The Allmusic Blog

Will the Real Wolfgang Please Stand Up?

Blair Sanderson — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:04:59 +0000

In Milos Forman’s 1984 film, Amadeus, court composer Antonio Salieri seeks out Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at Archbishop Colloredo’s salon in Salzburg. Circling a group of musicians, all dressed identically in powdered wigs and blue uniforms, Salieri ponders, “Which one of them could he be?” But as we soon learn, a homely, giggling fellow, wearing the same court dress as the others but looking disheveled from cavorting with his fiancée in the dining room, turns out to be the musical Wunderkind.

How is it that, on the one hand, one of the most sublime composers in history can be portrayed as the grotesque, cackling caricature of Forman’s movie, and on the other, be represented as the smooth-faced matinee idol that graces wrappers of Mozartkugeln? Though both are recognizable to us as Mozart, his true image surely must lie somewhere in between. What did he really look like? For that matter, can we be sure of the portraits of other classical composers? Because we idealize and idolize these artists, we have often felt a strong need to see them as better looking than we are, sometimes even godlike in appearance.

In the time before photography, a person’s likeness was dependent on the skill and accuracy of painters, sculptors, and engravers, who could flatter a sitter by removing any defects, enhance an image to increase the subject’s appeal, or create an honest portrait, warts and all. In the case of Mozart, we have several images that show that he was not as smooth and handsome as he appears in the Romanticized 1808 portrait by Burchard Dubeck (above), or the sentimental modern portraits on candy wrappers, but rather more like the ordinary man in Doris Stock’s 1789 silverpoint drawing (right). Granted, in this ivory miniature and in paintings from life (below), he didn’t exactly look like someone who could write heavenly music. But we can be pretty sure he looked nothing like Liberace.

Johann Sebastian Bach has a few puzzling portraits as well, including the controversial painting by J. E. Rentsch the Elder, the “Erfurt Portrait” (left), which is claimed to show what Bach looked like between 1708 and 1717, when he was court organist and concertmaster in Weimar. This painting was restored in 1907, and some slight differences between a pre-restoration photograph and the repair work suggest that changes to the face may have been made to give it a fleshier, rounder, more Bach-like appearance. This image has been published in many books and on numerous album covers, and has become almost as famous as the 1748 portrait of Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann (below left). While we may not know for sure what Bach looked like in his youth, or whether Rentsch’s painting may prove to be a portrait of someone else, a group of forensic scientists at the Center for Forensic and Medical Art, Dundee University, have reconstructed a face (below right) that uncannily resembles the image in the Haussmann portrait. Built up from a bronze cast of Bach’s skull, and shaped with meticulous artistry, it makes a fairly convincing 3-D likeness. But just as in the case of the Erfurt Portrait, could the features have been manipulated ever so slightly to achieve desired results, namely, to look like the Bach we recognize?

The imagery of Ludwig van Beethoven is even more fraught with problems since the process of idealization and myth-making began in the composer’s lifetime, partly at his own instigation. It is known that Beethoven was fond of the first image (below, top left), because it gave him a wild-eyed, leonine appearance. Other versions have developed from this heroic image (below, top right), and it appears that our conventional image of Beethoven comes from these two Romantic portraits, rather than any of the less familiar but more accurate renderings grouped below them. No doubt, this is what Beethoven would have wanted!

Representations of Franz Peter Schubert have especially suffered from sentimental idealization, and trying to pin down the real composer is difficult, since his portraits are often wildly divergent. Despite their obvious differences, we may put some stock in these two sketches by Leopold Kupelwieser, which show Schubert in 1813 (below left) and 1821 (below right). As someone who knew the composer well, Kupelwieser may be presumed to have noticed variations in Schubert’s physiognomy over eight years, and we may suppose he carefully recorded the appearance of the handsome teen as well as the pudgier adult.

But idealization of Schubert after his death appears to have greatly affected his later portraits. Compare the unpretentious anonymous portrait of Schubert, thought to be from 1828 (below left), with the glamorized 1875 image by Wilhelm August Rieder (detail, below right), and note that the two convey different indications of Schubert’s significance. Plainly, the idealized portrait shows a clear-eyed and visionary Schubert, i.e., the immortal genius, rather than the drab, possibly depressed, but quite ordinary mortal in the life study.

Similarly, one can study the famous portraits of Frédéric Chopin (below), and note how the artists’ liberties made the composer appear more poetic or dreamy than the rather morose and unattractive depiction in his 1849 daguerreotype (bottom right), one of the earliest photographs of a major composer. The camera may not always tell the truth, but it seems closer to the mark than the paint brush!

Obviously, this examination of the pitfalls of portraiture should have no effect on the reception of these composers’ works, but it does serve to remind us that whatever they looked like, they were real people with normal human dimensions and physical and personal flaws. Perhaps knowing this will help us appreciate the greatness of their music even more.

Spring in an Alternative Universe

Uncle Dave Lewis — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:13:45 +0000

A few very famous works tend to dominate the classical airwaves when spring arrives: Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, etc. But suppose the winds of fashion and popularity had blown in a different direction over the last 50 to 100 years and a completely different set of composers and works had become the cream of the classical crop? Here follows an alternative universe classical music playlist for springtime.

Francesco Landini

Blind organist Francesco Landini was the most popular figure in the Italian trecento. Landini was just as adept at composing complex polyphonic music as he was joyful, simple ditties like Ecco la Primavera (~~Echoes of Spring~~ Spring is Here), which was at the top of the trecento hit parade in 1360 or so.

David Munrow & The Early Music Consort of London - Landini: Ecco la Primavera

Johann Casper Ferdinand Fischer

Johann Casper Ferdinand Fischer composed his set of eight orchestral suites La Journal du Printemps around 1695. They are among the earliest major works for orchestra, preceding by quite some time more famous orchestral works of Johann Sebastian Bach or George Frederick Handel. They are extraordinary pieces as well, with a sense of grace, balance, and depth that sounds with a familiarity not often encountered in obscure repertoire. Hampered by a confusing manuscript and arcane printed edition, both lacking instrumental details, these important works are new to us, only recorded for the first time in 2007.

Michi Gaigg, L’Orfeo Barockorchester - Johann Casper Ferdinand Fischer: La Journal du Printemps, Suite No. 4 in D minor - “Passacaille”

Antonio Vivaldi — With a Twist

And while we’re on the subject of the Baroque, perhaps many are not aware that Antonio Vivaldi’s famous concerto La Primavera from The Four Seasons also exists in a vocal version, with words. Apparently, Vivaldi didn’t want to see this great tune get underutilized.

Cecila Bartoli, Il Giardino Armonico - Vivaldi: Dorilla in Tempe - “Dell’Aura Sussurrar”

Follow the Lieder

While it is not exactly “alternative universe” material, the realm of Lieder and art song tends to get overlooked. It offers a huge number of spring-themed choices, however, including selections ranging from Schubert to Ned Rorem.

Elly Ameling & Jörg Demus - Franz Schubert: Im Frühling
Felicity Lott & Graham Johnson - Gounod: Chanson au printemps
Emilio de Gogorza - Debussy: Romance “Voici que le printemps”
Roberta Alexander & Tan Crone - Charles Ives: Spring Song
Phyllis Curtin & Ned Rorem - Rorem: Poems of Paul Goodman - “Rain in Spring”

Spring Symphonies

There are way more symphonic works about spring than just Robert Schumann’s First Symphony. Take for example the outstanding Symphony No. 2 in A major of 19th-century American composer John Knowles Paine, or take your pick of symphonic poems by Sibelius, Glazunov, or Kabalevsky. Charles Koechlin’s La course du Printemps is a setting of Rudyard Kipling that is part of a series of musical works based on The Jungle Book.

Zubin Mehta, New York Philharmonic - John Knowles Paine: Symphony No. 2 “In the Spring”
Osmo Vänskä, Lahti Symphony Orchestra - Jean Sibelius: Spring Song
Evgeny Svetlanov, USSR Symphony Orchestra - Alexander Glazunov: To Spring
Igor Golivschin, Moscow Symphony Orchestra - Kabalevsky: Spring
Heinz Holliger, Radio Sinfonieorchester Stuttgarten SWR - Koechlin: La course de Printemps

Christian Sinding

The impact of spring is felt in small-scale instrumental works as well. Norwegian composer Christian Sinding’s Rustle of Spring was once a standard favorite found in most piano benches in America; today it is relegated to alternative universe status. The others examples here are well known only to those who play the koto or classical guitar respectively, however, come springtime these pieces do figure into the mix, slipped into recitals as encores.

Frank Glazer, piano - Sinding: Rustle of Spring
Lise Daoust, flute & Marie Joseé-Simard, marimba - Michio Miyagi: Haru No Imo
David Russell, guitar - Barrios: Valse da Primavera

Spring for the Modernist in Your Life

Spring has also captured the imagination of ultra-modern composers; Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring can even be seen as the work that heralded the onslaught of modernism. Far less riotous a reception has greeted the wispy George Antheil, peppy Darius Milhaud, and ominously otherworldly Luigi Dallapiccola works heard below. Webern student and follower Philippe Herscovici’s Spring Flowers (1947) is a tiny, crystalline 12-tone piece which does seem to evoke little flowers breaking through to the sun; its 50 seconds is the only music to have survived from Herscovici’s pen from between 1939 and 1959, a period he spent, at first, fleeing the Nazis and that ended with him placed under Soviet censure.

Jagdish Mistry, violin - Antheil: Printemps I
Darius Milhaud, Orchestre du Radio Luxembourg - Milhaud: Little Symphony No. 1, “Printemps”
Mojca Erdmann, soprano & Arbeit Reimann, piano - Dallapiccola: La primavera ha venido [first setting]
Steffen Schleiermacher, piano - Herscovici: Spring Flowers

Sousa is Not Just for Summer

To close, a little bit of Americana. President Rutherford B. Hayes instituted the annual Easter Egg roll at the White House in 1887, and in 1903 John Philip Sousa immortalized this event in his piece for band, Easter Monday on the White House Lawn. Just the sort of thing to get one’s spring off to a bang; we don’t know why this hasn’t become better known, but this raggy, non-march has a great chance of moving out of its alternative universe status into that of an American classic.

Col. Lowell Graham & USAF Heritage of America Band - Sousa: Easter Monday on the White House Lawn

Young composers, Episode 3: 1963 — It was a very good year

Stephen Eddins — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:32:37 +0000

In one of Classical Corner’s ongoing features, we look at young composers who haven’t fully made it onto the radar screen of general audiences, but who’ve got distinctive voices and something important to say — these are composers to watch out for. Since a surprising number were born in 1963 and are turning 45 this year, on the cusp of moving out of the “young” category, this seemed like an appropriate time to acknowledge these composers who deserve more widespread recognition.

Composers born in 1963 are young enough to have come of age musically when modernism, particularly serialism, was still the prevailing aesthetic. In the US and Britain, with post-modernism beginning to gain wider acceptance in academic music in the last decades of the century, minimalism and popular music were broadening the scope of aesthetic possibilities. In continental Europe there were some rumblings of change, but modernism has generally been more tenacious there. The critical issue for composers of this generation has been discovering a resolution of the relationship between modernism and post-modern musical developments, and one of the most fascinating things about this group is hearing the variety of responses individuals have come up with. For some of the composers, their aesthetic solutions to the wealth of options open to them could be pretty wild, so for several of the pieces here, be prepared to hold on to your hats!

Fausto Romitelli, 1963 (Gorizia, Italy) - 2004 (Milan)

“Ever since I was born, I have been immersed in digitalized images, synthetic sounds, artifacts. Artificial, distorted, filtered, this is the nature of man today.” With this quote, Fausto Romitelli astutely characterized his aesthetic vision; his music might be categorized as urban classical industrial grunge. While he used all the newest technologies available, the chaos his music expresses is a critique of the ways technology has wrought havoc on modern life. Many of his works are harrowing depictions of a post-industrial social dystopia the composer must have felt lay not too far distant in the future. Romitelli’s music is seldom “pretty” or easy to listen to, but it’s so compelling that it demands your attention; it’s something like watching an accident that you’re at least partially inclined to turn away from. His imagination was endlessly fertile, and his music is full of sonic surprises and brilliant turns of orchestration. It’s also emotionally direct and communicative; in spite of the complexity of his musical language, his music is not cerebral; it goes straight for the gut. Romitelli died at the age of 41, but he left a significant body of large-scale work, much of which has yet to be recorded. Pieces like Dead City Radio. Audiodrome (2003), Floating down too slow (2001), and An Index of metals (2003) mark him as composer of real originality and substance and make his early death an especially tragic loss to the music world.

Youtube has a video of a 2000 dance, Counter Phrases, choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and directed by Thierry de Mey, with music by ten different composers. Romitelli’s contribution, the section “Green, Yellow, and Blue,” is some of his least threatening music, but somehow, in combination with the pastoral imagery of the dance, the effect manages to be remarkably creepy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMPcVptOllU

Dead City Radio. Audiodrome
EnTrance
The Nameless City

John Pickard (Lancashire, England)

The British composer John Pickard has made a name for himself writing largely in traditional forms: string quartet, sonata, song cycle, symphony, concerto, tone poem. His principal teachers were the Welsh composer William Mathias and Louis Andriessen. His music doesn’t sound like either of theirs, but it’s possible to detect strains of both a descriptive pastoralism and a gesturally aggressive, edgy urbanity in his work, often within the same piece. Pickard’s harmonic language is relatively conservative and that may explain why he hasn’t received the same kind of attention in international new music circles as his tonally more adventurous near-contemporaries, George Benjamin (1960) and Thomas Adès (1971); his music may simply be considered too accessible to be taken fully seriously. That accessibility, though, has made his work popular with general concert audiences, and his orchestral pieces, in particular, are being played with increasing frequency. One of his best-known work is The Flight of Icarus (1990), a 20-minute tone poem based on Greek mythology; the San Francisco Chronicle called its first U.S. performance “a serious contender for the most exciting musical premiere of 2006.” Like much of Pickard’s work, it’s characterized by a profligacy of invention and colorful, shimmering orchestration. The sky is either directly or indirectly the subject of many of his programmatic works and inspires some of his most memorable, incandescent music.

String Quartet #3 - Con moto
Flight of Icarus
A Starlit Dome

John Pickard’s website

Isabel Mundry (Schlüchtern, Germany)

Modernism in music is out of favor in the US at the moment, but Europe is full of unapologetic modernists who are discovering ways of expanding the definition of the term beyond the rigid serialism that characterized it for many decades. Isabel Mundry is one of many composers who exemplify a kind of liberated modernism that defies the restraints of any particular compositional philosophy. Like many of the leading composers of her generation, she studied electronic music at IRCAM. She has spent much of her career as a free-lance composer, but currently teaches in Zürich. Her opera, Ein Atemzug — Die Odyssee (The Odyssey — A Breath), was widely praised after its premiere at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, in 2005.

One of Mundry’s most intriguing works is Dufay-Bearbeitungen (Dufay Arrangements) (2003-2004) for chamber ensemble. Taking seven motets and chansons by the 15th century French composer as her basis, Mundry does more than arrange them. She uses Dufay’s pitches, but in her inventive and delicately quirky instrumentation, she brings them decisively into the 21st century. She also overlays them with a web of contemporary sonorities that allows them to seem simultaneously very ancient and very new. (Dufay-Bearbeitungen raises the question of whether it’s possible for a modernist to use post-modern concepts without thereby switching into the post-modernist camp; the piece might be understood as an un-ironic appropriation of post-modern polystylist means, but for thoroughly modernist ends.) Mundry has written that for her, the act of composition is always an exercise in learning to listen, and in these pieces, she makes it possible for the listener to hear Dufay with open ears.

Penelopes Atem
Dufay Bearbeitungen - “Pour ce que veoir je ne puis”
Traces des moments - Movement 3

Thomas Larcher (Innsbruck, Austria)

For much of his career, Thomas Larcher has been as much in demand as a pianist as for his compositions. He writes, “My roots lie in performance and in decades of imprinting through the music and formal ideas of the classics. My music is communicative: it challenges the attentive listener but is meant to be readily intelligible in concert.” His work does indeed sound like it’s informed by the broadest understanding of Western musical traditions. In particular, Larcher has developed a style that unselfconsciously acknowledges and brings together the most rigorous aspects of Darmstadt-style modernism with elements of the new simplicity and holy minimalism, as exemplified by Silvestrov and Pärt. His harmonic and gestural language can be modernist, but his pieces are constructed with enough repetition and transparency that it’s possible to grasp them on first hearing. An especially striking work is My Illness Is the Medicine I Need (2002), for soprano and piano trio. The texts are quotes by patients in psychiatric hospitals, taken from a photo-essay on the treatment of the mentally ill, in a Benetton “Colors” magazine. Larcher’s understated settings of the aphoristic, troubling texts are remarkable for their profound compassion and probing insight, achieved with the most austere musical means.

My illness is the medicine I need - I like it when people ask me the time. It’s almost a conversation
Cold Farmer - Mit groove
Cold Farmer - Ganz langsam

Larcher’s children’s piece, The sad yellow whale, receives a lovely performance by a very young pianist. The music, which sounds a lot like Arvo Pärt, puts on full display a wistful, elegiac side of Larcher’s creative personality that runs as an undercurrent through much of his work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9um_qX997gU

Stay tuned for more features on young composers to watch out for!

Judged By Their Covers

AMG Staff — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:11:33 +0000

How well can you judge a CD by its cover? We put that question to the test by having each classical editor choose an album based solely on its cover, record his/her initial impressions and expectations, and then review the recording. Each editor’s “before” expectations are listed below; follow the links under the entries to see the “after” reviews. And now, on with the judgment!

Anthony Coleman: Lapidation
Blair Sanderson

At first blush, this CD appears to feature some kind of sparse avant-garde or ambient music, judged solely by the simple abstract art on the cover. There’s a subdued, minimalist feeling to the washed-out colors and roughly repetitive shapes, and the spiral — do you go clockwise or widdershins? — connotes an introspective approach in the music, perhaps of a meditative bent. Does a Japanese rock garden spring to mind? A Zen koan, anyone? Without knowing the work of this composer or how lapidation (i.e., the stoning of a person to death) figures into the musical style, method, or structure, one might guess that the music has some connection to pitched percussion or tuned stoneware, and hopefully not smashed crockery.

Read the review here

Philip Glass: Animals in Love [Original Film Score]
Allen Schrott

Animals in Love, with its pair of smooching marsupials on the cover, initially looks like the cloying apotheosis of marketing gags — the musical equivalent of puppies photographed through a fish-eye lens. All together now: “awwwwwww!” But this is actually Philip Glass’ original score for a documentary of the same name by director Laurent Charbonnier, and once the kangaroo-induced disorientation wears off (”I….get a kick…out of you”), the possibilities are intriguing. Film has often brought the best and most adaptable efforts out of America’s most easily parodied minimalist, and this could turn out to be a modern Carnival of the Animals or Peter and the Wolf. Hearing Glass discover the distinct physicality of various animals within the boundaries of his limited palette would be fascinating. The back cover, (cozy dolphins awash in deep-sea blue this time) with track titles like “Ballet of the Birds” and “The Orangutans and the Small Ducks” (we hope in separate scenes!), seems to support that possibility. But then again, the score could just as well start out with the stale pulsing arpeggios and chords that mark Glass at his least creative — the musical cubicle farm — and stay there for a maddening hour.

Read the review here

Alcvin Takegawa Ramos: Zen Shakuhachi 1
Stephen Eddins

The subtitle of this CD, “Japanese Traditional Flute Music for Meditation,” establishes an expectation of functional music — an aid for creating a mood of stillness and receptivity. One would expect the sound to be quiet, slow moving, and free of disruptions or surprises that could interrupt one’s inward thoughts (or lack thereof.) The graphics of the cover completely confirm this mood of mellow relaxation. The background is a soothing, dappled, earth-toned burgundy. The writing on the cover is in a discreetly small font, with the title in a westernized approximation of Japanese calligraphy and three pale gold Japanese characters at the middle. This centered, symmetrical presentation creates an expectation of balanced regularity, order and predictability, and the background silhouette of a branch with leaves and flowers perfectly conveys the serenity that the title promises. In all the elements of its presentation, the cover creates the anticipation of an hour of restful, lulling music, ideal for assuming the lotus position, or simply lying back and drifting off to sleep.

Read the review here

Christine Schäfer: Apparition
Patsy Morita

Apparition comes in a translucent slipcover over the digipak case with the disc in it. To get the real impact of the photos on the package, you have to remove the slipcover. It’s almost like those signs that start out with some prominent shocking word or picture, followed by “now that I have your attention….”

There is Christine Schäfer, in her white gown, standing in the midst of a dinosaur skeleton. On the back of the package is a full, face-on picture of a dinosaur skeleton with scads of others behind it. As the slipcover fits over this photo, a red heart outlines the skeleton’s nasal cavity. What is this? What relevance is there to the composers Henry Purcell and George Crumb, already an unexpected combination? The first reaction is, what a bizarre idea, posing among skeletons at a museum. It’s not that they’re creepy, although some people may think so; it just seems a completely strange thing to do. And it turns out that what she’s wearing is a Christian Dior wedding gown. Won’t it get dirty? It really is a striking cover and you can’t help but wonder what’s going on, what was she thinking (other than that she needed to grab your attention), and how in the world it relates to the music. Are the bones meant to represent the 300+ year-old Purcell, implying that his music is ancient, dry, or hard, while the dress means Crumb’s music is brighter and softer? In most people’s mind, the tuneful, tonal music of Purcell would probably be characterized as more easily grasped than Crumb’s, which usually is experienced more intuitively. Maybe it’s the other way around: the bones are a reference to the way Crumb often mixes the ancient and the modern musical ideas or the way he tries to use music to re-create natural sounds; and the wedding gown is the traditional, Western classical music of Purcell. Either way, the album is bound to be interesting. (Inside are more skeleton photos. My favorite is the giant turtle on its back, with its claws turned upward as if to say “Why me?” or “What the…?”)

Read the review here

Les Sacqueboutiers: El Fuego
Uncle Dave Lewis

Les Sacqueboutiers literally translates as “The Sackbutters.” The sackbut was a predecessor to the trombone, and it looks like a little trombone, cute in a way that would suit a child’s toy chest. But the instrument has a more conical bore and smaller bell than a standard trombone, and its sound is considerably more cramped and nasal in comparison. Listening to Renaissance brass instruments for an hour can lead to “cornetti syndrome” — an aural ennui that results from the monochromatic, piercing sound of the instruments. The front cover image, a painting by the 16th-century eccentric Giuseppe Arcimboldo, shows a human torch who almost looks like a Renaissance wicker man. Imagine: more than an hour of burning, blazing sackbut music…please lead me to the fire exit….

Read the review here

Zentralfriedhof Wien: Where the Great Composers Go to Decompose

Blair Sanderson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:25:48 +0000

No cemetery in the world boasts more graves of great classical composers and other famous musicians than the massive Central Cemetery in Vienna (Zentralfriedhof Wien), which is the biggest of almost 50 cemeteries in the city. The burial ground, which was opened in 1874, is Europe’s largest in number of interred, holding the remains of over three million people, and the second largest in area. Of course, notables in politics, science, literature, and the arts receive their due among the most visited sites, grouped in the Ehrengräber (Honorary Graves). However, the most celebrated tenants of all are the many musicians, who make this place a natural tourist attraction for Austria’s music capital.

Group 32 A in the cemetery is the location of the most illustrious composers and has been a popular destination for music lovers since the late 19th century.

Johannes Brahms (May 7, 1833 – April 3, 1897), Plot No. 26

By the time of Johannes Brahms’ death, the Zentralfriedhof had been well-established as the final resting place of Vienna’s elite, so his original grave is located at this site, without any of the strange post-mortem relocations suffered by some of his famous neighbors.

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem - Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras
Ein deutsches Requiem - Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit

Johann Strauss II (October 25, 1825 – June 3, 1899), Plot No. 27

Next to Brahms’ grave is the plot of his close friend and fellow composer, Johann Strauss, Jr., the author of The Beautiful Blue Danube, which Brahms wished he had written. As one of Vienna’s most honored sons, he was buried with his third wife, Adele, between Brahms and Schubert.

Strauss: Farewell Waltz
Strauss: Wiedersehn Polka
Strauss: You Only Live Once! Waltz

Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828), Plot No. 28

At Schubert’s final request, the composer of the “Unfinished” Symphony was buried on the outskirts of Vienna in Währinger Cemetery, two plots away from Beethoven’s grave. But on October 13, 1863, Schubert’s remains were exhumed along with Beethoven’s, and both composers’ skeletons were examined, placed in fresh coffins, and reburied next to each other.

Schubert: Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished”
Schubert: String Quartet No. 14, “Death and the Maiden”

Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827), Plot No. 29

When the Währinger Cemetery was closed in 1888, Beethoven and Schubert were re-exhumed on June 22 of that year, moved to their present resting place in the Zentralfriedhof, and given suitably impressive monuments. (At this second exhumation, composer and curiosity-seeker Anton Bruckner was present, and from his own report, he lost a lens from his pince-nez, which he assumed must have fallen among Beethoven’s bones!)

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3, “Eroica” - Marcia funebre

Christoph Willibald Gluck (July 2, 1714 - November 15, 1787), Plot No. 49

Though Gluck made his career in Paris as a composer of operas, he retired in Vienna, where he succumbed to a stroke at 73. His remains were originally buried at Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof in Vienna, but were moved to Zentralfriedhof in 1923 to be placed among Vienna’s most honored musicians.

Gluck: Orfée et Eurydice - Dance of the Blessed Spirits

Also included in Group 32 A are the graves of Johann Strauss I (Plot No. 15), Eduard Strauss (Plot 42), Josef Strauss (Plot No. 44), Franz von Suppé (Plot No. 31), and Hugo Wolf (Plot No. 10)

But these famous musical residents are by no means the only composers memorialized at Zentralfriedhof.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791), Plot 55

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s body is irretrievably lost, buried in an unmarked grave in Vienna’s St. Marx Cemetery, but there is an impressive marker commemorating him at the Central Cemetery.

Mozart: Requiem in D minor - Lacrimosa
Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music
Mozart: Ave verum corpus

Antonio Salieri (August 18, 1750 – May 7, 1825) Group O, grave 54

Fans of the film Amadeus may note with interest that Mozart’s rival, Antonio Salieri, is inhumed here, though his marker is not quite as impressive as the monument to Mozart. Salieri had previously been buried in Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof, but like his students Beethoven and Schubert, he eventually found a place at the Zentralfriedhof.

Salieri: In questa tomba oscura

Arnold Schoenberg (September 13, 1874 – July 13, 1951), Group 32 C, Number 21A

One of the most distinctive sculptures looms over Arnold Schoenberg’s resting place, a massive cube-like monument that is as modernist in appearance as the composer’s music sounded. This stone was sculpted by Fritz Wotruba, designer of Vienna’s abstract Church of the Holy Trinity, who is also buried in this cemetery.

Schoenberg: Friede auf Erde (Peace on Earth)

Located in other sections of the Zentralfriedhof are such noteworthy composers as Alexander von Zemlinsky (October 14, 1871 – March 15, 1942), Hans Rott (August 1, 1858 - June 25, 1884), Hans Pfitzner (May 5, 1869 – May 22, 1949), Robert Stolz (August 25, 1880 – June 27, 1975), Franz Schmidt (December 22, 1874 – February 11, 1939), Egon Wellesz (October 21, 1885 – November 9, 1974), Carl Czerny (February 21, 1791 – July 15, 1857), Karl Goldmark (May 18, 1830 - January 02, 1915), Johann Ritter von Herbeck (December 25, 1831 - October 28, 1877), Josef Lanner (April 12, 1801 – April 14, 1843), Carl Millöcker (April 29, 1842 – December 31, 1899) and György Ligeti (May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006), who is one of the most famous modern composers to be laid to rest here (above left).

Ligeti: Requiem
Ligeti: Lux Aeterna

Composers are not the only musical celebrities buried here. Conductor and waltz king Willi Boskovsky; pop star and singer of “Rock Me, Amadeus,” Falco (given name Johann “Hans” Hölzel); Viennese music critic and arch-defender of Brahms, Eduard Hanslick; soprano Lotte Lehmann; German heldentenor Max Lorenz; jazz musician Franz Georg “Fatty George” Pressler; dramatic soprano Leonie Rysanek; music theorist Simon Sechter; and 19th century vocal star, Johann Michael Vogl; all await Judgment Day at the Zentralfriedhof.

As you gaze upon the pictures and listen to the excerpts, you might recall the haunting words of this famous but grim Memento Mori:

I was once the same as ye,
Yet as I am, so shall ye be.

Wouldn’t be nice, though, to be as well-remembered as these musicians are, in such pleasant surroundings?

Requiescant in pace.

Leapling Rossini

Patsy Morita — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:49:15 +0000

February 29. Leap Day. That extra 24 hours jammed in between February and March every four years that makes up for the Earth’s revolving around the Sun at approximately 365.25 days per year instead of an even 365. On this day in 1504, Christopher Columbus used a lunar eclipse to frighten natives into providing food for his crew while stranded in Jamaica; in 1892, St. Petersburg, Florida, was incorporated; in 1940 Gone with the Wind won eight Academy Awards; and in 1960 an earthquake struck southern Morocco.

The day does have some musical significance. For one thing, Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots was premiered on Feb. 29, 1836, in Paris to overwhelming success. For another, it’s a major plot device in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. And there are musical birthdays: Ja Rule (1976), Dinah Shore (1916), Jimmy Dorsey (1904), and most importantly for our purposes, February 29, 2008, is the 54th actual birthday of Gioachino Rossini (1792). It’s not a milestone birthday, but if your birthday only comes around every four years, you celebrate what you can when you can, and Rossini was the kind of guy who would enjoy a good party.

Rossini’s two passions in life — music and food — were inheritances from his parents. His father is said to have occasionally been a slaughterhouse inspector as well as a horn player, and his mother, a singer at various theaters in northern Italy, was the daughter of a baker. Rossini grew up in the theater, living a Bohemian life that would be very hard to carry off today in most countries with child labor and education laws. Rossini never worked harder than he had to, although when he was at the height of his compositional career he was very prolific. There are stories of people making sure he stayed at his desk and tossing pages out of the window down to copyists as Rossini finished them. By the time Rossini was 9 (or 37 in human years), he had gained enough fame and fortune to retire from composing and the theater. He spent the rest of his life composing to amuse himself and share with friends (and his dog — Arthur Sullivan said Rossini told him [in jest?] that he always wrote a birthday piece for his dog). Particularly after Rossini moved to Paris in 1855, his home became known for its salons and “Samedi Soirs,” parties that attracted the crème de la crème of society.

So what should you do to celebrate Rossini’s birthday? Throw a party, of course!

For party games, try making as many words as possible out of his name. Mild amusement can be achieved by plugging it — with one or two C’s in the first name — into an anagram generator on the web. You’ll get results like these, with one C:

I Irish Casino Goon
Ciao Rigs His Onion
Oho, Iris Sang Ionic
Sing Ionic Airs, Oho
Ooh, I Sing Sonic Air

Or these, with two C’s:

Ooh, Sir Gains Iconic
Sing Ciao, Choir Ions
I Sing A Cocoon Irish
Sing Ciao, Choir Is On
Oh Sing Air So Iconic
Sing Ciao I Croon His
I Sing In His Rococo A
Nor Sing Ciao, Hi Cosi

Next, you can have some fun with quotes by Rossini:

“Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind,” is a paraphrase of “Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux,” originally by what French author?
Fill in the blank: “Give me a ___________ and I’ll set it to music.” (Remember, this is before telephone books.)
Of which composer was Rossini speaking when he said: “________ has beautiful moments, but bad quarters of an hour.”

If you and your friends like to watch cartoons, there are several to choose from featuring Rossini’s music. You could pop in your Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs and watch 1949’s Long-Haired Hare, wherein Bugs interrupts Giovanni Jones rehearsing the “Largo al Factotum” from the Barber of Seville. A very similar plot is found in the 1964 Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Cat Above and the Mouse Below, also directed by Chuck Jones. Better known is 1950’s The Rabbit of Seville, the Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd classic set to the complete overture to the Barber of Seville. Or, if Disney is more to your taste, watch 1935’s The Band Concert, in which Mickey Mouse attempts to conduct the William Tell Overture. Unfortunately the work of illustrator and animator Emanuele Luzzati isn’t available on DVD, but on YouTube, you can find some of his work set to Rossini’s music, including one of the spurious Cat Duet. Luzzati won an Academy Award in 1965 for his animated short The Thieving Magpie, based on…guess what?

For background music, there are literally hundreds of works by other composers based on Rossini’s music. The most popular is probably La Boutique Fantasque, the ballet by Ottorino Respighi assembled from Rossini’s music. Paganini wrote variations for violin on several of Rossini’s arias, not long after they were first heard. Variations and paraphrases or fantasias of opera themes are the most frequently found re-workings of Rossini. Even Benjamin Britten couldn’t resist creating two orchestral suites based on Rossini melodies, entitled Soirées musicales and Matinées musicales.

If you would rather hear Rossini performed in unusual ways, there’s the Barber of Seville Overture on double basses ; La Danza performed by mandolin orchestra ; and an entire album of Rossini instrumental music sung by the group Die Singphoniker . And if you’re trying to get lingering guests to leave, try Mary Schneider yodeling La Danza or one of the overtures or find an antique IBM PC and type in the commands to hear it beep out the end of the William Tell Overture; it sounds something like this.

You can’t forget food for your party. Very important to Rossini. An anecdote relates that he only wept on three special occasions: when his first opera was a disaster, when he heard Paganini play violin, and when a truffle-stuffed turkey accidentally slipped overboard during a boating picnic outing. The aria “Di tanti palpiti” from Tancredi is sometimes called the “rice aria” because Rossini is said to have composed it while waiting for his risotto to cook. One of his closest friends was Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carême, the world’s first celebrity chef and the man who codified French haute cuisine. Dedicated web research will turn up recipes for — or at least references to — Salad Rossini, Chicken Rossini, Fillet of Sole alla Rossini, Cannelloni alla Rossini, and a Rossini cocktail (a variation of the Bellini cocktail, made with strawberries instead of peaches). Escoffier (the world’s second celebrity chef and creator of the Peach Melba, named after soprano Nellie Melba) created the very rich Tournedos Rossini, fillets of beef topped with foie gras, truffles, and a sweet wine glaze.

Now you should have everything you need to celebrate Rossini’s 54th birthday in style. Have fun!

Highbrows in the Land of Jazz, Part 3

Uncle Dave Lewis — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:29:13 +0000

The Brits Go to Town

England’s obsession with jazz began in 1919, the day the Original Dixieland Jazz Band came to roost in London. The group remained there for over a year, and their success led to a flood of American groups into the U.K., so much so that the crown banned their presence on the island after 1924. Exceptions were made only for Paul Whiteman, who played there in 1926, and Louis Armstrong, who played there in 1932; the ban was finally rescinded for Duke Ellington, who arrived in 1933. Ellington’s impact on British musicians was enormous and long lasting; long after he’d abandoned the whole cause of “tone parallel” Black, Brown, and Beige, a team of British arrangers attempted to reconstruct a practical score of the lost work in the early 1970s. Even before the Duke’s records began to arrive upon England’s shores, however, Britain’s composers were incorporating the sounds of jazz into their works. The earliest to try, it appears, was a very well-known composer noted for a more genteel approach than that of the jazz hybrid.

William Walton and Constant Lambert

William Walton (1902-1983), along with Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, is one of the towering figures of 20th century English classical music, and most of his music fits that description. He is sometimes even viewed as a reactionary, but he most certainly was not one. As a young man he was seen as quite radical, and his song cycle Façade (1923), while popular with listeners of a more proletarian stripe, was regarded as an affront to high culture. Part of the shock was due to Edith Sitwell’s nonsensical, irreverent texts, delivered by Sitwell via megaphone through a grotesque clown face at the June 12, 1923, premiere; the audience never saw the speaker. Perhaps this was just as well, as Sitwell’s brother Osbert remembered, “At the end my sister was warned not to leave the shelter of her dressing room until the crowd had dispersed, or she might meet with injury.” Walton’s music was equally irreverent in keeping with the texts — sometimes presenting collisions of musical forms that don’t seem to go together, for example a “Tango Pasodoble,” or “Scotch Rhapsody.” Walton’s use of jazz was likewise subjected to such tongue-in-cheek transformation, as heard in the fox trot “Old Sir Faulk.” While he returned to Façade many times to create suites and to refashion various parts of it for use in different contexts, Walton never returned to the use of jazz, or to the sound of Façade itself, in any of his subsequent works.

Edith Sitwell, voice; William Walton, conductor - Walton: Façade - “Old Sir Faulk” (recorded 1929)

Constant Lambert (1905-1951), who served both as one of the reciters and conductor on the first recording of Walton’s Façade, made in 1929, was a different matter entirely. A gifted, irascible conductor and a composer whose talents, like Walton’s, were advanced well beyond his years, Lambert’s output, which began in a more neo-classical vein in the manner of Stravinsky, from about 1927 to 1931 is almost completely dominated by the influence of jazz. His Elegiac Blues in Memory of Florence Mills (1927) was written, like Duke Ellington’s Black Beauty, to honor the memory of the fallen singer to whom it was dedicated, who performed in England in 1926. It demonstrates total immersion into Ellington’s style, yet retains a flavor of individuality. More ambitious was The Rio Grande (1929), a work for chorus, piano, and orchestra written in the symphonic jazz vein, which Lambert recorded the following year. Around 1931, Lambert experienced a crisis of self-confidence that led him away from composing for several years; when he returned, he’d re-adopted the neo-classic vein that distinguished his early works, though in a manner somewhat more conservative in style. Like Walton, from this point he never returned to the jazz vein, though he never lost his enthusiasm for jazz itself, particularly the music of Ellington.

Richard Rodney Bennett, piano - Lambert: Elegiac Blues in Memory of Florence Mills

Constant Lambert, conductor; Hamilton Harty, piano; Hallé Orchestra - Lambert: The Rio Grande

There were a number of other English composers of standard concert music working to some extent in jazz in the 1920s, but the level of documentation of this activity remains poor; apparently, it has never been studied. There is mere mention that Peter Warlock (a.k.a. Philip Heseltine, 1894-1930) composed some pieces for Carroll Gibbons’ Savoy Orpheans in the mid-1920s, and that Gibbons himself composed an extended work for concert use, as did band leaders Fred Elizalde and Ray Noble — but there is no more information about these pieces known. However, in 1929 the next major British entry into the field of filtering jazz through the classical perspective made his debut on records as leader, Spike Hughes. Although his contribution to jazz would be more considerable than that of Walton or Lambert, he too, would swiftly leave the field behind him.

Spike Hughes (1908-1987)

Patrick “Spike” Hughes was a bassist whose interest in jazz dated from 1924 when he saw touring African-American groups in Vienna. Arthur Briggs’ Band so impressed him that he wrote some arrangements for them, which Briggs played. After a stint in the Piccadilly Players led by Al Starita, Hughes started his first band and was introduced through William Walton to Decca recording director Philip Lewis, who engaged them as the Decca “house jazz band.” Even at this point, Hughes’ music was strongly influenced by Duke Ellington, and the records sold well, though mostly overseas, particularly in Holland. After completing a tour there, Hughes discovered that Lewis had been sacked at Decca and he was without a contract, so for a time he worked in other bands, peddled arrangements, and ultimately took a job as an anonymous music critic for Melody Maker, writing about “hot records” –- he would keep this position for 13 years. In 1931, Hughes composed A Harlem Symphony and dedicated it to Ellington; it was not successful, but this effort, along with others, helped raise Hughes’ profile. In 1932, Sir Frederick Ashton commissioned a jazz ballet from Hughes, High Yellow, and Hughes threw practically all of his existing jazz compositions into the score to fulfill the requirement. That same year, Hughes’ subsequent score for Noël Coward, Words and Music, proved a success, and Hughes decided to use the considerable sum of money he’d earned to take a vacation in New York.

In New York, Hughes met promoter John Hammond and publisher Irving Mills, who managed to place Hughes’ composition Six Bells Stampede at a session with Benny Carter’s Orchestra in March 1933. Realizing that his contract with Decca would expire if he did not return to London, and not wanting to leave New York just yet, Hughes contacted Decca and asked them if they would be interested in recordings he would make with an American orchestra, and they assented. In April and May 1933, Hughes recorded 14 pieces on records insensitively billed as “Spike Hughes and his Negro Orchestra” on English records; this was Benny Carter’s Orchestra, including Benny Carter himself, under Hughes’ direction. Hughes’ charts were extremely advanced for their time, and the musicians, good as they were, did struggle with them. As trombonist Dicky Wells recalled in 1971, “No one in the outfit had the idea that he had so much hell in that valise until we started rehearsing. It was a good thing he had a gang like he had — these were cats who could see around a corner.”

The “hell” in that valise included Firebird -– probably the first successful merger of jazz with the music of Stravinsky –- and pieces bearing such unpromising, un-jazzy titles as Donegal Cradle Song, Arabesque, and Air in D Flat. Nevertheless, even these are remarkably transparent, harmonically colorful, and highly complex compositions that, in the hands of the Carter band, swing like mad. The resultant records were successful on both sides of the Atlantic, with some titles remaining in Decca’s catalogue for years. Unfortunately, for Hughes, the trip to Parnassus with the cats in Benny Carter’s band was enough –- he couldn’t bear to return to England and its jazz bands, just to hear his music played badly once again. Hughes later commented, “As a composer, as a band leader, as a performer, anything that came later would have been an anti-climax.” Other than Six Bells Stampede, none of the scores Hughes created for jazz ensembles have survived –- it is surmised that he emptied his “hellish” valise into the Atlantic Ocean on his return voyage to England. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been so rash had Hughes realized what he’d just achieved. Spike Hughes had moved forward the concept of the “jazz composer” –- someone who wrote instrumental music, in an advanced style, specifically for use by expert jazz ensembles, in a big way. Moreover, Hughes did so practically as soon as his hero Duke Ellington had introduced the concept and had made it viable; Hughes’ A Harlem Symphony and Ellington’s first extended work, Creole Rhapsody, are exactly contemporary. In 1934, Coleman Hawkins recorded his first advanced chart –- the wild and harmonically unstable Queer Notions –- with Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, a piece that pays more lip service to Spike Hughes than it does to Duke Ellington.

Spike Hughes: Harlem Symphony, Part 1

Spike Hughes: Firebird

Spike Hughes: Air in D flat

Fletcher Henderson - Hawkins: Queer Notions

Reginald Foresythe and Sidney Phillips

Reginald Foresythe (1907–19??), a British pianist of West Indian extraction so obscure neither photo nor death date could be found for this article, was another writer of classically informed, advanced charts in the early Swing period. Foresythe spent much of the late 1920s in California working on early talkies, and he spent some time in Chicago. However, Foresythe did not record until 1933-34, in England, then in New York in early 1935 with a band boasting the young Benny Goodman. After returning to England, Foresythe became something of a world traveler, recording in Italy and, according to some sources, Bombay. The wide geographical distribution of his activity makes his work difficult to assess; the last thing definitely known about Foresythe is that he served in the RAF during World War II. Unlike Hughes, whose jazz compositions went no further than Benny Carter’s band, several of Foresythe’s pieces were picked up by other artists; Earl Hines utilized Deep Forest as his band’s theme, Hal Kemp recorded Dodging a Divorcee and Fats Waller made a riotous version of Foresythe’s Serenade for a Wealthy Widow. The penchant for bizarre, cartoonish titles, so important to the “Egghead School” exemplified by Raymond Scott, seems to have begun with Foresythe, whose worklist includes such numbers as Berceuse for an Unwanted Child, Meditation in Porcelain, and Revolt of the Yes Men. Foresythe also recorded one extended work with the BBC Concert Orchestra in 1935, Southern Holiday. His Lullaby, recorded in 1935 with the “New Music” orchestra including Goodman, shows that Foresythe was in advance of harmonic procedures we usually associate with jazz composer Thelonious Monk.

Earl Hines’ Orchestra - Foresythe: Deep Forest

Fats Waller and his Rhythm - Foresythe: Serenade for a Wealthy Widow

Hal Kemp’s Orchestra - Foresythe: Dodging a Divorcee

The New Music of Reginald Foresythe: Lullaby

Sidney Phillips (1907-1973) is much more of a known quantity than Foresythe, though the modernistic charts he composed belong to a limited part of what proved a long career in English jazz. He first gained notice in 1923 as member of a popular continental group ultimately known as The Melodians, and when they disbanded in 1930, he moved into arranging. In 1933, Phillips joined the orchestra of Bert Ambrose, writing between 100 and 200 charts for Ambrose’s band, for decades a mainstay in the English popular music scene that played jazz with some proficiency in addition to a wide variety of Latin music and purely popularly oriented material unique to Britain. Phillips contributed a number of advanced compositions to Ambrose’s book, including Message from Mars (1936), which, in the context of this study, is a mini-masterpiece of the form — wildly experimental in the first section yet swinging in the second. Message from Mars proved popular and even added to the book of the Hal Kemp Orchestra in America. After he left Ambrose in 1937, Phillips led his own orchestras again, and by the 1950s, had moved back into a traditional jazz format, through which he remains best known in England.

Ambrose and his Orchestra - Phillips: Message from Mars

While the contribution of English musicians to the dialogue between classical music and jazz in the 1920s and 1930s seems of paramount importance to the field of this exchange, the lack of resources inhibits a further understanding of its big picture for now. Nevertheless, the work of Hughes, and Foresythe in particular, would have a decisive influence on the “Eggheads” –- conservatory graduates who entered into the field of jazz –- that shaped the next phase of the conversation.