George Bizet - His Music and Life

Born on October 25, 1838, in Paris, the French George Bizet passed away -also in Paris- on June 3, 1875.

As a music professor's son, Bizet started to study at the Parisienne College of Music at the age of 9!!! During the ten academic years Bizet passed many examinations with distinctions. One of his teacher was Jacques Halevy a.k.a. Elias Levy (1799-1862), his then future father-in-law.

At the age of 17 (1855), Bizet composed his first symphony in c-major. The premiere took place only in 1935 through Felix von Weingaertner (1863-1942) in Basel, Switzerland. Bizet considered this composition as immature 'schoolboy-work".

In 1857, his operetta "Le Docteur Miracle" (The Wonder Doctor0 won the first prize. In Italy, Bizet composed the comic opera "Don Procopio" with its premiere only 1906 in Monte Carlo.

The following operas remained as very unsuccessful, even they content many wonderful classic compositions: "Le Pecheurs de Perles" (1863), "Ivan le Terrible" (1865) or "Djamileh" (1877).

The two "L'Arlesienne Suites" (1872 and 1876) remained as world record classical compositions till today and are being aired on European radio stations many times.

The opera "Carmen" is one of the most performed operas worldwide up to now and remained as Bizet's great success.

Hector Berlioz - His Music and Life. Hector Berlioz: Enfant Terrible!

Born on December 11, 1803 in La Cote-Saint-Andre, Dauphine, the French Hector Berlioz passed away in Paris on March 8, 1869.

His father, a blessed doctor, wanted his son to follow him in his footsteps.

But in 1826, Berlioz shifted his medicine study to the College of Music. His father cut off all his supports. But Berlioz earned a lot of money with his early compositions such as "Waverly" (1828) - eight scenes "Doktor Faustus" (1829) and - also during the same year - his most successful composition "Symphony fantastique, Episode de la vie d'un Artiste" (Episodes from an artist's life).

When Ludwig van Beethoven passed away, it was a hazardous business to compose symphonies, "Dias Irae" and "Lello ou le retour de la vie" (Return to live, 1832), flopped. In his symphony "Romeo and Juliet" (1839), Berlioz utilized solos and chorus parts and call it "his first dramatic symphony".

"Le Carneval Romain" (his first opera, 1843) became unfortunately only successful in some parts.

Even though, Berlioz became one of the blessed French classical composers - sometimes reaching a despairing desperation, and ruffling up insanity and madness.

Hector Berlioz: Enfant Terrible!

by Georg Predota, Interlude

Hector Berlioz

Whether we like it or not, Hector Berlioz is primarily associated with a single composition. Everybody knows his Symphonie Fantastique, but his religious works, the dramatic legends, his songs and even his operas are rarely scheduled for performance, and they have remained an enigma to the concert going public. One of the most idiosyncratic artistic geniuses of all time, Berlioz’s music resists easy classification or categorization. He simply refused to fit neatly into one category or the other, as his compositions manipulate all aspects of musical rhetoric and discourse in order to achieve a broader artistic end. Genre designations play only a secondary role, as his symphonies evoke the theater and his operas, cantatas and songs pay only nominal tribute to established categories. In addition, he freed tone color from its subservient function of merely clarifying the melody, rhythm, harmony and counterpoint of a piece, and gave it an aesthetic reason for existing and a significance of its own.


His chosen path plunged the budding composer into an archetypal struggle, not only for financial survival but also for the acceptance of his artistic ideas, a task to which he would tirelessly devote all his creative and intellectual energy. And as you might well imagine, he was widely misunderstood in his own lifetime. Claude Debussy, as he was working on his own opera, Pelleas et Melisande, wrote “Berlioz was never, properly speaking, a musician of the theater.” This seems a rather strange comment on a composer whose work is from beginning to end intensely dramatic in character. For his critics, Berlioz was more successful as a dramatist in his symphonies than in his stage works. The dramatic brilliance of his orchestral writing, according to the argument, detracted from the theatrical effectiveness of his operas. Berlioz completed only five operas, but he contemplated or sketched many more and had at least one operatic project in mind throughout his life. 

Berlioz’s skill as an orchestrator lays not in the novelty of the instruments themselves as much as it is found in his skill of using and combining them. Before Berlioz, the functions of orchestral instruments associated melody and harmony mainly in the string choir, with winds used for occasional reinforcement and soloistic color. For Berlioz, as he comprehensively described in his treatise on orchestration and instrumentation, the invention of a particular tone colors for individual passages was part of the normal process of composition. Harmony and correct voice-leading become secondary elements, and melody and the color of the orchestral sound makes almost exclusive claims upon our attention. We know that Berlioz responded to a request from Niccolo Paganini in his composition of Harold in Italy, but the combination of solo viola and orchestra in a symphony is nevertheless highly unusual! Paganini didn’t like it at all because it was not sufficiently virtuosic. 

Berlioz sought employment in the theatre and the Conservatoire, but never in the Church. His pronouncements about religious music are the views of an unorthodox Christian, but he did set several sacred texts with a strong personal vision that discloses deeply religious roots. In his memoirs he writes about his fugue from the Messe solennelle, “Let people who have never heard anything like it, imagine what kind of devout expression arises when fifty voices, howling with fury in a lively tempo, repeat Amen four or five hundred times, or vocalize on the syllable “a,” so as to sound like raucous laughter. I defy anyone with the slightest musical feeling not to interpret such a chorus as an army of incarnate devils, making fun of the sacrament, rather than a gathering of the faithful praising god.” In essence, his religious music is primarily theatrical and orchestral, as his aim seems to have been a display of unity of subject matter and artistic purpose, rather then one of musical means.

Alban Berg - His Music and Life

Born on February 9, 1885 in Vienna, the Austrian Alban Berg passed away on December 24, 1935 - also in Vienna.

Berg became a civil servant, but gave up this unique career while becoming a student of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951, Los Angeles).

He was a down to earth person and thought himself to be part of the restored classical composers. His first compositions had been in rapture over disarming sounds and tones. The highlight became the "Four Clarinet Pieces" from 1913.

"Wozzeck", Berg's only opera reflected his experiences as a soldier during World War I. His supposed last opera "Lulu", composed in a 12-sound-technique, remained unfinished up to its premiere 1937 in Zurich/Switzerland.

Franz von Suppe - His Music and Life

Franz von Suppe, born on April 18, 1819, was one of the founders of Viennese operetta, attaining a position in Austria comparable to that of Jacques Offenbach in France. 

Suppe wrote over 200 compositions for the stage, including 30 operettas, farces, and incidental music. Nearly all these works have slipped into oblivion, but some of their sparkling overtures have survived and remain popular as light music, especially "Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna" (1844), "Poet and Peasant" (1846), and "Light Cavalry" (1866). In the United States, Suppe's music is probably best known for its frequent appearance on the soundtracks of old Hollywood movies and cartoons. Suppe was born in Split, Dalmatia, of Italian and Belgian descent. His real name was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Suppe-Demelli. He spent most of his life in Vienna and was Kapellmeister of the prestigious Theatre an der Wien from 1845 to 1862. Suppe was also a noted vocalist and sang bass roles in some of his early operettas.

His passed away on May 21, 1895 in Vienna.

Daniel Francois Esprit Auber - His Music and Life

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, born January 29, 1782 in Caen/France and passed away May 12, 1871, was a leading composer of French opera from the 1820s onwards, collaborating from then for some thirty years with the librettist Augustin- Eugène Scribe. He is particularly known for his contributions to the genre of opéra- comique, although one of his most famous works is Masaniello or La muette de Portici (The Dumb Girl of Portici), of which the first title is preferred in English. This work, staged in Paris in 1828, began the era of French grand opera. Auber wrote a considerable quantity of music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular. He was respected by Rossini and Wagner, and much honoured by the state in his life-time.

Operas

Auber's most popular operas are Fra Diavolo, Le cheval de bronze (The Bronze Horse), Les diamants de la couronne (The Crown Diamonds), and the seminal grand opera Masaniello or La muette de Portici (The Dumb Girl of Portici). It's funny, that only Auber's 13th opera "Le Macon" became a great success. I love all his compositions.