Luigi Cherubini - His Music and His Life

Born on September 14, 1760 in Florence, the great Italian composer Luigi Cherubini receceives his first teaching by his father. The Earl of Toscana, Italy, later the Emperor Leopold II, sent Cherubini to Venice, where he studied together with Guiseppe Sarti (1729, Faenza - 1802, Berlin).

Since 1780, Cherubini composed innumerable operas. He received incredible appreciations in most of all places in Italy. 1784 London followed. 1786 Pisa in Italy. The opera "Demophoon" (1789) became a great success after Napoleon's regency.

"La doiska" (1791), "Eliza" (1794), "Medee" (1797), and "Les Deux Journees" (The Two Journeys, 1800) came into being. Many more beautiful compositions followed. The "Oratorio f-major" has been composed 1808. The opera "Ali Baba" got its premiere only in 1963 (!) in Essen/Germany.

The native born Italian Cherubini lived most of the time in France - connected mostly with German classical music. He passed away in Paris on March 15, 1842.

Anton Brucker - His Music and His Life

Anton Bruckner, born near Linz on September 4, 1824, is known chiefly as a symphonist. He trained as a school-teacher and organist, and served in the second capacity in Linz until moving in 1868 to Vienna to teach harmony, counterpoint and organ at the Vienna Conservatory. His success as a composer was varied in his lifetime, his acceptance hampered by his own diffidence and his scores posing editorial problems because of his readiness to revise what he had written. He was nine years the senior of Brahms, who outlived him by six months. Bruckner continued Austro-German symphonic traditions on a massive scale, his techniques of composition influenced to some extent by his skill as an organist and consequently in formal improvisation. 

Orchestral Music

 

Bruckner completed nine numbered symphonies (10 if the so-called Symphony ‘No. 0’, ‘Die Nullte’ is included). The best known is probably Symphony No. 7, first performed in Leipzig in 1884; the work includes in its scoring four Wagner tubas, instruments that were a newly developed cross between the French horn and tuba. Symphony No. 4 ‘Romantic’ has an added programme—a diffident afterthought. All the symphonies, however, form an important element in late-19th-century symphonic repertoire

Choral Music

Bruckner wrote a number of works for church use, both large and small scale. Among the former are the Te Deum, completed in 1884, and various settings of the Mass, including the well-known Mass No. 2 in E minor.

The premiere of Bruckner's 9th symphony was 1903 (after his death on October 11, 1896 in Vienna), "dedicated to our Beloved Lord".

“It is to God that I must give account”

Anton Bruckner, 1889

125 years ago, on 11 October 1896, Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) died from acute heart disease brought on by persistent alcoholism. His funeral took place in the Karlskirche in Vienna on 14 October, and his remains were transferred to the crypt in the monastery of St. Florian near Linz, Austria. Even after his death, Bruckner took center stage in the cultural wars of late 19th-century Vienna. “Admirers described him as an unpretentious, modest man and a daring innovator who shied away from no enterprise.” While his detractors did recognize his originality, “they found nothing of value in the work of a modest Viennese church musician who lived a solitary dreamlike existence without ambition and who had been dragged into the limelight by an excessive Wagnerian cult.” Today, Bruckner is primarily remembered for his symphonies and sacred compositions, and as the “master-builder of cathedrals in sound,” we recognize him as a composer having exerted a lasting and crucial influence on the works of Gustav Mahler. Son of a schoolmaster and church organist, Bruckner was born in the village of Ansfelden—near the city of Linz—on 4 September 1824. The eldest of 11 children, he was admitted to the Augustinian monastery of St. Florian as a chorister, where he participated in its rich musical activities.

St. Florian not only imparted a solid musical education, it also firmly established his devotion to Roman Catholicism. Throughout his life, Bruckner was a devoutly religious man who kept a log of his daily devotions, and prayed before each performance. He is even thought to have experienced religious visions. It is said “there is no composer in the 19th century who was rooted so firmly in a lived, heart-deep devoutness, to whom prayer, confession, sacrament, and profession were vital elements.” His faith in the spiritual journey towards the afterlife became a process that decisively shaped his compositional imagination as he channeled profound spiritual messages that elevated music to the level of an undistracted prayer. His initial career path, however, had nothing to do with music, as he became a teaching assistant in Windhaag near Freistadt. An additional teaching appointment saw him at Kronstorf an der Enns, but eventually he returned to St. Florian for 10 years to work as a teacher and an organist.

St. Florian Monastery Bruckner Organ

As a composer, Bruckner was largely self-taught and only started to composing seriously at age 37. He took composition lessons from the German cellist and conductor Otto Kitzler, who introduced him to the music of Richard Wagner. He also became a student of the famous Vienna music theorist Simon Sechter, who instructed him in music theory and counterpoint.

Anton Bruckner

When Sechter died in 1868, Bruckner reluctantly took up the appointment of professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory, and subsequently as the Emperor’s court organist. His complete admiration for Richard Wagner elicited deep-seated resentment within Vienna’s musical and critical circles, and for a while, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra refused to perform his works. Habitually plagued by debilitating periods of low self-esteem, Bruckner was ill prepared for the acidic and highly competitive musical environment of imperial Vienna. He presented a wide and easy target for music critics, journalists and composers alike. Bruckner’s highly idiosyncratic and expansive musical style was mercilessly criticized, with a critic claiming, “Bruckner simply composes like a drunkard!”

Anton-Bruckner-Museum

Given such harsh professional assessments, it is not surprising that Bruckner was prone to suffer from devastating insecurities that made him endlessly revise and correct his compositions. He allowed outside influences to shape the content of his music and relied for editorial assistance on a number of former students. Their “authorized” involvement with his scores has become one the thorniest issues to haunt the composer’s legacy. Bruckner never felt at home in Vienna. He retained his peasant speech and social clumsiness throughout, and had the disastrous inclination to fall in love with teenage girls. His distracting compulsions ranged from obsessive preoccupation with financial security to a morbid fascination with corpses. Bruckner was painfully unaware of the intellectual and political currents of his day, and he exhibited a “Neanderthal male chauvinism that even his admirers found remarkable.”

Otto Böhler: Anton Bruckner arrives in heaven

Bruckner composed music that was simultaneously naïve and complex. Yet, once he had found his compositional path, the musical world did not know what to do with it. The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler pointedly stated, “Bruckner did not work for the present. In his art he thought only of eternity and he created for eternity. In this way he became the most misunderstood of the great musicians… Bruckner is one of those geniuses who have appeared but seldom in the course of European history, whose destiny it was to render the transcendent real and to attract, even to compel, the element of the divine into our human world.”

Ferruccio Busoni - His Music and His Life (II)

His own composition "Fantasia contrappuntistica" (1910), remains as idealism confession to Johann Sebastian Bach.

The "Comedy Overture" (1904) shows Mozart's cheerfulness. Classical dance compositions reminded us of Domenico Scarlatti (Italy, 1685-1757). The "Piano Concerto" from 1892 shows influences of Johannes Brahms.

Stringquartets from 1886 and 1889 as well as the '"Violin concerto" from 1899 captivate because of Beethoven's studies.

Busoni also loved the opera. "Die Brautwahl" (The bride's choice, 1912), "Arlecchino" (Commedia dell'arte, 1917) or "Doktor Faust" (1925) are great examples and evidences of operalistic composer handwork.

Busoni passed away on July 27, 1924 in Berlin/Germany.

Ferruccio Busoni - His Music and His Life

The Italian Ferruccio Busoni was born in Florenz on April 1, 1866. His father was also an Italian, but the father of Busoni's mother was a German.

At the age of 7, the child prodigy Busoni performed on stage for first time. At the age of 9, incredible piano performances in Vienna followed. When hes was 12, he conducted a symphony orchestra. At 15, Busoni became the youngest member of the Bologna Music Academy in Italy.

Busoni has been remembered as restless and have been all over the world. The cosmopolitan composer's biography shows really all colors of life: piano teacher in Leipzig,Germany; he married in Sweden; be became a chairman in Mosow; Boston followed; an artistic trip to Berlin; he became a General Director of Liceo musicales in Bologna, and much more... .

During World War I, Busoni lived in Switzerland. His glory and fame came through an incredible virtuoso. Bach's organ compositions had been arranged for piano by Busoni.

(To be continued!)

Max Bruch - His Music and His Life

 

The German Max Burch was born on January 5, 1838 in Cologne. His mother was his first emotional music teacher.

At the age of 11, Bruch composed his first classical piece, simple entitled as OPUS 1. When he became 14, his first symphony premiered in Cologne. 

After his father's death, Bruch got an insatiable thirst to travel around the whole world, which facilitated him many important and fruitful meetings with society personalities from politic, culture and clergy.

His ever best stage play, the opera "Lorely", premiered 1863 in Mannheim, Germany. Melodic and tuneful folksong atmosphere and E. Geibel's soft-emotional script are the reasons of this never forgotten highlight of Max Bruch.

Bruch's most valid orchestral works have been his "First violin Concerto in g-minor" from 1868; "The Scottish Fantasy" and -one of my favourites- "Variations Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra".

He received innumerabe honors, praises and musical awards. Even being very contrapuntally, Bruch remains as a very special classic composer in the hearts of real music lovers.

Bruch passed away in Berlin on October 2, 1920.

Francois Adrien Boildieu - His Music and His Life

Born on December 16, 1775 in Rouen, the Frenchman Francois Adrien Boildieu was a son of an Archdiocesan secretary. At the age of 18, he started composing cheerful and amusing lyrical dramas and operas.

In Paris, the piano constructor Sebastian Erard (1752-1831) became Boildieu's mentor. Etienne Nicolas Mehul (1763-1817) and Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) were Boildieu's very closed friends.

He composed 38 operas, which remained as pearls of the so-called Opera Comique. I like to mention just only a few such as "Der Kalif von Bagdad" from 1800 (a kalif was an Arabian governor and Mohammed's follower), "Johann von Paris" (1812), and, especially "La Dame Blanche" (The White Lady, 1825) - just aired in my show last Sunday.

Boildieu's piano compositions amuse through wonderful but superficial gleam.

The great composer passed away in Paris on October 8, 1834.

Leo Blech - His Music and His Life

The German Leo Blech was born in Aachen on April 21, 1871. He was a real great opera composer and conductor, who is perhaps most famous at his works from 1893-1899, when be became a conductor in his home town Aachen. Later he moved to Prague in the former CSSR. In 1906, Blech became First Conductor of Berlin's Royal Opera House (Koenigliches Schauspielhaus) - later the Berlin State Opera (Staatsoper Unter den Linden).

In 1925 in Vienna State Opera, then in Berlin 1936-1941, Riga in Lativa, then Stockholm in Sweden - what a career and what a fulfilled life for Leo Blech, who was known for his reliable, dear and elegant performances and for his sensitivity as an accompanist.

Besides apt and practical children's songs, Blech's comic operas deserved sympathy: "Das war ich" (That was me, 1902) and "Versiegelt" (Sealed, 1908).

Leo Blech passed away in Berlin on August 24, 1958.

The Magic of the Stradivarius

What makes Stradivarius violins so special? Made by Antonio Stradivari and his family, these instruments are among the most valuable violins in the world, highly regarded by performers and audiences. Take a look at pictures from the Stradivarius exhibition at Oxford's Ashmolean museum, uncovering the beauty of these musical works of art.

The Alard Stradivarius

Antonio Stradivari is one of the most famous makers of stringed instruments (otherwise known as luthiers) of all time. His instruments are highly regarded and often sell for six figure sums at auction thanks to their unique sound and esteemed history. Created in 1715, in Stradivari's 'golden period' this violin takes its name from French violinist Jean-Delphin Alard, its most famed owner. The instrument sold at auction in 1981 to a collector in Singapore for $1.2 million. Look at the ornate carving on the tailpiece.

Eugen d'Albert - His Music and Life

Eugen d'Albert was born on April 10, 1864 in Glasgow/Scotland. His father was the very known dance composer Charles d'Albert (1809-1886), an Italian grand duke's descendant.

D'Albert studied in London, then in Vienna with Hans Richter (1843-1916) and in Weimar with the unforgettable Franz Liszt. As a blessed pianist, he went on several concert tours. D'Albert admired very much Ludwig van Beethoven (by the way: me too!), whom he gave the real monstrous pathos, which Beethoven really deserves.

Johannes Brahms became an intimate friend.

From his compositions are still known and part of stage performances such as "The Concerto for Cello in c-major" from 1899 and
"The Concerto for Piano in e-major" from 1893. Out of 21 operas the following pieces are more then remarkable: "Die Abreise" (The departure, 1898), "Die toten Augen" (The dead eyes, 1916), and most especially "Tiefland" (The Plain, 1903).

Eugen d'Albert passed away on March 3, 1932 in Riga, the capital of Lativa.

Paul Lincke - His Music and Life

Born on November 7, 1866 in Berlin, the German Paul Lincke has become a popular composer.

Lincke's father was a known and successful municipal authorities civil servant. In Wittenberg's Piper College in Eastern Germany, Paul Lincke studied violin and bassoon play.

Then, Linncke became the Director General of the Berlin Apollo Theater.

1897 marked Lincke's first big stage success with a during those times so called "equipment revue" entitled "Venus on Earth". National traditions mixed with a unique and real "Berlinian operetta sound" has been the reasons of Lincke's entire success: "Frau Luna" (Madame Luna, 1899), "Lysistrata" (1902, with the evergreen "The glimmering glow-warm", one of my late grandmother's favourites), or "Casanova" (1914, badly on stage, because World War I just started).

"Berliner Luft" (Air from Berlin) remained as unofficial anthem of Berlin till today.

Paul Lincke passed away in Clausthal-Zellerfeld on September 3, 1946.

10 OMG Moments in Classical Music

What are the greatest moments in classical music history? The bits that make you immediately rewind and play them again? Simply, the most surprising, shocking, beautiful or weird bits in classical music? Here are 10 moments that will make you say 'OMG'… 

1. The top C in Allegri's Miserere

There you are, just chilling out with a bit of 17th century choral music like any self-respecting person would do, and then all of a sudden, BAM! High C! Emotional overload! Skip straight to it by pressing play below…

2. The climax of Beethoven's 9th Symphony

Everyone sing along! "Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium!" This is such a fist-pumping moment. How fist-pumping? Well, it's supposed to encapsulate the joy of humanity, of being alive, Germanic might, the brotherhood of man and basically all worldly positivity, which is a pretty tall order. Does Beethoven manage it? Take a listen… (the answer's 'yes', by the way.)

3. The opening chords of Elgar's Cello Concerto, played by Jacqueline Du Pré

Few pieces are so iconic that they can be defined by a few chords alone, and few musicians are so iconic that they can be defined by one piece. In a word, 'whoompf'.
Watch the performance here .

4. The Tristan Chord

How can one chord redefine the way we think about music? Well, it's simple. All Wagner did when he plonked this gorgeous little progression into the opening of his opera Tristan und Isolde was use an augmented fourth, an augmented sixth and an augmented ninth above the root to imply a completely different harmonic relation. Easy, yeah? Oh, just listen to it…

5. Don Giovanni is dragged to hell

Much of Mozart's Don Giovanni is actually quite humorous, with amorous japes and farce aplenty, but things take an incredibly sinister turn right at the end when the Don himself (think of him as a folkloric version of Russell Brand with comparable dress-sense) is finally forced to atone for his sins. There's a slow knock at the door, Giovanni opens it and is confronted with a stone state of the Commendatore, who drags the screaming Don into the fiery netherworld. Yikes!
Watch the whole scene here .

6. When all 40 voices come together in Spem in alium

Spem In Alium is a choral classic given a new audience thanks to a certain E.L. James, but we prefer to think of Thomas Tallis' piece as it was intended - a whacking great 40-part motet with one of the most breathtaking ensemble entries in the whole repertoire. Press play below to hear those 40 parts suddenly arrive all at once…

7. "Zaaadoook The Prieeest!"

You know how it is. You're just bumbling along, minding your own business, maybe there's some baroque music in the background… KAPOW! Mass choral entry! Something about a priest! Make sure you're sitting down for this one.

8. The Rite Of Spring causes a riot


Imagine being so maddened and confused by a piece of music that you start a riot. A bit like how parents of Justin Bieber fans must feel, maybe. Anyway, Igor Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring was the original authority-botherer, with its rhythmic and textural originality causing the audience at its premiere to turn into a gibbering rabble, 40 of whom were ejected from the theatre. Give the Augurs Of Spring section a listen and try to resist the urge to flip a table.

9. When Ride Of The Valkyries turns up in Apocalypse Now
When he was composing Die Walküre , it's probable that Richard Wagner didn't have the Vietnam war in mind. However, since Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, this exhilarating music has become associated with exactly that. And helicopters. And explosions.


10. The high notes in the Queen Of The Night aria

As well as being an OMG moment, this is a "did I just hear that correctly?" moment. Actually, it's more like an "is that an alien singing, and why has my champagne flute exploded?" moment. Just listen.

Orlando di Lasso - His Music and Life

Lassus, also known by the Italian form of his name Orlando di Lasso, belonged to the Franco-Flemish school of composers whose work was of supreme international importance in the 16th century. He was born at Mons, in Hainaut, in 1532, and as a boy entered the service of a member of the Gonzaga family (hereditary dukes of Mantua). Employment elsewhere in Italy and a stay in Antwerp was followed by a position in the musical establishment of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich, where Lassus remained from 1556 until his death. With Palestrina and Victoria, he is one of the most important composers of the period.

Church Music

Lassus wrote a considerable quantity of church music, including over 70 settings of the Mass, settings of the Passions from the four evangelists, and a very large number of motets. From this considerable body of high-quality work, selection is invidious; but mention may be made of the Requiem for four voices, the Missa Qual donna, motets such as Tristis est anima mea, and the setting of the seven penitential Psalms of David and of the Holy Week Lamentations.

Secular Vocal Music

The secular vocal compositions of Lassus include madrigals, in the Italian style, some 150 French chansons, and a much smaller number of German Lieder, all of great interest and forming a large body of work, including settings of Petrarch, Ariosto, Ronsard and Marot, from which selection is again invidious.

Ruggiero Leoncavallo - His Music and Life

Born in Naples on March 8, 1858, the Italian composer studied at the Naples College of Music and became a private music teacher and touring pianist in between those careers.

In 1892, Leoncavallo came out with the opera "I Pagliacci" (The Barber) in two acts. Together with the one act opera "Cavalleria Rusticana" by Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945), "The Barber" constitutes a wonderful one evening stage play in many concert houses and theatres. 

I have been blessed to experience several stage performances in different European cities.

The barber's part, the cheated comedian, has been holding great attractions for many world known tenors.

Unbelievable for me: all other operas of Leoncavallo flopped, even containing wonderful and incredible melodies, who might break your hearts. "Der Roland von Berlin" (1904, dedicated to the last German Emperor II). 

Leoncavalo passed away on August 9, 1919 in Montecatini Toscana County/Italy.

Ruggiero Leoncavallo - his Music and Life

SOON HERE...

Josef Matthias Hauer - His Music and Life

Born on March 19, 1883, the Austrian Josef Matthias Hauer, a simple elementary school teacher who wanted to be treated as the composition inventor of the so-called "12-tones-numbers-technique" or - in Greece - Dodecaphony.

Since 1908, Hauer used that technique in all his compositions.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), the "real Dodecaphony inventor never accepted Hauer's theory and work, Hauer calculated 479,001,600 combination possibilities of those sound or tones. 44 main types became the fundaments of Hauer's compositions: "About the colors of sounds" (1919), "Melodies interpretations" (1923, one of my favourite pieces of Hauer), or "From the melody to kettle-drum" (1925).

Hauer's opinion has remained till today as "embodiment and portrayal of an impartial melody" such as in the "Transubstantions Oratorio" from 1928 or "Salambo", an opera from 1930.

Hauer passed away in Vienna on September 22, 1959.