying performance of Nielsen's greatest symphony, snare drummer Alfred Dukes takes up with a vengeance the composer's challenge to improvise "as if at all costs he wants to stop the progress of the orchestra", climaxing his all-out assault with a terrifying salvo of rim shots in one of the most stunning passages in recorded 20th-century orchestral music (beginning at 14:20). But please, listen to the first movement in its entirety -- this is some of the most startlingly original and affecting music ever composed:
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Post by jk on Feb 16, 2023 4:17:54 GMT -5
1693: We are told that Isabella Leonarda (1620–1704) wrote the bulk of her circa 200 compositions after her fiftieth year (she lived to the then grand old age of 84). Just as her contemporary Barbara Strozzi dedicated her one religious work to both St Anne and the Arch-Duchess of Innsbruck, so Ms Leonarda, who spent nearly 70 years at the Sant'Orsola convent in Novara (to the west of Milan), applied the double-dedication principle -- in her case the Virgin Mary and one of a number of living persons of stature -- to almost all her compositions. It's possible she received and then gave instruction in music at that convent. As for the works themselves, her instrumental sonatas (Op. 16) are said to be the first in the genre written by a woman composer. Of these Sonate a 1,2,3,4 istromenti op. decima sesta, this is the five-movement "Sonata duodecima" in D minor for violin solo and continuo: 1923: I was familiar with the psalm settings by the Estonian composer Cyrillus Kreek (1889–1962) from the time I accompanied a choir at rehearsals, some years before visiting the Baltic states. This remarkable music had conjured up visions of nature at its most austere. Nor was I disappointed by the real thing -- that group tour took in some of the most remote parts of Estonia where Kreek had begun collecting religious folk songs armed with a phonograph, a "first" for Estonian collectors, in the early 1910s. "Õnnis on inimene" (Blessed is the Man) draws its text from several psalms:
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Post by jk on Feb 17, 2023 3:11:48 GMT -5
1692: Henry Purcell (1659–1695) is generally regarded as the last great English composer until Edward Elgar [ 1900], who wrote his first masterpieces more than three centuries later. One of Purcell's teachers was John Blow [ 1696], whom he seems to have succeeded as organist at Westminster Abbey (the details are lost in the mists of time) and who would write an ode to Purcell on the latter's early death. Purcell is best known today for his opera Dido and Aeneas and the Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary (think Wendy Carlos and A Clockwork Orange). Another work of his that has seen many recent performances and recordings is his "semi-opera" The Fairy-Queen. From Act Three, this is the opening Prelude, Aria and Chorus, "If love's a sweet passion": 1924: The Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) wrote in all genres -- from operas to transcriptions of Italian compositions from the 16th to 18th centuries -- but his best known and most performed works are the three orchestral tone poems that brought him international fame: Fontane di Roma (1916), Feste Romana (1928) and this year's work, Pini di Roma. Its third movement features the sound of a nightingale that Respighi requested to be played on a phonograph during its ending, which was considered innovative for its time and the first such instance in music (echoes of the previous post). But I've opted instead for "I Pini della Via Appia", the overpowering single crescendo that closes the work. "The final movement portrays pine trees along the Appian Way in the misty dawn, as a triumphant [Roman] legion advances along the road in the brilliance of the newly-rising sun. Respighi wanted the ground to tremble under the footsteps of his army and he instructs the organ to play bottom B flat on the 8', 16' and 32' organ pedals. The score calls for six buccine -- ancient circular trumpets that are usually represented by modern flugelhorns, and which are sometimes partially played offstage." [ Source]
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Post by jk on Feb 18, 2023 5:19:04 GMT -5
1691: Johann Georg Conradi (c.1645–1699) was one of the principal composers at the Oper am Gänsemarkt, the first public opera house to be established in Germany (another was Johann Kusser [ 1700]). Conradi was Kapellmeister there from 1690 to 1693, within which brief time he introduced French and Italian operas to that city. His own Ariadne (libretto by Christian Heinrich Postel) is, to quote Kerala J. Snyder's book about Buxtehude (p. 117), "the oldest extant opera composed specifically for Hamburg … Among Ariadne's notable features that were derived from the French operatic stage is a 314-measure Passacaille in the penultimate scene of the opera, which could have inspired Buxtehude to conclude his [now-lost] Templum honoris with a passacaglia." Here is that scene from Act III of Ariadne, "Edles Paar, dem nichts zu gleichen": 1925: Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) is one of the most influential figures in jazz, with a career spanning five decades and several eras in jazz history. His recording of "Melancholy Blues" with the Hot Seven is the one jazz performance included on the Golden Record now in interstellar space aboard the Voyager spacecraft. "Satchmo" was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. His recording of "Gut Bucket Blues" as Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five features Armstrong on cornet, Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lillian Hardin Armstrong on piano and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo:
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Post by jk on Feb 19, 2023 5:37:59 GMT -5
1690: The French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704) had the great foresight to classify more than 500 pieces from his vast oeuvre in 28 autograph volumes. This collection, Mélanges, is one of the most comprehensive sets of musical autograph manuscripts of all time. This is his magnificent Te Deum à 4 voix (H.147): 1926: My trio of threads devoted to women composers has yielded many candidates for this project, one of whom is the Latvian Lūcija Garūta (1902–1977). A pianist and poet as well as a composer, Ms Garūta is best known for her cantata Dievs, Tava zeme deg! (God, your land is burning!), which was written in 1943 during the German occupation of Latvia and is now regarded as one of that country's cultural treasures. But it was Lūgšana (The Prayer) for violin and piano (or organ, as here) that attracted my attention at the time:
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Post by jk on Feb 20, 2023 4:29:27 GMT -5
1689: The Frenchman Jean-Henri d'Anglebert (bapt. 1629–1691) was one of the foremost keyboard composers of his day. Beginning his performing career as a church organist, he was later royal harpsichordist at the court of Louis XIV for something like a decade. D'Anglebert's principal work is a collection of four harpsichord suites published under the title Pièces de clavecin. Apart from its contents, which represent some of the finest achievements of the French harpsichord school, Pièces de clavecin is historically important in setting a new standard for music engraving and for its sophisticated table of ornaments. Finally, D'Anglebert's original pieces are presented together with his arrangements of Lully's orchestral works. These arrangements are, once again, some of the finest pieces in that genre, and show him experimenting with texture to achieve an orchestral sonority. From Pièces de clavecin, this is the "Prelude" from the Première Suite en Sol Majeur: 1927: The English composer and teacher Gustav Holst (1874–1934), whose name a musically erudite Dutch radio presenter insists on pronouncing "Gust of Holst"(!), is best known to music-lovers from his popular orchestral suite The Planets, although Holst himself never considered it one of his best works and was bewildered by its success. His most perfectly realized composition, he felt, was the brief tone poem Egdon Heath. The following description, lifted from elsewhere at EH with the odd tweak, of this wonderfully compact work combines the (now-lost) YouTube blurb accompanying my favourite version (recorded in 1961 by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult) with some additional background information culled from Wikipedia: "'A place perfectly accordant with man's nature -- neither ghastly, hateful nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning nor tame; but like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony.' This quotation from Thomas Hardy's 1878 novel The Return of the Native appears on the score of Gustav Holst's tone poem Egdon Heath, dedicated to Hardy who, at age 87, had one more year of life remaining). It was commissioned by the New York Symphony Orchestra, which premiered it under the direction of Walter Damrosch on 12 February 1928. The next day Holst led the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the British premiere at Cheltenham, where the first major festival of Holst's music had taken place the previous year. Those initial performances went well, but another in London a few days later was greeted poorly by a noisy and unreceptive audience. This seems to have made Holst a bit anxious about the work, and may have led to his desire that the above Hardy quotation should always appear in any explanatory programme notes. "In her book on her father's music, Holst's daughter Imogen evokes the Hardy quotation in referring to the 'mysterious monotony' of the tone poem, which begins with a sombre melody heard first in the double basses, then taken up by the rest of the strings. A nostalgic theme in the brass and woodwinds [one of Holst's 'sad processions'], and a scurrying theme in the strings and oboe, work their way into the texture as well, leading to moody, twilit music and what has been described as a 'strange, ghostly dance'. This dark, evocative work finishes the same way it started: quietly, and somewhat mysteriously." Please give the volume knob a good crank, otherwise you'll miss the opening double basses and much of the rest of it:
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