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The trumpet goes back a long, long way. Trumpeters are depicted in art from ancient Egypt, dated in the 14th century BCE.
For most of its centuries of existence, the trumpet was an instrument of royalty, used for playing fanfares. Frankly, that’s about all it was good for. These early trumpets couldn’t play all the notes of the scale. They played only the first few notes from the harmonic series, which is already a subset of the scale’s notes.
By the 16th century, instrument makers had figured out how to make trumpets play more of the notes from the harmonic series. Now, the further up you go in the harmonic series, the closer together the notes get. If you could push your trumpet far enough, and fudge the pitch of some notes a bit, you could play all the notes of the scale. By the 17th century, trumpets could actually be used to more or less play melodies.
I say "more or less" because they still didn’t do a very good job of it. It took a really talented (and fit!) player to get all the notes in tune. (Many of today’s period instrument specialists use trumpets with tiny, inconspicuous, and inauthentic "cheater holes" that help them with this challenge.) Even then, the timbre (tone quality) of the notes varied radically.
In the 15th century, a few instrument makers had experimented with adding slides (like a trombone’s) to trumpets. We have pictures! But given the design – they were straight trumpets – it’s hard to see how a player could’ve flung that slide around fast enough to play any but the slowest music. He might well have knocked his own front teeth out trying. For centuries more, trumpet players had to pretty much depend only on skill and lungs to coax a real tune from their instruments.
In the 17th century, Vienna became something of a Mecca for trumpet players. The very earliest trumpet players had been little more than vagrants, but Viennese trumpeters were given a place of honor. On high feast days the court’s string orchestra was augmented by a choir of trumpets, playing sonatas composed by the likes of Schmelzer and Biber.
But by the late 18th century the trumpet was going out of style, giving way to more agile and tonally consistent instruments. A few trumpeters, determined to salvage their careers, scrambled to develop a trumpet that could compete with the violin, flute, and oboe. Some of them achieved a measure of success by adding keys to the trumpet, so it could play all the notes of the scale, even in its lowest register.
Enter Anton Weidinger (1767 – 1852). Weidinger was a Viennese court trumpeter. Around 1793, he began experimenting with some of these keyed trumpets, refining them and practicing with them. By 1796 he was making enough progress that he convinced Haydn to write a concerto for his Klappentrompette (keyed trumpet). He took that concerto on the road in 1803, playing it in France, Germany, and England. Weidinger caught the interest of composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who composed yet another concerto for him and his curious keyed trumpet.
The critics had good things to say about Weidinger’s trumpet and his playing. But it was too late. By 1820 the valved trumpet had appeared in Vienna and was rapidly taking over. Weidinger’s keyed trumpet hung on for a little longer; some musicians and composers preferred its tone to the valved trumpet’s. But by 1840 the Klappentrompette was forgotten – obsolete.
Although the Baroque natural trumpet has no shortage of proponents (and makers and players), not many musicians have shown much interest in reviving the Klappentrompette. Who can blame them? After all, what’s the point of reviving an instrument for which only two major concertos were ever written? (See also the arpeggione.) Adolf Egger has built modern reproductions, as has Christopher Monk, but they don’t seem to have had many customers. The few recordings that have been made with their instruments have quickly gone out of print, presumably for lack of interest.
But if you’d like to see and hear the keyed trumpet, here’s a rare opportunity: David Guerrier playing the first movement of the Haydn in the Festival de l’Epau last May (2009). He’s accompanied by the chamber orchestra "Les Siècles."
He was mostly self-taught. His studies were in German studies and Secondary Education. He did not attend a conservatory of music or take any master classes. As a matter of fact, in 1993 a jury member at a national competition (this is taken from a speech he made not too long ago in July 2007), told him to his face, that, “I will never have a musical career, that I have neither the talent nor the technique for playing the piano, and that I should find something easier to do with my life.†He is Jon Nakamatsu. This is a must-see speech.
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was the son of a wealthy paper maker, and never really had to work.
As a result, he was maybe the only Baroque composer who never tried to obtain a job as a church or court director. That does not mean he did not work. He composed around about fifty operas, and a fair amount of orchestra pieces.
Albinoni as a Bigwig
 As was often the case in portraits, especially from that time period, there were hints as to who the person was and what he or she did. You can see that he is holding music in his hands, but the immense wig on his head is supposed to tell us a lot more. Being a musician could be an iffy thing to anyone of nobility; not of the highest standards. So, Mr. Albinoni wore the wig to let you know his rank in society.
It is from those times and that hair piece that we learn that a ‘bigwig’ was a grand poobah.
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida’s latest Mozart recording — the 23rd and 24th concertos — landed on my desk Monday. She’s accompanied by the Cleveland Orchestra, continuing a partnership which has lasted well beyond her 2002 – 2007 residency with the orchestra.
Though I never expect to see Mitsuko Uchida at the keyboard of a classical fortepiano, or playing in front of the Academy of Ancient Music, her career trajectory has in some ways paralleled that of the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement. She was winning prizes in the early 1970s, at about the time the (modern) Academy of Ancient Music played its first concerts. Her New York debut was in 1985, the same year that Cleveland’s Early Music America was founded.
I went straight to the second movement of her Mozart 24th, that gorgeous, wistful respite Mozart gave us between the dense, dark outer movements of his c-minor concerto. As I listened to Uchida’s lucid, gentle, and thoroughly unsentimental playing, I opened my computer’s web browser and discovered that another great Mozart interpreter had left this world.
Alicia de Larrocha, who died last Friday (25 September 2009) in Barcelona, her birthplace, came from the generation before Uchida’s. Make no mistake, she brought to the table much of her own generation’s musical sensibility. When she recorded the Beethoven concertos in the mid-1980s, for example, she didn’t play Beethoven’s own cadenzas. She used the late-Romantic-era cadenzas of Carl Reinecke – the ones she grew up playing.
She wasn’t particularly glamorous, and she was rather shy. But by God she could play the piano.
– Herbert Breslin
The world recognizes de Larrocha for pushing Spanish keyboard music into the Classical mainstream. To name only one example, a quick glance at one of the online CD retailers shows nearly 4 dozen current recordings of the Suite Iberia by Isaac Albeniz, a work she first recorded in that late 1950s. Would there be half as many choices today, had she not championed the suite? If she’d accomplished nothing else, that would have been enough.
She performed and recorded plenty of full-bore romantic music — Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt. But it’s for her Mozart that I remember Alicia de Larrocha best. Well before the HIP movement, she was infusing Mozart (and Haydn and Beethoven) with a luminous delicacy that few other pianists could match.
So what am I leading up to here? That Mitsuko Uchida is heir to a mantle that Alicia de Larrocha wore, one with a badge that says "Mozart Pianist"? Not at all. Both of them would have to share that garment with too many other fine pianists.
But I do think we should remember de Larrocha as part of that generation of musicians who rethought the way we approach early music. She wasn’t a Steven Lubin or a Gustav Leonhardt, of course. That wasn’t her way. But she still helped lay the groundwork for a kind of music making that assigns great importance to discovering and communicating not just the musician’s own interpretation of the music – though that’s vital – but also the composer’s intent.
She will be missed.
So what about that Mozart concerto, the one Mitsuko Uchida has just released? Alicia de Larrocha recorded it too, for RCA, back in 1991, with Colin Davis and the English Chamber Orchestra. Do the two recordings help us draw a line from the older pianist to the younger? Not on your life! All it takes is a few bars of that middle movement to telegraph how differently she and Mitsuko Uchida viewed Mozart and his 24th concerto. Bravo for that – we’re richer for having both. Listen for yourself.
Alicia de Larrocha
Mitsuko Uchida
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The orchestras of Akron and Canton will kick off their 2009-10 classical series seasons with guest pianists performing concertos.
The Canton Symphony welcomes Menahem Pressler as part of their "American Living Legends" series. Pressler made over 50 recordings (most of them for Philips) as pianist for the Beaux Arts Trio, arguably the world’s best known piano trio. After over a half-century of acclaimed music making, Beaux Arts disbanded late last year (see Beaux Arts Trio Bows Out in WKSU Classical), and Pressler vowed to continue performing as a soloist. The Canton Symphony will accompany him in Mozart’s 17th piano concerto (K453).
Pressler hails from Bloomington, Indiana, but the Akron Symphony found their soloist right in their own back yard, so to speak: though Canadian-born, Philip Thomson is currently on the faculty of the University of Akron. Thomson is recognized for his interpretations of Liszt’s music and has recorded for Hungaroton, Naxos and Ivory Classics. He will join the orchestra for the Grieg concerto.
The Akron Symphony’s opening concert will be on Sunday, 13 September at E J Thomas Hall. Canton’s is set for Saturday, 10 October at Umstattd Hall. Tickets are available at their respective websites, or by phone at 330 535-8131 (Akron) and 330 452-2094 (Canton).
"The world has lost a musical giant and we have lost a dear friend." Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra President Trey Devey speaks for all of us in his statement.
Erich Kunzel, the longtime conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops — he ruled the podium for 44 years — died this morning at a hospital in Bar Harbor, Maine, near his home on Swan’s Island.
In late April Kunzel was diagnosed with pancreatic, liver and colon cancer. "It wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t on the schedule," was his response.
Kunzel was famous as one of the world’s busiest conductors, and he refused to let the disease halt his music making. Even as he was undergoing first one round and then another of chemotherapy, he maintained a full schedule.
However, Kunzel appeared drawn and thinner on the first of August (2009), when he conducted his last Cincinnati Pops Orchestra concert at Riverbend Music Center. Kunzel handed the baton to associate conductor Steven Reineke for the first half of the concert. He then led the remainder of the program from a stool onstage, with Reineke close by.
Among Erich Kunzel’s many legacies in Cincinnati are the Pops’ 38 year series of public park concerts. Through these performances, Kunzel introduced thousands of Cincinnati area residents to classical music.
Kunzel also recognized that young people are the future of classical music. He took a personal interest in promoting the now nearly finished School for Creative & Performing Arts, the nation’s first K-12 performing arts public school. It’s set to open in the fall of 2010. And his last recording, just released by Telarc Records, showcases soloists — and even a composer — under the age of 20.
Kunzel was a faculty member at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music from 1966 through 1972, where he taught orchestral conducting.
The Cincinnati Pops has set up a memorial Web page, and is accepting cards and notes for Kunzel’s family. Write to Cincinnati Symphony, 1241 Elm Street, Cincinnati OH 45202.
Erich Kunzel is survived by his wife of 44 years, Brunhilde.
It’s one of the hazards of concert-going. You’re deeply engrossed in the music. Comes a diminuendo to pianissimo and beyond. You scarcely breathe as the music falls to the limit of audibility.
From three seats over comes a quiet snorfff. The gentleman there has fallen asleep.
It’s hard to imagine a greater insult to a composer. Yet there’s a very well known work which was designed to have this exact effect — well, maybe. Or so legend has it.
J N Forkel
The story comes from Bach’s first biographer, Johann Nicolaus Forkel (1749 – 1818).
Johann Gottlieb Goldberg was one of Bach’s students. He was attached to the household of the former Russian ambassador to the electoral court of Saxony, Count Keyserlingk. The count often traveled to Leipzig. Goldberg usually accompanied him and would visit with Bach for a lesson.
Count Keyserlingk had health problems. Too often, his nights were filled with pain rather than sleep. On those nights he would call for young Goldberg, who would play the harpsichord for him in a room adjoining his bedchamber.
Count Keyserlingk
Could Bach compose some keyboard music for him? Perhaps Bach could make the pieces "of a soft and somewhat lively character." Then they might cheer Count Keyserlingk up on his sleepless nights.
Good story, so far. The first question is — assuming it’s true (and we’ll get to that in a moment), is the count asking for music to divert his mind when he can’t sleep, or music that might lull him to sleep?
The usual interpretation of this passage is the former. I might think that too if I were a keyboard player. Trying to sort out these challenging pieces at the harpsichord is definitely not going to lull you to sleep, and playing them on the piano is even more finger-twisting.
The fact that Count Keyserlingk is (according to Forkel) asking to be cheered, not lulled or soothed, is further evidence for the pianists’ side.
But note what Forkel says the count asked for: music "of a soft and somewhat lively character." Is he asking for pieces that are both soft and lively, or does he want some pieces to be soft and others lively?
Well, could "soft" be just a mistranslation? I don’t think so. Forkel writes sanft. I’m no German expert, though I speak a little, so I asked my old friend Herr Langenscheidt. Here are some possible English equivalents he suggests: soft, gentle, mild, calm, sweet, and smooth. In my book that doesn’t leave a lot of room for negotiation about what Keyserlingk was looking for.
You can’t say that the Goldberg Variations’ opening aria doesn’t fit that description — though some might call it a bit melancholy instead — and there are plenty of variations in the set which could easily fall into the "soft" category.
First Edition of the Goldberg Variations
Forkel never says that Goldberg played the entire set of 30 variations from beginning to end. On the contrary, he tells us that "when the sleepless nights came, he [Count Keyserlingk] used to say: ‘Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations.’" (Emphasis added.) Don’t you think that a reasonable and thoughtful Goldberg would try to choose an appropriate variation for that night’s situation?
Forkel also says that "Bach thought he could best fulfill [the count's] wish by variations, which, on account of the constant sameness of the fundamental harmony, he had hitherto considered as an ungrateful task." The implication is pretty clear here: Bach thought that variations, as a musical form, tended to be dull. One interpretation of this sentence might be that Bach took this as a challenge — to make his Goldberg Variations stimulating and engaging. But you could just as easily take it to mean that Bach used variations because they (or at least some of them!) were more likely than other forms to send the count into dreamland.
Either way, he seems to have pleased the count. Forkel tells us that Count Keyserlingk never tired of his variations. He rewarded Bach with a golden goblet, filled with 100 louis-d’or. A louis d’or was a gold coin with a weight of 6.75 ounces. Today that much gold would be worth a cool $635,850.
It’s a fine tale, but is it true? Good question. I have to admit, there’s evidence to the contrary.
First, a big one: no other source has yet appeared to corroborate Forkel’s yarn.
Nor is there in the published variations any hint of a dedication to either Count Keyserlingk or Goldberg. You’d certainly expect one, especially given the count’s rather generous payment. But Bach’s title page says only Keyboard practice, consisting of an aria with different variations for the harpsichord with two manuals, prepared for the enjoyment of music lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach, Polish royal and Saxon electoral court composer, director and chorusmaster in Leipzig.
Third, the inventory of Bach’s estate lists no golden goblet.
And finally — most damning in the view of generations of pianists who have struggled mightily with the Goldberg Variations — at the time the Goldberg Variations appeared, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg was only 14 years old.
It’s pretty tough to argue with the lack of corroboration, but remember that Forkel got much of his biographical information directly from two of Bach’s sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, who seem to have been generally pretty reliable. The lack of a dedication is telling, though; it definitely runs against common practice at the time.
However, the goblet could have been sold, lost, or given away by 1750. And Goldberg’s age? At 14, Mendelssohn was composing symphonies and Mozart created a full length opera (Mitridate, Re di Ponto). It’s remarkable what a talented kid can accomplish when he’s not distracted by Wii and Facebook, eh?
All that said, until some further documentation turns up — a dedicated copy from the count’s library, for example — I’m afraid we’ll have leave Forkel’s tale of the Goldberg Variations’ origins and use in the "legend, possibly apocryphal" department. But the next 3am when your sheep-count gets into five figures, why not see what the Goldberg Variations will do for you? I’ve listed a few recordings below, and there are many, many more in print.
Note: The vendor links above are provided solely for your information. WKSU doesn’t endorse these suppliers, nor does it receive any financial benefit from your use of the links.
Mozart died in the early morning hours of 4 December 1791. He was two months from his 36th birthday. Official Viennese documents listed the cause of his death as "hitziges Frieselfieber" — meaning very high fever with rash, which describes the symptoms, not the cause. Over the centuries since his death, medical experts have tried to analyze exactly what it was that took Mozart’s life.
On Monday (17 August 2009), researchers from the University of Amsterdam added their theory to the list. They think it may have been complications from strep throat. They say that in December of 1791, Vienna was experiencing a minor epidemic of strep throat, and that it may have begun in the city’s military hospital.
This is the latest chapter in an ongoing mystery story. In fact, the public began second-guessing Vienna’s official paperwork and news reports almost immediately.
One newspaper account from late in December 1791 held sway for generations. It suggested that the real cause of Mozart’s death was poison — that someone did him in. Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory, and the early 19th century was more than ready to believe it.
They were able to find some corroboration, of sorts. In 1829, for example, an English music publisher interviewed Mozart’s widow, Constanze, then 67. She claimed that, though she herself didn’t think Mozart had been poisoned, Mozart had been convinced of it. She said he’d told her 6 months before his death that "someone has given me acqua toffana." Acqua toffana was an arsenic-based preparation.
Death notice, 1792, unidentified newspaper (Mozart Forum)
Mozart’s second son, Karl Thomas, was also sold on the poisoning story. He wrote years later that the painful and extreme swelling that Mozart experienced was a likely symptom of poisoning. He also pointed to Mozart’s acute foul odor around the time of death — he claimed this is the reason that the coroner didn’t carry out an autopsy — and to the fact that Mozart’s body allegedly didn’t stiffen after his passing. (It’s worth mentioning here that Karl was all of 7 years old when his father died.)
If Mozart really was poisoned, whodunnit? The most common answer: composer Antonio Salieri. Salieri allegedly confessed to the deed while ill and despondent; Beethoven’s conversation books (in which his guests wrote to him after he’d lost his hearing) contain exactly this report.
But other accounts suggest that these were nothing more than wild, unsubstantiated rumors. Certainly Salieri wasn’t prosecuted as Mozart’s murderer. Besides, what motivation would he have had? "Professional jealousy" gets the rap, but by that argument it would have made more sense for Mozart to have poisoned Salieri. After all, Salieri had a steady (and lucrative) court job, and Mozart had to scrape together pennies to pay his rent. Sad to say, by then Mozart’s career was on the wane.
If not Salieri, then whom? There was no shortage of other theories. Most of them tell us more about the writer’s attitudes than about Mozart. One rumor suggested that the Freemasons were somehow offended by The Magic Flute and its Freemasonry theme, and came after its composer. (Why not the librettist Schickaneder, too?) Others attributed his death to various alleged sinister cabals of Masons, Catholics, and Jews.
Some sources even suggested that Mozart poisoned himself. One story is that he was trying to treat a case of syphilis, and accidentally took too much mercury. This falls flat for the lack of evidence that Mozart ever had the disease. Another notion, maybe a bit more plausible, is that Mozart overdosed himself with patent medicines containing antimony.
If not poison, could it have been heart disease? Some newspaper obituaries mentioned "dropsy of the heart." Mozart did indeed suffer from edema in the weeks before his death, but his other listed symptoms don’t fit too well with that diagnosis.
One doctor’s report mentions "a deposit in the brain" — perhaps some kind of tumor. Intriguing, but again, the reported symptoms don’t support this notion.
One physician who had attended Mozart suggested "rheumatic inflammatory fever." A few years ago, this led physicians at the University of Maryland to an obvious conclusion: rheumatic fever. The University of Amsterdam researchers arrived at their strep throat theory by building on this diagnosis and by examining other health records from 1790s Vienna.
Over two centuries after Mozart’s death, the cause continues to fascinate and puzzle health experts. Since we have no way of exhuming his remains — the cemetery in which he was buried was later plowed — it’s not too likely that we’ll ever know for certain.
George Gershwin in the 1920s (Library of Congress)
In 1920s America, Paul Whiteman was a bandleader and the self-proclaimed "King of Jazz" (a title which must have raised Louis Armstrong’s eyebrows, if not his hackles). On 3 January 1924 Whiteman announced that he planned an "Experiment in Modern Music" at Aeolian Hall in New York City. This concert would be a showcase for nearly every form of American music. It would include a new "jazz concerto" by George Gershwin.
The next day, Gershwin learned from the New York Times that he was composing a new "jazz concerto."
Odd way to receive a commission — from the newspaper — but Whiteman browbeat Gershwin into accepting it. The composer of Al Jolson’s hit song "Swanee" had 39 days to throw something together.
Between the time frame and his own keenly felt lack of experience, Gershwin wasn’t quite up to orchestrating the piece. So Whiteman collared his best arranger, Ferde Grofe, and persuaded him to do the deed. With Grofe’s help, on the 12th of February, a somewhat overly long "Experiment in Modern Music" suddenly snapped to life when Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue crackled through the audience.
Rhapsody in Blue was a smashing success. "Swanee" had made Gershwin’s name in America; now he suddenly had an international reputation.
So he wouldn’t have to rely on Grofe again, Gershwin began studying harmony and counterpoint in earnest. He traveled to Paris and called on Maurice Ravel, whom he knew had instructed other composers in orchestration. Ravel demurred: "Why would you want to risk being a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"
Stravinsky also turned him down, but in Hollywood, Gershwin finally got Arnold Schoenberg to work with him on orchestration (when they weren’t playing tennis). Schoenberg muttered that, considering his income against Gershwin’s, maybe Gershwin should be giving him music lessons.
So Gershwin had the opening of An American in Paris — but that was as far as he could get. He needed another, longer visit to La Ville-Lumière to tie down the rest of his "rhapsodic ballet." He got it in March of 1928. Such European musical luminaries as Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Poulenc and Milhaud graciously welcomed Gershwin. He also bought more taxi horns.
Gershwin was back in New York on 20 June and had the piano sketches for An American in Paris wrapped up within 6 weeks.
This time, Gershwin proudly orchestrated the work himself. It took him an agonizing 2 1/2 months. When he finished An American in Paris on 18 November, Gershwin had less than four weeks until the premiere. Walter Damrosch conducted it with the New York Philharmonic on 13 December, 1928.
So just who is the American in Paris? Gershwin tried to be vague. In August of 1928, he told a writer for Musical America magazine, "My purpose is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere."
But that’s exactly what Gershwin did in Paris in 1926 and 1928: he strolled the city, listened to its sounds, absorbed its atmosphere. "Write what you know," that’s the author’s axiom, and in 1926 and 1928, it worked for Gershwin. It would be awfully difficult to argue that anyone but George Gershwin himself was the American in Paris.
About 15 years ago, a professor of psychology stirred up the music world with the idea that listening to Mozart could make you smarter. Before the decade was out, the work of Dr Frances H. Rauscher, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, had brought forth a veritable flood of pop-psych books, tapes, and CDs promising in newspaper inserts and on television infomercials to boost your brain (or your baby’s). One enterprising author even went so far as to trademark the phrase "The Mozart Effect."
Dr Rauscher had a group of college students mentally unfold a piece of paper and try to identify its shape. She found that the students who had listened to a recording of Mozart’s K448 sonata were better and faster at the task. Dr Rauscher published the results in the journal Nature in 1993.
There were only two problems with the Mozart Effect. One was that it didn’t last: the students only held on to their newly acquired spatial skills for ten or fifteen minutes. The other problem was that when other researchers tried to verify the effect, some just couldn’t. So, over the years since, the idea that Mozart can make you smarter has lost much of its credibility.
However, a recent study has found that the Mozart Effect is real — but only for certain people. It definitely works for right-handed non-musicians.
Psychologist and Royal Holloway PhD candidate Afshin Aheadi assembled her own group of 100 university students — half musicians, half non-musicians. She had them listen to the same Mozart sonata that Dr Rausher used. Then they viewed a drawing, and were asked questions about it which forced them to mentally rotate the image.
Aheadi found that listening to Mozart helped the non-musicians with the task, but not the musicians. It seems that it’s the right hemisphere of the brain which processes spatial information. That’s the part of the brain that music tends to grab — in non-musicians. In effect, the Mozart "revved up" their right brains.
The musicians didn’t get the same right-brain boost because musicians process music with both brain hemispheres. And although the trial didn’t include any left-handed non-musicians, Aheadi’s team theorizes that they too might not get much benefit from listening to Mozart. That’s because southpaws tend to use both hemispheres of their brains more equally.
And the musicians? Mozart does them no good? Well, not exactly.
True, they didn’t get an immediate boost in their spatial processing skills from listening to Mozart. But that’s because they already had it. Thanks to their years of music study, the musicians were better at spatial processing right from the start of the test, long before the researchers ever hit the go button on the CD player. That finding confirms what we’ve known for years: early musical training improves mental ability. And that Mozart Effect lasts a lifetime.
Concerts used to be much more of a free-for-all … Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that great music can be rude and visceral; we have put conductors on pedestals, and turned our audiences into passive subjects.
From the Middle Ages, Italy’s Medici family was a magnet for artists and artisans, who created extraordinary works under the family’s generous patronage. In 1688, Florence’s Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici hired Bartolomeo Cristofori, then 33 years old, to look after his collection of harpsichords. This was an important position: Cristofori was paid as much as any court musician.
The harpsichord of Cristofori’s time was a well developed instrument, responsive and flexible. But it lacked one feature: variable dynamics. The harpsichord’s mechanism plucked the strings of the instrument. There was no practical way (then) to make it pluck them more gently. The only way to vary volume was to change stops or combine manuals. The possibilities for dynamic variety were fairly limited.
Some time in the 1690s, Cristofori had a brainstorm. He realized that if he replaced the harpsichord’s plucking mechanism with one which struck the string instead, the force of the strike — and thus the volume of the sound — could be under complete control of the player.
The idea of a keyboard instrument that struck the strings rather than plucking them wasn’t really new. The clavichord had existed since at least the 15th century. A clavichord had tangents fastened to the keys. Instead of controlling jacks and quills which plucked the strings, the tangents themselves struck the strings inside the instrument’s case.
The problem with the clavichord was that while it was capable of extraordinarily sensitive dynamic expression, its volume range was from almost inaudible to barely audible. Let’s face it, the force that a keyboard player can transmit through his or her fingers is limited. The clavichord’s tangents couldn’t strike its strings hard enough to make a sound that could be heard, say, in a church sanctuary. This meant that the clavichord wasn’t suitable for anything other than the most intimate music-making. (It made a magnificent instrument for late-night keyboard practice, however.)
Cristofori solved this problem by adding a mechanical action. It multiplied the player’s string-striking force by four (eight, in his later instruments) and used that force to drive a hammer against the string. He also added an escapement mechanism. The escapement allowed the hammer to fall back after striking the string, so the string would keep vibrating. (Think of the way a fine crystal goblet rings when you tap it with a spoon — as long as you don’t keep the spoon touching the glass after you tap it.)
Cristofori called his invention "arpicimbalo che fa il piano e il forte" — harpsichord with soft and loud. Today, we shorten that name a bit. We call it the piano.
Maybe you’re expecting me to say here that Cristofori’s piano "took Europe by storm" (or some similar cliche’!) and almost immediately eclipsed the harpsichord.
That didn’t happen. Truth to tell, keyboard players didn’t like the touch. The Florentine piano was harder to play, and the keys just didn’t feel right when pressed. They didn’t like the tone, either; it was too soft, too muffled. Besides, who really needed that much variety in volume anyway?
It would remain for later piano makers to solve these problems. But Cristofori had begun the process of breaking the harpsichord’s lock on public keyboard performance. It’s not hard to imagine that without the financial and moral support of the Medici family, Cristofori probably couldn’t have pushed keyboard technology ahead — but that’s another story for another day.
Now back to 1700, and over to Naples. That’s when and where Domenico Scarlatti, one more musical member of a hugely talented musical family, was named organist and composer of the Royal Chapel. He was even granted a special additional salary for his work as chamber harpsichordist.
Domenico Scarlatti was only 15 years old.
Two years later, Scarlatti and his father Alessandro made the first of two visits to Florence. Their host was none other than Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, Cristofori’s patron. Did Domenico play one or more of Cristofori’s Florentine pianos on these visits? Perhaps. History doesn’t tell us. So far no documentation has surfaced — no letters home raving about (or excoriating!) the new-fangled instrument, no eyewitness reports, no newspaper articles.
By 1708, Domenico had joined his father in Rome. There he attended the weekly concerts originated by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. In 1709, Prince Ferdinando sent the Cardinal a lavish gift from Florence: one of Cristofori’s pianos. Did Scarlatti play or hear that instrument? Again, history doesn’t tell us.
In 1719, Scarlatti left Rome, ostensibly for England. In actuality, he was on his way to Lisbon, Portugal, where he had a job offer — he was to be master of the Royal Chapel there. In Lisbon he encountered an exceptionally talented royal youngster — the infanta Maria Barbara, who, as a contemporary report said, “Surprise[ed] the amazed intelligence of the most excellent Professors with her Mastery of Singing, Playing and Composition.”
In January of 1729, Maria Barbara married Ferdinando, the Spanish infante. It was a rather uncomfortable union whose purpose was entirely political. Maria Barbara soon found herself in the hostile company of the jealous Queen Isabella of Spain. Isabella even refused to allow Maria Barbara to bring along her personal servants — all but one, that is: her music teacher, Domenico Scarlatti. During the remaining 28 years of his life, Scarlatti composed and catalogued over 550 keyboard exercises for Maria Barbara — from 1746, queen of Spain.
Scarlatti and the Florentine piano are linked (if only circumstantially) at several other times and places, but what’s undeniable is that Maria Barbara herself was a point of intersection.
Maria Barbara owned pianos. We know this because she died just over a year after Scarlatti did, and at her death, her instruments were inventoried. Of her dozen (!) keyboard instruments, three were pianos, and two more were harpsichords which had been converted from pianos (perhaps because their actions failed, or because they were judged unsatisfactory as pianos). It thus becomes rather difficult to deny that Scarlatti was acquainted with the piano.
But did he play them? Did he intend for Maria Barbara to play his sonatas on them?
Ralph Kirkpatrick didn’t think so. Kirkpatrick was an American harpsichordist (1911 – 1984). He had a distinguised career as a performer, but his magnum opus was his biography of Domenico Scarlatti. It occupied him for 16 years, from 1937 to 1953. When it came to Scarlatti’s sonatas, Kirkpatrick’s views in that 1953 publication were enormously influential, guiding the performance practice of a generation of historically-oriented keyboard musicians.
Kirkpatrick pointed out that 73 of Scarlatti’s 550-some sonatas required more keys than the queen’s pianos had. This is pretty hard to argue with! It seems very unlikely that either Maria Barbara or Scarlatti played those 73 sonatas on any of the pianos to which they had known access. That’s a carefully qualified statement, but it’s about as definitive as we can really get in this discussion.
Kirkpatrick thought that was sufficient evidence to declare that Scarlatti probably had the harpsichord in mind for playing all of his sonatas. There is more to his argument, but it’s mostly conjectural, related to what he saw as the musical suitability of the piano of the time to the sonatas. What else can one do without definitive surviving documentation?
But from 1970, other historically-oriented musicologists and performers began to question Kirkpatrick’s assessment. Their re-evaluation of the evidence, sketchy as it was and is, led to harpsichord maker David Sutherland’s 1995 article in Early Music magazine, “Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano.”
Sutherland argued that, in making his recommendation, Kirkpatrick should have given more weight to the circumstantial evidence connecting Scarlatti and the early Florentine piano. Sutherland also questioned Kirkpatrick’s judgement of the Florentine piano as unsuited to Scarlatti’s sonatas, but in all honesty it’s difficult to see Sutherland’s view of this matter as any less subjective than Kirkpatrick’s. Finally, he took issue with Kirkpatrick’s argument that the piano was mostly used at court for accompanying singers. Sutherland’s evidence here seems about as persuasive as Kirkpatrick’s. Stalemate.
Who’s right? I don’t know.
Keyboard isn’t my instrument, so maybe I’m able to view this whole discussion with a bit of detachment. We’ve invested over 70 years in poring over what little documentation exists (reckoning from when Kirkpatrick began his research for Domenico Scarlatti). We have more informed opinions than ever (and thank goodness for that), but informed as they are, they’re still opinions. We don’t have a definitive answer as to whether Scarlatti intended his sonatas for the harpsichord or the piano. Perhaps he intended some of them for one and some for the other, but we have no way of knowing that. If he did, the 73 I mentioned before are the only ones which we currently have much hope of assigning. Actually, we don’t know whether Scarlatti even cared which instrument they were played on. We may never know. There just isn’t enough evidence to say.
Meanwhile, players of the modern piano, from Dame Myra Hess to Vladimir Horowitz — and countless others since — have never stopped playing Scarlatti. Why should they? For them, I suspect that the question of what instrument Scarlatti had played was pretty much academic. His music worked for them on their chosen instrument. They gave Scarlatti a voice, and also found their own expressive nuances in the sonatas. Audiences loved it. I imagine that was enough for them.
What I do know is that I’ve heard successful and musically enlightening performances of Scarlatti sonatas on harpsichords, Florentine pianos, and modern pianos. But don’t take my word for it; compare for yourself. Here are three short clips from Scarlatti’s Sonata in f minor, K519 — played on modern piano, a reproduction of Cristofori’s Florentine piano, and harpsichord.
Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on modern piano (Beatrice Long)
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Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on Florentine piano (David Schrader)
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Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on harpsichord (Colin Tilney)
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I’ve also heard some pretty good Scarlatti on other instruments, including harp and guitar. His music seems to suit many different instruments, and I for one am glad that one more avenue of timbre and style has opened up for interpreting Scarlatti sonatas.
Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano. David Sutherland, Early Music, 1995 (Note: JSTOR access is required to read this article. A public-access computer associated with a university or library will usually connect immediately, but most home or business computers will not.)
Jeannette Sorrell’s background as a dancer has served her well in her role as founder and director of Cleveland’s historically informed performance band, Apollo’s Fire. Her deep understanding of the partnership between music and movement has unquestionably shaped her interpretation of the rhythms in early music.
Steven Player
Audio clip: Steven Player in Mediterranean Nights (2005)
At times, she’s also added literal dance to the group’s programs. This coming season (2009-10), two of Apollo’s Fire’s concerts will feature movement.
In late October and early November, guitarist, dancer, and high-energy showman Steven Player will join Apollo’s Fire as they present a revised version of their popular 2005 program Mediterranean Nights. Cool Cleveland’s Kelly Ferjutz said that the earlier Mediterranean Nights at St Paul’s Episcopal Church was "a treat that will not soon be forgotten." Of a Harp Consort program featuring Player, the Adelaide Review said, "Steven Player was worth the price of admission by himself."
In March, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra will bring dance to Severance Hall as they perform Mozart’s ballet music for Idomeneo, as part of an all-Mozart program. Apollo’s Fire last played this Mozart work three years ago, in October of 2006, and Sorrell also conducted a well-received Akron Symphony Orchestra performance of it in 2007. In 2009, for the first time with Apollo’s Fire, the performance will have the element of movement which Mozart intended. In addition to Severance Hall, the Mozart Celebration will be presented in Akron, and at Oberlin’s Finney Chapel.
For the 2009-10 season, the ensemble expands their repertoire with a new concert featuring excerpts from Bach’s B-minor mass and Vivaldi’s Gloria. Gloria will open the Apollo’s Fire season in October (on the 1st through the 4th of the month) in Cleveland Heights, Akron, and Rocky River.
Apollo’s Musettes
Audio clip: Puer Natus from Christmas Vespers (2005)
Two other audience favorites from the past will round out the series of five concerts. In early December, Apollo’s Fire will present a reprise of Christmas Vespers. This program of Advent and Christmas works by early Baroque composer Michael Praetorius sold out and generated highly positive reviews in 2005 and 2007. In February, the group will perform an updated program of concertos by J S Bach and his sons.
Although their regular season is one concert shorter for 2009-10 (5 concerts rather than 6), Apollo’s Fire will present a separately-ticketed bonus event to help make up the difference. In January the young French countertenor, Philippe Jaroussky, will perform a French art song recital with piano accompaniment at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Jaroussky will appear with Apollo’s Fire during the 2010-2011 season.
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Much of Finland’s history is the story of dominance by one country or another, mostly Sweden and Russia. In fact Finland wasn’t a truly independent entity until 1992, in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Russia controlled Finland for the better part of the 19th century, but for most of that time they were a relatively docile master. After the Finnish Diet accepted Tsar Alexander’s authority, Russia granted Finland grand duchy status and promised to respect Finnish law.
But nationalism continued to grow in Finland, with the spreading conversion of the elementary education system to the Finnish language, and the publication of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
In 1899, Tsar Nicholas II decided he’d had enough of these upstart Finns. He abrogated the earlier agreement to respect Finnish law and instituted new restrictions, notably on freedom of the press.
Here composer Jean Sibelius enters the picture. Sibelius was asked to create incidental music for a historical tableau. Ostensibly the performance of this pageant was to benefit the press pension fund, but in reality it was economic and moral support for the beleaguered newspapers and freedom of the press.
The finale was called Finland Awakes, representing — well, exactly what you’d expect. This selection quickly became a separate (and very popular) concert work. The following year, Sibelius revised it and renamed it Finlandia.
Given Finland’s craving for independence it’s no surprise that Finlandia became something of a rallying cry, and that Sibelius came to be considered a nationalist composer. This view was only reinforced when Sibelius was among the first to sign a petition protesting Russia’s plan to dissolve the Finnish army.
Still, as patriotic as he may have been, Sibelius wasn’t keen to have his music pigeonholed this way.
The year after Finland Awakes became Finlandia, Sibelius, on holiday in Italy, began creating the musical ideas which would eventually become his second symphony. He premiered the work in Helsenki on 8 March 1902 to widespread acclaim. Sibelius’s Symphony #2 quickly found conductors in other nations who championed it, too.
Conductor Robert Kajanus, for years one of Sibelius’s most ardent proponents, immediately suggested a fairly explicit nationalistic program for the second symphony. To him, the andante section was a "protest against all the injustice," the scherzo a "picture of frenzied preparation," and the finale "lighter and confident prospects for the future." With Finlandia so fresh in the Finnish public’s mind, it’s no surprise that Kajanus’s idea sat rather well with them.
Sibelius would have none of it. He denied any such associations. He wanted the symphony taken at face value — as absolute music, without any meaning beyond the notes on the page and in the ear.
And in fact there is nothing anywhere in the recorded history of Sibelius’s work on the second symphony that supports any of Kajanus’s ideas. Indeed one could make as much of a case — which is to say, a weak one — for the second symphony representing Italy, thanks to Sibelius’s holiday there. What’s more, he recycled some of the symphony’s musical material from an abandoned tone poem inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, which of course has nothing to do with Finland’s independence.
Sibelius’s international musical capital suffered something of a decline in the mid-20th century. This was thanks in no small part to American composer Virgil Thomson’s bully pulpit, which he occupied at the New York Herald Tribune. It was Thomson who penned that famous, witheringly vituperative assessment labeling the second symphony "vulgar, self-indulgent, and provincial."
History doesn’t record Sibelius’s opinions of Virgil Thomson’s music. But from the perspective of the 21st century’s first decade, it isn’t too tough to judge which of the two was the more significant composer. Today the Symphony #2 remains Sibelius’s best known symphony, and indeed one of the 20th century’s most frequently programmed symphonies.
The former conductor of the BBC Philharmonic and Netherlands Radio Orchestra has died at age 85.
Sir Edward Thomas Downes, CBE and his wife Joan, who was terminally ill, traveled to Switzerland where, according to a statement released by the conductor’s family, they "died peacefully, and under circumstances of their own choosing."
The arrangements were made though the Swiss assisted suicide group Dignitas.
Unlike his wife, Sir Downes was not terminally ill, but his daughter described him as "almost blind and increasingly deaf."
Friends of the conductor said that they weren’t surprised by his action. According to BBC Philharmonic general manager Richard Wigley, "Ted was completely rational, so I can well imagine him saying, ‘It’s been great, so let’s end our lives together.’"
Downes had also served as associate music director of the Royal Opera and as music director of the Australian Opera. He was knighted in 1991.
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, but not in Britain. The deaths are being investigated by Greenwich CID. In the cases of 115 other British citizens who have traveled to Switzerland to die in a similar manner, no friends or family members who accompanied or collaborated with them have been prosecuted. However, some UK officials have expressed concern over the fact that Downes was not himself terminally ill.
Join WKSU and the Cleveland Film Society for a sneak peek of the 34th Cleveland International Film Festival at the Akron Civic Theatre on Thursday, March 4 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Click through for more information and to RSVP for the event.
Once again, the finest independent American and international films light the screens at Tower City Cinemas in Cleveland from March 18-28. The 34th CIFF boasts more than 140 features and 160 short subjects from over 60 countries. Find more about a ticket discount for WKSU listeners.
WKSU starts 2010 with the addition of Inside Europe to Saturday mornings, Folk Alley to Friday and Saturday nights and locally produced classical music with David Roden and Nightaire latenights.
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She wasn’t particularly glamorous, and she was rather shy. But by God she could play the piano.
From the Middle Ages, Italy’s Medici family was a magnet for artists and artisans, who created extraordinary works under the family’s generous patronage. In 1688, Florence’s Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici hired Bartolomeo Cristofori, then 33 years old, to look after his collection of harpsichords. This was an important position: Cristofori was paid as much as any court musician.
Some time in the 1690s, Cristofori had a brainstorm. He realized that if he replaced the harpsichord’s plucking mechanism with one which struck the string instead, the force of the strike — and thus the volume of the sound — could be under complete control of the player.
Now back to 1700, and over to Naples. That’s when and where Domenico Scarlatti, one more musical member of a hugely talented musical family, was named organist and composer of the Royal Chapel. He was even granted a special additional salary for his work as chamber harpsichordist.
In 1719, Scarlatti left Rome, ostensibly for England. In actuality, he was on his way to Lisbon, Portugal, where he had a job offer — he was to be master of the Royal Chapel there. In Lisbon he encountered an exceptionally talented royal youngster — the infanta Maria Barbara, who, as a contemporary report said, “Surprise[ed] the amazed intelligence of the most excellent Professors with her Mastery of Singing, Playing and Composition.”
Ralph Kirkpatrick didn’t think so. Kirkpatrick was an American harpsichordist (1911 – 1984). He had a distinguised career as a performer, but his magnum opus was his biography of Domenico Scarlatti. It occupied him for 16 years, from 1937 to 1953. When it came to Scarlatti’s sonatas, Kirkpatrick’s views in that 1953 publication were enormously influential, guiding the performance practice of a generation of historically-oriented keyboard musicians.
