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Classical Music Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Classical Music The Magic Flute Queen Of The Night

2010-08-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

The Magic Flute (German: Die Zauberflöte, K. 620) is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue.

Premiere and reception

The opera was premiered in Vienna on 30 September 1791, at the suburban Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart conducted the orchestra, Schikaneder himself played Papageno, while the role of the Queen of the Night was sung by Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer.

On the reception of the opera, Mozart scholar Maynard Solomon writes:

Although there were no reviews of the first performances, it was immediately evident that Mozart and Schikaneder had achieved a great success, the opera drawing immense crowds and reaching hundreds of performances during the 1790s.

The success of The Magic Flute lifted the spirits of its composer, who had fallen ill while in Prague a few weeks before. Solomon continues:

Mozart's delight is reflected in his last three letters, written to Constanze, who with her sister Sophie was spending the second week of October in Baden. "I have this moment returned from the opera, which was as full as ever," he wrote on 7 October, listing the numbers that had to be encored. "But what always gives me the most pleasure is the silent approval! You can see how this opera is becoming more and more esteemed." … He went to hear his opera almost every night, taking along [friends and] relatives.

The opera celebrated its 100th performance in November 1792. Mozart did not have the pleasure of witnessing this milestone, having died of his illness on 5 December 1791.

Since its premiere, The Magic Flute has always been one of the most beloved works in the operatic repertoire, and is presently the eighth most frequently performed opera in North America.

Background

Emanuel Schikaneder, librettist of Die Zauberflöte, shown performing in the role of Papageno. The object on his back is a birdcage; see below.

The opera was the culmination of a period of increasing involvement by Mozart with Schikaneder's theatrical troupe, which since 1789 had been the resident company at the Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart was a close friend of one of the singer-composers of the troupe, tenor Benedikt Schack (the first Tamino), and had contributed to the compositions of the troupe, which were often collaboratively written. Mozart's participation increased with his contributions to the 1790 collaborative opera Der Stein der Weisen (The Philosopher's Stone), including the duet ("Nun liebes Weibchen," K. 625/592a) and perhaps other passages. Like The Magic Flute, Der Stein der Weisen was a fairy-tale opera and can be considered a kind of precursor; it employed much the same cast in similar roles.

The Magic Flute is noted for its prominent Masonic elements; Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons and lodge brothers (see: Mozart and Freemasonry). The opera is also influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, and can be regarded as an allegory advocating enlightened absolutism. The Queen of the Night represents a dangerous form of obscurantism or, according to some interpreters, contemporary Roman Catholicism. Her antagonist Sarastro symbolises the enlightened sovereign who rules according to principles based on reason, wisdom, and nature. The story itself portrays the education of mankind, progressing from chaos through religious superstition to rationalistic enlightenment, by means of trial (Tamino) and error (Papageno), ultimately to make "the Earth a heavenly kingdom, and mortals like the gods" ("Dann ist die Erd' ein Himmelreich, und Sterbliche den Göttern gleich." This couplet is sung in the finales to both acts.)

Mozart evidently wrote keeping in mind the skills of the singers intended for the premiere, which included both virtuosi and ordinary comic actors, asked to sing for the occasion. Thus, the vocal lines for Papageno and Monostatos are often stated first in the strings so the singer can find his pitch, and are frequently doubled by instruments. In contrast, Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer, who premiered the role of the Queen of the Night, evidently needed little such help: this role is famous for its difficulty. In ensembles, Mozart skillfully combined voices of different ability levels.

A particularly demanding aria is the Queen of the Night's "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart"), which reaches a high F6 (see Scientific pitch notation), rare in opera. At the low end, the part of Sarastro includes a conspicuous F in a few locations.

On 28 December 1791, 3½ weeks after Mozart's death, his widow Constanze offered to send a manuscript score of The Magic Flute to the electoral court in Bonn. Nikolaus Simrock published this text in the first full-score edition (Bonn, 1814), claiming that it was "in accordance with Mozart's own wishes" (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 13 September 1815).

Roles

The names of the performers at the premiere are taken from a preserved playbill for this performance (at right), which does not give full names; "Herr" = Mr., "Mme" = Madame, Mrs., "Mlle" = Mademoiselle, Miss.

While the female roles in the opera are assigned to different voice types, the playbill for the premiere performance referred to all of the female singers as "sopranos". The casting of the roles relies on the actual pitch range of the part.

These singers perform with an orchestra consisting of two flutes (one doubling on piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (doubling basset horns), two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones (alto, tenor, and bass), timpani and strings. The work also requires a four-part chorus for several numbers (notably the finales of each act); and a glockenspiel to perform the music of Papageno's magic bells.

Classical music composer John Williams - Classical music The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)

2010-08-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning six decades, Williams has composed many of the most recognizable film scores in history, including those for Jaws, the Star Wars films, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Home Alone, and three Harry Potter films; he has composed the music for all but one of Steven Spielberg's theatrical features.

Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Nightly News, the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, the DreamWorks Pictures production logo, and the television series Lost in Space. Williams also composed numerous classical concerti, and served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993. He is now the orchestra's laureate conductor.

Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards and 21 Grammy Awards. With 45 Academy Award nominations, Williams is, together with composer Alfred Newman, the second most nominated person after Walt Disney. He was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

Early life and family

John Williams was born on February 8, 1932, in Flushing Queens, New York. the son of Esther and John Williams, Sr. His father was a jazz drummer who played with the Raymond Scott Quintet.

In 1948, Williams moved to Los Angeles with his family. Williams attended North Hollywood High School and graduated in 1950. He later attended the University of California, Los Angeles and studied privately with composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In 1952, Williams was drafted into the United States Air Force, where he conducted and arranged music for the Air Force Band as part of his duties.

After his service ended in 1955, Williams moved to New York City and entered Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Rosina Lhévinne. During this time he worked as a jazz pianist at New York's many studios and clubs. He also played for composer Henry Mancini: The session musicians were John Williams on piano, Rolly Bundock on bass, Jack Sperling on drums, and Bob Bain on guitar—the same lineup featured on the "Mr. Lucky" television series. Williams recorded with Henry Mancini on the film soundtracks of Peter Gunn (1959), Charade (1963), and Days of Wine and Roses (1962). He was known as "Little Johnny Love" Williams in the early 1960s, and served as arranger and bandleader on a series of popular albums with singer Frankie Laine.

Williams was married to actress Barbara Ruick from 1956 until her death on March 3, 1974. They had three children together: Jennifer (born 1956), Mark (born 1958), and Joseph (born 1960). His youngest son, Joseph Williams, is one of the various lead singers the band Toto have had over time. His daughter, Jennifer (Jenny) Williams, is a singer. He married his second wife, Samantha Winslow, on July 21, 1980. Williams is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi, the national honorary fraternity for college band members.

Classical music composer John Williams - Classical music The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)

"The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)" is a musical theme present in the Star Wars franchise. It was composed by John Williams for the film Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Together with Yoda's Theme, the Imperial March was premiered on April 29, 1980, "five days before the opening of the film, on the occasion of John Williams' first concert as official conductor-in-residence of the Boston Pops Orchestra." One of the best known symphonic movie themes, it is a classic example of a leitmotif, a recurrent theme associated with characters or events in a drama.

Use in Star Wars

"The Imperial March" is sometimes referred to simply as "Darth Vader's Theme." In the movies (except for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope), the march is often played when Darth Vader appears. It is also played for the arrival of Emperor Palpatine on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, though it does segue into the Emperor's own theme as he appears.

Original Trilogy

"The Imperial March" is first heard in The Empire Strikes Back in low piccolos as the Galactic Empire sends probe droids across the galaxy in search of Luke Skywalker. Its major opening occurs as Star Destroyers amass and Darth Vader is first presented in the film. The theme and related motifs are also incorporated into tracks such as "The Battle of Hoth" and "The Asteroid Field". Return of the Jedi makes similar use of the theme, though its final statement is significantly different, making quiet use of a harp as a redeemed Anakin Skywalker dies in his son's arms.

Prequel Trilogy

"The Imperial March" appears on a few occasions in the prequel trilogy, most often used to hint at Anakin Skywalker's future as Darth Vader. An innocent theme for the nine-year-old Anakin in The Phantom Menace, is thematically based on "The Imperial March". "The Imperial March" is also heard towards the end, as Yoda acknowledges Anakin as Obi Wan's apprentice in saying "The chosen One, the boy may be. Nevertheless, grave danger I fear in his training". In the second prequel, Attack of the Clones, "The Imperial March" is sometimes played subtly when an event foreshadows Anakin's future: It is first played when Yoda senses Anakin slaughtering a tribe of Tusken Raiders to avenge his mother's death and later with more force when Anakin tells Padmé Amidala what he did. It is played most prominently during the final sequence when clone troopers assemble and depart Coruscant, foreshadowing that they are the predecessors of Imperial stormtroopers. Although "Across the Stars" is featured most prominently in the film's end credits, several notes from "The Imperial March" are heard beneath it near the end.

Uses outside Star Wars

Outside of the Star Wars films, the march is often used as a musical illustration for various totalitarian or authoritarian political and religious figures. In one example, "The Imperial March" was played as a form of protest against Scientology during the Project Chanology protests by Anonymous.

The music was used by radio show host Rush Limbaugh as the theme for his Gorbasm updates concerning the activities of then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, both while he was President and after.

The music has been used as emblematic of sporting rivalries. Numerous high school and college marching bands have taken to playing the march during football games, particularly when a home team's defense is on the field or has made a big play. The first regular use of "The Imperial March" was in the 1980s, when John Thompson led the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team onto the floor with "The Imperial March" being played by the Georgetown band, perpetuating the sullen, intimidating persona of the Hoyas.

In January 2003, during Super Bowl XXXVII, ABC Sports took to using "The Imperial March" as a leitmotif for the Oakland Raiders. Three-time and current World Professional Darts Champion John Part uses the theme as entrance for his matches. The Miami Hurricanes football program uses the Imperial March during games as part of its "evil empire" persona.

The Imperial Death March was used as thematic background music for the announcement of the "Creep of the Week" on Dave Dameshek's Jerk Report during the 2006 season of the Adam Carolla Show.

In 2007 US Open tournament final, "The Imperial March" was played as Roger Federer entered the stadium. This was done presumably because of the black outfit Federer wore at that tournament. Its use was repeated for his entrance in the 2009 final, when Federer again wore all black.

An elevator music version appears in the Family Guy episode "Blue Harvest", when Peter Griffin (as Han Solo) and Chris Griffin (as Luke Skywalker) escort Brian Griffin (as Chewbacca) dressed as Imperial stormtroopers. It acts as the Death Star's elevator's background song. The episode is a spoof of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in which "The Imperial March" is not used.

In The Simpsons episode "Gump Roast", Montgomery Burns steps toward a lectern and "The Imperial March" plays. Other episodes also use "The Imperial March" as Mr. Burns appears (for example, "A Star Is Burns").

On the soundtrack of the Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire saga, "Night Skies" features a slow, melodic sample of "The Imperial March", designed to reflect the thoughts of Darth Vader, who believes that his son, Luke Skywalker is on Coruscant and attempts telepathic contact with him. The main theme plays twice in the track.

During New York Yankees games at Yankee Stadium, when the visiting team's lineup is announced, "The Imperial March" plays in the background. Ever since the Yankees obtained the "Evil Empire" nickname from Boston Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino, this practice has taken on a certain irony to both Yankee fans and their detractors.

Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show in January 2009 began associating "The Imperial March" with former Vice President Dick Cheney after his appearance at President Barack Obama's inauguration in a wheelchair. This theme was carried across several episodes in the week following the Inauguration.

Fans and stadium staff of the Canadian Football League's Saskatchewan Roughriders coined the phrase "Evil Empire" to describe the rival Edmonton Eskimos, playing on their double E logo. The Eskimos staff and fans have embraced the image and play the theme on a regular basis during games.

Ska punk group No Doubt did a live cover of the song for their Live in the Tragic Kingdom DVD

The progressive metal band Bigelf use it in introduction of their concerts. In addition, their singer, Damon Fox, has a Yoda decal on his keyboard.

UFC fighter Ryan Bader uses Imperial March (Rage Mix) for his entrance music.

Classical music composer Juventino Rosas - Classical music Sobre las Olas Over the waves

2010-08-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

José Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas (25 January 1868 – 9 July 1894) was a Mexican composer, violinist, and band leader.

Rosas was born into a poor Otomi family, in Santa Cruz de Galeana, Guanajuato, now renamed Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas. In his youth he did whatever he could related to music, from ringing church bells to playing violin on the street, making music for his living from age 7 on. He used music for his ambitions to better himself, including composing a waltz in exchange for a pair of shoes.

He moved to Mexico City and soon became a well known musician and composer. At age 12 he was playing violin in one of the city's most popular dance bands. In his early teens, he worked accompanying well known singer Angela Peralta. Although he applied twice for entrance to the National Music Conservatory and briefly studied there, he was mostly self taught.

Rosas led a large orchestra and a brass band that toured internationally.

Rosas's best known work is "Sobre las Olas" or "Over the Waves". It was first published by Rosas in 1884 when he was in New Orleans, Louisiana with the popular Mexican band at the World Cotton Centennial World's Fair. (It was later republished in Mexico and Europe in 1888, and 1891; these later years are sometimes incorrectly given as the piece's first publication date.) It remains popular as a classic waltz, and has also found its way into New Orleans Jazz and Tejano music. In the United States "Sobre las Olas" has a cultural association with funfairs, and trapeze artists, as it was one of the tunes available for Wurlitzer's popular line of fairground organs. The music for "Over the Waves" was used for the tune "The Loveliest Night of the Year", which was sung by Ann Blyth in MGM's film The Great Caruso. It remains popular with country and old-time fiddlers in the United States.

In 1893 he led a band at the World Columbian Exposition World's Fair in Chicago, Illinois.

Rosas died in Surgidero de Batabanó, Cuba. Fifteen years later, in 1909, his remains were brought back to Mexico.

Classical Music Compositions

I. Waltzes
Dos pensamientos (before 1888, no Publisher mentioned)
Sobre las Olas (Über den Wellen - Over the Waves) (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City)
Carmen (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Amelia (1890, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Aurora (1890, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Ensueno seductor (1890; A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Ilusiones juveniles (1890, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Eva (1888-1891, Publisher not clear, most probably A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City)
Josefina (1892, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Flores de margarita (1893, Eduardo Gariel, Saltillo/Robert Forberg, Leipzig)
Soledad (1893, Eduardo Gariel, Saltillo/Robert Forberg, Leipzig)

II. Polkas
La cantinera (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Carmela (1890, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Ojos negros (1891, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Flores de México (1893, Eduardo Gariel, Saltillo/Robert Forberg, Leipzig)

III. Mazurcas
Acuérdate (before 1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City)
Lejos de ti (before 1888, H. Nagl. Sucs.)
Juanita (1890, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Último adiós (1899, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)

IV. Schottishes
El sueno de las flores (1888, (before 1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Floricultura-Schottisch (1888, (before 1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Lazos de amor (1888, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Julia (1890, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Salud y pesetas (1890, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Juventa (1892, A. Wagner y Levien Sucs., Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
El espirituano (1894, Autograph Archivo Provincial de Sancti Spíritus, Kuba)

V. Danzas
A Lupe (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
En el casino (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Juanita (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
No me acuerdo (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
!Qué bueno! (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
?Y para qué? (1888, A. Wagner y Levien, Mexico City/Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig)
Flores de Romana (1893, Eduardo Gariel, Saltillo)

Classical Music Composer Juventino Rosas - Classical Music Sobre las Olas Over the waves

The waltz "Sobre las Olas" (or "Over the Waves") is the best known work of Mexican composer Juventino Rosas (1868–1894). It "remains one of the most famous Latin American pieces worldwide," according to the "Latin America" article in The Oxford Companion to Music.

This classic waltz has often been mistakenly thought by many to be Viennese, and frequently attributed to Johann Strauss II. It was first published by Rosas in 1884 when he was in New Orleans, Louisiana with the popular Mexican band at the World Cotton Centennial World's Fair. It was later republished in Mexico and Europe in 1888, and 1891; these later years are sometimes incorrectly given as the piece's first publication date. It remains popular as a classic waltz, and has also found its way into New Orleans Jazz and Tejano music.

The song remains popular with country and old-time fiddlers in the United States.

Classical Music Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Classical Music The Nutcracker: Walz of the Flowers

2010-06-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

The Nutcracker, a two-act ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, is perhaps the composer's best-loved and most famous work. Tchaikovsky's adaptation of the story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by E. T. A. Hoffmann was commissioned by the director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky in 1891. The original production was staged by Marius Petipa on 18 December 1892, premiering on a double-bill with a now semi-forgotten Tchaikovsky opera, Iolanta.

The plot of Hoffmann's original story is much more complex than that of the ballet, in which events had to be considerably simplified; Hoffmann's tale contains a long flashback story within its plot entitled The Tale of the Hard Nut, explaining how and why the Prince was turned into the Nutcracker. In Hoffmann's original version, the heroine Marie's adventures with the toys and with the Nutcracker are not a dream, and the Nutcracker does not turn into a Prince after his battle with the Mouse King, but at the end of the story - after Marie tells the now inanimate Nutcracker that she would love him even if he remained ugly forever. A year and a day after she declares this, the Prince returns to Marie and asks her to marry him. She accepts, and goes back to reign with him in the Doll Kingdom.

In Western countries, The Nutcracker has become perhaps the most popular of all ballets, performed primarily during the Christmas season. In the United States, especially since the 1960s, it has transcended its origins as a mere ballet or piece of classical music, becoming a part of American tradition almost as much as the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Countless cities across the U.S. now stage the ballet at Christmas time, and new telecasts, video versions and interpretations of the ballet now appear even more often than before. There are several versions of the ballet now on DVD that have never been telecast in the U.S. Its music, especially the music of the suite derived from the ballet, has become familiar to millions all over the world. And because of the ballet's fame, Hoffmann's original story on which it is based has also become well known, and has been made into an animated feature film several times.

Tchaikovsky made a selection of eight of the numbers from the ballet before the ballet's December 1892 premiere, forming The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a, intended for concert performance. The suite was first performed, under the composer's direction, on 19 March 1892 at an assembly of the St. Petersburg branch of the Musical Society. The suite became instantly popular (according to Men of Music "every number had to be repeated"), but the complete ballet did not begin to achieve its great popularity until after the George Balanchine staging became a hit in New York City.

Among other things, the score of The Nutcracker is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had already employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda (premiered 1891). Although well-known in The Nutcracker as the featured solo instrument in the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Act II, it is employed elsewhere in the same act.

History

Composition history

Tchaikovsky himself was less satisfied with The Nutcracker than with The Sleeping Beauty, his previous ballet. (In the film Fantasia, commentator Deems Taylor observes, very accurately, that he "really detested" the score.) He accepted the commission from Ivan Vsevolozhsky, however did not particularly want to write it (though he did write to a friend while composing the ballet: "I am daily becoming more and more attuned to my task.")

While composing the music for the ballet, Tchaikovsky is said to have argued with a friend who wagered that the composer could not write a melody based on the notes of the scale in an octave in sequence. Tchaikovsky asked if it mattered whether the notes were in ascending or descending order, and was assured it did not. This resulted in the Adagio from the Grand pas de deux of the second act, which traditionally is danced just after the Waltz of the Flowers.

A story is also told that Tchaikovsky's sister had died shortly before he began composition of the ballet, and that his sister's death influenced him to compose a melancholy, descending scale melody for the adagio of the Grand Pas de Deux.

Performance history

The first performance of the ballet was held as a double premiere together with Tchaikovsky's last opera, Iolanta, on 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1892, at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. The ballet libretto was by Marius Petipa. Who exactly choreographed the first production has been debated. Petipa began work on the choreography in August 1892; however, illness removed him from its completion and his assistant of seven years, Lev Ivanov, was brought in. Although Ivanov is often credited as the choreographer, some contemporary accounts credit Petipa. The original production of The Nutcracker was conducted by Riccardo Drigo, with Antoinetta Dell-Era as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Pavel Gerdt as Prince Coqueluche, Stanislava Belinskaya as Clara, Sergei Legat as the Nutcracker-Prince, and Timofei Stukolkin as Drosselmeyer. The children's roles, unlike many later productions, were performed by real children rather than adults (Stanislava Belinskaya as Clara, and Vassily Stukolkin as Fritz), students of Imperial Ballet School of St. Petersburg. Alas, the first performance of The Nutcracker was not deemed a success.

In other countries
An abridged version of the ballet was first performed outside Russia in Budapest (Royal Opera House) in 1927, with choreography by Ede Brada. The first complete performance outside Russia took place in England in 1934, staged by Nicholas Sergeyev after Petipa's original choreography. Another abridged version of the ballet, performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was staged in New York City in 1940 by Alexandra Fedorova (not to be confused with the university teacher of the same name) - again, after Petipa's version. The ballet's first complete United States performance was on 24 December 1944, by the San Francisco Ballet, staged by its artistic director Willam Christensen. The New York City Ballet gave its first annual performance of George Balanchine's staging of The Nutcracker in 1954. The tradition of performing the complete "Nutcracker" at Christmas eventually spread to the rest of the United States.

Classical Music

The music in Tchaikovsky's ballet is some of the composer's most popular. The music belongs to the Romantic Period and contains some of his most memorable melodies, several of which are frequently used in television and film. (They are often heard in TV commercials shown during the Christmas season.) The Trepak, or Russian dance, is one of the most recognizable pieces in the ballet, along with the famous Waltz of the Flowers and March, as well as the ubiquitous Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The ballet contains surprisingly advanced harmonies and a wealth of melodic invention that is (to many) unsurpassed in ballet music. Nevertheless, the composer's reverence for Rococo and late 18th century music can be detected in passages such as the Overture, the "Entrée des parents", and "Tempo di Grossvater" in Act I.

One novelty in Tchaikovsky's original score was the use of the celesta, a new instrument Tchaikovsky had discovered in Paris. He wanted it genuinely for the character of the Sugar Plum Fairy to characterize her because of its "heavenly sweet sound". It appears not only in her "Dance", but also in other passages in Act II. Tchaikovsky also uses toy instruments during the Christmas party scene. Tchaikovsky was proud of the celesta's effect, and wanted its music performed quickly for the public, before he could be "scooped." Everyone was enchanted.

Suites derived from this ballet became very popular on the concert stage. The composer himself extracted a suite of eight pieces from the ballet, but that authoritative move has not prevented later hands from arranging other selections and sequences of numbers. Eventually one of these ended up in Disney's Fantasia. In any case, The Nutcracker Suite should not be mistaken for the complete ballet.

Although the original ballet is only about 85 minutes long if performed without applause or an intermission, and therefore much shorter than either Swan Lake or The Sleeping Beauty, some modern staged performances have omitted or re-ordered some of the music, or inserted selections from elsewhere, thus adding to the confusion over the suites. In fact, most of the very famous versions of the ballet have had the order of the dances slightly re-arranged, if they have not actually altered the music.

For example, in The Nutcracker: a Fantasy on Ice, a television adaptation for ice skating from 1983 starring Dorothy Hamill and Robin Cousins, narrated by Lorne Greene, and telecast on HBO, Tchaikovsky's score underwent not only reordering, but also insertion of music from his other ballets and also of music from Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov's Caucasian Sketches. Drosselmeyer did not appear at all in this version. Some years later, Ms. Hamill and then-husband Kenneth Forsythe produced a more complete ice ballet version for the stage, which was broadcast (in somewhat abridged form) in 1990 on NBC's Sportsworld, co-narrated by Hamill herself and Merlin Olsen. This version featured Nathan Birch as the Prince, J. Scott Driscoll as the Nutcracker, and Tim Murphy as Drosselmeyer.

The 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version adds to Tchaikovsky's score an entr'acte that the composer wrote for Act II of The Sleeping Beauty. It is used as a transition between the departure of the guests and the battle with the mice. During this transition, the mother of Marie (as she is called in this version) appears in the living room and throws a blanket over the girl, who has crept downstairs and fallen asleep on the sofa; then Drosselmeyer appears, repairs the Nutcracker, and binds the jaw with a handkerchief. In addition, the Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy is moved from near the end of Act II to near the beginning of the second act, just after the Sugar Plum Fairy makes her first appearance. To help the musical transition, the tarantella that comes before the dance is also cut. In the 1993 film version of the Balanchine version, just as in the telecast of Baryshnikov's staging, the Miniature Overture is cut in half, and the opening credits are seen as the overture is heard. The film's final credits feature a reprise of the Waltz of the Flowers.

A made-for-TV filmed German-American co-production in color was first telecast in the United States as a Christmas season special by CBS in December 1965. Choreographed by Kurt Jacob, it featured a largely German, but still international cast made up from several companies, including Edward Villella, Patricia McBride and Melissa Hayden from the New York City Ballet. First televised in Germany in 1964, this production aired on CBS annually between 1965 and 1968, and then was withdrawn from American network television. Videotaped "wraparound" host segments in English, made in the style of those that CBS manufactured for their 1960's telecasts of MGM's The Wizard of Oz, featured Eddie Albert (at that time starring in the CBS long-running hit Green Acres), who also narrated the story offscreen. These segments were added to the program for its showings in the U.S. New opening credits were also added in English. Famed German dancer Harald Kreutzberg appeared (in what was probably his last rôle) in the dual rôles of Drosselmeyer and the Snow King (though in one listing, Drosselmeyer has been re-christened Uncle Alex Hoffman — presumably a reference to E.T.A. Hoffmann, who wrote the original tale). This production cut the ballet down to a one-act version lasting slightly less than an hour, and drastically re-ordered all the dances, even to the point of altering the storyline (instead of defeating the Mouse King, who does not even appear in this production, Clara and the Nutcracker must now journey to the Castle of the Sugar Plum Fairy, where the Fairy will wave her wand and turn the Nutcracker back into a Prince). Villella does not wear a Nutcracker mask at all in this production; he is seen throughout as a normal-looking man, and the only way that one can tell that he has been transformed from a nutcracker into a prince is by his change in costume. This production inserted some music from Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, as two bluebirds were brought in as characters to dance the Bluebird Pas de Deux from that work. Curiously enough, the famous March is not heard during the actual ballet, but only during the new opening credits and hosting sequence devised by CBS. The March comes to a sudden halt as host Eddie Albert cracks a nut with a nutcracker that he has beside him on a table.

Rudolf Nureyev's 1967 version for the Royal Ballet changes the order of some of the musical numbers, repeating the music of the "mice attack" and the departure of the guests at the end, and omitting the Final Waltz and Apotheosis which normally conclude the ballet.

In Baryshnikov's American Ballet Theatre version, nearly all of the original Tchaikovsky score is used, with slight edits, but the order of the divertissement numbers in Act II (the section of the ballet with the least plot) is changed, and the Arabian Dance had to be completely omitted in the television version in order to bring the program in at 90 minutes (counting the three commercial breaks which were included in the production's CBS telecasts). The Miniature Overture, during which the opening credits are seen in the TV version, is cut in half, as is the Final Waltz, which is danced near the end and again heard during the closing credits. Drosselmeyer appears right after the opening credits, in a prologue which shows him conjuring up the puppets for the puppet show, the dancing toys that he will bring to the Christmas Party, and the Nutcracker that he will give to Clara. The music normally used for his entrance during the party is here used as scoring for the puppet show. Baryshnikov also turned the Adagio from the Pas de Deux into a dance for Clara and the Nutcracker/Prince rather than one for the Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince Kolkyush, moving it to the end of the Pas de deux rather than having it danced at the beginning as is traditionally done in ballet, and creating an emotional climax by having it performed just before the concluding Final Waltz and Apotheosis.

Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker adds a duet from Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades that is heard during the Christmas party sequence. In addition, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is placed very early in the second act, rather than its traditional place toward the end, and is danced by the dream Clara. The tarantella, danced by the Nutcracker/Prince, is also placed very early in the second act, rather than near the end, and the ending of the Waltz of the Snowflakes is slightly changed in the 1986 film adaptation of this version. The Final Waltz and Apotheosis are also switched around; the Apotheosis is placed first. As in the Baryshnikov version, the Adagio from the Pas de deux is placed very near the end, and becomes the emotional climax of the production.

In the Royal Ballet's 1985 version, Tchaikovsky's score is used and the original order of the dances is not changed at all, but the Mother Ginger dance is omitted. Wright also created a prologue featuring Drosselmeyer, performed during the Miniature Overture. In it, Drosselmeyer is seen grieving in his workshop over the spell that has turned his beloved nephew into a Nutcracker, and preparing to take his presents to the Christmas Party. This version was re-staged with some of the same dancers taking different rôles, as well as with new dancers, in 2001. In the 2001 version, Alina Cojocaru danced the rôle of Clara, a rôle danced in 1985 by Julie Rose. Anthony Dowell, who had danced the Sugar Plum Fairy's Cavalier in 1985, danced the rôle of Drosselmeyer in the 2001 version, telecast by PBS. A new film version of this production's latest revival was shown in hi-def movie theatres in late 2009. In the film, Iohna Loots was Clara, Ricardo Cervera was the Nutcracker and Drosselmeyer's nephew, and Gary Avis was Drosselmeyer.

The Kirov Ballet's 1994 revival of the Vainonen version, starring Larissa Lezhnina and Viktor Baranov, omits Mother Ginger and the Clowns altogether, and cuts the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, already short to begin with, in half, but otherwise presents the score complete, and the dances in their original order.

Another ice skating version, 1994's Nutcracker on Ice, starring Oksana Baiul as Clara and Victor Petrenko as Drosselmeyer, was originally telecast on NBC, and is now shown on several cable stations. It was also condensed to slightly less than an hour, radically altering and compressing both the music and the storyline.

Still another one-hour ice skating version, also called Nutcracker on Ice, was staged on television in 1995, starring Peggy Fleming as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Nicole Bobek as Clara, and Todd Eldredge as the Nutcracker.

And yet another version of Nutcracker on Ice, this one starring Tai Babilonia as Clara and Randy Gardner as the Nutcracker/ Prince, was released straight-to-video in 1998, appearing on DVD in 2007.

Another edition of Nutcracker on Ice, also only an hour in length, was made in 1996 and is scheduled to be telecast in some areas in December 2009. Debi Thomas appears as the Snow Queen, Calla Urbanski is Clara, Rocky Marval is the Nutcracker/ Prince, and Rudy Galindo is Drosselmeyer. Music from other works by Tchaikovsky is added, and many of the divertissement dances are cut.

Maurice Béjart's controversial version throws in folk songs and other tunes totally unrelated to Tchaikovsky's original score; however, the Tchaikovsky music is also used.

The 2008 San Francisco Ballet production makes a few slight edits in the music, rearranges the order of a few of the dances in the Act II divertissement, and uses a fragment of the Pas de deux music to cover the moment when the child Clara is replaced by the "adult" Clara.

Patrice Bart's Berlin Ballet version adds an unidentified piece not from the score of The Nutcracker, and reprises the Journey Through the Snow movement at the beginning of the second act, as Marie is reunited with her mother. It also cuts the Final Waltz in half.

The Chemiakin Mariinsky Ballet production uses the entire score unaltered, with the numbers in their original order, as do both of the Bolshoi versions now on DVD.

Nearly all of the CD and LP recordings of the complete ballet present Tchaikovsky's score exactly as he originally conceived it. Those which do present it somewhat re-arranged are taken from the soundtracks of films (such as the Maurice Sendak Nutcracker) or television versions such as the Baryshnikov one.

There are also several transcriptions of the Nutcracker Suite available on CD, including a noted one played by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.

Classical Music Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Classical Music The Nutcracker: Walz of the Flowers

Classical Music Composer Maurice Ravel - Classical Music Boléro

2010-05-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

Classical Music Online Youtube Video

Classical Music Composer: Maurice Ravel

Classical Music: Boléro

Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 – December 28, 1937) was a French composer of Impressionist music known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire.

Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le Tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la Nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the performer, and his orchestral music, including Daphnis et Chloé and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, uses a variety of sound and instrumentation very effectively.

Ravel is perhaps known best for his orchestral work, Boléro (1928), which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music."

According to SACEM, Ravel's estate earns more royalties than that of any other French musician. According to international copyright law, Ravel's works are public domain since January 1, 2008 in most countries. In France, due to anomalous copyright law extensions to account for the two world wars, they will not enter the public domain until 2015.

Biography

Early life (in a classical music)

Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, close to the border with Spain, during 1875. His mother, Marie Delouart, was of Basque descent and grew up in Madrid, Spain, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was a Swiss inventor and industrialist from French Haute-Savoie. Both were Catholics and they provided a happy and stimulating household for their children. Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important, including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death," an automotive loop-the-loop that was quite a success until a fatal accident at the Barnum and Bailey circus during 1903. Joseph delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, and he also had a keen interest in music and culture. Ravel substantiated his father's early influence by stating later, “As a child, I was sensitive to music—- to every kind of music.”

Ravel was very fond of his mother, and her Basque heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories are folk songs she sang to him. The family moved to Paris three months after the birth of Maurice, and there his younger brother Édouard was born. He became his father’s favorite and also became an engineer. At age seven, Maurice began piano lessons with Henry Ghys and received his first instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Charles-René. His earliest public piano recital was during 1889 at age fourteen.

Though obviously talented at the piano, Ravel demonstrated a preference for composing. He was particularly impressed by the new Russian works conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. The foreign music at the exhibition also had a great influence on Ravel’s contemporaries Erik Satie, Emmanuel Chabrier, and most significantly Claude Debussy. That year Ravel also met Ricardo Viñes, who would become one of his best friends, one of the foremost interpreters of his piano music, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music. The students shared an appreciation for Richard Wagner, the Russian school, and the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé.

The Conservatoire and early career in classical music

Ravel’s parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. His teachers included Émile Descombes. He received a first prize in the piano student competition in 1891. Overall, however, he was not successful academically even as his musicianship matured dramatically. Considered “very gifted”, Ravel was also called “somewhat heedless” in his studies. Around 1893, Ravel created his earliest compositions, and he was introduced by his father to the café pianist Erik Satie, whose distinctive personality and unorthodox musical experiments proved influential.

Ravel was not a "bohemian" and evidenced little of the typical trauma of adolescence. At twenty years of age, Ravel was already "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter. He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey". His large head seemed suitably matched to his great intellect. He was well-read and later accumulated a library of over 1,000 volumes. In his younger adulthood, Ravel was usually bearded in the fashion of the day, though later he dispensed with all whiskers. Though reserved, Ravel was sensitive and self-critical, and had a mischievous sense of humor. He became a life-long tobacco smoker in his youth, and he enjoyed strongly flavored meals, fine wine, and spirited conversation.

After failing to meet the requirement of earning a competitive medal in three consecutive years, Ravel was expelled during 1895. He turned down a music professorship in Tunisia then returned to the Conservatoire in 1898 and started his studies with Gabriel Fauré, determined to focus on composing rather than piano playing. He studied composition with Fauré until he was dismissed from the class in 1900 for having won neither the fugue nor the composition prize. He remained an auditor with Fauré until he left the conservatoire in 1903. Ravel found his teacher’s personality and methods sympathetic and they remained friends and colleagues. He also undertook private studies with André Gédalge, whom he later stated was responsible for "the most valuable elements of my technique." Ravel studied the ability of each instrument carefully in order to determine the possible effects, and was sensitive to their color and timbre. This may account for his success as an orchestrator and as a transcriber of his own piano works and those of other composers, such as Mussorgsky, Debussy and Schumann.

His first significant work, Habanera for two pianos, was later transcribed into the well-known third movement of his Rapsodie espagnole. His first published work was Menuet antique (dedicated to and premiered by Viñes). During 1899, Ravel conducted his first orchestral piece, Shéhérazade, and was greeted by a raucous mixture of boos and applause. The critics were somewhat unfavorable, e.g. reviling him as "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and terming him a “mediocrely gifted debutante ... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard.” As the most gifted composer of his class and as a leader, with Debussy, of avant-garde French music, Ravel would continue to have a difficult time with the critics for some time to come.

Around 1900, Ravel joined with a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians (but not women) who were referred to as the Apaches (hooligans), a name coined by Viñes to represent his band of "artistic outcasts". The group met regularly until the beginning of World War I and the members often inspired each other with intellectual argument and performances of their works before the group. For a time, the influential group included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla. One of the first works Ravel performed for the Apaches was Jeux d'eau, his first piano masterpiece and clearly a pathfinding impressionistic work. Viñes performed the public premiere of this piece and Ravel's other early masterpiece Pavane pour une infante défunte during 1902.

During his years at the Conservatoire, Ravel tried numerous times to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, but to no avail, likely because he was considered too radical by the conservatives, including Director Théodore Dubois. One of Ravel's pieces, the String Quartet in F, likely modeled on Debussy’s Quartet (1893), is now a standard work of chamber music, though at the time it was criticized and found lacking academically. After a scandal involving his loss of the prize during 1905 to Victor Gallois, despite being favored to win, Ravel left the Conservatoire. The incident — named the "Ravel Affair" by the Parisian press — engaged the entire artistic community, pitting conservatives against the avant-garde, and eventually caused the resignation of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré, a vindication of sorts for Ravel. Though deprived of the opportunity to study in Rome, the decade after the scandal proved to be Ravel's most productive, and included his "Spanish period".

Ravel and Debussy

Ravel met Debussy during the 1890’s. Debussy was older than Ravel by some twelve years and his pioneering "Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune" was influential among the younger musicians including Ravel, who were impressed by the new language of impressionism. During 1900, Ravel was invited to Debussy’s home and they played each other’s works. Viñes became the preferred piano performer for both composers and a go-between. The two composers attended many of the same musical events and were performed at the same concerts. Ravel and the Apaches were strong supporters of Debussy’s controversial public debut of his unconventional opera "Pelléas et Mélisande", which garnered Debussy both fame and scorn.

The two musicians also appreciated much the same musical heritage and operated in the same artistic milieu, but they differed in terms of personality and their approach to music. Debussy was considered more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship. Even though they worked independently of one another, because they employed differing means to similar ends, and because superficial similarities and even some more substantive ones are evident, the public and the critics associated them more than the facts warranted.

Ravel wrote that Debussy’s “genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy.” Ravel further stated, “I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy.”

They admired each other’s music and Ravel even played Debussy’s work in public on occasion. However, Ravel did criticize Debussy sometimes, particularly regarding his orchestration, and he once said, “If I had the time, I would reorchestrate "La Mer"”

By 1905, factions formed for each composer and the two groups began feuding in public. Disputes arose as to questions of chronology about their respective works and who influenced whom. The public tension caused personal estrangement. As Ravel said, “It is probably better after all for us to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons.” Ravel stoically absorbed superficial comparisons with Debussy promulgated by biased critics, including Pierre Lalo, an anti-Ravel critic who stated, “Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people.” During 1913, in a remarkable coincidence, both Ravel and Debussy independently produced and published musical settings for poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, again provoking comparisons of their work and their perceived influence on each other, which continued even after Debussy’s death five years later.

Early major works in classical music

The next of Ravel’s piano compositions to become famous was "Miroirs" (Mirrors - 1905), five piano pieces which marked a “harmonic evolution” and which one commentator described as “intensely descriptive and pictorial. They banish all sentiment in expression but offer to the listener a number of refined sensory elements which can be appreciated according to his imagination.”Next was his "Histoires naturelles" (Nature Stories), five humorous songs evoking the presence of five animals. Two years later, Ravel completed his Rapsodie espagnole, his first major “Spanish” piece, written first for piano four hands and then scored for orchestra. Though it employs folk-like melodies, no actual folk songs are quoted. It premiered during 1908 to generally good reviews, with one critic stating that it was “one of the most interesting novelties of the season.”, while Lalo (as usual) reacted negatively, calling it “laborious and pedantic”. Next followed Ravel’s music for the opera "L’Heure espagnole" (The Spanish Hour), full of humor and rich in color, employing a wide variety of instruments and their characteristic qualities, including the trombone, sarrusophone, tuba, celesta, xylophone, and bells.

Ravel further extended his mastery of impressionistic piano music with Gaspard de la nuit, based on a collection by the same name by Aloysius Bertrand, with some influence from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, particularly in the second part. Viñes, as usual, performed the premiere but his performance displeased Ravel, and their relationship became strained from then on. For future premieres, Ravel replaced Vines with Marguerite Long.Also unhappy with the conservative musical establishment which was discouraging performance of new music, around this time Ravel, Faure, and some of his pupils formed the Société Musical Indépendante (SMI). During 1910, the society presented the premiere of Ravel’s Ma Mere l’Oye (Mother Goose) in its original piano version. With this work, Ravel followed in the tradition of Schumann, Mussorgsky, and Debussy who also created memorable works of childhood themes. During 1912, Ravel’s “Ma Mere l’Oye” was performed as a ballet (with added music) after being first transcribed from piano to orchestra. Looking to expand his contacts and career, Ravel made his first foreign tours to England and Scotland during 1909 and 1911.

Daphnis et Chloé

Ravel began work with impresario Sergei Diaghilev during 1909 for the ballet Daphnis et Chloé commissioned by Diaghilev with the lead danced by the great Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev had taken Paris by storm the previous year in his Parisian debut opera Boris Godunov. “Daphnis et Chloé” took three years to reach final form with conflicts constantly arising among the principal artists, including Leon Bakst (sets and costumes), Michel Fokine (libretto), and Ravel (music). In frustration, Diaghilev nearly cancelled the project. The ballet had an unenthusiastic reception and lasted only two performances, only to be revived to acclaim a year later. Stravinsky called “Daphnis et Chloé” “one of the most beautiful products of all French music” and author Burnett James claims that it is “Ravel’s most impressive single achievement, as it is his most opulent and confident orchestral score”. The work is notable for its rhythmic diversity, lyricism, and evocations of nature. The score utilizes a large orchestra and two choruses, one onstage and one offstage. So exhausting was the effort to score the ballet that Ravel’s health deteriorated, with a diagnosis of neurasthenia soon forcing him to rest for several months. During 1914, just as World War I began, Ravel composed his Trio (for piano, violin, and cello) with its Basque themes. The piece, difficult to play well, is considered a masterpiece among trio works.

War years

Although he considered his small stature and light weight an advantage to becoming an aviator, and he tried every means of securing service as a flyer, during the First World War Ravel was not allowed to enlist as a pilot because of his age and weak health. Instead, he became a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front.At one point Ravel's unit engaged a German unit that included a young Adolf Hitler. With his mother’s death during 1917, his fondest relationship ended and he began a “horrible despair”, adding to his ill health and the general gloom over the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war. However, during the war years, Ravel did manage some compositions, including one of his most popular works, Le Tombeau de Couperin, a commemoration of the musical ideals of the early 18th century composer, which premiered during 1919. Each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel who died by the war, with the final movement dedicated to the deceased husband of Ravel’s favorite pianist Marguerite Long. During the war, a National League for the Defense of French Music was formed but Ravel, despite his strong antipathy for the German aggression, declined to join stating:

“it would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the works of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical, so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate and become isolated by its own academic formulas.”

Ravel was exhausted and lacking creative spirit at the war’s end during 1918. With the death of Debussy and the emergence of Satie, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, modern classical music had a new style to which Ravel would shortly re-group and make his contribution.

1920s (Classical Music Composer)

Around 1920, Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to write La Valse, originally named Wien (Vienna), which was to be used for a projected ballet. The piece, conceived many years earlier, became a waltz with a macabre undertone, famous for its “fantastic and fatal whirling”. However, it was rejected by Diaghilev as “not a ballet. It’s a portrait of ballet”. Ravel, hurt by the comment, ended the relationship.Subsequently, it became a popular concert work and when the two men met again during 1925, Ravel refused to shake Diaghilev's hand. Diaghilev challenged Ravel to a duel (friends persuaded Diaghilev to recant). The men never met again.

During 1920, the French government awarded Ravel the Légion d'honneur, but he refused it. The next year, he retired to the French countryside where he continued to write music, albeit even less prolifically, but in more tranquil surroundings.He returned regularly to Paris for performances and socializing, and increased his foreign concert tours. Ravel maintained his influential participation with the SMI which continued its active role of promoting new music, particularly of British and American composers such as Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson. With Debussy’s passing, Ravel became perceived popularly as the main composer of French classical music. As Fauré stated in a letter to Ravel (October, 1922), “I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor.”During 1922, Ravel completed his Sonata for Violin and Cello. Dedicated to Debussy’s memory, the work features the thinner texture popular with the younger postwar composers.

The English, in particular, lauded Ravel, as the Times reported during 1923, “Since the death of Debussy, he has represented to English musicians the most vigorous current in modern French music." In reality, however, Ravel’s own music was no longer considered au courant in France. Satie had become the inspiring force for the new generation of French composers known as Les Six. Ravel was fully aware of this, and was mostly effective in preventing a serious breach between his generation of musicians and the younger group.

In post-war Paris, American musical influence was strong. Jazz particularly was played in the cafes and became popular, and French composers including Ravel and Darius Milhaud were applying jazz elements to their work.Also in vogue was a return to simplicity in orchestration and a transition from the great scale of the works of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Stravinsky and Prokofiev were in ascent, and Schoenberg's experiments were leading music into atonality.These trends posed challenges for Ravel, always a slow and deliberate composer, who desired to keep his music relevant but still revered the past. This may have played a part in his declining output and longer composing time during the 1920s.

Around 1922, Ravel completed his famous orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzsky, which through its widespread popularity brought Ravel great fame and substantial profit. The first half of the 1920s was a particularly lean period for composing but Ravel did complete successful concert tours to Amsterdam, Milan, London, Madrid, and Vienna, which also boosted his fame. By 1925, by virtue of the unwelcomed pressure of a performance deadline, he finally finished his opera, L'enfant et les sortilèges, with its significant jazz and ragtime accents. Famed writer Colette provided the libretto. Around this time, he also completed Chansons madécasses, the summit of his vocal art.

During 1927, Ravel’s string quartet received its first complete recording. By this time Ravel, like Edward Elgar, had become convinced of the importance of recording his works, especially with his input and direction. He made recordings nearly every year from then until his death.That same year, he completed and premiered his Sonata for Violin and Piano, his last chamber work, with its second movement (titled “Blues”) gaining much attention.

American tour

After two months of planning, during 1928 Ravel made a four-month concert tour in North America, for a promised minimum of $10,000. In New York City, he received a standing ovation, unlike any of his unenthusiastic premieres in Paris. His all-Ravel concert in Boston was equally acclaimed. The noted critic Olin Downes wrote, “Mr. Ravel has pursued his way as an artist quietly and very well. He has disdained superficial or meretricious effects. He has been his own most unsparing critic.”Ravel conducted most of the leading orchestras in the U.S. from coast to coast and visited twenty-five cities.

He also met the American composer George Gershwin in New York and went with him to hear jazz in Harlem, likely hearing some of the famous jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington.There is a story that when Gershwin met Ravel, he mentioned that he would like to study with the French composer. According to Gershwin, the Frenchman retorted, "Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?" The second part of the story has Ravel asking Gershwin how much money he made. Upon hearing Gershwin's reply, Ravel suggested that maybe he should study with Gershwin. This tale may well be apocryphal: Gershwin seems also to have told a near-identical story about a conversation with Arnold Schoenberg, and some have claimed it was with Igor Stravinsky. (See George Gershwin.) In any event, this had to have been before Ravel wrote Boléro, which became financially very successful for him.

Ravel then visited New Orleans and imbibed the jazz scene there as well. His admiration of American jazz, increased by his American visit, caused him to include some jazz elements in a few of his later compositions, especially the two piano concertos. The great success of his American tour made Ravel famous internationally.

Final years in classical music

After returning to France, Ravel composed his most famous and controversial orchestral work Boléro, originally called “Fandango”. Ravel called it “an experiment in a very special and limited direction”.He stated his idea for the piece, “I am going to try to repeat it a number of times on different orchestral levels but without any development.” He conceived of it as an accompaniment to a ballet and not as an orchestral piece as, in his own opinion, “it has no music in it”, and was somewhat taken aback by its popular success.A public dispute began with conductor Arturo Toscanini. The Italian maestro, taking liberties with Ravel’s strict instructions, conducted the piece at a faster tempo and with an “accelerando at the finish”. Ravel insisted “I don’t ask for my music to be interpreted, but only that it should be played.” In the end, the feuding only helped to increase the work’s fame. A Hollywood film titled Bolero (1934), starring Carole Lombard and George Raft, made major use of the theme. Ravel made one of his few recordings of his own music when he conducted his Boléro with the Lamoureux Orchestra in 1930.

Remarkably, Ravel composed both of his piano concertos at the same time. ”He completed the Concerto for the Left Hand first. The work was commissioned by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I. Ravel was inspired by the technical challenges of the project. As Ravel stated, “In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands.” At the premiere of the work, Ravel—- not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand—- played two-handed and Wittgenstein was reportedly underwhelmed by it. But later Wittgenstein stated, “Only much later, after I’d studied the concerto for months, did I become fascinated by it and realized what a great work it was.” During 1933, Wittgenstein played the work in concert for the first time to instant acclaim.One critic wrote, “From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us.”

The other piano concerto was completed a year later. Its lighter tone follows the models of Mozart, Domenico Scarlatti, and Saint-Saëns, and also makes use of jazz-like themes.Ravel dedicated the work to his favorite pianist, Marguerite Long, who played it and popularized it across Europe in over twenty cities, and they recorded it together during 1932. EMI later reissued the 1932 recording on LP and CD. Although Ravel was listed as the conductor on the original 78-rpm discs, it is possible he merely supervised the recording.

Ravel, ever modest, was bemused by the critics sudden favor of him since his American tour, “Didn’t I represent to the critics for a long time the most perfect example of insensitivity and lack of emotion?... And the successes they have given me in the past few years are just as unimportant.”

Illness and death

During 1932, Ravel suffered a major blow to the head in a taxi accident. This injury was not considered serious at the time.However, afterwards he began to experience aphasia-like symptoms and was frequently absent-minded. He had begun work on music for a film, Adventures of Don Quixote (1933) from Cervantes's celebrated novel, featuring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin and directed by G. W. Pabst. When Ravel became unable to compose, and could not write down the musical ideas he heard in his mind, Pabst hired Jacques Ibert. However, three songs for baritone and orchestra that Ravel composed for the film were later published under the title Don Quichotte a Dulcinée, and have been performed and recorded.

On April 8, 2008, the New York Times published an article suggesting Ravel may have been in the early stages of frontotemporal dementia during 1928, and this might account for the repetitive nature of Boléro. This accords with an earlier article, published in a journal of neurology, that closely examines Ravel's clinical history and argues that his works Boléro and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand both indicate the impacts of neurological disease.

This is contradicted somewhat, however, by the earlier cited comments by Ravel about how he created the deliberately repetitious theme for Boléro.

During late 1937, Ravel consented to experimental brain surgery. One hemisphere of his brain was re-inflated with serous fluid. He awoke from the surgery, called for his brother Edouard, lapsed into a coma and died shortly afterwards at the age of 62. Ravel probably died as a result of a brain injury caused by the automobile accident and not from a brain tumor as some believe. This confusion may arise because his friend George Gershwin had died from a brain tumor only five months earlier. Ravel was buried with his parents in a granite tomb at the cemetery at Levallois-Perret, a suburb of northwest Paris.

Classical Music Composer: Maurice Ravel

Classical Music: Boléro

Boléro is a one-movement orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel. Originally composed as a ballet commissioned by Russian ballerina Ida Rubenstein, the piece, which premiered in 1928, is Ravel's most famous musical composition. Before Boléro, Ravel had composed large scale ballets (such as Daphnis et Chloé, composed for the Ballets Russes 1909–1912), suites for the ballet (such as the second orchestral version of Ma Mère l'Oye, 1912), and one-movement dance pieces (such as La Valse, 1906-1920). Apart from such compositions intended for a staged dance performance, Ravel had demonstrated an interest in composing re-styled dances, from his earliest successes (the 1895 Menuet and the 1899 Pavane) to his more mature works like Le tombeau de Couperin (which takes the format of a dance suite).

Boléro epitomises Ravel's preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. It was also one of the last pieces he composed before illness forced him into retirement: the two piano concertos and the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée song cycle were the only compositions that followed Boléro.

Composition

The work had its genesis in a commission from the dancer Ida Rubinstein, who asked Ravel to make an orchestral transcription of six pieces from Isaac Albéniz' set of piano pieces, Iberia. While working on the transcription, Ravel was informed that the movements had already been orchestrated by Spanish conductor Enrique Arbós, and that copyright law prevented any other arrangement from being made. When Arbós heard of this, he said he would happily waive his rights and allow Ravel to orchestrate the pieces. However Ravel changed his mind and decided initially to orchestrate one of his own previously-written works. He then changed his mind again and decided to write a completely new piece based on the musical form and Spanish dance called bolero.While on vacation at St Jean-de-Luz, Ravel went to the piano and played a melody with one finger to his friend Gustave Samazeuilh, saying "Don't you think this theme has an insistent quality? I'm going to try and repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can."This piece was initially called Fandango, but its title was soon changed to "Boléro".

Premiere and early performances

The composition was a sensational success when it was premiered at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Alexandre Benois. The orchestra of the Opéra was conducted by Walther Straram. Ernest Ansermet had originally been engaged to conduct the orchestra during its entire ballet season; however the orchestra refused to play under him.A scenario by Rubinstein and Nijinska was printed in the program for the premiere:

Inside a tavern in Spain, people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling. [In response] to the cheers to join in, the female dancer has leapt onto the long table and her steps become more and more animated.

Ravel himself, however, had a different conception of the work: his preferred stage design was of an open-air setting with a factory in the background, reflecting the mechanical nature of the music.

Boléro became Ravel's most famous composition, much to the surprise of the composer, who had predicted that most orchestras would refuse to play it. It is usually played as a purely orchestral work, only rarely being staged as a ballet. According to a possibly apocryphal story, at the premiere a woman shouted that Ravel was mad. When told about this, Ravel smiled and remarked that she had understood the piece.The piece was first published by the Parisian firm Durand in 1929. Arrangements of the piece were made for piano solo and piano duet (two people playing at one piano), and Ravel himself composed a version for two pianos, published in 1930.

The first recording was made by Piero Coppola in Paris for The Gramophone Company on January 8, 1930. The recording session was attended by Ravel.The very next day Ravel made his own recording for Polydor, conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra. That same year further recordings were made by Serge Koussevitzky with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Willem Mengelberg with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

The Toscanini affair

Conductor Arturo Toscanini gave the U.S. premiere of Boléro with the New York Philharmonic on November 14, 1929. The performance was a great success, bringing "shouts and cheers from the audience" according to a New York Times review leading one critic to declare that "it was Toscanini who launched the career of the Boléro",and another to claim that Toscanini had made Ravel into "almost an American national hero".

On May 4, 1930, Toscanini performed the work with the New York Philharmonic at the Paris Opéra as part of that orchestra's European tour. Toscanini's tempo was significantly faster than Ravel preferred, and Ravel signaled his disapproval by refusing to respond to Toscanini's gesture during the audience ovation. An exchange took place between the two men backstage after the concert. According to one account Ravel said "It's too fast", to which Toscanini responded "It's the only way to save the work".According to another report Ravel said "That's not my tempo". Toscanini replied "When I play it at your tempo, it is not effective", to which Ravel retorted "Then do not play it".Four months later Ravel attempted to smooth over relations with Toscanini by sending him a note explaining that "I have always felt that if a composer does not take part in the performance of a work, he must avoid the ovations" and, ten days later, inviting Toscanini to conduct the premiere of his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.

Early popularity

The Toscanini affair became a cause célèbre and further increased Boléro's fame.Other factors in the work's renown were the large number of early performances, gramophone records (including Ravel's own), transcriptions and radio broadcasts, together with the 1934 motion picture Bolero starring Carole Lombard, in which the music plays an important role.

Classical Music

Boléro is written for a large orchestra consisting of two flutes, piccolo (actually a second piccolo doubles the second flautist because it is in the part with the horns and celesta.), two oboes (oboe 2 doubles oboe d'amore), cor anglais, two B-flat clarinets (Bb Clarinet 1 or 2 doubles on E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, piccolo trumpet in D, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two saxophones (one sopranino and one tenor doubling on soprano — one of the first large ensemble pieces to employ the family), timpani, two snare drums, a bass drum, one pair of orchestral cymbals, tamtam, celesta, two harps and strings (violins, violas, cellos and double basses).

(The sopranino saxophone called for in the instrumentation is a sopranino saxophone in F; the ones of today are in E-flat. Today, both the soprano saxophone and the sopranino saxophone parts are commonly played on the B-flat soprano saxophone.)

(The celesta, E-flat clarinet, and the soprano saxophone only comes once in part, meaning they cannot be used in later parts of the music (including the final). Actually the oboe d'amore comes twice, one after the E-flat clarinet, and the other with the oboes and clarinets.)

Criticism

Ravel was a stringent critic of his own work. During Boléro's composition, he said to Joaquín Nin that the work had "no form, properly speaking, no development, no or almost no modulation".In a newspaper interview with The Daily Telegraph in July 1931 he spoke about the work as follows:

It constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of "orchestral tissue without music" — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution.

In 1934, in his book Music Ho!, Constant Lambert wrote: There is a definite limit to the length of time a composer can go on writing in one dance rhythm (this limit is obviously reached by Ravel towards the end of La Valse and towards the beginning of Boléro).

Classical Music Composer Ludwig van Beethoven - Classical Music Moonlight Sonata

2010-05-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

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Classical Music Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven

Classical Music: Piano Sonata No. 14

The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor "Quasi una fantasia", Op. 27, No. 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven, popularly known as the Moonlight Sonata (Mondscheinsonate in German), was completed in 1801. It is rumored to be dedicated to his pupil, 17-year-old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, with whom Beethoven was, or had been, in love.

Allegedly, the piece came about when Beethoven heard music coming from a house, which he recognized as one of his compositions. When he entered the house, he found a blind girl playing the piano, although she wished someone would show her how to play the song correctly. He offered to play it for her, and when he finished, she realized who it was. He then improvised the sonata, inspired by the moonlight streaming in through the window, and, after offering to give the girl piano lessons, rushed home to write the music down while he still remembered it.

The name "Moonlight" Sonata derives from an 1832 description of the first movement by music critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared it to moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne.

Beethoven included the phrase "Quasi una fantasia" (Italian: Almost a fantasy) in the title partly because the sonata does not follow the traditional sonata pattern where the first movement is in regular sonata form, and where the three or four movements are arranged in a fast-slow-[fast]-fast sequence. Instead, the Moonlight sonata possesses an end-weighted trajectory; the climax is held off until the third movement. To be sure, the deviation from traditional sonata form is intentional. In his analysis of the Moonlight sonata, German critic Paul Bekker states that “The opening sonata-allegro movement gave the work a definite character from the beginning…which succeeding movements could supplement but not change. Beethoven rebelled against this determinative quality in the first movement. He wanted a prelude, an introduction, not a proposition.” By placing the most dramatic form (sonata form) at the end of the piece, Beethoven could magnify the drama inherent in the form.

The sonata has three movements:

Adagio sostenuto
Allegretto
Presto agitato

The first movement, in C♯ minor is written in a rough, truncated sonata form. The movement opens with an octave in the left hand and a triplet figuration in the right. A melody that Hector Berlioz called a "lamentation", mostly by the right hand, is played against an accompanying ostinato triplet rhythm, simultaneously played by the right hand. The movement is played pianissimo or "very quietly", and the loudest it gets is mezzo-forte or "moderately loud". The movement has made a powerful impression on many listeners; for instance, Berlioz said of it that it "is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify." The work was very popular in Beethoven's day, to the point of exasperating the composer, who remarked to Carl Czerny, "Surely I've written better things."

The second movement is a relatively conventional scherzo and trio; a moment of relative calm written in D-flat major, the enharmonic equivalent of C♯ major, the parallel major of C♯ minor. This replaces 7 sharps (C♯ major) with 5 flats (D♭ major), granting less confusion when reading the music. Franz Liszt described the second movement as "a flower between two chasms."

The stormy final movement (C♯ minor), in sonata form, is the weightiest of the three, reflecting an experiment of Beethoven's (also carried out in the companion sonata, Opus 27, No. 1 and later on in Opus 101) placement of the most important movement of the sonata last. The writing has many fast arpeggios and strongly accented notes, and an effective performance demands lively and skillful playing.

Of the final movement, Charles Rosen has written "it is the most unbridled in its representation of emotion. Even today, two hundred years later, its ferocity is astonishing."

It is thought that the C-sharp minor sonata, particularly the third movement, was the inspiration for Frédéric Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. The Fantaisie-Impromptu is also in the key of C♯ minor, with a middle section of D♭ major, similar to the three movements of this sonata.

The musical dynamic that predominates in the third movement is in fact piano. It seems that Beethoven's heavy use of sforzando notes, together with just a few strategically located fortissimo passages, creates the sense of a very powerful sound in spite of the overall dynamic. Within the entire movement there seems to be two themes, with the other melodies simply making up the rest of composition. The first theme consists of bars 6 to 16 which then repeats themselves, with variations, in bars 37 to 47. The second theme lasts from 26 to 30, and like the first theme is then restated in variations, in 51 to 55. In the sonata there is no two bars are exactly the same; all very related but none of them are not an exact match. They may sound similar but however they are completely different. The similar notes that come afterwards are more intense and give more emotion with their embellishments.

Beethoven's pedal mark

See also: Piano history and musical performance, Mute (music), and Piano pedals#Beethoven and pedals

At the opening of the work, Beethoven included a written direction that the sustain pedal should be depressed for the entire duration of the first movement. The Italian reads: "Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordino" ("One must play this whole piece [meaning "movement"] very delicately and without dampers."). The modern piano has a much longer sustain time than the instruments of Beethoven's day. Therefore, his instruction cannot be followed by pianists playing modern instruments without creating an unpleasantly dissonant sound.

One option for dealing with this problem is to perform the work on a restored or replicated piano of the kind Beethoven knew. Proponents of historically informed performance using such pianos have found it feasible to perform the work respecting Beethoven's original direction.

For performance on the modern piano, most performers today try to achieve an effect similar to what Beethoven asked for using pedal changes only where necessary to avoid excessive dissonance. For instance, the Ricordi edition of the score posted at the external link given below does include pedal marks throughout the first movement. These are the work of a 20th century editor, meant to facilitate performance on a modern instrument. "Half pedaling”—a technique involving a partial depression of the damper pedal—is also often used to simulate the shorter sustain of the early nineteenth century pedal. Charles Rosen suggests both half-pedaling and releasing the pedal a fraction of a second late. Banowetz offers a further suggestion: to pedal cleanly while allowing sympathetic vibration of the low bass strings to provide the desired "blur." This is accomplished before beginning the movement by silently depressing the piano's lowest bass notes and then holding these dampers up with the middle pedal for the duration of the movement.

Classical Music Composer George Gershwin - Classical Music Rhapsody in Blue

2010-04-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

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Classical Music Composer: George Gershwin

Classical Music: Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known.

He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works, including more than a dozen Broadway shows, in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin.

George Gershwin composed music for both Broadway and the classical concert hall, as well as popular songs that brought his work to an even wider public. His compositions have been used in numerous films and on television, and many became jazz standards recorded in numerous variations. Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs.

Biography

Early life in classical music

Gershwin was named Jacob Gershowitz at birth in Brooklyn on September 26, 1898. His parents were Russian Jews. His father, Morris (Moishe) Gershowitz, changed his family name to 'Gershvin' some time after immigrating to the United States from St. Petersburg, Russia in the early 1890s. Gershwin's mother Rosa Bruskin had already immigrated from Russia. She met Gershowitz in New York and they married on July 21, 1895. (George changed the spelling of the family name to 'Gershwin' after he became a professional musician; other members of his family followed suit.)

George Gershwin was the second of four children. He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he was intrigued by what he heard at his friend Maxie Rosenzweig's violin recital. The sound and the way his friend played captured him. His parents had bought a piano for lessons for his older brother Ira, but to his parents' surprise and Ira's relief, it was George who played it. Although his younger sister Frances Gershwin was the first in the family to make money from her musical talents, she married young and devoted herself to being a mother and housewife. She gave up her performing career, but settled into painting for another creative outlet — painting was also a hobby of George Gershwin.

Gershwin tried various piano teachers for two years, and then was introduced to Charles Hambitzer by Jack Miller, the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Until Hambitzer's death in 1918, he acted as Gershwin's mentor. Hambitzer taught Gershwin conventional piano technique, introduced him to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestra concerts. At home, following such concerts, young Gershwin would attempt to reproduce at the piano the music that he had heard. He later studied with classical composer Rubin Goldmark and avant-garde composer-theorist Henry Cowell.

Tin Pan Alley

At the age of fifteen, George left school and found his first job as a performer as a "song plugger" for Jerome H. Remick and Company, a publishing firm on New York City's Tin Pan Alley, where he earned $15 a week. His first published song was "When You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em." It was published in 1916 when Gershwin was only 17 years old and earned him a sum total of $5, although he was promised much more.

His 1917 novelty rag "Rialto Ripples" was a commercial success, and in 1919 he scored his first big national hit with his song "Swanee" with words by Irving Caesar. In 1916, Gershwin started working for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls in New York, recording and arranging. He produced dozens, if not hundreds, of rolls under his own and assumed names. (Pseudonyms attributed to Gershwin include Fred Murtha and Bert Wynn.) He also recorded rolls of his own compositions for the Duo-Art and Welte-Mignon reproducing pianos. As well as recording piano rolls, Gershwin made a brief foray into vaudeville, accompanying both Nora Bayes and Louise Dresser on the piano.

In the early 1920s Gershwin frequently worked with the lyricist Buddy DeSylva. Together they created the experimental one-act jazz opera Blue Monday set in Harlem, which is widely regarded as a forerunner to the groundbreaking Porgy and Bess.

In 1924, George and Ira Gershwin collaborated on a musical comedy Lady Be Good, which included such future standards as "Fascinating Rhythm" and "Oh, Lady Be Good!."

This was followed by Oh, Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), Strike up the Band (1927 and 1930), Show Girl (1929), Girl Crazy (1930), which introduced the standard "I Got Rhythm"; and Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Classical music, opera, ballet, and European influences

In 1924, Gershwin composed his first major classical work, Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano. It was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and premiered by Paul Whiteman's concert band in New York. It proved to be his most popular work.

Gershwin stayed in Paris for a short period, where he applied to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger, along with several other prospective tutors such as Maurice Ravel, rejected him, however, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style. While there, Gershwin wrote An American in Paris. This work received mixed reviews upon its first performance at Carnegie Hall on December 13, 1928, but it quickly became part of the standard repertoire in Europe and the United States. Growing tired of the Parisian musical scene, Gershwin returned to the United States.

In 1929, Gershwin was contracted by Fox Film Corporation to compose the score for the movie Delicious. Two movements were used in the final film, the five-minute "Dream Sequence" and the six-minute "Manhattan Rhapsody". Gershwin became infuriated when the rest of the score was rejected by Fox Film Corporation, and it would be seven years before he worked in Hollywood again.

His most ambitious composition was Porgy and Bess (1935). Gershwin called it a "folk opera," and it is now widely regarded as the most important American opera of the twentieth century. Based on the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, the action takes place in the fictional all-black neighborhood of Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina. With the exception of several minor speaking roles, all of the characters are black. The music combines elements of popular music of the day, with a strong influence of Black music, with techniques typical of opera, such as recitative, through-composition and an extensive system of leitmotifs. Porgy and Bess contains some of Gershwin's most sophisticated music, including a fugue, a passacaglia, the use of atonality, polytonality and polyrhythm, and a tone row. Even the "set numbers" (of which "Summertime", "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" and "It Ain't Necessarily So" are well known examples) are some of the most refined and ingenious of Gershwin's output. (For the performances, Gershwin collaborated with Eva Jessye, whom he picked as the musical director. One of the outstanding musical alumnae of Western University in Kansas, she had created her own choir in New York and performed widely with them.)

After Porgy and Bess, Gershwin eventually was commissioned by RKO Pictures in 1936 to compose songs and the underscore for Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Gershwin's extended score, which would marry ballet with jazz in a new way, runs over an hour in length. It took Gershwin several months to write and orchestrate it.

Hollywood and early death

Early in 1937, Gershwin began to complain of blinding headaches and a recurring impression that he was smelling burned rubber. Doctors discovered he had developed a type of cystic malignant brain tumor known as glioblastoma multiforme. Although some tried to trace his disease to a blow on the head from a golf ball, the cause of this type of cancer is still unknown. This type of cancer occurs most often in males, accounts for 52% of all brain cancers, and is nearly always fatal.

The diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme has been questioned. The surgeon's description of Gershwin's tumor as a right temporal lobe cyst with a mural nodule is much more consistent with a pilocytic astrocytoma, a very low-grade of brain tumor. Further, Gershwin's initial olfactory hallucination (the unpleasant smell of burning rubber) was in 1934. It is highly unlikely that a glioblastoma multiforme would cause symptoms of that duration prior to causing death. Pilocytic astrocytomas may cause symptoms for twenty or more years prior to diagnosis. Thus, it is possible that Gershwin's prominent chronic gastrointestinal symptoms (which he called his "composer's stomach") were a manifestation of temporal lobe epilepsy caused by his tumor. If this is correct, then Gershwin was not "a notorious hypochondriac," as suggested by his biographer Edward Jablonski.

In January 1937, Gershwin performed in a special concert of his music with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under the direction of French maestro Pierre Monteux. It was in Hollywood, while working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies, that he collapsed. He died on July 11, 1937 at the age of 38 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital following surgery for the tumor. John O'Hara remarked: "George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to." A memorial concert was held at the Hollywood Bowl on September 8, 1937 at which Otto Klemperer conducted his own orchestration of the second of Gershwin's Three Piano Preludes.

Gershwin received his sole Oscar nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 1937 Oscars, for "They Can't Take That Away from Me" written with his brother Ira for the 1937 film Shall We Dance. The nomination was posthumous; Gershwin died two months after the film's release.

Gershwin had a 10-year affair with composer Kay Swift and frequently consulted her about his music. Oh, Kay was named for her. After Gershwin died, Swift arranged some of his music, transcribed some of his recordings, and collaborated with his brother Ira on several projects.

Gershwin died intestate. All his property passed to his mother. He is buried in the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.^[29] The Gershwin estate continues to collect significant royalties from licensing the copyrights on Gershwin's work. The estate supported the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act because its 1923 cutoff date was shortly before Gershwin had begun to create his most popular works. The copyrights on those works expired at the end of 2007 in the European Union
.

According to Fred Astaire's letters to Adele Astaire, Gershwin whispered Astaire's name before passing away.

In 2005, The Guardian determined using "estimates of earnings accrued in a composer's lifetime" that George Gershwin was the wealthiest composer of all time.

Musical style and influence

"Much has been made of his debt to African-American music, and it is indeed a major source of his inspiration, but it's not the only one." Gershwin was influenced by French composers of the early twentieth century. In turn Maurice Ravel was impressed with Gershwin's abilities, commenting, "Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing." The orchestrations in Gershwin's symphonic works often seem similar to those of Ravel; likewise, Ravel's two piano concertos evince an influence of Gershwin.

Gershwin asked to study with Ravel. When Ravel heard how much Gershwin earned, Ravel replied with words to the effect of, "You should give me lessons." (Some versions of this story feature Igor Stravinsky rather than Ravel as the composer; however Stravinsky confirmed that he originally heard the story from Ravel.)

Gershwin's own Concerto in F was criticized for being related to the work of Claude Debussy, more so than to the expected jazz style. The comparison did not deter Gershwin from continuing to explore French styles. The title of An American in Paris reflects the very journey that he had consciously taken as a composer: "The opening part will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and Les Six, though the tunes are original."

Aside from the French influence, Gershwin was intrigued by the works of Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Arnold Schoenberg. He also asked Schoenberg for composition lessons. Schoenberg refused, saying "I would only make you a bad Schoenberg, and you're such a good Gershwin already." (This quote is similar to one credited to Maurice Ravel during Gershwin's 1928 visit to France — "Why be a second-rate Ravel, when you are a first-rate Gershwin?")

Russian Joseph Schillinger's influence as Gershwin's teacher of composition (1932–1936) was substantial in providing him with a method to composition. There has been some disagreement about the nature of Schillinger's influence on Gershwin. After the posthumous success of Porgy and Bess, Schillinger claimed he had a large and direct influence in overseeing the creation of the opera; Ira completely denied that his brother had any such assistance for this work. A third account of Gershwin's musical relationship with his teacher was written by Gershwin's close friend Vernon Duke, also a Schillinger student, in an article for the Musical Quarterly in 1947.

What set Gershwin apart was his ability to manipulate forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular songs of his era. Although George Gershwin would seldom make grand statements about his music, he believed that "true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today."

In 2007, the Library of Congress named their Prize for Popular Song after George and Ira Gershwin. Recognizing the profound and positive effect of popular music on culture, the prize is given annually to a composer or performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins. On March 1, 2007, the first Gershwin Prize was awarded to Paul Simon.

Recordings and film

Early in his career Gershwin made dozens of player piano piano roll recordings, which were a main source of income for him. Many are of popular music of the period and others are of his own works. Once his musical theatre-writing career took precedence, his regular roll-recording sessions dwindled. He did record additional rolls throughout the 1920s, including a complete version of his Rhapsody in Blue.

Compared to the piano rolls, there are few accessible audio recordings of Gershwin's playing. His first recording was his own Swanee with the Fred Van Eps Trio in 1919. The recorded balance highlights the banjo playing of Van Eps, and the piano is overshadowed. The recording took place before Swanee became famous as an Al Jolson specialty in early 1920.

Gershwin did record an abridged version of Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1924, soon after the world premiere. Gershwin and the same orchestra made an electrical recording of the abridged version for Victor in 1927. However, a dispute in the studio over interpretation angered Paul Whiteman and he left. The conductor's baton was taken over by Victor's staff conductor Nathaniel Shilkret.

In 1925, Gershwin sat down at the keyboard of an Aeolean Duo-Art Weber reproducing piano and created an exact record — note for note, pause for pause, inflection for inflection — of his famous Rhapsody in Blue. The inspiration for the piece came to him during a train journey to Boston, "with its steely rhythms, its rattlety-bang . . . I suddenly heard - and even saw on paper - the complete construction of the rhapsody from beginning to end. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America - of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness." This piano and the recording survive today and can be heard several times per day at the Music House Museum located near Traverse City, Michigan.

Gershwin made a number of solo piano recordings of tunes from his musicals, some including the vocals of Fred and Adele Astaire, as well as his Three Preludes for piano. In 1929, Gershwin "supervised" the world premiere recording of An American in Paris with Nathaniel Shilkret and the Victor Symphony Orchestra. Gershwin's role in the recording was rather limited, particularly because Shilkret was conducting and had his own ideas about the music. When it was realized no one had been hired to play the brief celeste solo, Gershwin was asked if he could and would play the instrument, and he agreed. Gershwin can be heard, rather briefly, on the recording during the slow section.

Gershwin appeared on several radio programs, including Rudy Vallee's, and played some of his compositions. This included the third movement of the Concerto in F with Vallee conducting the studio orchestra. Some of these performances were preserved on transcription discs and have been released on LP and CD.

In 1934, in an effort to earn money to finance his planned folk opera, Gershwin hosted his own radio program titled Music by Gershwin. The show was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network from February to May and again in September through the final show on December 23, 1934. He presented his own work as well as the work of other composers. Recordings from this and other radio broadcasts include his Variations on I Got Rhythm, portions of the Concerto in F, and numerous songs from his musical comedies. He also recorded a run-through of his Second Rhapsody, conducting the orchestra and playing the piano solos. Gershwin recorded excerpts from Porgy and Bess with members of the original cast, conducting the orchestra from the keyboard; he even announced the selections and the names of the performers. In 1935 RCA Victor asked him to supervise recordings of highlights from Porgy and Bess; these were his last recordings.

A 74-second newsreel film clip of Gershwin playing I've Got Rhythm has survived, filmed at the opening of the Manhattan Theater (now The Ed Sullivan Theater) in August of 1931. There are also silent home movies of Gershwin, some of them shot on Kodachrome color film stock, which have been featured in tributes to the composer. In addition, there is newsreel footage of Gershwin playing "Madamoselle from New Rochelle" and the title song from Strike Up The Band on the piano during a Broadway rehearsal of the 1930 musical production. The comedy team of Clark and McCullough are seen conversing with Gershwin, then singing as he plays.

In 1965, Movietone Records released an album MTM 1009 featuring Gershwin's piano rolls of the titled George Gerswhin plays RHAPSODY IN BLUE and his other favorite compositions. The flip side of the LP featured 9 other recordings.

In 1975, Columbia Records released an album featuring Gershwin's piano rolls of the Rhapsody In Blue, accompanied by the Columbia Jazz Band playing the original jazz-band accompaniment, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. The flip side of the Columbia Masterworks release features Tilson Thomas leading the New York Philharmonic in An American In Paris. In 1976, RCA Records, as part of their "Victrola Americana" line released a collection of Gershwin recordings, taken from 78's recorded in the 20's and called the l.p., "Gershwin plays Gershwin, Historic First Recordings" (RCA Victrola AVM1-1740) and included recordings of "Rhapsody in Blue" with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra and Gershwin on piano, "An American in Paris", from 1927 with Gershwin on celesta; "Three Preludes", "Clap Yo' Hands" and Someone to Watch Over Me", among others.There are a total of 10 recordings on the album. In 1993, a selection of piano rolls originally produced by Gershwin for the Standard Music Roll Company were issued by Nonesuch Records through the efforts of Artis Woodhouse. It is entitled Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls.

Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs, including Paul Posnak, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, Dean Martin, Al Jolson, Bobby Darin, Percy Grainger, Art Tatum, Yehudi Menuhin, Bing Crosby, Janis Joplin, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke, Diana Ross, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Hiromi Uehara, Madonna, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Marni Nixon, Natalie Cole, Patti Austin, Nina Simone, Maureen McGovern, John Fahey, The Residents, Kate Bush, Sublime, Sting, and Liquid Tension Experiment.

In October of 2009, it was reported by Rolling Stone that Brian Wilson is completing at least two unfinished compositions by George Gershwin for possible release in 2010.

Baseline Studio Systems announced in January 2010 that Steven Spielberg may direct a biopic about the composer's life, which is scheduled for release in 2012; 32 year-old American actor Zachary Quinto has been confirmed for the leading role of George Gershwin.

Compositions

Main article: List of compositions by George Gershwin

Orchestral

Rhapsody in Blue (for piano and orchestra, 1924)
Piano Concerto in F (1925)
An American in Paris (for orchestra, 1928)
Dream Sequence (for orchestra, 1929)
Second Rhapsody, originally titled Rhapsody in Rivets (for piano and orchestra, 1931)
Cuban Overture (1932), originally entitled Rumba
Variations on "I Got Rhythm" (for piano and orchestra) (1934)
Catfish Row (1936) a suite based on music from Porgy and Bess
Shall We Dance (1937) a movie score feature-length ballet

Solo Piano

Preludes For Piano (1926)
George Gershwin's Songbook (1932) (piano arrangements of eighteen songs)

Operas

Blue Monday, (1922) one-act opera
Porgy and Bess (1935) at the Colonial Theatre in Boston

London Musicals

Primrose (1924)

Broadway Musicals

George White's Scandals (1920–1924) (featuring, at one point, the 1922 one-act opera Blue Monday)
Lady, Be Good (1924)
Tip-Toes (1925)
Tell Me More! (1925)
Oh, Kay! (1926)
Strike up the Band (1927)
Funny Face (1927)
Rosalie (1928)
Show Girl (1929)
Girl Crazy (1930)
Of Thee I Sing (1931)
Pardon My English (1933)
Let 'Em Eat Cake (1933)
My One and Only (1983) (an original 1983 musical using previously written Gershwin songs)
Crazy for You (1992), a revised version of Girl Crazy, written and compiled without the participation of either George or Ira Gershwin.

Films for which Gershwin wrote original scores

Delicious (1931) (an early version of the Second Rhapsody and one other musical sequence was used in this film, the rest were rejected by the studio)
Shall We Dance (1937) (original orchestral score by Gershwin, no recordings available in modern stereo, some sections have never been recorded)
A Damsel in Distress (1937)
The Goldwyn Follies (1938) (posthumously released)
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947) (uses songs previously unpublished)

Classical Music Composer: George Gershwin

Classical Music: Rhapsody in Blue

Rhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. The composition was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé three times, in 1924, in 1926, and finally in 1942. The piece received its premiere in a concert entitled An Experiment in Modern Music, which was held on February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band with Gershwin playing the piano. The version for piano and symphony orchestra, orchestrated by Ferde Grofé in 1942, has become one of the most popular American concert works.

History

Commission

After the success of an experimental classical-jazz concert held with French-Canadian singer Eva Gauthier at Aeolian Hall on 1 November 1923, band leader Paul Whiteman decided to attempt something more ambitious. He asked Gershwin to contribute a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz concert he would give in Aeolian Hall in February 1924. Whiteman became interested in featuring such an extended composition by Gershwin in the concert after he had collaborated with Gershwin in the Scandals of 1922, impressed by the original performance of the one-act opera Blue Monday, which was nevertheless a commercial failure. There would certainly be call for revisions to the score; he felt that he would not have enough time to compose the new piece.

Late on the evening of January 3, at the Ambassador Billiard Parlor at Broadway and 52nd Street in Manhattan, while George Gershwin and Buddy De Sylva were playing billiards, his brother Ira Gershwin was reading the 4 January edition of the New York Tribune. An article entitled "What Is American Music?" about the Whiteman concert caught his attention, in which the final paragraph claimed that "George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto, Irving Berlin is writing a syncopated tone poem, and Victor Herbert is working on an American suite."

In a phone call to Whiteman next morning, Gershwin was told that Whiteman's rival Vincent Lopez was planning to steal the idea of his experimental concert and there was no time to lose. Gershwin was finally persuaded to compose the piece.

Composition

Since there were only five weeks left, Gershwin hastily set about composing a piece, and on the train journey to Boston, the ideas of Rhapsody in Blue came to his mind. He told his first biographer Isaac Goldberg in 1931:

It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.

Gershwin began his work on January 7 as dated on the original manuscript for two pianos. The piece was titled "American Rhapsody" during composition. The title Rhapsody in Blue was suggested by Ira Gershwin after his visit to a gallery exhibition of James McNeill Whistler paintings, which bear titles such as Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket and Arrangement in Gray and Black (better known as Whistler's Mother). After a few weeks, Gershwin finished his composition and passed the score to Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grofé, who orchestrated the piece, finishing it on February 4, only eight days before the premiere.

Premiere

Rhapsody in Blue premiered in an afternoon concert on February 12, 1924, held by Paul Whiteman and his band Palais Royal Orchestra, entitled An Experiment in Modern Music, which took place in Aeolian Hall in New York City. The event has since become historic specifically because of its premiere of the Rhapsody.

The purpose of the experiment, as told by Whiteman in a pre-concert lecture in front of many classical music critics and highbrows, was "to be purely educational." It would "at least provide a stepping stone which will make it very simple for the masses to understand, and therefore, enjoy symphony and opera." The program was long, including 26 separate musical movements, divided into 2 parts and 11 sections, bearing titles such as "True form of jazz" and "Contrast: legitimate scoring vs. jazzing". Gershwin's latest composition was the second to last piece (before Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1). As many of the numbers sounded similar, and the ventilation system was broken, people in the audience were losing their patience, until the clarinet glissando that opened Rhapsody in Blue was heard. The piece was a huge popular success, and remains popular to this day.

The Rhapsody was performed by Whiteman's band, with an added section of string players, and George Gershwin on piano. Gershwin decided to keep his options open as to when Whiteman would bring in the orchestra and he did not write out one of the pages for solo piano, with only the words "Wait for nod" scrawled by Grofé on the band score. Gershwin improvised some of what he was playing. As he did not write out the piano part until after the performance, we do not know exactly how the original Rhapsody sounded.

The opening clarinet glissando came into being during rehearsal when; "...as a joke on Gershwin, [Ross] Gorman (Whiteman's virtuoso clarinettist) played the opening measure with a noticeable glissando, adding what he considered a humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favourably to Gorman’s whimsy, Gershwin asked him to perform the opening measure that way at the concert and to add as much of a 'wail' as possible."

Responses

By the end of 1927, Whiteman’s band had played the Rhapsody eighty-four times, and its recording sold a million copies. Whiteman later adopted the piece as his band's theme song, and opened his radio programs with the slogan "Everything new but the Rhapsody in Blue".

The piece received mixed reviews from mainstream critics. Olin Downes, reviewing the concert in The New York Times:

This composition shows extraordinary talent, as it shows a young composer with aims that go far beyond those of his ilk, struggling with a form of which he is far from being master... In spite of all this, he has expressed himself in a significant and, on the whole, highly original form.... His first theme... is no mere dance-tune... it is an idea, or several ideas, correlated and combined in varying and contrasting rhythms that immediately intrigue the listener. The second theme is more after the manner of some of Mr. Gershwin's colleagues. Tuttis are too long, cadenzas are too long, the peroration at the end loses a large measure of the wildness and magnificence it could easily have had if it were more broadly prepared, and, for all that, the audience was stirred and many a hardened concertgoer excited with the sensation of a new talent finding its voice... There was tumultuous applause for Gershwin's composition.

Another reviewer, Lawrence Gilman, a Richard Wagner specialist who later wrote a famously devastating review of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, commenting on the Rhapsody in the New York Tribune on February 13, 1924, said:

How trite, feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! ... Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!

Some critics described the piece as formless, and claimed that Gershwin only glued his melodic segments together into one piece. Pitts Sanborn wrote that the music "runs off into empty passage-work and meaningless repetition". In an article in Atlantic Monthly in 1955, Leonard Bernstein, who nevertheless admitted that he loved the piece, wrote:

The Rhapsody is not a composition at all. It's a string of separate paragraphs stuck together. The themes are terrific – inspired, God-given. I don't think there has been such an inspired melodist on this earth since Tchaikovsky. But if you want to speak of a composer, that's another matter. Your Rhapsody in Blue is not a real composition in the sense that whatever happens in it must seem inevitable. You can cut parts of it without affecting the whole. You can remove any of these stuck-together sections and the piece still goes on as bravely as before. It can be a five-minute piece or a twelve-minute piece. And in fact, all these things are being done to it every day. And it's still the Rhapsody in Blue.

Music Analysis

Is it jazz?

Whether or not Rhapsody in Blue is "jazz" remains a much-debated topic. It should be noted that Whiteman styled himself "The King of Jazz". This appellation, applied to Whiteman's band of all-white musicians playing from written arrangements, would be questioned today, but in the 1920s, the word jazz was used loosely to cover a broad range of contemporary popular music. Gilbert Seldes, in his book The Seven Lively Arts, was one of the first books to treat popular culture in a serious way, and "jazz" was starting to be seen as a significant American contribution to musical culture. Whiteman undertook to present what for the most part was an ordinary set of dance-band numbers in a concert hall under the trappings of high culture.

Due to Whiteman’s advertisement of the concert at Aeolian Hall, and the orchestration for primarily wind instruments, the audience was predisposed to listen to the piece as a jazz work. Critics have voiced widely varying opinions on where Rhapsody fits into the jazz canon. Thirty years after its premiere, William Grossman and Jack Farrell denounced the entire Aeolian concert, including Rhapsody in Blue, saying the "clumsily syncopated 'jazz' was gradually replaced with ponderous pseudosymphonic harmonies played over dance rhythms, culminating in the concert rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, one of the most ludicrous of the popular attempts during the 1920s to merge jazz and 'serious' music". But critic Deems Taylor voiced the opinion that the Rhapsody was "genuine jazz music, not only in its scoring but in its idiom", and Osgood claimed that Gershwin was able to "take the elements of jazz and employ them with a distinct degree of success in forms of composition higher and larger than popular songs and musical comedy".

Analysis

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (September 2007)

Paul Whiteman asked Gershwin to write a "jazz concerto" which became the Rhapsody in Blue; like a concerto, the piece is written for solo piano with orchestra: a rhapsody differs from a concerto in that it features one extended movement instead of separate movements. Rhapsodies often incorporate passages of an improvisatory nature (although written out in a score), and are irregular in form, with heightened contrasts and emotional exuberance; Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is typical in that it certainly has large contrasts in musical texture, style, and color. The music ranges from intensely rhythmic piano solos to slow, broad, and richly orchestrated sections.

The opening of Rhapsody in Blue is written as a clarinet trill followed by a legato 17-note rising diatonic scale. During a rehearsal, Whiteman's virtuoso clarinetist, Ross Gorman, rendered the upper portion of the scale as a captivating (and fully trombone-like) glissando: Gershwin heard it and insisted that it be repeated in the performance. An American Heritage columnist called it the "famous opening clarinet glissando... that has become as familiar as the start of Beethoven’s Fifth." The effect is produced by gradually opening the left-hand tone-holes on the clarinet during the passage from the last concert F (or earlier if possible, thus employing the right hand as well) to the top concert B-flat, adjusting the embouchure to smoothly control the continuously rising pitch. This effect has now become standard performance practice for the work.

Rhapsody in Blue displays Gershwin’s gifts of both rhythmic invention and melodic inspiration, as well as his ability to write a piece with large-scale harmonic and melodic structure. The piece is characterized by strong motivic interrelatedness. Much of the motivic material is introduced in the first 14 measures. David Schiff identifies five major themes plus a sixth “tag”. Of these, two appear in the first 14 measures, and the tag shows up in measure 19. Two of the remaining three themes are rhythmically related to the very first theme in measure 2, which is sometimes called the Glissando theme (after the opening glissando in the clarinet solo) or the Ritornello theme. The remaining theme is the Train theme, which is the first to appear (at rehearsal 9) after the opening material. All of the themes rely on the blues scale, which includes lowered sevenths and a mixture of major and minor thirds. Each theme appears both in orchestrated form and as a piano solo. There are considerable differences in the style of presentation of each theme.

The harmonic structure of Rhapsody is more difficult to analyse. The piece begins and ends in B flat, but it modulates towards the sub-dominant direction very early on, returning to B flat at the end, rather abruptly. The opening modulates "downward", as it were, through the keys B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, B, E, and finally to A major. Modulation through the circle of fifths in the reverse direction inverts classical tonal relationships, but does not abandon them. The entire middle section resides primarily in C major, with forays into G major (the dominant relation). Modulations occur freely and easily, though not always with harmonic direction. Gershwin frequently uses a recursive harmonic progression of minor thirds to give the illusion of motion when in fact a passage does not change key from beginning to end. Modulation by thirds was a common element of Tin Pan Alley music.

The influences of jazz and other contemporary styles are certainly present in Rhapsody in Blue. Ragtime rhythms are abundant, as is the Cuban "clave" rhythm, which doubles as a dance rhythm in the Charleston jazz dance.

Gershwin’s own intentions were to correct the belief that jazz had to be played strictly in time so that one could dance to it. The Rhapsody’s tempos vary widely, and there is an almost extreme use of rubato in many places throughout. The clearest influence of jazz is the use of blue notes, and the exploration of their half-step relationship plays a key role in the Rhapsody. The use of so-called "vernacular" instruments, such as accordion, banjo, and saxophones in the orchestra, contribute to its jazz or popular style, and the latter two of these instruments have remained part of Grofé's "standard" orchestra scoring. Gershwin incorporated several different piano styles into the work. He utilized the techniques of stride piano, novelty piano, comic piano, and the song-plugger piano style. Stride piano’s rhythmic and improvisational style is evident in the "agitato e misterioso" section, which begins four bars after rehearsal 33, as well as in other sections, many of which include the orchestra. Novelty piano can be heard at rehearsal 9 with the revelation of the Train theme. The hesitations and light-hearted style of comic piano, a vaudeville approach to piano made well-known by Chico Marx and Jimmy Durante, are evident at rehearsal 22.

Classical Music Composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Classical Music Flight Of The Bumblebee

2010-04-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Classical Music Online Youtube Video

Classical Music Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Classical Music: Flight Of The Bumblebee

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian: Николай Андреевич Римский-Корсаков, tr. Nikolaj Andreevič Rimskij-Korsakov) (18 March [O.S. 6 March] 1844 – 21 June [O.S. 8 June] 1908) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are considered staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects.

Rimsky-Korsakov believed, as did fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, in developing a nationalistic style of classical music. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. His techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.

For much of his life, Rimsky-Korsakov combined his composition and teaching with a career in the Russian military—at first as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, then as the civilian Inspector of Naval Bands. He wrote that he developed a passion for the ocean in childhood from reading books and hearing of his older brother's exploits in the navy. This love of the sea might have influenced him to write two of his best-known orchestral works, the musical tableau Sadko (not his later opera of the same name) and Scheherazade. Through his service as Inspector of Naval Bands, Rimsky-Korsakov expanded his knowledge of wind and brass playing, which enhanced his abilities in orchestration. He passed this knowledge to his students, and also posthumously through a textbook on orchestration that was completed by his son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg.

Rimsky-Korsakov left a considerable body of original Russian nationalist compositions. He prepared works by The Five for performance, which brought them into the active classical repertoire (although there is controversy over his editing of the works of Modest Mussorgsky), and shaped a generation of younger composers and musicians during his decades as an educator. Rimsky-Korsakov is therefore considered "the main architect" of what the classical music public considers the Russian style of composition. His influence on younger composers was especially important. While Rimsky-Korsakov's style was based on those of Glinka, Balakirev, Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt, he "transmitted this style directly to two generations of Russian composers" and influenced non-Russian composers including Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas and Ottorino Respighi.

Life

Early years in classical music

Rimsky-Korsakov was born in Tikhvin, 200 kilometres (120 mi) east of Saint Petersburg, into an aristocratic family with a long line of military and naval service—his older brother Voin, 22 years his senior, became a well-known navigator and explorer.

Rimsky-Korsakov later recalled that his mother played the piano a little, and his father could play a few songs on the piano by ear.It is said that Rimsky-Korsakov inherited his mother's tendency to play too slowly. Beginning at six, he took piano lessons from various local teachers and showed a talent for aural skills, but he showed a lack of interest, playing, as he later wrote, "badly, carelessly, ... poor at keeping time".

Although he started composing by age 10, Rimsky-Korsakov preferred literature over music. He later wrote that from his reading, and tales of his brother's exploits, he developed a poetic love for the sea "without ever having seen it". This love, and prompting from Voin, encouraged the 12-year-old to join the Imperial Russian Navy. He studied at the School for Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in Saint Petersburg and, at 18, took his final examination in April 1862.

While at school, Rimsky-Korsakov took piano lessons from a man named Ulikh. These lessons were sanctioned by Voin, who now served as director of the school, because they would help the youth to develop social skills and overcome his shyness. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that while "indifferent" to lessons, he developed a love for music, fostered by visits to the opera, and, later, orchestral concerts. Ulikh perceived that he had serious musical talent, and recommended another teacher, Feodor A. Kanille (Théodore Canillé). Beginning in the autumn of 1859, Rimsky-Korsakov took lessons in piano and composition from Kanille, whom he later credited as the inspiration for devoting his life to musical composition. Through Kanille, he was exposed to a great deal of new music, including Mikhail Glinka and Robert Schumann Despite Rimsky-Korsakov's now liking his music lessons, Voin cancelled them when Rimsky-Korsakov was 17, as he felt they no longer served a practical need. Kanille told Rimsky-Korsakov to continue coming to him every Sunday, not for formal lessons but to play duets and discuss music. In November 1861, Kanille introduced the 18-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov to Mily Balakirev. Balakirev in turn introduced him to César Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky; all three of these men were already known as composers, despite only being in their 20s. Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote, "With what delight I listened to real business discussions [Rimsky-Korsakov's emphasis] of instrumentation, part writing, etc! And besides, how much talking there was about current musical matters! All at once I had been plunged into a new world, unknown to me, formerly only heard of in the society of my dilettante friends. That was truly a strong impression".

Balakirev encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov to compose and taught him the rudiments when he was not at sea. Balakirev also prompted him to enrich himself in history, literature and criticism. When he showed Balakirev the beginning of a symphony in E-flat minor that he had written, Balakirev insisted he continue working on it despite his lack of formal musical training. By the time Rimsky-Korsakov sailed on a two-year-and-eight-month cruise aboard the clipper Almaz in late 1862, he had completed and orchestrated three movements of the symphony. He composed the slow movement during a stop in England, and mailed the score to Balakirev before going back to sea. At first, his work on the symphony kept Rimsky-Korsakov occupied during his cruise. He purchased scores at every port of call, along with a piano upon which to play them, and filled his idle hours studying Berlioz's treatise on orchestration He found time to read the works of Homer, William Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and he saw London, Niagara Falls, and Rio de Janeiro during his stops in port. Eventually, the lack of outside musical stimuli dulled the young midshipman's hunger to learn, and he wrote to Balakirev that after two years at sea he had neglected his musical lessons for months "Thoughts of becoming a musician and composer gradually left me altogether", he later recalled; "distant lands began to allure me, somehow, although, properly speaking, naval service never pleased me much and hardly suited my character at all".

Mentored by Balakirev; time with The Five

Once back in Saint Petersburg in May 1865, Rimsky-Korsakov's onshore duties consisted of a couple of hours of clerical duty each day, but he recalled that his desire to compose "had been stifled ... I did not concern myself with music at all." He wrote that contact with Balakirev in September 1865 encouraged him "to get accustomed to music and later to plunge into it". At Balakirev's suggestion, he wrote a trio to the scherzo of the E-flat minor symphony, which it had lacked up to that point, and reorchestrated the entire symphony. Its first performance came in December of that year under Balakirev's direction in Saint Petersburg. A second performance followed in March 1866 under the direction of Konstantin Lyadov (father of composer Anatoly Lyadov)

Correspondence between Rimsky-Korsakov and Balakirev clearly shows that some ideas for the symphony originated with Balakirev. Balakirev seldom stopped at merely correcting a piece of music, and would often recompose it at the piano. Rimsky-Korsakov recalled,

A pupil like myself had to submit to Balakirev a proposed composition in its embryo, say, even the first four or eight bars. Balakirev would immediately make corrections, indicating how to recast such an embryo; he would criticize it, would praise and extol the first two bars, but would censure the next two, ridicule them, and try hard to make the author disgusted with them. Vivacity of composition and fertility were not at all in favor, frequent recasting was demanded, and the composition was extended over a long space of time under the cold control of self-criticism.

Rimsky-Korsakov recalled that "Balakirev had no difficulty in getting along with me. At his suggestion I most readily rewrote the symphonic movements composed by me and brought them to completion with the help of his advice and improvisations". Though Rimsky-Korsakov later found Balakirev's influence stifling, and broke free from it, this did not stop him in his memoirs from extolling the older composer's talents as a critic and improviser. Under Balakirev's mentoring, Rimsky-Korsakov turned to other compositions. He began a symphony in B minor, but felt it too closely followed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and abandoned it. He completed an Overture on Three Russian Themes, based on Balakirev's folksong overtures, as well as a Fantasia on Serbian Themes that was performed at a concert given for the delegates of the Slavonic Congress in 1867. In his review of this concert, nationalist critic Vladimir Stasov coined the phrase Moguchaya kuchka for the Balakirev circle (Moguchaya kuchka is usually translated as "The Mighty Handful" or "The Five"). Rimsky-Korsakov also composed the initial versions of Sadko and Antar, which cemented his reputation as a writer of orchestral works.

Rimsky-Korsakov socialized and discussed music with the other members of The Five; they critiqued one another's works in progress and collaborated on new pieces.^[8] He became friends with Alexander Borodin, whose music "astonished" him. He spent an increasing amount of time with Mussorgsky. Balakirev and Mussorgsky played piano four-hand music, Mussorgsky would sing, and they frequently discussed other composers' works, with preferred tastes running "toward Glinka, Schumann and Beethoven's late quartets". Mendelssohn was not thought of highly, Mozart and Haydn "were considered out of date and naïve", and J.S. Bach merely mathematical and unfeeling Berlioz "was highly esteemed", Liszt "crippled and perverted from a musical point of view ... even a caricature", and Wagner discussed little. Rimsky-Korsakov "listened to these opinions with avidity and absorbed the tastes of Balakirev, Cui and Mussorgsky without reasoning or examination". Often, the musical works in question "were played before me only in fragments, and I had no idea of the whole work". This, he wrote, did not stop him from accepting these judgments at face value and repeating them "as if I were thoroughly convinced of their truth".

Rimsky-Korsakov became especially appreciated within The Five, and among those who visited the circle, for his talents as an orchestrator. He was asked by Balakirev to orchestrate a Schubert march for a concert in May 1868, by Cui to orchestrate the opening chorus of his opera William Ratcliff and by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, whose works were greatly appreciated by The Five and who was close to death, to orchestrate his opera The Stone Guest.

In the fall of 1871, Rimsky-Korsakov moved into Voin's former apartment, and invited Mussorgsky to be his roommate. The working arrangement they agreed upon was that Mussorgsky used the piano in the mornings while Rimsky-Korsakov worked on copying or orchestration. When Mussorgsky left for his civil service job at noon, Rimsky-Korsakov then used the piano. Time in the evenings was allotted by mutual agreement. "That autumn and winter the two of us accomplished a good deal", Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, "with constant exchange of ideas and plans. Mussorgsky composed and orchestrated the Polish act of Boris Godunov and the folk scene 'Near Kromy.' I orchestrated and finished my Maid of Pskov."

Professorship, marriage, inspector of bands

In 1871, the 27-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov became Professor of Practical Composition and Instrumentation (orchestration) at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, as well as leader of the Orchestra Class. He retained his position in active naval service, and taught his classes in uniform (military officers in Russia were required to wear their uniforms every day, as they were considered to be always on duty).

Rimsky-Korsakov explained in his memoirs that Mikhaíl Azanchevsky had taken over that year as director of the Conservatory, and wanting new blood to freshen up teaching in those subjects, had offered to pay generously for Rimsky-Korsakov's services. Biographer Mikhail Zetlin suggests that Azanchevsky's motives might have been two-fold. First, Rimsky-Korsakov was the member of the Five least criticized by its opponents, and inviting him to teach at the Conservatory may have been considered a safe way to show that all serious musicians were welcome there. Second, the offer may have been calculated to expose him to an academic climate in which he would write in a more conservative, Western-based style. Balakirev had opposed academic training in music with tremendous vigor, but encouraged him to accept the post to convince others to join the nationalist musical cause.

Rimsky-Korsakov's reputation at this time was as a master of orchestration, based on Sadko and Antar. However, he had written these works mainly by intuition. His knowledge of musical theory was elemental; he had never written any counterpoint, could not harmonize a simple chorale, nor knew the names or intervals of musical chords. He had never conducted an orchestra, and had been discouraged from doing so by the navy, which did not approve of his appearing on the podium in uniform. Aware of his technical shortcomings, Rimsky-Korsakov consulted Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with whom he and the others in The Five had been in occasional contact. Tchaikovsky, unlike The Five, had received academic training in composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, and was serving as Professor of Music Theory at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky advised him to study.

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that while teaching at the Conservatory he soon became "possibly its very best pupil [Rimsky-Korsakov's emphasis], judging by the quantity and value of the information it gave me!" To prepare himself, and to stay at least one step ahead of his students, he took a three-year sabbatical from composing original works, and assiduously studied at home while he lectured at the Conservatory. He taught himself from textbooks, and followed a strict regimen of composing contrapuntal exercises, fugues, chorales and a cappella choruses.

Rimsky-Korsakov eventually became an excellent teacher and a fervent believer in academic training. He revised everything he had composed prior to 1874, even acclaimed works such as Sadko and Antar, in a search for perfection that would remain with him throughout the rest of his life. Assigned to rehearse the Orchestra Class, he mastered the art of conducting. Dealing with orchestral textures as a conductor, and making suitable arrangements of musical works for the Orchestra Class, led to an increased interest in the art of orchestration, an area into which he would further indulge his studies as Inspector of Navy Bands. The score of his Third Symphony, written just after he had completed his three-year program of self-improvement, reflects his hands-on experience with the orchestra.

Professorship brought Rimsky-Korsakov financial security, which encouraged him to settle down and to start a family. In December 1871 he proposed to Nadezhda Purgold, with whom he had developed a close relationship over weekly gatherings of The Five at the Purgold household. They married in July 1872, with Mussorgsky serving as best man. The Rimsky-Korsakovs had six children; one of their sons, Andrei, became a musicologist, married the composer Yuliya Veysberg and wrote a multi-volume study of his father's life and work.

Nadezhda became a musical as well as domestic partner with her husband, much as Clara Schumann had been with her own husband Robert. She was beautiful, capable, strong-willed, and far better trained musically than her husband at the time they married she had attended the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in the mid-1860s, studying piano with Anton Gerke (one of whose private students was Mussorgsky) and music theory with Nikolai Zaremba, who also taught Tchaikovsky. Nadezhda proved a fine and most demanding critic of her husband's work; her influence over him in musical matters was strong enough for Balakirev and Stasov to wonder whether she was leading him astray from their musical preferences. Musicologist Lyle Neff wrote that while Nadezhda gave up her own compositional career when she married Rimsky-Korsakov, she "had a considerable influence on the creation of [Rimsky-Korsakov's] first three operas. She travelled with her husband, attended rehearsals and arranged compositions by him and others" for piano four hands, which she played with her husband. "Her last years were dedicated to issuing her husband's posthumous literary and musical legacy, maintaining standards for performance of his works ... and preparing material for a museum in his name."

In the spring of 1873, the navy created the post of Inspector of Naval Bands and appointed Rimsky-Korsakov. While this kept him on the navy payroll and listed on the roster of the Chancellery of the Navy Department, it allowed him to resign his commission. As Inspector, he visited naval bands throughout Russia, supervised the bandmasters and their appointments, reviewed the bands' repertoire, and inspected the quality of their instruments. He wrote a study program for a complement of music students who held navy fellowships at the Conservatory, and acted as an intermediary between the Conservatory and the navy. The post of Band Inspector came with a promotion to Collegiate Assessor, a civilian rank. "I parted with delight with both my military status and my officer's uniform", he later wrote. "Henceforth I was a musician officially and incontestably."

Rimsky-Korsakov applied himself with zeal to his duties, and indulged in a long-standing desire to familiarize himself with the construction and playing technique of orchestral instruments. These studies prompted him to write a textbook on orchestration. He used the privileges of rank to exercise and expand upon his knowledge. He discussed arrangements of musical works for military band with bandmasters, encouraged and reviewed their efforts, held concerts at which he could hear these pieces, and orchestrated original works, and works by other composers, for military bands.

In March 1884, an Imperial Order abolished the navy office of Inspector of Bands, and Rimsky-Korsakov was relieved of his duties. He worked under Balakirev in the Court Chapel as a deputy until 1894, which allowed him to study Russian Orthodox church music. He also taught classes at the Chapel, and wrote his textbook on harmony for use there and at the Conservatory.

Backlash and May Night

Rimsky-Korsakov's studies and his change in attitude regarding music education brought him the scorn of his fellow nationalists, who thought he was throwing away his Russian heritage to compose fugues and sonatas. After he strove "to crowd in as much counterpoint as possible" into his Third Symphony, he wrote chamber works adhering strictly to classical models, including a string sextet, a string quartet in F minor and a quintet for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano. About the quartet and the symphony, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, that they "were filled with a host of clever things but ... [were] imbued with a dryly pedantic character". Borodin commented that when he heard the symphony, he kept "feeling that this is the work of a German Herr Professor who has put on his glasses and is about to write Eine grosse Symphonie in C".

According to Rimsky-Korsakov, the other members of The Five showed little enthusiasm for the symphony, and less still for the quartet. Nor was his public debut as a conductor, at an 1874 charity concert where he led the orchestra in the new symphony, considered favorably by his compatriots. He later wrote that "they began, indeed, to look down upon me as one on the downward path". Worse still to Rimsky-Korsakov was the faint praise given by Anton Rubinstein, a composer opposed to the nationalists' music and philosophy. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that after Rubinstein heard the quartet, he commented that now Rimsky-Korsakov "might amount to something" as a composer. He wrote that Tchaikovsky continued to support him morally, telling him that he fully applauded what Rimsky-Korsakov was doing and admired both his artistic modesty and his strength of character. Privately, Tchaikovsky confided to Nadezhda von Meck, "Apparently [Rimsky-Korsakov] is now passing through this crisis, and how it will end will be difficult to predict. Either a great master will come out of him, or he will finally become bogged down in contrapuntal tricks".

Two projects helped Rimsky-Korsakov focus on less academic music-making. The first was the creation of two folk song collections in 1874. Rimsky-Korsakov transcribed 40 Russian songs for voice and piano from performances by folk singer Tvorty Filippov, who approached him at Balakirev's suggestion. This collection was followed by a second containing 100 songs, supplied by friends and servants, or taken from rare and out-of-print collections. Rimsky-Korsakov later credited this work as a great influence on him as a composer; it also supplied a vast amount of musical material from which he could draw for future projects, either by direct quotation or as models for composing fakeloric passages. The second project was the editing of orchestral scores by pioneer Russian composer Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857) in collaboration with Balakirev and Anatoly Lyadov. Glinka's sister, Lyudmila Ivanovna Shestavoka, wanted to preserve her brother's musical legacy in print, and paid the costs of the project from her own pocket. No similar project had been attempted before in Russian music, and guidelines for scholarly musical editing had to be established and agreed. While Balakirev favored making changes in Glinka's music to "correct" what he saw as compositional flaws, Rimsky-Korsakov favored a less intrusive approach. Eventually, Rimsky-Korsakov prevailed. "Work on Glinka's scores was an unexpected schooling for me", he later wrote. "Even before this I had known and worshipped his operas; but as editor of the scores in print I had to go through Glinka's style and instrumentation to their last little note ... And this was a beneficent discipline for me, leading me as it did to the path of modern music, after my vicissitudes with counterpoint and strict style".

In the summer of 1877, Rimsky-Korsakov thought increasingly about the short story May Night by Nikolai Gogol. The story had long been a favorite of his, and his wife Nadezhda had encouraged him to write an opera based on it from the day of their betrothal, when they had read it together. While musical ideas for such a work predated 1877, now they came with greater persistence. By winter May Night took an increasing amount of his attention; in February 1878 he started writing in earnest, and he finished the opera by early November.

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that May Night was of great importance because, despite the opera's containing a good deal of contrapuntal music, he nevertheless "cast off the shackles of counterpoint [emphasis Rimsky-Korsakov]". He wrote the opera in a folk-like melodic idiom, and scored it in a transparent manner much in the style of Glinka. Nevertheless, despite the ease of writing this opera and the next, The Snow Maiden, from time to time he suffered from creative paralysis between 1881 and 1888. He kept busy during this time by editing Mussorgsky's works and completing Borodin's Prince Igor (Mussorgsky died in 1881, Borodin in 1887).

Belyayev circle

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that he became acquainted with budding music patron Mitrofan Belyayev (M. P. Belaieff) in Moscow in 1882. Belyayev was one of a growing coterie of Russian nouveau-riche industrialists who became patrons of the arts in mid- to late-19th century Russia; their number included railway magnate Savva Mamontov and textile manufacturer Pavel Tretyakov. Belyayev, Mamontov and Tretyakov "wanted to contribute conspicuously to public life". They had worked their way into wealth, and being Slavophilic in their national outlook believed in the greater glory of Russia. Because of this belief, they were more likely than the aristocracy to support native talent, and were more inclined to support nationalist artists over cosmopolitan ones. This preference paralleled a general upsurge in nationalism and Russophilia that became prevalent in mainstream Russian art and society.

By the winter of 1883 Rimsky-Korsakov had become a regular visitor to the weekly "quartet Fridays" "Les Vendredis") held at Belyayev's home in Saint Petersburg. Belyayev, who had already taken a keen interest in the musical future of the teenage Alexander Glazunov, rented a hall and hired an orchestra in 1884 to play Glazunov's First Symphony plus an orchestral suite Glazunov had just composed. This concert and a rehearsal the previous year gave Rimsky-Korsakov the idea of offering concerts featuring Russian compositions, a prospect to which Belyayev was amenable. The Russian Symphony Concerts were inaugurated during the 1886–87 season, with Rimsky-Korsakov sharing conducting duties with Anatoly Lyadov. He finished his revision of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and conducted it at the opening concert. The concerts also coaxed him out of his creative drought; he wrote Scheherazade, Capriccio Espagnol and the Russian Easter Overture specifically for them. He noted that these three works "show a considerable falling off in the use of contrapuntal devices ... [replaced] by a strong and virtuoso development of every kind of figuration which sustains the technical interest of my compositions."

Rimsky-Korsakov was asked for advice and guidance not just on the Russian Symphony Concerts, but on other projects through which Belyayev aided Russian composers. "By force of matters purely musical I turned out to be the head of the Belyayev circle", he wrote. "As the head Belyayev, too, considered me, consulting me about everything and referring everyone to me as chief". In 1884 Belyayev set up an annual Glinka prize, and in 1885 he founded his own music publishing firm, through which he published works by Borodin, Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov at his own expense. To select which composers to assist with money, publication or performances from the many who now appealed for help, Belyayev set up an advisory council made up of Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. They would look through the compositions and appeals submitted and suggest which composers were deserving of patronage and public attention.

The group of composers who now congregated with Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov became known as the Belyayev circle, named after their financial benefactor. These composers were nationalistic in their musical outlook, as The Five before them had been. Like The Five, they believed in a uniquely Russian style of classical music that utilized folk music and exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements, as exemplified by the music of Balakirev, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Unlike The Five, these composers also believed in the necessity of an academic, Western-based background in composition—which Rimsky-Korsakov had instilled in his years at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Compared to the "revolutionary" composers in Balakirev's circle, Rimsky-Korsakov found those in the Belyayev circle to be "progressive ... attaching as it did great importance to technical perfection, but ... also broke new paths, though more securely, even if less speedily ..."

Increased contact with Tchaikovsky

In November 1887, Tchaikovsky arrived in Saint Petersburg in time to hear several of the Russian Symphony Concerts. One of them included the first complete performance of his First Symphony, subtitled Winter Daydreams, in its final version. Another concert featured the premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov's Third Symphony in its revised version. Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky having corresponded considerably before the visit, they spent a lot of time together, along with Glazunov and Lyadov. Though Tchaikovsky had been a regular visitor to the Rimsky-Korsakov home since 1876, and had at one point offered to arrange Rimsky-Korsakov's appointment as director of the Moscow Conservatory, this was the beginning of closer relations between the pair. Within a couple of years, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, Tchaikovsky's visits became more frequent.

During these visits and especially in public, Rimsky-Korsakov wore a mask of geniality. Privately, he found the situation emotionally complex, and confessed his fears to his friend, the Moscow critic Semyon Kruglikov. Memories persisted of the tension between Tchaikovsky and The Five over the differences in their musical philosophies—tension acute enough for Tchaikovsky's brother Modest to liken their relations at that time to "those between two friendly neighboring states ... cautiously prepared to meet on common ground, but jealously guarding their separate interests". Rimsky-Korsakov observed, not without annoyance, how Tchaikovsky became increasingly popular among Rimsky-Korsakov's followers. This personal jealousy was compounded by a professional one, as Tchaikovsky's music became increasingly popular among the composers of the Belyayev circle, and remained on the whole more famous than his own. Even so, when Tchaikovsky attended Rimsky-Korsakov's nameday party in May 1893, Rimsky-Korsakov asked Tchaikovsky personally if he would conduct four concerts of the Russian Musical Society in Saint Petersburg the following season. After hesitation, Tchaikovsky agreed. While his sudden death in late 1893 prevented him from fulfilling this commitment in its entirety, the list of works he had planned to conduct included Rimsky-Korsakov's Third Symphony.

Classical music in later years

In March 1889, Angelo Neumann's traveling "Richard Wagner Theater" visited Saint Petersburg, giving four cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen there under the direction of Karl Muck. The Five had ignored Wagner's music, but The Ring impressed Rimsky-Korsakov: he was astonished with Wagner's mastery of orchestration. He attended the rehearsals with Glazunov, and followed the score. After hearing these performances, Rimsky-Korsakov devoted himself almost exclusively to composing operas for the rest of his creative life. Wagner's use of the orchestra influenced Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, beginning with the arrangement of the polonaise from Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov that he made for concert use in 1889.

In 1892 Rimsky-Korsakov suffered a second creative drought, brought on by bouts of depression and alarming physical symptoms. Rushes of blood to the head, confusion, memory loss and unpleasant obsessions led to a medical diagnosis of neurasthenia. Crises in the Rimsky-Korsakov household may have been a factor—the serious illnesses of his wife and one of his sons from diphtheria in 1890, the deaths of his mother and youngest child, as well as the onset of the prolonged, ultimately fatal illness of his second youngest child. He resigned from the Russian Symphony Concerts and the Court Chapel and considered giving up composition permanently. After making third versions of the musical tableau Sadko and the opera The Maid of Pskov, he closed his musical account with the past; he had left none of his major works before May Night in their original form.

Another death brought about a creative renewal. The passing of Tchaikovsky presented a two-fold opportunity—to write for the Imperial Theaters and to compose an opera based on Nikolai Gogol's short story Christmas Eve, a work on which Tchaikovsky had based his opera Vakula the Smith. The success of Rimsky-Korsakov's Christmas Eve encouraged him to complete an opera approximately every 18 months between 1893 and 1908—a total of 11 during this period. He also started and abandoned another draft of his treatise on orchestration, but made a third attempt and almost finished it in the last four years of his life. (His son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg completed the book posthumously in 1912.) Rimsky-Korsakov's scientific treatment of orchestration, illustrated with more than 300 examples from his work, set a new standard for texts of its kind.

In 1905, demonstrations took place at Saint Petersburg Conservatory as part of the 1905 Revolution; these, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, were triggered by similar disturbances at Saint Petersburg State University, in which students demanded political reforms and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Russia. "I was chosen a member of the committee for adjusting differences with agitated pupils", he recalled; however, almost as soon as the committee had been formed, "[a]ll sorts of measures were recommended to expel the ringleaders, to quarter the police in the Conservatory, to close the Conservatory entirely". A lifelong liberal politically, he wrote that he felt someone had to protect the rights of the students to demonstrate, especially as disputes and wrangling between students and authorities were becoming increasingly violent. In an open letter, he sided with the students against what he saw as unwarranted interference by Conservatory leadership and the Russian Musical Society. A second letter, this time signed by a number of faculty including Rimsky-Korsakov, demanded the resignation of the head of the Conservatory. Partly as a result of these two letters, he wrote, approximately 100 Conservatory students were expelled, and he was removed from his professorship. Just before the dismissal was enacted, Rimsky-Korsakov received a letter from one of the members of the school directorate, suggesting that he take up the directorship in the interest of calming student unrest. "Probably the member of the Directorate held a minority opinion, but signed the resolution nevertheless," he wrote. "I sent a negative reply."

Not long after Rimsky-Korsakov's dismissal, a student production of his opera Kaschei the Immortal was followed not with the scheduled concert but with a political demonstration, which led to a police ban on Rimsky-Korsakov's work. Due in part to widespread press coverage of these events, an immediate wave of outrage to the ban arose throughout Russia and abroad; liberals and intellectuals deluged the composer's residence with letters of sympathy, and even peasants who had not heard a note of Rimsky-Korsakov's music sent small monetary donations. Several faculty members of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory resigned in protest, including Glazunov and Lyadov. Eventually, over 300 students walked out of the Conservatory in solidarity with Rimsky-Korsakov. By December he had been reinstated under a new director, Glazunov; Rimsky-Korsakov retired from the Conservatory in 1906. The political controversy continued with his opera The Golden Cockerel. Its implied criticism of monarchy, Russian imperialism and the Russo-Japanese War gave it little chance of passing the censors. The premiere was delayed until 1909, after Rimsky-Korsakov's death, and even then it was performed in an adapted version.

In April 1907, Rimsky-Korsakov conducted a pair of concerts in Paris, hosted by impresario Sergei Diaghilev, which featured music of the Russian nationalist school. The concerts were hugely successful in popularizing Russian classical music of this kind in Europe, Rimsky-Korsakov's in particular. The following year, his opera Sadko was produced at the Paris Opéra and The Snow Maiden at the Opéra-Comique. He also had the opportunity to hear more recent music by European composers. He hissed unabashedly when he heard Richard Strauss's opera Salome, and told Diaghilev after hearing Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, "Do not make me listen to all these horrors, or I shall end up liking them!" Hearing these works led him to appreciate his place in the world of classical music. He admitted that he was a "convinced kuchkist" (after kuchka, the shortened Russian term for The Five) and that his works belonged to an era that musical trends had left behind.

Beginning around 1890, Rimsky-Korsakov suffered from angina. While this ailment initially wore him down gradually, the stresses concurrent with the 1905 Revolution and its aftermath greatly accelerated its progress. After December 1907, his illness became severe, and he could not work. He died in Lyubensk in 1908, and was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg, next to Borodin, Glinka, Mussorgsky and Stasov.

Legacy

Classical music compositions

Rimsky-Korsakov was a prolific composer. As a perpetual self-critic, he revised every orchestral work up to and including his Third Symphony—some, like Antar and Sadko, more than once. These revisions range from minor changes of tempo, phrasing and instrumental detail to wholesale transposition and complete recomposition.

Rimsky-Korsakov was open about the influences in his music, telling Vasily Yastrebtsev, "Study Liszt and Balakirev more closely, and you'll see that a great deal in me is not mine". Nevertheless, while he took Glinka and Liszt as models, his use of whole tone and octatonic scales do demonstrate his originality. He developed both these compositional devices for the "fantastic" sections of his operas, which depicted magical or supernatural characters and events. Rimsky-Korsakov continued to be interested in harmonic experiments and the exploration of new idioms, but this interest was coupled with an abhorrence of excess, and he kept his tendency to experiment under constant control. The more radical his harmonies became, the more he attempted to control them with strict rules—applying his "musical conscience", he called it. In this sense, he was both a progressive and a conservative composer. The whole tone and octatonic scales were both considered adventurous in the Western classical tradition, and Rimsky-Korsakov's use of them made his harmonies seem radical. Conversely, his care about how or when in a composition he used these scales made him seem conservative compared with later composers like Igor Stravinsky, though they were often building on Rimsky-Korsakov's work.

Operas

Musicologist Gerald Abraham wrote that while Rimsky-Korsakov is best known in the West for his orchestral works, his operas are more complex; they offer a wider variety of orchestral effects than in his instrumental works, as well as fine vocal writing. Subjects range from historical melodramas (The Tsar's Bride) to folk operas (May Night), fairytales and legends (The Snow Maiden, Kashchey the Immortal and The Tale of Tsar Saltan). Of this range Rimsky-Korsakov wrote in 1902, "In every new work of mine I am trying to do something that is new for me. On the one hand, I am pushed on by the thought that in this way, [my music] will retain freshness and interest, but at the same time I am prompted by my pride to think that many facets, devices, moods and styles, if not all, should be with my reach."

Rimsky-Korsakov's music often lacks dramatic power, a seemingly fatal flaw in an operatic composer. This may have been consciously done, as he repeatedly stated in his scores that he felt operas were first and foremost musical works rather than mainly dramatic ones. Ironically, the operas succeed in most cases by being deliberately non-dramatic. Toward this end he devised a dual musical language—diatonic and lyrical music much like Russian folk music for the "real" human characters and chromatic, artificial music for the "unreal" or "fantastic" magical beings. Harold C. Schonberg phrased it thus: "[the operas] open up a delightful new world, the world of the Russian East, the world of supernaturalism and the exotic, the world of Slavic pantheism and vanished races. Genuine poetry suffuses them, and they are scored with brilliance and resource."

Excerpts and suites from Rimsky-Korsakov's operas have proved as popular in the West as the purely orchestral works. The best-known of these excerpts is probably "The Flight of the Bumblebee" from The Tale of Tsar Sultan, which has often been heard by itself in orchestral programs, and in countless arrangements and transcriptions, most famously in a piano version made by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Other selections familiar to listeners in the West are "Dance of the Tumblers" from The Snow Maiden, "Procession of the Nobles" from Mlada, and "Song of the Indian Guest" (or, less accurately, "Song of India") from Sadko, as well as suites from The Golden Cockerel and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya.

Orchestral works

The purely orchestral works are mainly programmatic in nature—the musical content and sequence of events is determined by a story, a painting or another non-musical source, rather than by abstract rules of musical composition. To Rimsky-Korsakov, the use of a program in music was natural, if his comment is taken at face value: "To me, even a folk theme has a program of sorts." The orchestral works show the dual influence of Balakirev and Liszt—Balakirev in the use of the whole tone scale and musical orientalism; Liszt likewise for harmonic adventurousness, as well as the programmatic nature of his music. They also continue the musical ideals espoused by The Five, such as in the use of liturgical themes in the Russian Easter Festival Overture; this work also follows the design and plan of Balakirev's Second Overture on Russian Themes. Capriccio Espagnol is based on folk song but its structure is more rhapsodic. Scheherazade became the best-known expression of Russian musical orientalism, and possibly his best known work; with the sultan introduced by a robust theme in the brass and Scheherazade in the arabesques of a violin solo, the paradigm between barbarous despotism and feminine seduction is set forth at once. The Scheherazade theme links this work with the orientalism of The Five while being in itself very closely related to Balakirev's Tamara. Rimsky-Korsakov considered Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture and Scheherazade to "close a period of my work, at the end of which my orchestration has attained a considerable degree of virtuosity and warm sonority without Wagnerian influence, limiting myself to the normally constituted orchestra used by Glinka." Another exercise in orientalism is the symphonic poem Night on Mount Triglav, a symphonic rearrangement of Act III of the opera Mlada.

Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral works are especially celebrated for their imaginative use of instrumental forces. Though this is true even of early works such as Sadko and Antar, their sparer textures pale compared to the luxuriance of the more popular works of the 1880s. While a principle of highlighting "primary hues" of instrumental color remained in place, it was augmented in the later works by a sophisticated cachet of orchestral effects, some gleaned from other composers including Wagner, but many invented by himself. As a result, these works resemble brightly colored mosaics, striking in their own right and often scored with a juxtaposition of pure orchestral groups. The final tutti of Scheherazade is a prime example of this scoring. The theme is assigned to trombones playing in unison, and is accompanied by a combination of string patterns. Meanwhile, another pattern alternates with chromatic scales in the woodwinds and a third pattern of rhythms is played by percussion.

Smaller-scale works

Rimsky-Korsakov composed dozens of art songs, arrangements of folk songs, chamber and piano music, and a body of choral works, both secular and for Russian Orthodox Church service. The latter include settings of portions of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (despite his staunch atheism)

Students

In his decades at the Conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov taught composers who later found fame, including Glazunov, Alexander Spendiaryan, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Ottorino Respighi, Witold Maliszewski, Mykola Lysenko, and Artur Kapp. Other students included the music critic and musicologist Alexander Ossovsky, and the composer Lazare Saminsky.

Rimsky-Korsakov felt talented students needed little formal dictated instruction. His teaching method included distinct steps: show the students everything needed in harmony and counterpoint; direct them in understanding the forms of composition; give them a year or two of systematic study in the development of technique, exercises in free composition and orchestration; instill a good knowledge of the piano. Once these were properly completed, studies would be over. He carried this attitude into his conservatory classes. Conductor Nikolai Malko remembered that Rimsky-Korsakov began the first class of the term by saying, "I will speak, and you will listen. Then I will speak less, and you will start to work. And finally I will not speak at all, and you will work." Malko added that his class followed exactly this pattern. "Rimsky-Korsakov explained everything so clearly and simply that all we had to do was to do our work well."

Editing the work of The Five

Rimsky-Korsakov's editing of works by The Five are significant. It was a practical extension of the collaborative atmosphere of The Five during the 1860s and 1870s, when they heard each other's compositions in progress and worked on them together, and was an effort to save works that would otherwise either have languished unheard or become lost entirely. This work included the completion of Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor, which Rimsky-Korsakov undertook with the help of Glazunov after Borodin's death, and the orchestration of passages from César Cui's William Ratcliff for its first production in 1869. He also completely orchestrated the opera The Stone Guest by Alexander Dargomyzhsky three times—in 1869–70, 1892 and 1902. While not a member of The Five himself, Dargomyzhsky was closely associated with the group and shared their musical philosophy.

Musicologist Francis Maes wrote that while Rimsky-Korsakov's efforts are laudable, they are also controversial. It was generally assumed that with Prince Igor, Rimsky-Korsakov edited and orchestrated the existing fragments of the opera while Glazunov composed and added missing parts, including most of the third act and the overture. This was exactly what Rimsky-Korsakov stated in his memoirs. However, both Maes and Richard Taruskin cite an analysis of Borodin's manuscripts by musicologist Pavel Lamm, which showed that Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov discarded nearly 20 percent of Borodin's score. According to Maes, the result is more a collaborative effort by all three composers than a true representation of Borodin's intent. Lamm stated that because of the extremely chaotic state of Borodin's manuscripts, a modern alternative to Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov's edition would be extremely difficult to complete.

More debatable, according to Maes, is Rimsky-Korsakov's editing of Mussorgsky's works. After Mussorgsky's death in 1881, Rimsky-Korsakov revised and completed several of Mussorgsky's works for publication and performance, helping to spread Mussorgsky's works throughout Russia and to the West. However Maes, in reviewing Mussorgsky's scores, wrote that Rimsky-Korsakov allowed his "musical conscience" to dictate his editing, and he changed or removed what he considered musical over-experimentation or poor form. Because of this, Rimsky-Korsakov has been accused of pedantry in "correcting", among other things, matters of harmony. Rimsky-Korsakov may have foreseen questions over his efforts when he wrote,

If Mussorgsky's compositions are destined to live unfaded for fifty years after their author's death (when all his works will become the property of any and every publisher), such an archeologically accurate edition will always be possible, as the manuscripts went to the Public Library on leaving me. For the present, though, there was need of an edition for performances, for practical artistic purposes, for making his colossal talent known, and not for the mere studying of his personality and artistic sins.

Maes stated that time proved Rimsky-Korsakov correct when it came to posterity's re-evaluation of Mussorgsky's work. Mussorgsky's musical style, once considered unpolished, is now admired for its originality. While Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangement of Night on Bald Mountain is still the version generally performed, Rimsky-Korsakov's other revisions, like his version of Boris Godunov, have been replaced by Mussorgsky's original.

Folklore and pantheism

Rimsky-Korsakov may have saved the most personal side of his creativity for his approach to Russian folklore. Folklorism as practiced by Balakirev and the other members of The Five had been based largely on the protyazhnaya dance song. Protyazhnaya literally meant "drawn-out song", or melismatically elaborated lyric song. The characteristics of this song exhibit extreme rhythmic flexibility, an asymmetrical phrase structure and tonal ambiguity. After composing May Night, however, Rimsky-Korsakov was increasingly drawn to "calendar songs", which were written for specific ritual occasions. The ties to folk culture was what interested him most in folk music, even in his days with The Five; these songs formed a part of rural customs, echoed old Slavic paganism, and the pantheistic world of folk rites. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that his interest in these songs was heightened by his study of them while compiling his folk song collections. He wrote that he "was captivated by the poetic side of the cult of sun-worship, and sought its survivals and echoes in both the tunes and the words of the songs. The pictures of the ancient pagan period and spirit loomed before me, as it then seemed, with great clarity, luring me on with the charm of antiquity. These occupations subsequently had a great influence in the direction of my own activity as a composer".

Rimsky-Korsakov's interest in pantheism was whetted by the folkloristic studies of Alexander Afanasyev. That author's standard work, The Poetic Outlook on Nature by the Slavs, became Rimsky-Korsakov's pantheistic bible. The composer first applied Afanasyev's ideas in May Night, in which he helped fill out Gogol's story by using folk dances and calendar songs. He went further down this path in The Snow Maiden, where he made extensive use of seasonal calendar songs and khorovodi (ceremonial dances) in the folk tradition.

Publications

Rimsky-Korsakov's autobiography and his books on harmony and orchestration have been translated into English and published. Two books he started in 1892 but left unfinished were a comprehensive text on Russian music and a manuscript, now lost, on an unknown subject.^[147]

My Musical Life. [Летопись моей музыкальной жизни – literally, Chronicle of My Musical Life.] Trans. from the 5th rev. Russian ed. by Judah A. Joffe; ed. with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. London: Ernst Eulenburg Ltd, 1974.
Practical Manual of Harmony. [Практический учебник гармонии.] First published, in Russian, in 1885. First English edition published by Carl Fischer in 1930, trans. from the 12th Russian ed. by Joseph Achron. Current English ed. by Nicholas Hopkins, New York, New York: C. Fischer, 2005.
Principles of Orchestration. [Основы оркестровки.] Begun in 1873 and completed posthumously by Maximilian Steinberg in 1912, first published, in Russian, in 1922 ed. by Maximilian Steinberg. English trans. by Edward Agate; New York: Dover Publications, 1964 ("unabridged and corrected republication of the work first published by Edition russe de musique in 1922").

Classical Music Composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Classical Music: Flight Of The Bumblebee

"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900. The piece closes Act III, Tableau 1, during the magic Swan-Bird changes Prince Gvidon Saltanovich (the Tsar's son) into an insect so that he can fly away to visit his father (who does not know that he is alive). Although in the opera the Swan-Bird sings during the first part of the "Flight", her vocal line is melodically uninvolved and easily omitted; this feature, combined with the fact that the number decisively closes the scene, made easy extraction as an orchestral concert piece possible.

Overview

Here is the text of the scene where the Swan-Bird sings during this music:

Russian	English translation
(Гвидон спускается с берега в море. Из моря вылетает шмель, кружась около Лебедь-Птицы.) ЛЕБЕДЬ-ПТИЦА: Ну, теперь, мой шмель, гуляй, судно в море догоняй, потихоньку опускайся, в щель подальше забивайся. Будь здоров, Гвидон, лети, только долго не гости! (Шмель улетает.)	(Gvidon goes down from the shore into the sea. Out from the sea flies a bumblebee, whirling around the Swan-Bird.) SWAN-BIRD: Well, now, my bumblebee, go on a spree, catch up with the ship on the sea, go down secretly, get into a crack a little distance away. Good luck, Gvidon, fly, only do not stay long! (The bumblebee flies away.)

Although the "Flight" does not have a title in the score of the opera, its common English title translates like the Russian one (Полёт шмеля = Polyot shmelya). Incidentally, this piece does not constitute one of the movements of the orchestral suite that the composer derived from the opera for concerts.

Those familiar with the opera Tsar Saltan may recognize two leitmotifs used in the Flight, both of which are associated with Prince Gvidon from earlier in the opera. These are illustrated here in musical notation:

The music of this number recurs in modified form during the ensuing tableau (Act III, Tableau 2), at the points when the Bumblebee appears during the scene: it stings the two evil sisters on the brow, blinds Babarikha (the instigator of the plot to trick Saltan at the beginning into sending his wife away), and in general causes havoc at the end of the tableau. Readers of Aleksandr Pushkin's original poem upon which this opera is based will note that Gvidon is supposed to go on three separate trips to Saltan's kingdom, each of which requires a transformation into a different insect.

"Flight of the Bumblebee" is recognizable for its frantic pace when played up to tempo, with nearly uninterrupted runs of chromatic sixteenth notes. It is not so much the pitch or range of the notes that are played that challenges the musician, but simply the musician's ability to move to them quickly enough.

Although the original orchestral version mercifully assigns portions of the sixteenth-note runs to various instruments in tandem, in the century since its composition the piece has become a standard showcase for solo instrumental virtuosity, whether on the original violin or on practically any other melodic instrument.

In popular culture

The radio program The Green Hornet used "Flight of the Bumblebee" as its theme music, blended with a hornet buzz created on a theremin. The music became so strongly identified with the show and the character that it was retained as the theme for the later TV series. This version was orchestrated by Billy May and conducted by Lionel Newman, with trumpet solo by Al Hirt, in a jazz style nicknamed "Green Bee". It appears in Shine, a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, as the piece he performs in a restaurant to the amazement of its patrons. In 2000, the piece was the basis for the first half of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra song "A Last Illusion" from their Beethoven's Last Night album (the other half being based on Beethoven's Ode to Joy). Later, the music was featured in a key scene in the 2003 film Kill Bill. The Heavy Metal band Manowar included an arrangement of the piece on their album Kings of Metal titled "Sting of the Bumblebee." Russian pop singer Vitas included a vocal rendition of a passage from Flight Of The Bumblebee in his song Prelude (Прелюдия). Brazilian rock guitarist Tiago Della Vega established the fastest guitar World Record in 2008 playing a 320 beats per minute rendition of "Flight of the Bumblebee". In the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV, the theme is featured in the musics of the Mr. Tasty, a fictional ice cream van. In the 2009 episode "Throwdown" from the television series Glee, an a cappella version of "Flight" is used as background music.

The music inspired Walt Disney to have a bumblebee featured in a segment of Fantasia that would sound as if it was flying in all parts of the theatre - an experiment that ended up on the cutting room floor but anticipated the eventual invention of surround sound.

Classical Music Composer Felix Mendelssohn - Classical Music Wedding March

2010-04-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

Classical Music Online Youtube Video

Classical Music Composer:Felix Mendelssohn

Classical Music: Wedding March

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period.

The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was born into a notable Jewish family, although he himself was brought up initially without religion, and later as a Lutheran Christian. He was recognized early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his abilities. Indeed his father was disinclined to allow Felix to follow a musical career until it became clear that he intended seriously to dedicate himself to it.

Early success in Germany was followed by travel throughout Europe; Mendelssohn was particularly well received in Britain as a composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there, during which many of his major works were premiered, form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes however set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz. The Conservatory he founded at Leipzig became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook.

Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. He also had an important role in the revival of interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.

Life in classical music

Childhood

Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany, the son of a banker, Abraham Mendelssohn (who later changed his surname to Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and who was himself the son of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), and of Lea Salomon, a member of the Itzig family and the sister of Jakob Salomon Bartholdy. He was the family's second child: his older sister Fanny Mendelssohn was also to display, like him, exceptional and precocious musical talent.

Felix grew up in an environment of intense intellectual ferment. The greatest minds of Germany were frequent visitors to his family's home in Berlin, including Wilhelm von Humboldt and Alexander von Humboldt. His sister Rebecca married the Belgian mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet.

Abraham renounced the Jewish religion; his children were first brought up without religious education, and were baptised as Christians in 1816 (at which time Felix took the additional names Jakob Ludwig – Abraham and his wife were not themselves baptised until 1822.) The name Bartholdy was assumed at the suggestion of Lea's brother, Jakob, who had purchased a property of this name and adopted it as his own surname. Abraham was later to explain this decision in a letter to Felix as a means of showing a decisive break with the traditions of his father Moses: "There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than there can be a Jewish Confucius". Felix did not entirely drop the name Mendelssohn as requested but in deference to his father signed his letters and had his visiting cards printed using the form "Mendelssohn Bartholdy".

The family moved to Berlin in 1811. Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn sought to give Felix, his brother Paul, and sisters Fanny and Rebecca, the best education possible. His sister Fanny (later Fanny Hensel), became a well-known pianist and amateur composer; originally Abraham had thought that she, rather than her brother, might be the more musical. However, at that time, it was not considered proper (by either Abraham or Felix) for a woman to have a career in music, so Fanny remained an amateur musician. Six of her early songs were later published (with her consent) under Felix's name.

Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart before him, Mendelssohn was regarded as a child prodigy. He began taking piano lessons from his mother when he was six, and at seven was tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris. From 1817 he studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. This was an important influence on his future career. Zelter had almost certainly been recommended as Felix's teacher by his aunt Sarah Levy, who had been a pupil of W. F. Bach and a patron of C. P. E. Bach and was a talented keyboard player in her own right, often playing with Zelter's orchestra at the Berlin Singakademie (of which she and the Mendelssohn family were leading patrons). Sarah had formed an important collection of Bach family manuscripts which she bequeathed to the Singakademie; Zelter, whose tastes in music were conservative, was also an admirer of the Bach tradition. This undoubtedly played a significant part in forming Felix Mendelssohn's conservative musical tastes. Mendelssohn's own works show his study of Baroque and early classical music. His fugues and chorales especially reflect a tonal clarity and use of counterpoint reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, by whose music he was deeply influenced.

Early maturity

Felix probably made his first public concert appearance at the age of nine, when he participated in a chamber music concert accompanying a horn duo. He was also a prolific composer from an early age. As an adolescent, his works were often performed at home with a private orchestra for the associates of his wealthy parents amongst the intellectual elite of Berlin. Between the ages of 12 and 14, Mendelssohn wrote twelve string symphonies. These works were ignored for over a century, but are now recorded and occasionally played in concerts. He wrote his first published work, a piano quartet, by the time he was thirteen. (It was probably Abraham Mendelssohn who procured the publication of this work by the house of Schlesinger). In 1824, at age 15, he wrote his first symphony for full orchestra (in C minor, Op. 11). At the age of 16 he wrote his String Octet in E-flat major, the first work which showed the full power of his genius. This Octet and his Overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he wrote a year later, are the best known of his early works. (He wrote incidental music for the play 16 years later in 1842, including the famous Wedding March.) The Overture is perhaps the earliest example of a 'concert overture', (i.e. a piece not written deliberately to accompany a staged performance, but to evoke a literary theme in performance on a concert platform), a genre which was to become a popular form in musical Romanticism.

In 1824 Felix took lessons from the composer and piano virtuoso Ignaz Moscheles who however confessed in his diaries that he had little to teach him. Moscheles became a close colleague and lifelong friend.

1827 saw the premiere—and sole performance in his lifetime—of Mendelssohn's opera, Die Hochzeit des Camacho. The failure of this production left him disinclined to venture into the genre again.

Besides music, Mendelssohn's education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy. He was a skilled artist in pencil and watercolour, he could speak (besides his native German) English, Italian, and Latin, and he had an interest in classical literature; Felix translated Terence's Andria for his tutor Heyse in 1825 — Heyse was impressed and had it published in 1826 as a work of 'a work of 'his pupil, F****' [i.e. 'Felix' (asterisks as provided in original text)].

This translation also qualified Mendelssohn to study at the University of Berlin, where he attended from 1826 to 1829 lectures on aesthetics by Hegel, on history by Eduard Gans and on geography by Carl Ritter.

Goethe

In 1821 Zelter introduced Mendelssohn to his friend and correspondent, the elderly Goethe, who was greatly impressed by the child, leading to perhaps the earliest confirmed comparison with Mozart in the following conversation with Zelter:

"Musical prodigies […] are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders the miraculous. and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age." "And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt?" said Zelter. "Yes", answered Goethe, "[…] but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time, that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child"

Felix was invited to meet Goethe on several later occasions and set a number of his poems to music; other of his compositions inspired by Goethe include the overtures Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and a Prosperous Voyage, Op. 27, 1828) and the cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night, Op. 60, 1832).

Revival of St Matthew Passion

In 1829, with the backing of Zelter and the assistance of a friend, the actor Eduard Devrient, Mendelssohn arranged and conducted a performance in Berlin of Bach's St Matthew Passion. The orchestra and choir were provided by the Berlin Singakademie. The success of this performance (the first since Bach's death in 1750) was an important element in the revival of Johann Sebastian Bach's music in Germany and, eventually, throughout Europe. It earned Mendelssohn widespread acclaim at the age of twenty. It also led to one of the very few references which Mendelssohn ever made to his origins: 'To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son (Judensohn) to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!' (cited by Devrient in his memoirs of the composer).

Early career in classical music

On the death of Zelter in 1832, Mendelssohn had some hopes of becoming the conductor of the Berlin Singakademie. However, at a vote in January 1833 he was defeated for the post by the less distinguished Karl Rungenhagen. This may have been because of Mendelssohn's youth, and fear of possible innovations; it was also suspected by some to be on account of his Jewish ancestry. Following this rebuff, Mendelssohn divided most of his professional time over the next few years between England and Düsseldorf, where he was appointed musical director in 1833. In the spring of that year he directed the Lower Rhenish Music Festival, commencing it with a performance of Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt prepared from the original score which he had found in London. This may be regarded as the start of a Handel revival in Germany begun by Mendelssohn, much as he had reawakened interest in JS Bach. Mendelssohn worked with the dramatist Karl Immermann to improve local theatre standards, and made his first appearance as an opera conductor in Immermann's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of 1833, when he took umbrage at the audience's protests about the cost of tickets. His frustration at his quotidian duties in Düsseldorf, and its provincialism, led him to resign his position at the end of 1834.

In Britain

In 1829 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to Britain, where Moscheles, already settled in London, introduced him to influential musical circles. In the summer he visited Edinburgh where he met the composer John Thomson. One of the most significant in terms of his success in Britain was his eighth visit in the Summer of 1844. He conducted five of the Philharmonic concerts in London, and wrote of it "Never before was anything like this season-we never went to bed before half-past one, every hour of every day was filled with engagements three weeks beforehand, and through more music in two months than in all the rest of the year". On subsequent visits he met with Queen Victoria and her musical husband Prince Albert, both of whom were great admirers of his music.

In the course of ten visits to Britain during his life, totalling about 20 months Mendelssohn won a strong following, sufficient for him to make a deep impression on British musical life. Not only did he compose and perform, but he also edited for British publishers the first critical editions of oratorios of Handel and of the organ music of JS Bach. Scotland inspired two of his most famous works, the overture Fingal's Cave (also known as the Hebrides Overture) and the Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3). His oratorio Elijah was premiered in Birmingham at the Triennial Music Festival on August 26, 1846. On his last visit to England in 1847 he was the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4 and conducted his own Scottish Symphony with the Philharmonic Orchestra before the Royal couple.

He also worked closely with his protege and friend the English composer William Sterndale Bennett both in London and Leipzig

Leipzig

In 1835, Mendelssohn was appointed as conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. This appointment was extremely important for him; he felt himself to be a German and wished to play a leading part in his country's musical life. In its way it was a redress for his disappointment over the Singakademie appointment. Despite efforts by the king of Prussia to lure him to Berlin, Mendelssohn concentrated on developing the musical life of Leipzig, working not only with the orchestra but with the opera house, the Choir of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig and the city’s other choral and musical institutions. Concerts given by Mendelssohn included, apart from many of his own works, three series of ‘historical concerts’ and a number of works by his contemporaries. Mendelssohn was deluged by offers of music from rising composers and would-be composers; amongst these was Richard Wagner who submitted his early Symphony, which (to Wagner’s disgust) Mendelssohn lost or mislaid. Mendelssohn was also able to revive interest in the work of Franz Schubert. Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's Ninth Symphony and sent it to Mendelssohn who promptly premiered it in Leipzig on March 21, 1839, more than a decade after the composer's death.

A landmark event during Mendelssohn’s Leipzig years was the premier of his oratorio St. Paul which was given at the Lower Rhine Festival in Düsseldorf in 1836, shortly after the death of the composer’s father, which much affected him. St. Paul seemed to many of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries to be his finest work, and set the seal on his European reputation. The sceptics included Heinrich Heine who wrote of the work’s ‘finest, cleverest calculation, sharp intelligence and, finally, complete lack of naïveté. But is there in art any originality of genius without naïveté?’ — anticipating Wagner and many of Mendelssohn’s later critics who attacked the composer’s supposed glibness.

In the Berlin of Friedrich Wilhelm IV

Friedrich Wilhelm IV came to the Prussian throne in 1840 with ambitions to develop Berlin as a cultural centre. This included the establishment of a music school and reform of music for the church. The obvious choice to head these reforms was Mendelssohn, who was however reluctant to undertake the task, a reluctance perhaps associated with earlier disappointments in the city, especially in the light of his existing strong position in Leipzig. Although Mendelssohn did spend some time in Berlin, writing some church music and also, at the King’s request, music for a production of Sophocles’s Antigone, the funds for the school never materialised and various of the promises (in terms of finance, title and concert programming) made to Mendelssohn by the court were broken. He was therefore not displeased to have the excuse to return to Leipzig.

The Leipzig Conservatory

In 1843, however Mendelssohn did found a major music school, the Leipzig Conservatory, where he persuaded Ignaz Moscheles and Robert Schumann to join him; other prominent musicians, including the string players Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim, and the music theorist Moritz Hauptmann also became staff members. After Mendelssohn's death in 1847, his conservative tradition was carried on when Moscheles succeeded him as head of the Conservatory.

Works in classical music

Early works in classical music

The young Mendelssohn was greatly influenced in his childhood by the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart and traces of these can all be seen in the twelve early string symphonies, mainly written for performance in the Mendelssohn household and not published or publicly performed until long after his death. He wrote these from 1821 to 1823, when he was between the ages of 12 and 14 years old.

Mendelssohn's first published works were his three piano quartets, (1822-5; op. 1 in C minor, op. 2 in F minor and op. 3 in B minor). His astounding capacities are especially revealed in a clutch of works of his early maturity: the String Octet (1825), the Overture A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) (which in its finished form owes much to the influence of Adolf Bernhard Marx, at the time a close friend of Mendelssohn), and the two early quartets (op. 12 written in 1829, and op.13 in fact written earlier, in 1827) which show a remarkable grasp of the techniques and ideas of Beethoven's last quartets, which Felix had been closely studying. These show an intuitive grasp of form, harmony, counterpoint, colour and the compositional technique, which justify claims frequently made that Mendelssohn's precocity exceeded even that of Mozart in its intellectual grasp.

Classical symphonies

The numbering of his mature symphonies is approximately in order of publishing, rather than of composition. The order of composition is: 1, 5, 4, 2, 3. (Because he worked on it for over a decade, the placement of No. 3 in this sequence is problematic; he started sketches for it soon after the No. 5, but completed it following both Nos. 5 and 4.)

The Symphony No. 1 in C minor for full-scale orchestra was written in 1824, when Mendelssohn was aged 15. This work is experimental, showing the influence of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Mendelssohn conducted this symphony on his first visit to London in 1829 with the orchestra of the Royal Philharmonic Society. For the third movement he substituted an orchestration of the Scherzo from his Octet. In this form the piece was an outstanding success and laid the foundations of his British reputation.

During 1829 and 1830 Mendelssohn wrote his Symphony No. 5, known as the Reformation. It celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Lutheran Church. Mendelssohn remained dissatisfied with the work and did not allow publication of the score.

The Scottish Symphony (Symphony No. 3 in A minor), was written and revised intermittently between 1830 and 1842. This piece evokes Scotland's atmosphere in the ethos of Romanticism, but does not employ any identified Scottish folk melodies. Mendelssohn published the score of the symphony in 1842 in an arrangement for piano duet, and as a full orchestral score in 1843.

Mendelssohn's travels in Italy inspired him to write the Symphony No. 4 in A major, known as the Italian. Mendelssohn conducted the premiere in 1833, but he did not allow this score to be published during his lifetime as he continually sought to rewrite it.

In 1840 Mendelssohn wrote the choral Symphony No. 2 in B-flat major, entitled Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), and this score was published in 1841.

Other orchestral music

Mendelssohn wrote the concert overture The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) in 1830, inspired by visits he made to Scotland around the end of the 1820s. He visited the cave, on the Hebridean isle of Staffa, as part of his Grand Tour of Europe, and was so impressed that he scribbled the opening theme of the overture on the spot, including it in a letter he wrote home the same evening.

Throughout his career he wrote a number of other concert overtures. Those most frequently played today include an overture to Ruy Blas (commissioned for a charity performance of Victor Hugo's drama, which Mendelssohn hated), Meerestille und Glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, inspired by a pair of poems by Goethe), and The Fair Melusine.

The incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (Op. 61), including the well-known Wedding March, was written in 1843, seventeen years after the overture.

Opera

Mendelssohn wrote some Singspiels for family performance in his youth. His opera Die beiden Neffen was rehearsed for him on his fifteenth birthday. In 1827 he wrote a more sophisticated work, Die Hochzeit des Camacho, based on an episode in Don Quixote, for public consumption. It was produced in Berlin in 1827. Mendelssohn left the theatre before the conclusion of the first performance, and subsequent performances were cancelled.

Although he never abandoned the idea of composing a full opera, and considered many subjects —including that of the Nibelung saga later adapted by Wagner— he never wrote more than a few pages of sketches for any project. In his last years the manager Benjamin Lumley tried to contract him to write an opera on The Tempest on a libretto by Eugène Scribe, and even announced it as forthcoming in the year of Mendelssohn's death. The libretto was eventually set by Fromental Halévy. At his death Mendelssohn left some sketches for an opera on the story of Lorelei.

Classical music concertos

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1844), written for Ferdinand David, has become one of the most popular of all of Mendelssohn's compositions. David, who had worked closely with Mendelssohn during the piece's preparation, gave the premiere of the concerto on his Guarneri violin.

Mendelssohn also wrote two piano concertos, a less well known, early, violin concerto (D minor), two concertos for two pianos and orchestra and a double concerto for piano and violin. In addition, there are several works for soloist and orchestra in one movement. Those for piano are the Rondo Brillante, Op. 29, of 1834; the Capriccio Brillante, Op. 22, of 1832; and the Serenade and Allegro Giocoso Op. 43, of 1838. Opp. 113 and 114 are Konzertstücke (concerto movements, originally for clarinet, basset horn and piano, that were orchestrated and performed in that form in Mendelssohn's lifetime.)

Chamber music

Mendelssohn's mature output contains many chamber works, many of which display an emotional intensity that some people think his larger works lack. In particular his String Quartet No. 6, his last string quartet and major work, written following the death of his sister Fanny, is both powerful and eloquent. Other mature works include two string quintets, sonatas for the clarinet, cello, viola and violin, and two piano trios. For the Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Mendelssohn unusually took the advice of a fellow-composer (Ferdinand Hiller) and rewrote the piano part in a more romantic, 'Schumannesque' style, considerably heightening its effect.

Choral works

The two large biblical oratorios, St Paul in 1836 and Elijah in 1846, are greatly influenced by Bach. From the unfinished oratorio, Christus, the chorus "There Shall a Star Come out of Jacob" (which together with the preceding recitative and male trio comprises all of the existing material from that work) is sometimes performed.

Strikingly different is the more overtly 'romantic' Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First Walpurgis Night), a setting for chorus and orchestra of a ballad by Goethe describing pagan rituals of the Druids in the Harz mountains in the early days of Christianity. This remarkable score has been seen by the scholar Heinz-Klaus Metzger as a "Jewish protest against the domination of Christianity".

Mendelssohn also wrote many smaller-scale sacred works for unaccompanied choir and for choir with organ. Some were written, and most have been translated into English, and remain highly popular. Perhaps the most famous is Hear My Prayer, with its second half containing 'O for the Wings of a Dove', which became extremely popular as a separate item. The piece is written for full choir, organ, and a treble or soprano soloist who has many challenging and extended solo passages. As such, it is a particular favourite for choirboys in churches and cathedrals, and has perhaps been recorded more than any other treble solo.

The hymn tune Mendelssohn—an adaptation by William Hayman Cummings of a melody from Mendelssohn's cantata Festgesang—is the standard tune for Charles Wesley's popular hymn Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. This extract from an originally secular 1840s composition, which Mendelssohn felt unsuited to sacred music, is thus ubiquitous at Christmas.

Songs

Mendelssohn wrote many songs, both for solo voice and for duet, with piano. Many of these are simple, or slightly modified, strophic settings. Such songs as Auf Flügeln des Gesanges ("On Wings of Song") became popular. Seven of Mendelssohn's songs, including Auf Flügeln des Gesanges and Neue Liebe (to a poem of Heine) were transcribed for piano solo, in a virtuoso style, by Franz Liszt.

A number of songs written by Mendelssohn's sister Fanny originally appeared under her brother's name; this was partly due to the prejudice of the family, and partly to her own diffidence.

Piano music

Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), eight cycles each containing six lyric pieces (2 published posthumously), remain his most famous solo piano compositions. They became standard parlour recital items, and their overwhelming popularity has caused many critics to under-rate their musical value. Other composers who were inspired to produce similar pieces of their own included Charles-Valentin Alkan (the five sets of Chants, each ending with a barcarolle), Anton Rubinstein, Ignaz Moscheles and Edvard Grieg.

Other notable piano pieces by Mendelssohn include his Variations sérieuses, Op. 54 (1841), the Rondo Capriccioso, the set of six Preludes and Fugues, Op. 35 (written between 1832 and 1837), and the Seven Characteristic Pieces, Op. 7 (1827).

Organ music

Mendelssohn played the organ and composed for it from the age of 11 to his death. His primary organ works are the Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 37 (1837), and the Six Sonatas, Op. 65 (1845).

Classical Music Composer:Felix Mendelssohn

Classical Music: Wedding March

Felix Mendelssohn's "Wedding March", written in 1842, is one of the best known of the pieces from his suite of incidental music (Op. 61) to Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is one of the most frequently used wedding marches, generally being played on a church pipe organ.

At weddings in many English-speaking countries, this piece is commonly used as a recessional, though frequently stripped of its episodes in this context. It is normally not used in Roman Catholic weddings because it is not sacred music. It is frequently teamed with the "Bridal Chorus" from Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin, or with Jeremiah Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March", both of which are often played for the entry of the bride.

The first time that Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" was used at a wedding was when Dorothy Carew wed Tom Daniel at St Peter’s Church, Tiverton, UK, on 2 June 1847. However, it did not become popular at weddings until it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858. The bride was the daughter of Queen Victoria, who loved Mendelssohn's music and for whom Mendelssohn often played while on his visits to Britain.

An organ on which Mendelssohn gave recitals of the "Wedding March", among other works, is housed in St Ann's Church in Tottenham.

Vladimir Horowitz transcribed the Wedding March into a virtuoso piece for piano and played it as an encore at his concerts.

Classical Music Composer Liszt Ferenc ( Franz Liszt ) - Classical Music Hungarian Rhapsody No 2

2010-04-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

Classical Music Online Youtube Video

Classical Music Composer: Liszt Ferenc ( Franz Liszt )

Classical Music: Hungarian Rhapsody No 2

Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Ferencz Liszt, in modern use Ferenc Liszt, from 1859 to 1865 officially Franz Ritter von Liszt) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.

Liszt became renowned throughout Europe during the 19th century for his great skill as a performer. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.

As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.

Early life in classical music

The earliest known male ancestor of Franz Liszt is his great-grandfather, Sebastian List, who as one of the thousands of German-speaking migrant serfs entered Hungary from Lower Austria in the first half of the 18th century, and died in 1793 in Rajka, Moson County. Liszt's grandfather was an overseer on several Esterházy estates; he could play the piano, violin and organ. The Liszt clan dispersed throughout Austria and Hungary and gradually lost touch with one another.

Franz Liszt was born to Marie Anna Lager and Adam Liszt on October 22, 1811, in the village of Raiding (Hungarian: Doborján) in Sopron County.Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello, and guitar. He had been in the services of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven personally. At age six, Franz Liszt began listening attentively to his father's piano playing as well as to show an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz Liszt began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight. He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pozsony in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy Hungarians offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad.

In Vienna, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then music director of the Viennese court. His public debut in Vienna on December 1, 1822, at a concert at the "Landständischer Saal," was a great success. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert. In spring 1823, when the one year's leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt asked Prince Esterházy in vain for two more years. Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Prince's services. At the end of April 1823, the family for the last time returned to Hungary. At end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again.

Towards the end of 1823 or early 1824 Liszt's first published composition appeared in print, a Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (now S. 147), which was Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. This anthology, commissioned by Diabelli, included 50 variations on his waltz by 50 different composers (Part II), Part I being taken up by Beethoven's 33 variations on the same theme, which are now better known as the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120.

Adolescence in Paris

After his father's death Liszt returned to Paris; for the next five years he was to live with his mother in a small apartment. He gave up touring. To earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to cross long distances. Because of this, Liszt kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking—all habits he would continue throughout his life.

The following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles X's minister of commerce. However, her father insisted that the affair be broken off. Liszt again fell ill (there was even an obituary notice of him printed in a Paris newspaper), and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother. He had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists. Urhan also wrote music that was anti-classical and highly subjective, with titles such as Elle et moi, La Salvation angélique and Les Regrets, and may have whetted the young Liszt's taste for musical romanticism. Equally important for Liszt was Urhan's earnest championship of Schubert, which may have stimulated his own lifelong devotion to that composer's music.

During this period Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of a general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Heinrich Heine. He composed practically nothing in these years. Nevertheless, the July Revolution of 1830 inspired him to sketch a Revolutionary Symphony based on the events of the "three glorious days," and he took a greater interest in events surrounding him. He met Hector Berlioz on December 4, 1830, the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz's music made a strong impression on Liszt, especially later when he was writing for orchestra. He also inherited from Berlioz the diabolic quality of many of his works.

Paganini

After attending an April 20, 1832 concert for charity, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini, Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard. Some, such as Sigismond Thalberg and Alexander Dreyschock, focused on specific aspects of technique (e.g. the "three-hand effect" and octaves, respectively). While it was called the "flying trapeze" school of piano playing, this generation also solved some of the most intractable problems of piano technique, raising the general level of performance to previously unimagined heights. Liszt's strength and ability to stand out in this company was in mastering all the aspects of piano technique cultivated singly and assiduously by his rivals.

In 1833 he made transcriptions of several works by Berlioz, including the Symphonie fantastique. His chief motive in doing so, especially with the Symphonie, was to help the poverty-stricken Berlioz, whose symphony remained unknown and unpublished. Liszt bore the expense of publishing the transcription himself and played it many times to help popularise the original score. He was also forming a friendship with a third composer who influenced him, Frédéric Chopin; under his influence Liszt's poetic and romantic side began to develop.

With Countess Marie d'Agoult

In 1833, Liszt began his relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult. In addition to this, at the end of April 1834 he made the acquaintance of Felicité de Lamennais. Under the influence of both, Liszt's creative output exploded. In 1834 Liszt debuted as a mature and original composer with his piano compositions Harmonies poetiques et religieuses and the set of three Apparitions. These were all poetic works which contrasted strongly with the fantasies he had written earlier.

In 1835 the countess left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; their daughter Blandine was born there on December 18. Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost) and contributed essays for the Paris Revue et gazette musicale. In these essays, he argued for the raising of the artist from the status of a servant to a respected member of the community.

For the next four years Liszt and the countess lived together, mainly in Switzerland and Italy, where their daughter, Cosima, was born in Como, with occasional visits to Paris. On May 9, 1839 Liszt and the countess's only son, Daniel, was born, but that autumn relations between them became strained. Liszt heard that plans for a Beethoven monument in Bonn were in danger of collapse for lack of funds, and pledged his support. Doing so meant returning to the life of a touring virtuoso. The countess returned to Paris with the children while Liszt gave six concerts in Vienna then toured Hungary.

Touring virtuoso

For the next eight years Liszt continued to tour Europe; spending holidays with the countess and their children on the island of Nonnenwerth on the Rhine in summers 1841 and 1843. In spring 1844 the couple finally separated. This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist. Honours were showered on him and he was adulated everywhere he went. Since Liszt often appeared three or four times a week in concert, it could be safe to assume that he appeared in public well over a thousand times during this eight-year period. Moreover, his great fame as a pianist, which he would continue to enjoy long after he had officially retired from the concert stage, was based mainly on his accomplishments during this time.

After 1842 "Lisztomania" swept across Europe. The reception Liszt enjoyed as a result can only be described as hysterical. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. Helping fuel this atmosphere was the artist's mesmeric personality and stage presence. Many witnesses later testified that Liszt's playing raised the mood of audiences to a level of mystical ecstasy.

Adding to his reputation was the fact that Liszt gave away much of his proceeds to charity and humanitarian causes. In fact, Liszt had made so much money by his mid-forties that virtually all his performing fees after 1857 went to charity. While his work for the Beethoven monument and the Hungarian National School of Music are well known, he also gave generously to the building fund of Cologne Cathedral, the establishment of a Gymnasium at Dortmund, and the construction of the Leopold Church in Pest. There were also private donations to hospitals, schools and charitable organizations such as the Leipzig Musicians Pension Fund. When he found out about the Great Fire of Hamburg, which raged for three weeks during May 1842 and destroyed much of the city, he gave concerts in aid of the thousands of homeless there.

Liszt in Weimar

In February 1847, Liszt played in Kiev. There he met the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who dominated most of the rest of his life. She persuaded him to concentrate on composition, which meant giving up his career as a travelling virtuoso. After a tour of the Balkans, Turkey and Russia that summer, Liszt gave his final concert for pay at Elisavetgrad in September. He spent the winter with the princess at her estate in Woronince. By retiring from the concert platform at 35, while still at the height of his powers, Liszt succeeded in keeping the legend of his playing untarnished.

The following year, Liszt took up a long-standing invitation of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to settle at Weimar, where he had been appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in 1842, remaining there until 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre. He gave lessons to a number of pianists, including the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 (years after she would marry Richard Wagner). He also wrote articles championing Berlioz and Wagner. Finally, Liszt had ample time to compose and during the next 12 years revised or produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly rests. His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance of Lohengrin in 1850.

Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since she had been previously married and her husband, Russian military officer Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After huge efforts and a monstrously intricate process, she was temporarily successful (September 1860). It was planned that the couple would marry in Rome, on October 22, 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt having arrived in Rome on October 21, 1861, the Princess nevertheless declined, by the late evening, to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Czar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican. The Russian government also impounded her several estates in the Polish Ukraine, which made her later marriage to anybody unfeasible.

Liszt in Rome

The 1860s were a period of severe catastrophes of Liszt's private life. On December 13, 1859, he had lost his son Daniel, and on September 11, 1862, his daughter Blandine also died. In letters to friends Liszt afterwards announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on June 20, 1863, he took up quarters in a small, Spartan apartment. He had on June 23, 1857, already joined a Franciscan order.

On April 25, 1865, he received the tonsure at the hands of Cardinal Hohenlohe. Following this he was sometimes called the Abbé Liszt. He received the four minor orders on July 31, 1865, porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte. On 14th August 1879 he was made an honorary canon of Albano. The title 'Abbé', the French equivalent of 'Father', is a courtesy title reminiscent of the Eighteenth Century, when it was often given to men in minor orders; Liszt was never a priest. (Abbé can also mean abbot, but that definition does not apply here at all.)

At some occasions, Liszt took part in Rome's musical life. On March 26, 1863, at a concert at the Palazzo Altieri, he directed a programme of sacred music. The "Seligkeiten" of his "Christus-Oratorio" and his "Cantico del Sol di Francesco d'Assisi", as well as Haydn's "Die Schöpfung" and works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Jornelli, Mendelssohn and Palestrina were performed. On January 4, 1866, Liszt directed the "Stabat mater" of his "Christus-Oratorio", and on February 26, 1866, his "Dante Symphony". There were several further occasions of similar kind, but in comparison with the duration of Liszt's stay in Rome, they were exceptions. Bódog Pichler, who visited Liszt in 1864 and asked him for his future plans, had the impression that Rome's musical life was not satisfying for Liszt.

Threefold life

Liszt was invited back to Weimar in 1869 to give master classes in piano playing. Two years later he was asked to do the same in Budapest at the Hungarian Music Academy. From then until the end of his life he made regular journeys between Rome, Weimar and Budapest, continuing what he called his "vie trifurquée" or threefold existence. It is estimated that Liszt travelled at least 4000 miles a year during this period in his life—an exceptional figure given his advancing age and the rigours of road and rail in the 1870s.

Last years in classical music

On July 2, 1881, Liszt had fallen down the stairs of the Hotel in Weimar. Though friends and colleagues had noted swelling in Liszt's feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month, Liszt had up to this point been in reasonably good health, and his body retained the slimness and suppleness of earlier years. The accident, which immobilised him for eight weeks, changed this. A number of ailments manifested—dropsy, asthma, insomnia, a cataract of the left eye and chronic heart disease. The last-mentioned eventually contributed to Liszt's death. He became increasingly plagued with feelings of desolation, despair and death—feelings which he expressed in his works from this period. As he told Lina Ramann, "I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound."

He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at age 74, officially as a result of pneumonia which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a direct part in Liszt's demise.

Composer Camille Saint-Saëns, an old friend, whom Liszt had once called "the greatest organist in the world" dedicated his Symphony No. 3 "Organ Symphony" to Liszt; it had premiered in London only a few weeks before his death.

Liszt as classical pianist

Performing style

There are few, if any, good sources that give an impression of how Liszt really sounded from the 1820s. Carl Czerny claimed Liszt was a natural who played according to feeling, and reviews of his concerts especially praise the brilliance, strength and precision in his playing. At least one also mentions his ability to absolutely never change tempo, which may be due to his father's insistence that he practice with a metronome. His repertoire at this time consisted primarily of pieces in the style of the brilliant Viennese school, such as concertos by Hummel and works by his former teacher Czerny, and his concerts often included a chance for the boy to display his prowess in improvisation.

Following the death of Liszt's father in 1827 and his hiatus from the life as a touring virtuoso, it is likely Liszt's playing gradually developed a more personal style. One of the most detailed descriptions of his playing from this time comes from the winter of 1831/1832, during which he was earning a living primarily as a teacher in Paris. Among his pupils were Valerie Boissier, whose mother Caroline kept a careful diary of the lessons. From her we learn that:

"M. Liszt's playing contains abandonment, a liberated feeling, but even when it becomes impetuous and energetic in his fortissimo, it is still without harshness and dryness. [...] [He] draws from the piano tones that are purer, mellower and stronger than anyone has been able to do; his touch has an indescribable charm. [...] He is the enemy of affected, stilted, contorted expressions. Most of all, he wants truth in musical sentiment, and so he makes a psychological study of his emotions to convey them as they are. Thus, a strong expression is often followed by a sense of fatigue and dejection, a kind of coldness, because this is the way nature works."

Possibly influenced by Paganini's showmanship, once Liszt began focusing on his career as a pianist again his emotionally vivid presentations of the music were rarely limited to mere sound. His facial expression and gestures at the piano would reflect what he played, for which he was sometimes mocked in the press. Also noted was the extravagant liberties he could take with the text of a score at this time. Berlioz tells us how Liszt would add cadenzas, tremolos and trills when playing the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and created a dramatic scene by changing the tempo between Largo and Presto. In his Baccalaureus letter to George Sand from the beginning of 1837, Liszt admitted that he had done so for the purpose of gaining applause, and promised to follow both the letter and the spirit of a score from now on. It has been debated to what extent he realized his promise, however. By July 1840 the British newspaper The Times could still report

"His performance commenced with Händel's Fugue in E minor, which was played by Liszt with an avoidance of everything approaching to meretricious ornament, and indeed scarcely any additions, except a multitude of ingeniously contrived and appropriate harmonies, casting a glow of colour over the beauties of the composition, and infusing into it a spirit which from no other hand it ever received."

Classical music repertoire

During his years as a travelling virtuoso Liszt performed an enormous amount of music throughout Europe, but his core repertoire always centered around his own compositions, paraphrases and transcriptions. Studying Liszt's German concerts between 1840 and 1845, the five most frequently-played pieces were the Grand Galop chromatique, Schubert's Erlkönig (in Liszt's transcription), Réminiscences de Don Juan, Réminiscences de Robert le Diable, and Réminiscences de Lucia de Lammermoor. Among the works by other composers we find compositions like Weber's Aufforderung zum Tanz, Chopin Mazurkas, Études by composers like Ignaz Moscheles, Chopin and Ferdinand Hiller, but also major works by Beethoven, Weber and Hummel, and from time to time even selections of Bach, Händel and Scarlatti.

Most of the concerts at this time were shared with other artists, and as a result Liszt also often accompanied singers, participated in chamber music, or performed works with an orchestra in addition to his own solo part. Frequently played works include Weber's Konzertstück, Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Choral Fantasy, and Liszt's reworking of the Hexameron for piano and orchestra. His chamber music repertoire included Hummel's Septet, Beethoven's Archduke Trio and Kreutzer Sonata, and a large selection of songs by composers like Rossini, Donizetti, Beethoven and especially Schubert. At some concerts Liszt could not find musicians to share the program with, and consequently was among the first to give solo piano recitals in the modern sense of the word. The term was coined by the publisher Frederick Beale, who suggested it for Liszt's concert at the Hanover Square Rooms in London on June 9, 1840, even though Liszt had given concerts all by himself already by March 1839.

Classical musical works

Liszt was a prolific composer. His composition career has a clear arch that follows his changing professional and personal life. Liszt is best known for his piano music, but he wrote extensively for many mediums. Liszt's piano works are usually divided into two classes. On the one hand, there are "original works", and on the other hand "transcriptions", "paraphrases" or "fantasies" on works by other composers. Because of his background as a forefront technical piano virtuoso, Liszt's piano works are often marked by their difficulty. Liszt is very well known as a programmatic composer, or an individual who bases his compositional ideas in extra-musical things such as a poetry or painting. Liszt is credited with the creation of the Symphonic Poem which is a programmatic orchestral work that generally consists of a single movement.

Liszt's compositional style delved deeply into issues of unity both within and across movements. For this reason, in his most famous and virtuosic works, he is an archetypal Romantic composer. Liszt pioneered the technique of thematic transformation, a method of development which was related to both the existing variation technique and to the new use of the Leitmotif by Richard Wagner.

Piano Music

The largest and best known portion of Liszt's music is his original piano work. His thoroughly revised masterwork, "Années de pèlerinage" ("Years of Pilgrimage") includes arguably his most provocative and stirring pieces. This set of three suites ranges from the virtuosity of the Suisse Orage (Storm) to the subtle and imaginative visualizations of artworks by Michelangelo and Raphael in the second set. Années contains some pieces which are loose transcriptions of Liszt's own earlier compositions; the first "year" recreates his early pieces of "Album d'un voyageur", while the second book includes a resetting of his own song transcriptions once separately published as "Tre sonetti di Petrarca" ("Three sonnets of Petrarch"). The relative obscurity of the vast majority of his works may be explained by the immense number of pieces he composed, and the level of technical difficulty which was present in much of his composition.

Liszt's piano works are usually divided into two classes. On the one hand, there are "original works", and on the other hand "transcriptions", "paraphrases" or "fantasies" on works by other composers. Examples for the first class are works such as the piece Harmonies poétiques et religieuses of May 1833 and the Piano Sonata in B minor (1853). Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert songs, his fantasies on operatic melodies, and his piano arrangements of symphonies by Berlioz and Beethoven are examples for the second class. As special case, Liszt also made piano arrangements of his own instrumental and vocal works. Examples of this kind are the arrangement of the second movement "Gretchen" of his Faust Symphony and the first "Mephisto Waltz" as well as the "Liebesträume No. 3" and the two volumes of his "Buch der Lieder".

Transcriptions

Liszt's composing music on music, being taken as such, was nothing new. Nevertheless, Liszt invested a particular kind of creativity. Instead of just overtaking original melodies and harmonies, he ameliorated them. In case of his fantasies and transcriptions in Italian style, there was a problem which was by Wagner addressed as "Klappern im Geschirr der Perioden". Composers such as Bellini and Donizetti knew that certain forms, usually periods of eight measures, were to be filled with music. Occasionally, while the first half of a period was composed with inspiration, the second half was added with mechanical routine. Liszt corrected this by modifying the melody, the bass and—in cases—the harmonies.

Many of Liszt's results were remarkable. The Sonnambula-fantasy for example, a concert piece full of charming melodies, could certainly not have been composed either by Bellini or by Liszt alone. Outstanding examples are also the Rigoletto-Paraphrase and the Faust-Walzer. The most delicate harmonies in parts of those pieces were not invented by Verdi and Gounod, but by Liszt. Hans von Bülow admitted, that Liszt's transcription of his Dante Sonett "Tanto gentile" was much more refined than the original he himself had composed. Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert songs, his fantasies on operatic melodies, and his piano arrangements of symphonies by Berlioz and Beethoven are other well known examples of piano transcriptions.

Liszt was the second pianist (after Kalkbrenner) to transcribe Beethoven's symphonies for the piano. He usually performed them for audiences that would probably never have an opportunity to hear the orchestral version.

Original songs

Franz Liszt composed about six dozen original songs with piano accompaniment. In most cases the lyrics were in German or French, but there are also some songs in Italian and Hungarian and one song in English. Liszt began with the song "Angiolin dal biondo crin" in 1839, and by 1844 had composed about two dozen songs. Some of them had been published as single pieces. In addition, there was an 1843–1844 series "Buch der Lieder". The series had been projected for three volumes, consisting of six songs each, but only two volumes appeared.

Although Liszt's early songs are seldom sung, they show him in much better light than works such as the paraphrase "Gaudeamus igitur" and the Galop after Bulhakow, both composed in 1843. The transcriptions of the two volumes of the "Buch der Lieder" can be counted among Liszt's finest piano works. However, the contemporaries had much to criticise with regard to the style of the songs. Further critical remarks can be found in Peter Raabe's Liszts Schaffen.

Today, Liszt's songs are nearly entirely forgotten. As an exception, most frequently the song "Ich möchte hingehen" is cited. It is because of a single bar, most resembling the opening motif of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. While it is commonly claimed that Liszt wrote that motif ten years before Wagner started work on his masterpiece, it has turned out that this is not true: the original version of "Ich möchte hingehn" was composed in 1844 or 1845. There are four manuscripts, and only a single one, a copy by August Conradi, contains the said bar with the Tristan motif. It is on a paste-over in Liszt's hand. Since in the second half of 1858 Liszt was preparing his songs for publication, and he just at that time received the first act of Wagner's Tristan, it is most likely that the version on the paste-over was a quotation from Wagner. This is not to say, the motif was originally invented by Wagner. An earlier example can be found in bar 100 of Liszt's Ballade No.2 in B minor for piano, composed in 1853.

Programme music

Liszt, in some of his works, supported the idea of programme music – that is, music intended to evoke extra-musical ideas. By contrast, absolute music (a radical new idea in the 19th century world of music) stands for itself and is intended to be appreciated without any particular reference to the outside world.

Liszt's own point of view regarding programme music can for the time of his youth be taken from the preface of the Album d'un voyageur (1837). According to this, a landscape could evoke a certain kind of mood. Since a piece of music could also evoke a mood, a mysterious resemblance with the landscape could be imagined. In this sense the music would not paint the landscape, but it would match the landscape in a third category, the mood.

In July 1854 Liszt wrote his essay about Berlioz and Harold in Italy that stated that not all music was programme music. If, in the heat of a debate, a person would go so far as to claim the contrary, it would be better to put all ideas of programme music aside. But it would be possible to take means like harmony, modulation, rhythm, instrumentation and others to let a musical motif endure a fate.In any case, a programme should only be added to a piece of music if it was necessarily needed for an adequate understanding of that piece.

Still later, in a letter to Marie d'Agoult of November 15, 1864, Liszt wrote:

"Without any reserve I completely subscribe to the rule of which you so kindly want to remind me, that those musical works which are in a general sense following a programme must take effect on imagination and emotion, independent of any programme. In other words: All beautiful music must be first rate and always satisfy the absolute rules of music which are not to be violated or prescribed".

Symphonic poems

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in one movement in which some extramusical program provides a narrative or illustrative element. This program may come from a poem, a story or novel, a painting, or another source. The term was first applied by Liszt to his 13 one-movement orchestral works in this vein. They were not pure symphonic movements in the classical sense because they dealt with descriptive subjects taken from mythology, Romantic literature, recent history or imaginative fantasy. In other words, these works were programmatic rather than abstract. The form was a direct product of Romanticism which encouraged literary, pictorial and dramatic associations in music. It developed into an important form of program music in the second half of the 19th century.

The first 12 symphonic poems were composed in the decade 1848–58 (though some use material conceived earlier); one other, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (From the Cradle to the Grave), followed in 1882. Liszt's intent, according to Hugh MacDonald in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), was for these single-movement works "to display the traditional logic of symphonic thought." That logic, embodied in sonata form as musical development, was traditionally the unfolding of latent possibilities in given themes in rhythm, melody and harmony, either in part or in their entirety, as they were allowed to combine, separate and contrast with one another. To the resulting sense of struggle Beethoven had added an intensity of feeling and the involvement of his audiences in that feeling, beginning from the Eroica Symphony to use the elements of the craft of music—melody, bass, counterpoint, rhythm and harmony—in a new synthesis of elements toward this end.

Liszt attempted in the symphonic poem to extend this revitalization of the nature of musical discourse and add to it the Romantic ideal of reconciling classical formal principles to external literary concepts. To this end, he combined elements of overture and symphony with descriptive elements, approaching symphonic first movements in form and scale. While showing extremely creative amendments to sonata form, Liszt used compositional devices such as cyclic form, motifs and thematic transformation to lend these works added coherence. Their composition proved daunting, requiring a continual process of creative experimentation that included many stages of composition, rehearsal and revision to reach a version where different parts of the musical form seemed balanced.

Late works in classical music

With some works from the end of the Weimar years Liszt drifted more and more away from the musical taste of his time. An early example is the melodrama "Der traurige Mönch" ("The sad monk") after a poem by Nikolaus Lenau, composed in the beginning of October 1860. While in the 19th century harmonies were usually considered as major or minor triads to which dissonances could be added, Liszt took the augmented triad as central chord.

More examples can be found in the third volume of Liszt's Années de Pèlerinage. "Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este" ("The Fountains of the Villa d'Este"), composed in September 1877, foreshadows the impressionism of pieces on similar subjects by Debussy and Ravel. However, other pieces such as the "Marche funèbre, En mémoire de Maximilian I, Empereur du Mexique" ("Funeral march, In memory of Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico") composed in 1867 are without stylistic parallel in the 19th and 20th centuries.

At a later stage Liszt experimented with "forbidden" things such as parallel 5ths in the "Csárdás macabre" and atonality in the Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality"). In the last part of his "2de Valse oubliée" ("2nd Forgotten waltz") Liszt composed that he could not find a lyrical melody. Pieces like the "2nd Mephisto-Waltz" are shocking with nearly endless repetitions of short motives. Also characteristic are the "Via crucis" of 1878, as well as Unstern!, Nuages gris, and the two works entitled La lugubre gondola of the 1880s.

Literary works

Besides his musical works, Liszt wrote essays about many subjects. Most important for an understanding of his development is the article series "De la situation des artistes" ("On the situation of the artists") which 1835 was published in the Parisian Gazette musicale. In winter 1835–36, during Liszt's stay in Geneva, about half a dozen further essays followed. One of them which should have been published under the name "Emm Prym" was about Liszt's own works. It was sent to Maurice Schlesinger, editor of the Gazette musicale. Schlesinger, however, following an advice of Berlioz, did not publish it. In the beginning of 1837, Liszt published a review of some piano works of Sigismond Thalberg. The review evoked a huge scandal. Liszt also published a series of writings titled "Baccalaureus letters", ending in 1841.

During the Weimar years, Liszt wrote a series of essays about operas, leading from Gluck to Wagner. Besides, Liszt wrote essays about Berlioz and the symphony Harold in Italy, Robert and Clara Schumann, John Field's nocturnes, songs of Robert Franz, a planned Goethe foundation at Weimar, and other subjects. In addition to these essays, Liszt wrote a book about Chopin as well as a book about the Romanis (Gypsies) and their music in Hungary.

While all of those literary works were published under Liszt's name, it is not quite clear which parts of them he had written himself. It is known from his letters that during the time of his youth there had been collaboration with Marie d'Agoult. During the Weimar years it was the Princess Wittgenstein who helped him. In most cases the manuscripts have disappeared so that it is difficult to decide which of Liszt's literary works actually were works of his own. However, until the end of his life it was Liszt's point of view that it was he who was responsible for the contents of those literary works.

Liszt also worked until at least 1885 on a treatise for modern harmony. Pianist Arthur Friedheim, who also served as Liszt's personal secretary, remembered seeing it among Liszt's papers at Weimar. Liszt told Friedheim that the time was not yet ripe to publish the manuscript, titled Sketches for a Harmony of the Future. Unfortunately, this treatise has been lost.

Classical Music Composer: Liszt Ferenc ( Franz Liszt )

Classical Music: Hungarian Rhapsody No 2

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, S.244/2, is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt, and is by far the most famous of the set. Few other piano solos have achieved such widespread popularity, offering the pianist the opportunity to reveal exceptional skill as a virtuoso, while providing the listener with an immediate and irresistible musical appeal. It is considered one of the most technically demanding works in the solo piano repertoire.

In both the original piano solo form and in the orchestrated version this composition has enjoyed widespread use in animated cartoons. Its themes have also served as the basis of several popular songs.

Background

The Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt was strongly influenced by the music heard in his youth, particularly Hungarian folk music, with its unique gypsy scale, rhythmic spontaneity and direct, seductive expression. These elements would eventually play a significant role in Liszt's compositions. Although this prolific composer's works are highly varied in style, a relatively large part of his output is nationalistic in character, the Hungarian Rhapsodies being an ideal example.

Composed in 1847 and dedicated to Count László Teleki, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was first published as a piano solo in 1851 by Senff and Ricordi. Its immediate success and popularity on the concert stage soon led to an orchestrated version, arranged by the composer in collaboration with Franz Doppler, and published by Schuberth. In addition to the orchestral version, the composer arranged a piano duet version in 1874, published by Schuberth the following year.

By the late 19th century and early 20th century, the excruciating technical challenges of the piano solo version led to its acceptance as the "unofficial standard" by which every notable pianist would "prove his salt", usually as a smashing finale. It had become an expected staple of virtually every performance of the greatest pianists of the time. Offering an outstanding contrast to the serious and dramatic lassan, the following friska holds enormous appeal for audiences, with its simple alternating tonic and dominant harmonization, its energetic, toe-tapping rhythms, and breath-taking "pianistics".

Most unusual in this composition is the composer's invitation for the performer to improvise an original Cadenza, although most pianists choose to decline the invitation. Other pianists have arranged their own versions of the Rhapsody with changes beyond that of simply adding a cadenza, most notably Vladimir Horowitz in 1953.

Form

The piece consists of two distinct sections.

The first is the Lassan, with its brief but dramatic introduction. Although beginning on the C-sharp major triad, C-sharp minor is soon established as the home key. From this point on, the composer modulates freely, particularly to the tonic major and the relative major. The mood of the Lassan is generally dark and sombre, although marked by playful and capricious contrasts.

The second section is the Friska. It opens quietly in the key of F-sharp minor, but on its dominant chord, C sharp major, recalling a theme from the Lassan. The alternating dominant and tonic harmonies quickly increase in volume, the tempo gaining momentum as the outburst of the Friska's main theme (in F sharp major) is approached. At this point, the Friska begins its journey of ever-increasing energy and pianistic bravura, still underpinned by alternating tonic and dominant harmonies. Modulations are limited almost exclusively to the dominant (C sharp major) and the lowered mediant (A major). Before the final whirlwind of sound, a moment of calm prevails in the key of F sharp minor, recalling another of the Lassan's themes, and is followed by the instruction, Cadenza ad lib. Finally, in the key of F-sharp major, an overwhelming crescendo of prestissimo octaves, ascending then descending almost the entire range of the keyboard, brings the Rhapsody to an impressive conclusion.

Liszt planned his choice of keys in a remarkably symmetrical fashion. Although the Lassan's principal key is C sharp minor (with the appropriate key signature used throughout) the work opens on the tonic major chord, C sharp major. However, by bar 6, the minor tonality is established. This device provides a contrast which intensifies the generally dark and sombre character of the Lassan. This procedure is directly reversed in the Friska. Although the principal key of the Friska is F sharp major, Liszt chooses to begin in the tonic minor key, F sharp minor, which is sustained until bar 51. For practical reasons of notation (i.e., the prolongation of the tonic minor key), Liszt chooses the key signature of F sharp minor, until the arrival of the main theme in F sharp Major. This time, the use of the more serious minor tonality is used as a contrast to the arrival of the playful and jubilant main theme of the Friska.

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in popular culture

The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor is also well-known due to its frequent use in animated cartoons.

The first such appearance was as part of a piano solo by Mickey Mouse in The Opry House in 1929 where he has to deal with an animated piano intent upon making life difficult for him.

Another notable early appearance was in the Max Fleischer cartoon A Car-Tune Portrait, featuring a lion attempting to conduct an orchestra of animals playing a variety of instruments. As the music progresses, the orchestra falls into disarray (to the conductor's despair) and eventually ends with all the animal musicians attacking one another. The rhapsody made another early appearance, as one of several classical pieces, in Disney's Farmyard Symphony.

It became a permanent part of cartoon history with its use in Friz Freleng's Rhapsody in Rivets, where the construction of a skyscraper is synchronized to the rhapsody. Freleng used the piece in several other Warner Brothers cartoons, most notably Rhapsody Rabbit, which featured Bugs Bunny as a concert pianist playing the solo piano version. This film was clearly inspired by its first use in 1929 because many of the gags are similar. However, controversy followed this short's release. Within weeks, MGM released Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera's Tom and Jerry short, The Cat Concerto, which won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. The short featured an almost identical plot, and the same Hungarian Rhapsody, being played by Tom the cat this time. Freleng was convinced that MGM stole the idea from him, and Hanna and Barbera were just as convinced that they were the victims of plagiarism.

Freleng continued to use the piece, though, featuring it in Back Alley Oproar and in an animated sequence for the Doris Day movie My Dream Is Yours. Disney would later use the piece again in 1969's It's Tough to Be a Bird. In the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, director Robert Zemeckis pays tribute to "Number 2"'s cartoon heritage by using the piece for the "dueling pianos" scene featuring Daffy Duck and Donald Duck. In the same fashion, themes from this piece are interweaved throughout the score for the Disneyland attraction Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. Warner Brothers also used it in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode C Flat or B Sharp? , in which Buster Bunny, Plucky Duck and Hamton must take the piano that is on top of the Acme Looniversity's main tower to the concert room, following the orders of Yosemite Sam. The soundtrack of this episode is a shorter version of the composition, and no lines are spoken.

Walter Lantz also gave Woody Woodpecker a chance to perform the piece in Convict Concerto, in which Woody tries to tune a piano under the aim of a bank robber's gun.

Finally, it was used again in Wakko's Wish as the tune of The Wishing Star, as a cast ensemble piece where the Warners sing about the wishing star and how they were off to find it. As the rest of the town finds out that the star will grant a wish to whoever finds it first, everyone sets out on the quest.

The rhapsody was also used several times in the movies of the Marx Brothers. In A Day at the Races and A Night in Casablanca, Chico Marx plays it as an introduction to his main number on the piano with an orchestral accompaniment; in Races it is played with a full orchestra with Harpo conducting comically; in Casablanca, it is played with a smaller jazz orchestra, and opens Chico's 'classical number—the second movement from the Beer Barrel Polka'. Later on, Harpo plays the rhapsody as his harp solo.

In 1949 Stephen Weiss and Bernie Baum composed "Music! Music! Music!". By 1950 it became a "number one hit". Its bridge (lyrics: "Closer, my dear come closer! The sweetest part of any melody..."), melodically and harmonically, is a direct plagiarism of the second theme from the Friska of the Rhapsody.

In 1979, Victor Borge played the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 on The Muppet Show with Rowlf the Dog.

Most recently, "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" was used in the "Ice-Skating Priests" advertisement for the lager Stella Artois.

The final scenes of the 1982 cult film documentary The Atomic Cafe feature the rhapsody as the accompaniment to a nuclear war.

The "Hungarian Rhapsody" #2 was also the basis for a popular song, "Ebony Rhapsody" by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston, introduced in the 1934 film Murder at the Vanities. In the film, it was played by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, who also recorded it. This swing version of the rhapsody was a major influence on several aspiring arrangers, including Billy Strayhorn (who later became Duke Ellington's composing partner) and Billy May (who later recorded "Ebony Rhapsody" with Nat King Cole).

This "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" is also included in the soundtrack of the 1996 film Shine by Australian director Scott Hicks. The film relates the life of pianist David Helfgott.

With a different set of lyrics, "Hungarian Rhapsody" became the Capitol children's record "Daffy Duck's Rhapsody," sung by Mel Blanc in his Daffy Duck persona, and still another cartoon connection for the rhapsody.

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra re-worked Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in their song "Wish Liszt (Toy Shop Madness)" on their fourth album, The Lost Christmas Eve.

In one of the earliest examples of a baseball relief pitcher coming out to signature music, St. Louis Cardinals organist Ernie Hays played "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" when pitcher Al Hrabosky (nicknamed "The Mad Hungarian") would warm up before his appearances in the 1970s.

The piece also makes an appearance in Project Gotham Racing 4.