Question: “Ouf!  Let me out!  I must have air.  It’s incredible!  Marvelous!  It has so upset and bewildered me that when I wanted to put on my hat, I couldn’t find my head…One ought not to write music like that.”   That is a quote from a student of Jean-François Le Seur, Hector Berlioz who took his teacher to one of the first performances of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in Paris.  This opera composer and famous teacher was so stirred by the piece, it led him to make that comment to Berlioz.  What was Berlioz response?

Answer: “Calm yourself—it will not be done often.”

Question: A couple of days ago, I mentioned again that it was not against the law to copy music from other composers…and as a matter of fact, if not done too much was considered a compliment to the composer from whom something was taken.  This piece ended up in the catalogue of another composer.  Who was he?

Answer: Alessandro Marcello was a rich man and that impeded composing.  The rich looked at someone in the arts as beneath them, so sometimes, Marcello was forced to use the pseudonym “Eterio Stinfalico” so as to not get ribbed from fellow well-heeled.  But Johann Sebastian Bach knew better when arranging the middle movement (‘Adagio’) for keyboard.  He gave the credit to Marcello, but it did became a stand-alone piece of Bach’s and even given its own BWV number by Wolfgang Schmieder.

Question: In the last six days, we have celebrated the births of two great composers.  Who were they?

Answer: Wolfgang Mozart was born on January 27^th, 1756, and Franz Schubert on January 31^st, 1797.

Johannes Brahms and Eduard Remény (seated)

“My father was a dear old man, very simple-minded, and most unsophisticated.” Those words are from Johannes Brahms. They help to explain why, while studying not just music, but also Latin and classics in school, Brahms had to help pay the family’s bills by playing the piano. In dirty Hamburg, the places that paid were the bars and brothels in his neighborhood.

Playing mood or dance music, mostly ignoring the activities around him, he was paid in coins dropped in a stein on the piano (and given as much beer as he wanted). He was only 12 years old. The ‘ladies’ would hang around waiting for business, teasing the cute little boy, but staying clear of improprieties.

Within a couple of years, Brahms was finding work elsewhere in town – not just as a pianist, but also as an arranger for small ensembles in which he was often participating.

By the age of 15, Brahms was able make his official premiere as a concert pianist. That was 1848 and Hamburg was experiencing the overflow of Hungarian refugees trying to get to the United States. During the summer, the Austrian and Russian governments had crushed a revolution in Hungary. Those trying to get out of the mess were passing through the port of Hamburg.

While waiting, Hungarians (including gypsies from the area) would entertain themselves and passers-by with their songs, quite ready to accept cash for these impromptu performances. Young Johannes made his way to the docks for this wonderful music.

About two years later, a violinist born Eduard Hoffmann changed his name to Reményi – essentially a Hungarian translation of his name – out of love for his homeland. He was among those Hungarian refugees in Hamburg. Brahms heard this young phenom, and before long the two were performing around Hamburg.

A rumor started circulating that there was an arrest warrant out for Reményi, so the fun was over for the time being. Reményi was off the U.S. for two years, only to return with bigger plans in mind. The two would tour Europe. It would be a chance of a lifetime for the young unknown Brahms. He would be touring with a true Hungarian violinist at a time when the popularity of that country’s music was peaking. They were a hit.

But the young Brahms was so good that the more famous Reményi became jealous. Their friendship soured. When Brahms published his Hungarian Dances, Reményi claimed that Brahms had stolen pieces that the violinist had actually originated. Brahms responded that they were indeed folk tunes and therefore basically ‘public domain.’

But I’m getting ahead of myself. While the two were on one of their tours, they met other famous musicians. One of them was the Jewish-Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim. Reményi and Joachim were close friends and both had that feeling for the music of their people.

Let me stop for a moment and take us to another place and time. You are in the back of a bar in New York City – maybe the Village Vanguard. The year is 1959. The Dave Brubeck Quartet or Miles Davis are playing the latest take on this heavily styled genre of music. You can hear it better than you can see it, thanks to the grey haze of smoke – smoke that over the years has glazed the place with a light shade of ochre-brown. Your beer is warm, but your company is cool, as you are completely mesmerized by what you hear.

That’s what it was like in many of Europe’s hip taverns in the mid-nineteenth century. The Jazz of the day was variations on Hungarian or Gypsy music. Even when Brahms wasn’t playing it with Reményi, he could certainly hear it close by.

About five years later, this time on his own and better known, Brahms would find himself at the piano at the center of a small crowd waiting for his next tune. He’d play these ‘out-there’ gypsy-style pieces. Before long, these ideas ended up on paper, one Hungarian dance at a time, until his friend Clara Schumann started adding them to her concerts.

By 1868, Brahms had penned ten of these Hungarian dances in a scoring for two pianos. He and Clara performed them in a concert. The he gave them to his publisher, Fritz Simrock. They proved to be very popular.

Four years later, another publication – this time for single piano – sold even better. Brahms then orchestrated three of the dances. Simrock made a ton of money from these dances. Before long, he had the brilliant idea of asking Brahms to come up with more. Brahms obliged.

In time, other versions appeared, and Brahms’s good friend Antonín Dvořák orchestrated the last four Hungarian Dances of Book Four. He may have done this partly as thanks to Brahms for hooking him up with the publisher Simrock. (Simrock’s first request to Dvořák was a set of Slavonic Dances – which made Simrock even more money).

The 21 Hungarian Dances brought in cash for Brahms too, not just for his publisher. But what was more important to Brahms was that now he had leverage with Simrock. Now Brahms could ask Simrock to publish his more ‘serious’ music, which both knew would be less profitable.

Brahms’ Hungarian Dances may not have been his greatest work. But by helping to bring his other works to light, they may have been some of the most important pieces of music he ever composed.

Jenő Blau was born in Budapest, Hungary. We know him by the name he adopted early in his career when he moved to the United States.

The first name he took is the English version of his given name, Jenő. Legend has it that he invented his American last name by looking at the boat from which he was disembarking and removing the N.

He left 501 boxes of marked scores, arrangements and more for the University of Pennsylvania Library. Here is the website the library set up to let you in on the life of Eugene Ormandy.

Hallelujah Chorus Manuscript (British Library)

Most years at least one of the major Northeast Ohio orchestras – the Cleveland Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, the Akron Symphony Orchesta, or the Canton Symphony – slates a November or December performance of Handel’s beloved oratorio, Messiah. This year (2011), though, none of them has programmed that famous oratorio. Nevertheless, you’ll still have plenty of opportunities to hear it.

Ross Duffin’s chorus, Quire Cleveland, is offering a Messiah performance as part of the Chagrin Valley Chamber Music Concert Series. They’ll sing with conductor Michael Gelfand and the Cleveland Virtuosi. Soloists: Dorota Sobieska, Lara Nie, Daniel Doty, and Brian Keith Johnson. It’s Saturday 3 December, 7:30pm, at Valley Lutheran Church, 87 East Orange Street, Chagrin Falls.

Orrville Community Chorus will present their 68th annual reading of Messiah on 4 December at 7pm. It’ll be performed at Central Christian School, 3970 Kidron Road, Kidron. The chorus and soloists will be accompanied by a 12-member chamber orchestra and piano.

This year’s will be the Cleveland Messiah Chorus‘s 90th performance of Handel’s famed oratorio. Virginia Wieland-Mast will conduct at Grace Lutheran Church, 13001 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights. It’s Sunday, 27 November, 7pm. As with public radio, the admission is free, but they’ll gladly accept your monetary offering.

Various area churches will present programs including excerpts and, in some cases, substantial portions of Messiah.

Some of them even invite you to join in. One such reading will be on 27 November, when Canton’s Christ Presbyterian Church, 530 West Tuscarawas Street, will offer their 3rd annual Messiah singalong. If you’ve sung Messiah, or if you’re a good sight-singer, you can take your score along and add your own voice. If you’d rather just listen, you can discover the heady feeling of immersing yourself completely in Handel’s music.

On 11 December at 5pm, Samuel Gordon will lead First Congregational Church’s Festival Choir, Singers Companye, and a chamber orchestra in Part One (the Nativity sequence) of Handel’s Messiah. First Congregational is located at 292 E Market St, Akron.

If you don’t mind a bit of a hike, the Cincinnati Symphony and May Festival Chorus will offer Messiah on the 18th of December at 2pm. It’s at Cincinnati Music Hall, 1241 Elm St. The Toledo Symphony‘s reading will be at 8pm on the 3rd and 4th of December, at Peristyle Theater, 2445 Monroe Street. The Dayton Philharmonic‘s is set for Sunday 11 December at 4pm, at Dayton’s Westminster Presbyterian Church.

One of the more intriguing Messiah performances this year is the one being assembled by the Pittsburgh Symphony and Mendelssohn Choir. This dramatization of the work reportedly de-emphasizes the three sections’ religious interpretations – Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection – and re-imagines them as eras in American history – the 1950s, the present, and the years round the turn of the 20th century. PSO music director Manfred Honeck will conduct. As in an opera, soloists Laura Heimes, Lindsay Ammann, William Ferguson, and Philip Cutlip will be costumed on a set stage, and the orchestra will play from the pit. Performances are on 2, 3, and 4 December.

Know of a Messiah performance that I’ve missed? Add it in the comments below!

The link below is another item from Oberlin Conservatory’s web site, this one about harpist Yolanda Kondonassis.  It’s a well produced and edited piece showcasing her as a teacher, person and ambassador for the harp.  

You can explore the Oberlin website for dozens of these little vignettes. This is just a taste.

Oberlin Conservatory

Oberlin College Conservatory has one of the best music school websites I’ve seen. For instance, the faculty section has a video presentation on pianist Peter Takács, where he shares a little about himself. Here, he talks about his recently released CD set – a complete recording of the Beethoven piano sonatas.

Rescue worker, 11 Sept 2001 (US Navy)

Through the ages, very little has done as much as music to settle an unsteady world. Wherever and whenever people have mourned, it has soothed their grief and given them comfort. In this universal art form we find peace, consolation, and reconciliation.

Music is, at its core, organized sound. Like so many in past centuries, ours is an age of disorder, a world of violence. To bring order and peace to our world, we must begin with ourselves, and music’s order can help us stem the chaos of our own lives.

Many of these works we present today (Sunday, 11 September 2011) have a direct connection with the outcomes of violence between people: requiem, remembrance, reconciliation, and pleas for human unity and peace. I hope that, in some small way, they will help to heal some of the world’s wounds.

In memoriam: Baroque tombeaux

Sylvius Leopold Weiss: Tombeau sur la mort de Mr. Logy

Marin Marais: Tombeau pour Mr. de Saint-Colombe

The term tombeau means “tombstone.” It was first applied to poetry in the 16th century. Then, in the 17th century, musicians began using it for compositions written as memorials to persons of significance. That might be a public figure, but just as often the person was “of significance” mainly to the composer. In the late 17th century, the tombeau became common in the repertoire of lutenists, harpsichordists, and viol players. Today we present two tombeaux.

Sylvius Leopold Weiss

Sylvius Leopold Weiss was one of the 18th century’s most successful lutenists and composers, the highest-paid musician at the Dresden Court. He met the Bohemian lutenist Jan Anton Losy, Count of Losinthal, in 1717 in Prague. They became good friends. Weiss’s compositions may even have been influenced by the Count. When Losy died just four years later, Weiss composed the Tombeau sur la mort de Mr. Logy in his memory.

Today we remember Marin Marais as France’s master viol player and composer round the turn of the 18th century. Monsieur de Saint-Colombe (we think his first name was Jean, but we’re not positive) was his teacher. It’s said that Saint-Colombe tried to keep some of the secrets of his playing from Marais, but Marais hid nearby while Saint-Colombe was practicing.

The development of the viol owes a great deal to Saint-Colombe. He added a 7th string to the bass viol, adopted overspun bass strings (still used today on modern string instruments), and developed a new left hand technique. But somehow the story of his life has evaded the historians. If not for the heartfelt tombeau Marais composed for him in 1701, we wouldn’t even know the year of his death.

Ernest Bloch (Ernest Bloch Foundation)

For reflection: Ernest Bloch: Suite Modale

Ernest Bloch arrived in the United States during the Great War. He expected to stay only long enough to conduct for a dance company’s tour, but when the company disintegrated, he stayed on, teaching, conducting, and composing. In 1920, Bloch was the founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Four years later, he became an American citizen.

Although he spent much of the 1930s in Europe, the rise of anti-Semitic sentiment drove Bloch back to the United States in 1940.

In 1956, Bloch had only 3 more years to live, so it’s not surprising that his Suite Modale has an autumnal, pensive mood.

Bach at the Keyboard

In memoriam: J S Bach: Cantata No. 170 “Vergnuegte Ruh”

Though we know Bach for his big, powerful works, from 1726 he seems to have abandoned the chorus in favor of just one or two voices with instruments. This may have been a stylistic evolution. Or perhaps it’s simply that Bach, ever the pragmatic musician, found himself with a surfeit of fine soloists — or a shortage of choral singers.

Case in point: the Cantata “Vergnuegte Ruh.” Bach composed this warmly glowing image of heavenly rest for the sixth Sunday after Trinity, probably in 1732. The opening aria is a perfect example of Baroque tone-painting. The gentle, rocking rhythm feels like a reassuring cradle song.

Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, dich kann man nicht bei Höllensünden, wohl aber Himmelseintracht finden; du stärkst allein die schwache Brust. Drum sollen lauter Tugendgaben in meinem Herzen Wohnung haben.

Pleasant rest, favored desire of the soul, one cannot find you through the sins of hell, but rather through heavenly harmony; you alone strengthen the weak breast. Therefore, pure gifts of virtue shall dwell in my heart.

Gabriel Faure (Wikimedia Commons)

In memoriam: Gabriel Faure: Requiem: In Paradisum

Faure called it “a requiem as gentle as I am.” He was spot on. Faure’s requiem may be the most comforting and affirmative of all. It has none of the storms and threats that usually darken the big romantic requiem settings.

Like Brahms and his German Requiem, Faure composed his requiem after a personal loss – the death of his parents. Unlike Brahms, Faure didn’t discard the entire Latin Requiem Mass text, but in purging the requiem of its fire and brimstone he made it just as non-liturgical. The Faure Requiem is muted, but far from somber – its mood is more that of peaceful resignation.

Faure ends the work with a setting of the In Paradisum from the Burial Service. This movement is bathed in warmth and light. The voices float weightless on a soft summer breeze. The organ sways as the strings gently, graciously, lift us heavenward.

In paradisum deducant te angeli, in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you to paradise, at your coming may the martyrs receive you, and guide you into the holy city of Jerusalem. May the choir of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest.

Rick Sowash (sowash.com)

For reflection: Rick Sowash: An American Pavane

Their music could hardly be more different, but Ohio composer Rick Sowash is in one way similar to the earlier American composer, Charles Ives: he doesn’t make his living from his music. Sowash has been a radio broadcaster, a theater manager, an innkeeper, and a county commissioner. More recently he’s been earning his daily bread as an author, lecturer, and filmmaker.

After college, Sowash returned to North Central Ohio, lived in Gambier (near Mount Vernon) for some years, and now makes his home in Cincinnati. His works have a kind of folksy appeal that’s hard to categorize.

Of Une Pavane Americaine: Homage a Ravel, Sowash says: “It borrows the structure of [Ravel's] Pavane for a Dead Princess. But the piece remains very American in character: in it there are echoes of Gershwin and jazz. Ravel admired both.”

Johannes Brahms

In memoriam: Johannes Brahms: A German Requiem: “Selig sind die toten” (Blessed are the Dead).

Brahms was deeply saddened by the death of his friend Robert Schumann. It’s likely that the German Requiem was his way of coping with his grief.

Despite the name, Brahms’s requiem is not really a liturgical work. Instead of setting the usual texts of the Latin Requiem, Brahms chose his own texts – all in German. Although he took them from the Christian Bible, Brahms specifically was not writing a church service. He meant the German Requiem to be a source of comfort and hope in the face of death and loss.

Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben, von nun an. Ja, der Geist spricht, dass sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit; denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach. (Revelation 14: 13)

Blessed [holy] are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth. The Spirit says that they may rest from their labors, because their works follow them.

Ravel and Couperin (Wikimedia Commons)

In memoriam: Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin

Ravel had a real fascination for French music of earlier times, so it was natural for him to pay homage to his Baroque counterpart, Francois Couperin, in Le Tombeau de Couperin. But this is really a triple homage. He’s also recalling the 17th century tombeau form, and paying tribute to six of his friends who had perished in First World War.

Ravel composed Le Tombeau de Couperin for solo piano in 1917. By the time he had orchestrated it, choosing four sections he felt were most suitable for the orchestra, the war was over.

Maurice Durufle (durufle.org)

In memoriam: Maurice Durufle: Requiem: Introit and Kyrie

Maurice Durufle spent most of his life as organist at Saint-Etienne du Mont de Paris. He grew up with the sound of Gregorian Chant in his ears, and chant infused both his playing and his composition.

As a composer Durufle was an unremitting perfectionist. Thus he left us only a few works – but those he did give us are finely crafted and brilliantly polished. The most beloved of them is the Requiem.

Durufle modeled his requiem on Faure’s. Like Faure’s, his requiem is a peaceful work of rest and light: not for him the fury and darkness of the Judgment Day. Durufle even used Faure’s editorial revisions in the Latin text, including the inclusion of the In Paradisum from the Burial Service.

This similarity is a bit surprising,when you look at the two composers’ religious backgrounds. Faure was a church chorus master, but he thought of himself as a skeptic. Durufle had no such doubts. He was deeply dedicated to the Catholic Church.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem. Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

Grant them eternal rest, Lord; may perpetual light shine on them. A hymn becomes You in Sion, Lord, and a vow paid to You in Jerusalem. Hear my prayer; to You all flesh shall come. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Henryk Gorecki (Artur Gierwatowski)

In memoriam: Henryk Gorecki: “Sorrowful Songs” from Symphony #3

The best known work of this modern Polish composer is his moving Third Symphony. It’s a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.

The spare text of the second movement’s vocal part is taken from a prayer found on the wall of a cell in the Gestapo headquarters in Zakopane. It is signed, “Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, 18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.”

No, mother, do not weep.
Most chaste Queen of Heaven,
Support me always.
Zdrowas Mario.

Gerald Finzi

For reflection: Gerald Finzi: Eclogue

The First World War left Finzi bereaved. He’d lost friends, a beloved mentor, and three brothers. Surely this colored his music. Though it has moments of celebration and joy, much of it is tinged with a gentle melancholy.

The word eclogue comes from Middle English. It’s a pastoral poem. But this musical eclogue could be called an elegy – at least for its composer.

Finzi composed his Eclogue in 1929, intending it as the middle movement of a piano concerto. He tinkered with ideas for the outer movements off and on until just a few years before his death in 1956. He reworked this one at least twice, but never finished the others. This is all we have, the composer’s final word.

Finzi didn’t hear this music played in concert. Nor did he publish it – in fact, he never even named it. After his death, his friends and relatives, along with his editors and executors, decided on the title. Eclogue was premiered at a memorial service for Finzi, four months after he’d died.

Alan Hovhaness & Rajah Hoyden c1948 (Frank Ferrante) Click for more info

Toward unity: Alan Hovhaness: Symphony #11 “All Men are Brothers”: Finale

When Alan Hovhaness died in June of 2000, he left behind one of the 20th century’s largest catalogs of works – in spite of the fact that he’d burned many of his early pieces.

While he was studying with the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, Hovhaness discovered Eastern music. This led him to explore Eastern cultures and religions. His own heritage brought him into contact with musicians of the Armenian Church, who carried on the ancient traditions of Armenian music. All these influences found their way into his music.

Of his Symphony #11, Hovhaness wrote, “The symphony is an attempt to express a positive faith in universal cosmic love as the only possible ultimate goal for man and nature. Let all unite in peace on our tiny planet …” He says the finale “begins with a theme in praise of universal love.” Then he quotes a Buddhist sutra: “And the voice of the Lord Buddha was heard like the sound of a great gong hung in the skies, saying that though one met a thousand men on his way, they would all be one’s brothers.”

Leonard Bernstein (Wikimedia Commons)

Toward unity: Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms: Finale

The Chichester Psalms are an intriguing union of Bernstein’s religious and ethnic background with the source of the commission. The name “Chichester” points to the Anglican cathedral in Sussex. Every summer since 1903, the cathedrals of Chichester, Winchester and Salisbury join forces to put on a Southern Cathedrals Festival in Winchester.

As music director of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein never felt that he had enough time to compose, so in 1965 he took a sabbatical. Among the works he created that year, Bernstein said the one he was happiest with was the Chichester Psalms, created for the Southern Cathedrals Festival.

Bernstein drew his psalm texts from the Hebrew. He deliberately used instruments that evoke Biblical times — harp, trombone, and trumpet. His final text in the fourth and last section is the gentle Hineh mah tov.

Adonai, Adonai, lo gavah libi,v’lo ramu einai,v’lo hilachtiBig’dolot uv’niflaot mimeni. Im lo shiviti V’domam’I,, naf’shi k’gamul alei imo, Kagamul alai naf’shi. Yahel Yis’rael el Adonai me’atah v’ad olam.

Behold how good, and how pleasant it is, for brethren to dwell together in unity.

Samuel Barber

In memoriam: Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings

Barber composed his string quartet in 1936. He said the adagio second movement was inspired by a passage from Virgil’s Georgics, describing how a stream becomes a river.

When Arturo Toscanini asked Barber to arrange that movement for string orchestra, he could hardly have known its future. Toscanini’s NBC Symphony first performed the arrangement in 1938. Less than seven years later, it was played for the funeral of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was also heard at President Kennedy’s funeral, and has since been used at other times of deepest public mourning. The Adagio for Strings is elegant, almost archaic, in its simplicity and strength.

Keith Jarrett (Micael Engstroem/IBL)

Toward unity: Keith Jarrett: Bridge of Light

If you know of Jarrett, probably you think of him as a jazzman. However, his early training was classical. In fact, before he was even twenty, he found himself preparing for a trip to Paris and study with the famed composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Almost on the eve of the trip, though, he abruptly cancelled. Instead, he went to New York to make a career in jazz.

Despite his success in jazz, Jarrett never lost his interest in classical music. Bridge of Light dates from 1990. Jarret writes, “This piece is a sort of multicultural hymn … born of a desire to praise and contemplate … I am trying to reveal a state I think is missing in today’s world: a certain state of surrender: surrender to an ongoing harmony in the universe that exists with or without us.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams and friend (bach-cantatas.com)

For reconciliation: Ralph Vaughan Williams: Dona nobis pacem: “Reconciliation”

In mid-1930s Europe, the talk was once again of war. Vaughan Williams was deeply fearful of the outcome. Against this grim backdrop, he created the Dona nobis pacem. It was premiered in 1936. Ironically, the third performance of the work, in 1939, had to be canceled after fighting broke out.

Vaughan Williams found a text to match his anguish and despair in Walt Whitman’s anti-war poem Beat! Beat! Drums!, inspired by Whitman’s own close-up view of the Civil War. He added more texts from other sources, including other Whitman writings. Over it all he suspended the words “Dona nobis pacem” – grant us peace – from the Latin Mass.

The third movement of Dona nobis pacem is titled “Reconciliation.” It takes its text from Whitman’s Drum Taps. The movement ends with the chorus bearing the image of Death and Night, which “incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again this soiled world,” as the soprano intones the invocation, “Grant us peace.” It is a plea that echoes from Whitman’s time to Vaughan Williams’s, and indeed to our own.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly,
Wash again and ever again this soiled world.

Dona nobis pacem.

Robert Moran (courtesy of the composer)

In memoriam: Robert Moran: Trinity Requiem

When Trinity Youth Chorus director Robert Ridgell asked Denver-born composer Robert Moran to create a work in observance of the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster, Moran wasn’t sure that young voices were right for such a serious event. But then he recalled that “a friend of mine in England, as a little child, was sent off to Wales during the Nazi bombing of London. He returned at the end of the war to find that both his parents had been killed.”

“I remember so many past stories of children who had lost their parents, their families and in fact lost everything to wars, famine, vicious governments, and natural catastrophes,” Moran says. “Trinity Requiem is a reflection upon those thousands of children throughout the world with no future and little if any hope.”

The official world premiere of the Trinity Requiem took place this past Wednesday (7 September 2011) in Lower Manhattan’s Trinity Church.

The recording we hear today was made last November (2010) in Trinity. Listen carefully during the opening of the Offertory movement, the fourth. You’ll hear a quiet introduction built upon the bass of the famous Pachelbel Canon in D – and over it, a police car’s siren.

Such ambient noise intrusions are just another challenge when you’re recording in a real-world public space rather than a studio. Most producers would have declared the take a loss, stopped, and re-recorded. Composer Moran and and chorus director Robert Ridgell didn’t. They decided that the siren would be “a reminder that the World Trade Center, 10 years before, had been just behind Trinity.” The siren became part of the music, part of their remembrance.

Masques et bergamasques was one of the last pieces that Gabriel Fauré finished. The Prince of Monaco commissioned it, and it premiered in Monte Carlo in April of 1919.

He composed only a small part of it anew. Most of the rest was ideas that had been lying around, Fauré wondering what to do with them.

When the work was finished, Fauré is supposedly to have said that “It is like the impression you get from the paintings of Watteau.” Here are some of those paintings.

The Ahn Trio has one of the most impressive websites I’ve seen for a Classical ensemble.
http://www.ahntrio.com/v2/

A performer cannot move others unless he is also moved. He must feel all of the affects he hopes to arouse in his audience.

A mere technician can lay no claim to the rewards of those who sway the heart rather than the ear … one meets technicians who astound us with their prowess, without ever touching our sensibilities. They overwhelm our hearing without satisfying it, and stun the mind without moving it.

Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn was about as far from the stereotype of the starving artist as you could imagine. His father was a well-heeled and highly discriminating banker, and he saw to it that Felix got the best education money could buy.

Such an education inevitably included mind-broadening travel. Felix was no more than a teenager when he visited Paris and Switzerland, and papa’s pocket change paid his way to Britain in 1829 at the age of twenty. There he soaked up the damp, severe beauty of Holyrood Chapel, where Mary Stuart had been crowned. This set him on course for his Scottish Symphony.

Italy was quite another matter. Felix landed there late in 1830. It wasn’t long before Italy’s sunshine and energy had put paid to the grim grey memories of Scotland – and (for the moment) to the Scottish Symphony.

The festivals, the celebrations, the coronation of a pope: all this brilliant color shifted the musical gears of Mendelssohn’s mind into overdrive. In early 1831 he wrote home that he’d begun work on a new symphony – "the merriest piece I’ve yet written," he said. He expected to finish it in short order, but that was not to be. Mendelssohn didn’t have the Italian Symphony in performing condition until Spring of 1833, just in time to conduct its premiere in London in May.

You could argue, in fact, that Mendelssohn never actually finished his Italian Symphony as such. He never published it, and continued to revise and tweak it off and on for the rest of his life. The Italian Symphony finally saw print in 1851, listed as "opus 90, posthumous."

Italy’s vitality and energy radiate from the very first brilliant A major bars of the symphony – no slow, dark introduction here! The entire movement has a strong forward, upward drive. The andante second movement is the embodiment of Mendelssohn’s melodic skill (also on display in his Songs Without Words). His third movement echoes an elegant Mozartean minuet and trio.

The finale is where the Italian Symphony really gets technically interesting. Mendelssohn labels it a saltarello – a medieval Italian dance – and it ends in the key of A minor. In finishing a major-key symphony in the minor mode, Mendelssohn left Mozart well behind.

By Mendelssohn’s time, a transition from minor to major wasn’t too extraordinary, even in a large, multimovement work. After all, Beethoven had begun his fifth symphony in minor and moved to major.

But going the other way – from major to minor – wasn’t nearly as common. Not unheard of, mind you; a handful of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas and a Handel concerto had followed this pattern, well before Mendelssohn’s time. (I should note, though, that the Handel was from his opus 3. That set was a notorious cut-and-paste hack job, so it’s entirely possible that ending a major work in minor was literally accidental there!)

It’s also true that Mendelssohn himself had composed his opus 14 Rondo Capriccioso for piano a year before the symphony, beginning it in E major and wrapping it up in E minor. And in the early 20th century, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen would effectively dispense with the idea of a symphony being in a key, more or less aiming his last three symphonies toward keys.

However, in his era’s symphonic literature, Mendelssohn seems to stand alone. I don’t know of any symphony prior to Mendelssohn’s Italian which begins in a major key and ends in a minor key.

Alvy Powell and Marquita Lister

NOTE: This In Performance broadcast will begin one hour earlier than usual, at 2:30pm.

Over the last decade, the Akron Symphony Orchestra has periodically programmed opera – collections of operatic excerpts, and complete concert-format and semi-staged operas. The latter have included Bizet’s Carmen in 2003 and Verdi’s La Traviata in 2007.

For the 2010-11 season, music director Christopher Wilkins set an even more ambitious goal – a large scale, semi-staged production of George Gershwin’s American "folk opera," Porgy and Bess.

Gershwin’s vision for Porgy and Bess specified an African-American cast and onstage chorus. In addition to the national and regional talent recruited for the singing roles, Wilkins called on the musicians who have brought several years of the orchestra’s Gospel Meets Symphony programs to life, augmenting them with performers from Akron’s Youth Excellence Performing Arts Workshop (YEPAW). An additional 68 voice chorus located in the upper balcony included members of the Akron Symphony Chorus.

In 1924, author DuBose Heyward read a newspaper account of a local African-American man accused of aggravated assault, a crime of passion. It caught Heyward’s attention and imagination. "Goat Sammy" was disabled, unable to stand or walk; a cart pulled by a goat was his only mobility.

Porgy, Heyward’s novel inspired by Goat Sammy’s story, became a best seller. Composer George Gershwin read Porgy in September of 1926 and immediately contacted Heyward, proposing that they work together on a folk opera adaptation of the tale. Heyward’s response was strongly favorable, but he was already involved in a collaboration to produce a stage production of Porgy with spirituals.

This was just two years after Gershwin’s sensational success with Rhapsody in Blue, and he was much in demand. So it wasn’t until late in 1933, more than 7 years after their initial contact, that the author’s and the composer’s schedules finally meshed. The month after that, though, Heyward began sending material to Gershwin. The following spring he spent a month in New York with George and his brother Ira, who was helping with the lyrics.

Heyward had set Porgy in his native Charleston, South Carolina. Since almost the inception of the project he’d been trying to draw Gershwin there for a visit. Finally, in June 1934, Gershwin rented a cottage on an island off the Charleston shore. Heyward and his wife Dorothy, who had assisted with the theatrical Porgy, joined Gershwin there.

Gershwin spent quite a bit more of his summer enjoying the island than he did working on the opera. Nevertheless, he was able to absorb some of the African-American musical culture on a neighboring island.

When he returned to New York late in July, Gershwin set to work in earnest, wrapping up the recitatives and orchestrating his opera. This time he soloed on the orchestration (Paul Whiteman had orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue for him). A year later, Porgy and Bess – now bearing the second character’s name to distinguish it from the earlier spiritual-based musical – was finished.

Gershwin’s next tasks were casting and production. He was seeking classically trained African-American singers for his cast, and Todd Duncan’s name surfaced almost immediately. However, Duncan taught at Howard University, and Gershwin "didn’t want any university professor to sing" in Porgy and Bess. When Gershwin actually heard Duncan sing, though, he gave Duncan the lead on the spot.

Gershwin may have thought of Porgy and Bess as an opera, but he was careful to book its Broadway run at the Alvin Theater, assiduously avoiding the word "opera" in connection with it. The show opened in New York on 10 October 1935. It ran for a rather modest 124 performances and was not a financial success.

Nevertheless, Porgy and Bess went on tour in January 1936, playing in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Washington DC. In Washington the cast protested the National Theatre’s policy of discrimination. Eventually, the theatre management gave in. Porgy and Bess became the first performance there to have an integrated audience.

Porgy didn’t achieve real audience and financial success for another half-dozen years. The turning point was a 9-month 1942 run at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre. However, what played at the Majestic was not Gershwin’s original work. The show’s director had made draconian cuts in the libretto, halved the size of the cast, pruned the orchestra, and eliminated many of the recitatives in favor of spoken dialogue.

A 1952 version reversed many of the cuts, and brought in sizable European audiences. Although that production made a few appearances here in the States, the first really successful American performance of Porgy and Bess as the full opera Gershwin had envisioned didn’t take place until nearly 40 years after the premiere.

In the summer of 1975, Lorin Maazel led the first essentially uncut modern performance of Porgy and Bess with the Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. It was recorded by London/Decca. The recording was out of print for some years, but was reissued in 2007.

That same year, Houston Grand Opera presented a fully staged, full length performance, which they later took to Broadway’s Uris Theater. That performance was recorded by RCA.

At last, a half-century after Gershwin had first conceived the idea for Porgy and Bess, it was the fully-fledged American opera he had meant it to be. Its international stature has only grown since then.

Act I, Scene 1

It is night in Catfish Row, a shantytown near the Charleston waterfront. A piano plays "Jassbo Brown’s Blues." Clara sings her infant to sleep with the lullaby, "Summertime." Jake, Clara’s husband, sings "A Woman is a Sometime Thing" to the baby.

Porgy enters (in the Akron performance, he supports himself with a crutch rather than riding a goat cart) as a crap game is in progress. The others tease him for his interest in Bess. Bess enters with her lover, Crown, who is intoxicated. Crown joins the crap game. Enraged at his losses, Crown attacks another player, Robbins, and kills him with a cotton hook.

Crown runs away to hide. As the police arrive, the Catfish Row residents scatter. Bess, now abandoned by her runaway lover, pleads to the nearly empty scene for help and shelter. Sportin’ Life, Catfish Row’s drug dealer, offers to take her to New York, but she refuses. Porgy opens his door to her.

Act I, Scene 2

Robbins’s corpse lies in his and Serena’s room, a saucer on his chest for burial cost donations ("Overflow, Overflow"). The police arrive on the scene and accuse Peter, a half-deaf elderly man, of the murder, expecting the others to finger Crown. No one does, so Peter is hauled off as a "material witness." Serena mourns Robbins with "My Man’s Gone Now." His friends commend his soul to heaven with "Leaving for the Promised Land."

Act II, Scene 1

It’s a month later on Catfish Row. Jake and the fisherman mend their nets and prepare to take to sea, despite warnings of September storms ("It Takes a Long Pull to Get There"). Porgy sings "I’ve Got Plenty of Nothin’," and his friends remark on how he’s changed since he’s been with Bess. Sportin’ Life once again tries to entice Bess with his "magic dust" and life in New York, but Porgy’s example has helped her change her ways. She refuses both. Porgy sends the dope peddler packing. He and Bess sing the love duet "Bess, You is My Woman Now."

A picnic is in the offing ("Oh, I Can’t Sit Down"), but Porgy can’t go. Bess says she’ll stay home too. Porgy insists that she join their friends at the picnic.

Act II, Scene 2

It’s evening, and the picnic is in full swing on Kittiwah Island ("I Ain’t Got No Shame"). Sportin’ Life extols the virtues of religious skepticism in "It Ain’t Necessarily So." Serena arrives and casts "Shame on All You Sinners." Now they have to hurry, or they’ll miss the last boat home.

As the others pack up to leave, Bess lingers. Abruptly, Crown appears; he has been hiding on the island. She begs him to leave her alone ("What You Want With Bess?"), but he compels her to stay. The boat leaves without her.

Act II, Scene 3

It’s early morning, a week later. Jake and the fishermen make final preparations for their fishing excursion, with a partial reprise of "It Takes a Long Pull to Get There." The police have released Peter.

Bess has returned from Kittiwah Island, incoherent. She lies delerious in Porgy’s house. Serena prays for her recovery ("Oh, Doctor Jesus"). Catfish Row awakens as the Strawberry Woman, the Crab Man and Peter the honey man offer their wares.

Bess calls for Porgy. She admits to having been with Crown. Porgy replies that he knows, but it’s all right. Bess has promised Crown that she will go with him, but now she’s afraid. She wants to stay with Porgy ("I Loves You, Porgy"). Porgy swears that he will protect her from Crown.

Anxiously, Clara watches the sea. A storm is brewing. The hurricane bell rings its urgent warning. Fearing the worst, Clara falls to her knees.

Act II, Scene 4

The storm rages outside Serena’s room, where all have gathered to wait and pray. Peter sings "I Hear Death Knockin’ at the Door" – and just then there is a loud, violent knock at the door! Crown bursts in, returning to claim Bess. Serena warns Crown that the storm may kill him, but he sings "If God wanted to kill me, He had plenty of chance ‘tween here and Kittiwah Island." He taunts the entire company with a bawdy song ("A Red-Headed Woman").

Clara spots Jake’s boat, capsized ("Jake’s Boat In the River"). She hands her baby to Bess and rushes out into the storm. Bess urges all the men to follow her, but it is Crown who does so, shouting that he will return for Bess.

Act III, Scene 1

In the courtyard the next night, all mourn Clara, Jake, and Crown – surely lost in the storm ("Clara, Clara"). Sportin’ Life, however, hints that Crown is not dead. Bess sings "Summertime" to Clara’s baby. The courtyard empties.

Crown slinks into the abandoned courtyard, creeping toward Porgy’s door. As he passes the window, an arm reaches out and plunges a long knife into his back. Crown staggers. Porgy stumbles out of the house, seizes Crown, and throttles him. "Bess, Bess, You Got a Man Now," he proclaims.

Act III, Scene 2

The next afternoon, the police arrive to investigate Crown’s death. Serena says she knows nothing – and that all in Catfish Row will swear that Crown murdered her husband Robbins. The police ask Porgy to identify Crown’s body. He refuses out of fear; Sportin’ Life has told him that if a man’s killer looks at his corpse, the corpse’s wounds will bleed. The police haul him away.

Sportin’ Life approaches Bess. Porgy could be in prison for years, he tells her. He might even be executed. The dope peddler offers Bess his "happy dust" to assuage her fears. At first she refuses, but then she succumbs to the temptation. Sportin’ Life again presses her to accompany him to the big city ("There’s a Boat That’s Leaving Soon for New York"). He reminds her that she is now again all alone.

Act III, Scene 3

A week later, life in Catfish Row seems normal ("Good morning, Sister"). Porgy returns. Everyone sings "It’s Porgy Coming Home." Porgy has been in jail for contempt of court after refusing to identify Crown. Even there his luck held up; he’s won cash at jailhouse crap games. He brings gifts for all, including a red dress for Bess.

But – "Oh, Bess, Oh Where’s My Bess?" Serena and Maria join in, excusing and explaining her actions: Bess has gone to New York with Sportin’ Life. Porgy calls for his goat cart. He will find Bess, wherever she is, and bring her back. He and the chorus sing the finale, "Oh Lord, I’m On My Way."

If you’re a book geek and library lover, you’d be in heaven in an orchestra’s library. It’s scores by the score (and parts too), on shelf after shelf.

The accumulated musical thoughts of the centuries are simultaneously inspiring and sobering. They also have an alluring aroma all their own. It’s as good as (but a bit different from) what you breathe in when you prowl the stacks of a good, well established public library.

Somebody has to take care of all that wisdom. Go to the website of any orchestra, large or small, and check out their list of musicians. Somewhere in there, among the violists and horn players, you’ll find a category for librarians.

Orchestra librarians are the folks who look after all these semibreves, crochets, and quavers (whole notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes).

But their job isn’t just handing parts out before rehearsals begin, and collecting them after the concert. Orchestra librarians have crucial behind-the-scenes roles before rehearsal can even begin. Here’s one example from the San Diego Symphony – complete with "bad attitude."