When Simple is Necessary: Fauré’s Berceuse

by Maureen Buja

A berceuse is a piece to put you to sleep – particularly if you’re a small child in a cradle. It’s usually in triple meter with a very simple tonality – wild and chromatic is just out of the question if you want it to be a lullaby. French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) composed a Berceuse, op. 16, that continues to be a performer’s favourite.

John Singer Sargent: Gabriel Fauré, 1899 (Paris: Musée de la Musique)

Fauré made his name at two major French churches as an organist. First at the Église Saint-Sulpice, where he started as the choirmaster in 1871 under the organist Chares-Marie Widor before moving to the Église de la Madeleine in 1874, where he was deputy organist under Camille Saint-Saëns, taking over when the senior organist was on one of his frequent tours. Although he was recognised as a leading organist and played it professionally for some 40 years, he didn’t appreciate its size, with one commentator saying, ‘for a composer of such delicacy of nuance, and such sensuality, the organ was simply not subtle enough’.

In 1879, he wrote a little Berceuse that was quickly appreciated by violinists. Fauré himself didn’t quite see what the fuss was about, but the work went into the repertoire of many violinists in the late 19th century and was recorded by the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe.

The premiere of the work was given in February 1880 at the Société Nationale de Musique (which Fauré was a founding member) with the violinist Ovide Musin and the composer at the piano. The French publisher Julien Hamelle was at the performance and quickly put the work into print, where it sold over 700 copies in its first year alone.

It has been arranged for cello, violin and orchestra, and even as a vocalise for text-less voice and harp. 

This recording was made in 1935, with violinist Henry Merckel, under Piero Coppola leading the Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup.

Henry Merckel

Henry Merckel (1887–1969) was a classical violinist from Belgium who graduated from the Paris Conservatoire in 1912. He had his own string quartet and was concertmaster of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra (now known as the Orchestra de Paris) from 1929 to 1934, and also served as concertmaster of the Paris Opera Orchestra from 1930 until 1960.

Piero Coppola

The Italian conductor Piero Coppola (1888–1971) studied piano and composition at the Milan Conservatory. He graduated in 1910 and, in 1911, was already conducting at La Scala. He is known for his recordings of Debussy and Ravel in the 1920s and 1930s, including the first recordings of Debussy’s La Mer and Ravel’s Boléro, with his Debussy recordings being praised as ‘close to Debussy’s thoughts’. From 1923 to 1934, he was the artistic director of the recording company La Voix de son Maître, the French branch of The Gramophone Company, under whose name this recording was made.

The Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup, founded in 1861 by Jules Pasdeloup, is the oldest symphony orchestra in France. They scheduled their concerts for Sundays to catch concert-goers who weren’t able to make evening concerts. It started out with the name of Concerts Populaires and ran until 1884. It was started up again in 1919 under Serge Sandberg as the Orchestre Pasdeloup.

Performed by

Henry Merckel
Piero Coppola
Orchestre des Concerts Pasdeloup

Recorded in 1935

Bringing Folk Music to Life: Grieg’s Lyric Pieces

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

Edvard Grieg (1843 – 1907) invented the idea of Lyric Pieces, but it’s really part of a long list of character pieces for the piano. With the rise of the home piano, there was an immediate market for music for the instrument and the home players.

Eilif Peterssen: Edvard Grieg, 1891 (Oslo: Nasjonalmuseet)

Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) was born in Bergen, Norway, and when his skills were recognised by the violinist and composer Ole Bull, he was sent to Leipzig at age 15 to attend the conservatory. Although he later complained about the conservatory, there is no doubt that he received very good and solid musical training. In a city with an extremely active musical life, he heard music he never would have encountered in Norway and it made a lasting impression on him.

When he returned to Scandinavia, he first went to Copenhagen and there started to make his name as a composer. Meeting the Norwegian composer Rikard Nordraak, Grieg came to believe, as Nordraak did, that the future of Norwegian music lay in nationalism and that folksong was key to this.

In 1866, Grieg returned to Norway and settled in Christiana, a part of the capital city of Oslo. Although he wrote many major works, his identity with folk music tainted his reputation as someone who simply borrowed from folk music. Grieg’s own compositional style followed that of traditional Norwegian music: ‘Much instrumental Norwegian folk-music is built from small melodic themes, units which are repeated with small variations in appoggiaturas and sometimes with rhythmic displacements’. Development sections are rare. In following this style, he made it difficult for listeners to tell the difference between his original works and folk music borrowings.

The rise of the piano (it’s estimated that in 1910, more than 600,000 pianos were produced) gave Grieg a ready audience for his piano pieces. They were so popular that his publisher, C.F. Peters in Leipzig, eventually gave him an annual salary for the right to have first choice of his new works.

In his collections of Lyric Pieces, there were eventually 66 works published in 10 albums in the 34 years between 1867 and 1901. His fifth book, Op. 54, published in 1891, is considered to contain his best work in the series. The idea of Nature binds the collection together, and the source material is Grieg’s own, not coming from folk music.

The fourth piece in the collection, the March of the Trolls, takes the equivalent of the Norwegian boogieman as its subject. When the irritable, short-tempered trolls come out after dark with their plans to wreak havoc on quiet households everywhere, beware!

This piece, originally for piano, was orchestrated by conductor Anton Seidl for the New York Philharmonic as part of a work he called Norwegian Suite. This was later revised by Grieg as Lyric Suite with one piece removed, another added, and the order shifted. Grieg’s revised version replaced Seidl’s original version, which is rarely heard anymore.

Golovanov (R) and Shostakovich (L)

This recording was made in Moscow in 1949, with Nikolai Golovanov leading the Orchestre Symphonique de la Radio de l’URSS. Soviet composer and conductor Nikolai Semyonovich Golovanov (1891–1953) was one of the leading conductors of his time, and was extensively associated with the Bolshoi Opera. He was recognised as a People’s Artist of the USSR and Honoured Artist of the RSFSR, was awarded the Stalin Prize Winner four times, and was also awarded the Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner of Labor, Medal ‘For the Defence of Moscow’ and Medal ‘For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945’. He was dismissed by Stalin over a disagreement about casting a Jewish singer for the title role in a recording of Boris Godunov. His friends said it was his shame over this dismissal that led to his death.

Performed by

Nikolai Golovanov
Orchestre Symphonique de la Radio de l’URSS

Recorded in 1949

Searching for a Button, Searching for Life: George Benjamin’s Picture a Day Like This

by Maureen Buja

English composer George Benjamin (b. 1960) started working with British playwright Martin Crimp (b.1956) in 2006, resulting in four operas: Into the Little Hill (2006), Written on Skin (2012), Lessons in Love and Violence (2018), and Picture a Day Like This (2023).

George Benjamin (Photo by Matthew Lloyd)

Martin Crimp

The first is a chamber opera based on the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Written on the Skin is set in 13th -century Provence and tells the legend told by the troubadour Guillaume de Cabestanh, where an unfaithful wife is served a dinner of the heart of her lover. When she’s told what she’s eaten, she turns the tables on her murderous husband by declaring that nothing can now remove the taste of her lover’s heart from her. As her husband rushes at her to kill her, she jumps off the balcony to her death.

Miniature of Guillem de Cabestany / Guillaume de Cabestanh, 13th century (Gallica: BnF ms. 12473: btv1b60007960, folio 89v)

Lessons in Love and Violence is about the relationship between King Edward II (1284–1327) and Piers Gaveston (1284–1312). Gaveston impressed Edward I, who assigned him to the household of his son, Edward of Caernafon. Edward I kept separating the two because Edward of Caernafon was so extreme in his partiality to Piers. What is unclear is the relationship, variously described with them being friends, lovers, or sworn brothers.

Edward II receiving the English Crown, 1350 (British Library, Royal MS 20 A ii, folio 10)

For the 2023 Aix-en-Provence Festival, the new text was for another chamber opera with 5 singers and a 22-member orchestra. The setting is a kind of never-when and fairy-tale like; the characters occupy separate worlds and operate on a kind of ‘dream-like logic’.

Marianne Crebassa in Picture a Day Like This at the Aix-en-Provence festival, 2023 (Photograph by Jean-Louis Fernandez)

A woman’s child dies, and, wrapping the boy in silk, she prepares the body for cremation. People in black arrive to take the body and one tells her: ‘Find one happy person in this world and cut one button from their sleeve – do it before night and your child will live’. She gives the mother (called simply Woman in the opera) a paper list that tells her where to look.

Picture a Day Like This: Scene 1, The Woman and the Death Attendants, 2023 (Festival-d’Aix-En-Provence) (photo by Jean-Louis-Fernandez)

George Benjamin: Picture a Day Like This – Scene 1: The Page (Marianne Crebass, Woman)

It’s Quest Opera, but with a dark and sombre center. The Woman goes off, and first finds 2 lovers, clothes discarded to the side. She asks for a button, as they’re clearly happy in themselves. They agree but then get into an argument about past and current lovers, and jealousy and happiness flee. So does the mother when one of the lovers looks to her to add to his list.

Next, she finds an Artisan. He’s retired and sitting happily in the sun. He confirms he’s happy, but when she asks for a button, he refuses. He was a button maker, and all the buttons on his suit were made with his hands. What he wants is the knife that she should use to cut off the button. What he also wants is chlorpromazine, used to treat psychiatric disorders. As he rolls up his sleeves, she sees all the cuts on his skin from all the times he’s tried to commit suicide. The woman leaves as the nurse leads the unhappy man away.

The Woman (Marianne Crebassa) and the Artisan (John Brancy)

The Composer and her assistant arrive next. The Composer is so busy that happiness has no part in her life.

In the middle, in an Aria, the woman reflects on the hopeless people she’s just met: ‘fools – vain fools – the insane’ when what she wanted was miracles. If dead flowers can come to life, why not her son? She throws away the paper list she was given.

The Collector enters. He says he’s on her list and shows her his collection of paintings: Warhol’s Gold Marilyn, Manet’s last vase of flowers, a book of hours, a Matisse….

Warhol: Gold Marilyn Monroe, 1962
(New York: Museum of Modern Art)

He refers to his rooms of artworks as his rooms of miracles. He invites her to take anything that will make her happy…but she must love him. And, he doesn’t have any buttons. She continues her search, paper list back in her hand.

Her last meeting is with Zabelle, a woman seemingly like herself. In a beautiful garden, Zabelle appears when the Woman reads her description on the paper list. She has 2 children playing on the swings; her husband lies half-asleep in the rose garden…can the mother share in this happy and beautiful life? Zabelle says to look again at the garden: shadows are falling, men are at the gate to occupy the park and destroy things, she’s dropped the baby boy, and he seems cold…it’s all an illusion. There is no happiness. Zabelle says that just because her name is on a list doesn’t mean she’s happy because she, in fact doesn’t exist. As she disappears, she twists a button off her sleeve and holds it out, but an invisible barrier separates the two characters.

Picture a Day Like This: Scene 7, The Woman and the Death Attendants, 2023 (Festival-d’Aix-En-Provence) (photo by Jean-Louis-Fernandez)

At the end, the Woman finds herself back where she started, the death attendants are still in the room. They tell her the quest was in vain because

The page is torn from the vast book of the dead –
punched through by grief –
sewn with a human thread –
no one can alter it.
Now do you understand?

The woman smiles at them and bids them to look at ‘the bright button in my hand’.

It’s an intriguing and puzzling story – how things appear on the surface do not survive closer scrutiny. New characters bring different definitions of happiness and different pictures of their hope and despair – lovers are unfaithful, the artisan was broken, the composer was self-obsessed, the collector was lonely, and even the beautiful Zabelle is happy only when it’s not dark. The Woman goes through an impossible journey but still emerges victorious at the end. It was about her own happiness, not others.

The composer said the sequential scenes made it feel like he was writing a new opera for each scene – but, on the other hand, he welcomed the challenge. Another part of the challenge the composer and writer set each other is to find something new and different for each work: fairy tales to stories of the troubadours to royal scandals, and now a dream quest – they couldn’t be more different in the subject if they tried!

The opera closes ambiguously. In the final scene, Zabelle describes the change from the day’s beauty to the night’s horrors, the Woman confronts the women who gave her the impossible quest and shows them her button. Does she get her son back? It’s not clear.

George Benjamin: Picture a Day Like This – Scene VII: III. Picture a Day Like This (Anna Prohaska, Zabelle; Marianne Crebass, Woman)

George Benjamin: Picture a Day Like This
Nimbus Records: NI 8116
Release date: 6 September 2024

Official Website

   

The Hero in Women’s Clothes: Saint Saëns’ Le Rouet d’Omphale

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

In the 1870s, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) wrote a set of symphonic poems on classical subjects, including Phaéton, Danse macabre, La jeunesse d’Hercule, and Le Rouet d’Omphale (The Spinning Wheel of Omphale), which tell of an episode in Hercules’s life.

Gustave Jacquet: Portrait of Camille Saint-Saëns, 1870

Omphale was the queen of Lydia, in the cross-Bosporus region of modern-day Turkey. After her husband’s death, she reigned as queen. She comes into our knowledge as the keeper of Hercules after his murder of Iphitos, a prince and one of Jason’s Argonauts.

After Hercules had completed his Twelve Labours, he came to Ochelaia to compete in an archery competition. The prize was King Eurytus’ daughter Iole’s hand in marriage. Despite winning the competition, Eurytus and his sons (except for Iphitos) refused to give Hercules the prize because he had killed his children by his earlier wife Megara. Megara had been given to Hercules by her father, the King of Thebes, and they had several sons together. Unfortunately, Megara hated her husband and so, in a fit of temporary madness, Hercules killed all their children and then his wife.

Iphitos, the sole supporter of Hercules, went to see Hercules after he was blamed for the loss of cattle stolen by Autolycus, a notorious thief. Iphitos told Hercules he would help him look for the stolen cattle but Hercules went mad again and threw Iphitos from walls of the city of Tiryns. Apollo then sentenced Hercules to serve Omphale for one year… dressed as a woman and doing women’s work.
Because of the story’s gender implications, it was a favourite of artists. Generally, the illustrations show Hercules using a distaff to spin wool.

Roman Mosaic from Spain: Hercules and Omphale, 3rd century

Bartholomaeus Spranger: Hercules and Omphale, ca. 1600 (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum)

Luca Cranach the Elder: Hercules and Omphale’s maids, 1537 (Braunschweig: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum)

The music takes up the idea of spinning in its opening, but underneath are the groans of Hercules. The violins and woods take up the idea of Omphale mocking the fallen hero. Saint-Saëns said that he knew very well that there were no spinning wheels before the Middle Ages and explained at the beginning of the score that the wheel was ‘merely a pretext, chosen simply from the point of view of rhythm and general atmosphere of the piece’. His real subject was that of ‘feminine seduction, the triumphant struggle of weakness against strength’.

Philippe Gaubert, ca 1920

This recording was made in 1927 in Paris with Philippe Gaubert leading the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Philippe Gaubert (1879—1941) began studying flute at the Paris Conservatoire at age 13 and rose to be one of the most important French musicians in the inter-war years. He was not only professor of flute at the Conservatoire (Marcel Moyse was one of his students), but principal conductor of both the Paris Opera and the orchestra on this recording.

The Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire was founded in 1828 and was made up of the Conservatoire faculty and students. Gaubert was their chief conductor from 1919–1938, succeeded by Charles Munch. The orchestra folded in 1967, and a new orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, was formed, with Charles Munch returning as their music director for their first two years (1967–1968).

Performed by

Philippe Gaubert
Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire

Recorded in 1927

The Magpie as Thief: Rossini’s La gazza ladra

by Maureen Buja 

Three of Rossini’s operas mark turning points in his development as an opera composer. Semiramide, Guillaume Tell, and La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) each gather up a summary of his operatic development to that point and are made into very long operas. They also share another characteristic: none of these operas show the self-borrowing that marks much of his work. Semiramide is the culmination of his opera seria work and is the turning point in his withdrawal from Italian operatic life. Guillaume Tell is the end of the series of his operas written in Naples and then Paris, which were about experimentation and exploration – this is his farewell to his career in the theatre. La gazza ladra, with its mix of serious and comic elements, is his last experiment in comic opera. His next area was the musical farce (farse), starting with L’Italiana in Algeri, where his operas called for the top soloists to take on his difficult principal roles.

Marie Françoise Constance Mayer: Gioachino Rossini (Pesaro: Casa Rossini)

La gazza ladra, which sits between opera seria and comic opera, is an opera semiseria. The opera received its premiere on 31 May 1817 at La Scala, Milan.

Many opera semiseria, also called melodrama, were ‘rescue operas’ which involved a class conflict between the feudal aristocracy and regular society, generally peasants. The settings are usually the village square, with the nobleman’s house (or the local prison) looming over the scene. In La gazza ladra, the climax is set in the nobleman’s court, pushing the emphasis over to a more opera seria ending.

José Álvarez Cubero: Bust of Gioachino Rossini, ca. 1819 (private owner)

Ninetta loves Giannetto, who is on his way back from the wars. Her father, Fernando, a deserter from the army, shows up and asks her to sell two of their silver spoons so he has some money. She gathers up the spoons and is interrupted by the mayor who asks her to read out the description of a deserter in the area. She makes up a different description of her father, and while she’s doing that, a magpie swoops down and steals a spoon.

Alessandro Sanquirico: Tribunal del podestà in un grosso villaggio non molto distante da parigi : questa scena su eseguita pel melodramma La Gazza Ladra, posto in musica dal sig. Gioachimo Rossini, e rappresentato nell’J. R. Teatro alla Scala (Design for courtroom scene (Act II: 9)) (Gallica: btv1b53117267k)

Giannetto’s mother, who is not in favour of Ninetta, accuses Ninetta of theft, and as the two family spoons have the same initials on them, Ninetta is found guilty and sent to the scaffold. The magpie steals a silver coin, and when it’s followed to its nest, both Ninetta’s and Gianetta’s mother’s lost spoons are found. Will the discoverers get back to the scaffold in time to save Ninetta? Of course they do, and all have a happy ending, except the Mayor, who was hoping Giannetta’s troubles would be solved in his arms.

Discovery of the magpie’s nest

The overture, which starts with a snappy drum roll, is significant for its use of snare drums.

Gioachino Rossini: La gazza ladra Overture

This 1928 recording was conducted by Ernst Viebig, leading the Berlin State Opera Orchestra. Ernst Viebig (1897–1959) was an accomplished composer from a family with literary connections. His father was a publisher and his mother a writer. His original name was a hyphenated version of his parents’ names, Cohn-Viebig, and was shortened to Viebig in 1914 when he wanted to join the army. The family hoped that eliminating his father’s Jewish name would make his way easier. His father had converted to Lutheran Protestantism when he married Clara Viebig.

Ernst Viebig

Family connections brought the world of literature to the house and his own interests in music started with the piano, with a particular skill in improvisation. He served in WWI and returned to Berlin with a position at the Electrola record company as musical director, while also serving as a bandmaster and composer. With the rise of the National Socialists in Germany and an inquiry by the Gestapo about his Jewish background, he decided to leave Germany for South America. His music did not find favour there and he and his second wife opened a German bookstore in Rio de Janeiro and then in São Paulo. He returned to Berlin in 1958 but could not find work and retired to Lower Bavaria where he died in 1959.

As the musical director at Electrola in the 1920s, he played an important role in their recordings. As a conductor, he made not only this La gazza ladra recording but also important recordings of the overture to von Suppé’s operetta The Beautiful Galathée and Puccini’s Turandot Fantasy.

Performed by

Ernst Viebig
Berlin State Opera Orchestra

Recorded in 1928

Official Website

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