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.

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.

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."

David Guerrier plays the keyed trumpet

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."

Further reading:

The story of the keyed trumpet, by Norwegian trumpeter Ole J Utnes

The natural trumpet in Wikipedia

Adolf Egger’s workshop

Trumpeter David Guerrier from Trumpet World

This article was first published in WKSU Classical on 28 December 2009.

Estates Theatre, Prague, where Mozart conducted Figaro in 1787 (Wikimedia Commons)

Much has been written about Leopold Mozart’s anxiety about his family’s financial security – and his own, as he aged. Leopold was unrelenting in his pressure on Wolfgang to find a permanent position. This, as much as anything else, may have precipitated Mozart’s split with home and hearth. In 1781, he cast off Archbishop Colloredo’s hated livery and shook Salzburg’s dust from his boots. Mozart would make his fortune as a freelance musician in Vienna, or so he believed.

There, at first, Mozart had all the concert and lesson business anyone could want. Five years on, though, Vienna’s appetite for Mozart’s keyboard virtuosity had already begun to wane. Increasingly, he saw opera as his future; but even there, the response was cooler than he had hoped. The Vienna premiere of Le nozze di Figaro in May of 1786 went well. However, after only nine performances that year, Figaro faded from the repertory.

In December of 1786 Figaro opened in Prague – and there it did not fade. Quite to the contrary.

In spite of his wide travels, Mozart had never visited Prague; there were more musical and financial attractions in other cities. But his music had led the way four years before, when a traveling company had first introduced the Prague public to Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

The Figaro premiere literally ignited a new musical sprit in the city. A month later, Mozart was invited to Prague to conduct a performance of the opera at the Nostic Theatre (now the Estates Theatre).

Given Vienna’s growing indifference, the adulation Mozart encountered in Prague must have been deeply satisfying. In a letter to his student Baron Gottfried von Jacquin, Mozart marveled, "Here they speak of nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro. Nothing draws like Figaro."

Figaro was to be the main course for Prague, but Mozart also planned dessert – a symphony. Symphonies had been among his concert staples in earlier years, but since then Mozart’s symphonic output had fallen drastically (in 1773 alone he had turned out a half-dozen – as many as he composed in his entire ten Vienna years from 1781). In fact, there’s evidence that he initially planned to simply recycle the Paris Symphony (K300a) for Prague. He even composed a new finale for it. But for some reason he set that work aside, and made a fresh start. Mozart wrote the date on his newly-finished Prague symphony: 6 December 1786.

This was a somewhat uncharacteristically punctual finish for Mozart – he wasn’t due to leave for Prague until the 8th of January. Thus, some historians speculate that Mozart didn’t really compose K504 for Prague, but rather meant it for a Vienna premiere which never took place. Others argue against this, pointing out that the Viennese expected their symphonies to have four movements, and K504 has only three.

The missing minuet gives K504 its other (seldom used) nickname – "Ohne Menuett." And of course it provides yet another source of speculation for the music historians.

Some of them characterize the Prague Symphony as a throwback to Mozart’s earlier Italian-style 3-movement symphonies. This is a little tough to swallow, though, when hardly anything else about this symphony suggests those earlier works.

Mozart expert Alfred Einstein declared in the 1940s that K504 is "a full scale Viennese symphony which happens to lack a minuet simply because it says everything it has to say in 3 movements." Maybe so, but this strikes me as somehow more in line with Schumann’s ethos, or even Beethoven’s, than with Mozart’s.

One recent writer has even declared that by dispensing with the "aristocratic" minuet, Mozart was indulging his pro-Enlightenment persuasions. This isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem on first glance. Prague wasn’t too keen on Vienna’s political machinations, and one reason for their enthusiasm about Figaro was the opera’s rather daring political tone.

Or perhaps the experts are all thinking too hard. Seven years before, in his K338 symphony, Mozart had swapped the andante and minuet for no apparent reason. So maybe it’s just as valid to suggest that Mozart dumped the minuet in K504 because he felt sure that Prague’s musically canny audiences would let him get away with a bit of creative tinkering.

Nor was this the only example. Mozart began with a slow introduction, only the second time he had done so in a symphony (though Joseph Haydn had shown the way fully 25 years before). After the first 36 bars, Mozart dispelled the dark clouds with an energetic theme. He developed this theme in ways that no doubt raised a few eyebrows among his more knowledgable listeners.

A pastoral andante leads to the fleet-footed finale. Here Mozart gave Prague concertgoers a treat by including one of those Figaro themes that they were all playing, singing, and whistling.

Both the Figaro performance and the symphony were rousing successes for Mozart. Twenty-one years later, Mozart’s biographer Franz Xaver Niemetschek was able to report that this and the K543 symphonies "are still favorites of the Prague public, although they have been played at least a hundred times."

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)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on Florentine piano (David Schrader)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on harpsichord (Colin Tilney)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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.

Further reading:

Domenico Scarlatti. Ralph Kirkpatrick, 1953 (1983 revision).

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.)

A Florentine Piano c.1730 for Early Piano Music. Denzil Wraight.

Domenico Scarlatti, a brief biography. Chris Whent, Here of a Sunday Morning, WBAI, New York.

Cristofori, Inventor of the Piano. Roy E. Howard, Cantos Para Todos.

This article was originally published on 17 July 2008.

"The rests are as important as the notes …" Pianist Andras Schiff talks to a Wigmore Hall audience about Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 3 in C.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The article is part of an eight part series titled "Schiff on Beethoven" by the Guardian newspaper, a series to which one can subscribe.

Sergei Rachmaninoff rarely smiled in public, so you may think that he was dour. This tribute will show you otherwise. This is the Rachmaninoff of about the mid to late 1920s. He’s smiling and you can see his love for his granddaughters. And, as one of his friends once reported, he’s polite. He says “thank you” frequently.

Sometimes just being able to see a composer’s painting or photo along with his or her music adds a new dimension to the listening experience. I found a silent film (as part of something much bigger) that shows Jean Sibelius at his home in his later years. View while listening to his music.

Incipit (cantus part) from Canticum Trium Puerorum (Renato Calcaterra) Click to zoom

Now and again music history gives us personalities whose accomplishments range far and wide, well beyond composition. One such musician is Michael Praetorius. Not only did he leave us a good-sized body of music both sacred and secular, he created a reference volume that generations of early music researchers and performers have found invaluable: Syntagma Musicum, describing performing practice and musical instruments in the late Renaissance era.

Among Praetorius’s many publications of Lutheran church music is the collection Musarum Sioniarum: Motectae et Psalmi Latini. The 34th item in that volume is a setting of a text from the Latin Vulgate Bible.

It’s the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – also called Ananias, Azarias and Misael. The three men refuse to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, so Nebuchadnezzar has them thrown into a furnace. There, the story goes, they’re protected by an angel. They walk about in the flames, unscathed, praying and singing.

This text has come to be called The Prayer of the Three Holy Children. In the Latin Praetorius used, it’s Canticum Trium Puerorum – the song of the three boys. It’s not clear to me why they’re called boys or children when all of the biblical text refers to them as men, but those seem to be the terms used.

If Bach was the master of numerology, Praetorius excelled at word-painting, at least in this work. Where his text is "bless the lightning and clouds," at "fulgura" (lightning) he zig-zags the music across the voices. At "nubes" (clouds) the music gets softer and darker. Listen:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

But Praetorius’s best word-painting is the trick he plays on us throughout the entire work.

Praetorius structures Canticum Trium Puerorum as a series of verses and two alternating refrains, on a text which exhorts all of Creation to bless the Lord. In the first verse, two high voices (they would have been the boys of his choir) speak of the angels and heaven. With each verse, Praetorius adds more voices. By the time he reaches the last lines of the text almost 20 minutes later, all of Creation is indeed singing – or at least every voice in his choir.

Our recording is an early-1980s recording from Erato Records of France, with the Audite Nova Chorale of Paris and director Jean Sourisse. The choir is doubled in the refrains by a small cornett and sackbut ensemble. In general, when it comes to Renaissance music, there’s ample evidence to support the use of such doubling. However, some purists might insist that since Praetorius didn’t specify an instrumental ensemble, a pure choral reading would be safer, if you’re going for authenticity.

A reviewer for Gramophone also sniffed that the 38-voice choir was too large for Praetorius. I’ll stay out of this one and let that reviewer work it out with Praetorius, should they ever meet. I will say, though, that I suspect that reviewer would wax apoplectic if he heard Erato’s earlier recording of this work.

That older performance was my own introduction to Canticum Trium Puerorum about 3 dozen years ago. No one could possibly call that performance authentic! It was sung by a massive 500-voice choir, doubled in the refrains by a blaring brass band (the Paris Police Force brass ensemble, if you can imagine that). It was the sort of performing forces that, as the recording’s annotator pointed out, Praetorius could only have dreamed of.

That recording was distributed in the US a good half-century ago under the Westminster label, and later by Musical Heritage Society. It’s many years out of print. We’ll have to make do with just 38 voices.

This is Felix Mendlessohn’s handiwork with a watercolor paintbrush. It’s of Lake Lucerne, from 1847.

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.

Bach at the Organ

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.

Further reading:

The Goldberg Variations by Yo Tomita

Further listening (recommended recordings of the Goldberg Variations):

Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord (1976) stocked item at Amazon Germany

Gustav Leonhardt, harpsichord (1976) special order at Arkiv Music

Pierre Hantai, harpsichord (1993) at Arkivmusic

Glenn Gould, piano (1955) at Arkivmusic

Murray Perahia, piano (2000) at CD Universe

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.