Why Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’? The Batman soundtrack explained

 

Tiffin Boys' Choir sing in The Batman. Picture: Warner Bros. Pictures / Alamy

By Sophia Alexandra Hall, ClassicFM London

@sophiassocials

 

We break down the classical music heard in the new Batman film, and the voices behind the soundtrack... 

The first sound audiences hear when sitting down to watch DC’s new big screen comic book offering, The Batman, is the opening of Schubert’s Ave Maria.

The track, performed by Tiffin Boys’ Choir, a world-renowned school choir from London, UK, can be heard accompanying someone’s heavy breathing as the first scene of the film plays out after an unusually silent film credits opening.

Ave Maria is heard three more times in the film, and Schubert’s melody is continuously weaved into the soundtrack in a twisted villainous arrangement.

But why this piece of music, what’s its significance to the story line, and what themes does the song represent? We take a closer look at this musical prayer and the other music featured in the new Batman film.

Warning: Spoilers ahead... 

What is the meaning behind ‘Ave Maria’ in The Batman?

Robert Pattinson stars as the title role in The Batman alongside actor and musician Paul Dano, who portrays the film’s main villain, the Riddler. Director, Matt Reeves, wrote the part of the Riddler for the new Batman film with Dano in mind to play the part.

In the comic books, the Riddler is depicted as one of the most notorious criminal masterminds in Gotham City, and is most associated with his obsession with riddles, puzzles, and death traps, which assert his intelligence over both Batman, and the police force.

In this new film, one puzzle the audience has to solve is the association of Schubert’s Ave Maria with this character.

The villain’s main theme is even a twisted minor key version of Schubert’s melody, giving the song even more play-time than its already three-time film appearance.

The theme uses the first six-note pattern of Schubert’s melody, but instead of rising to the major third on the fourth note of the phrase, the Riddler’s theme only rises to the minor third, creating an uneasy sonic atmosphere, before a falling semitone leads us back to the phrase’s starting note.

The unedited version of Schubert’s Ave Maria is heard three times in The Batman.

Firstly in the opening scene, while the Riddler watches his first victim, Mayor Don Mitchell Jr., and his family through a window. Secondly, in archive footage found in the city’s old orphanage, the song is performed by a children’s choir while Batman’s father (Thomas Wayne) gives an electoral speech. Finally, the song is sung by the Riddler himself while locked up in Arkham State Hospital.

While it’s not uncommon for film villains to sing their own themes (see Die Hard), the Riddler’s reason for singing this song is more one of vengeance, a theme that weaves through The Batman.

The Riddler reveals that he was an orphan in his ‘face off’ with Batman in Arkham State Hospital, and thanks to pinboard footage we see during an earlier scene, we can place the Riddler as a child in the children’s choir that sings Ave Maria.

This piece of music is subsequently suggested to be very important to the Riddler’s character, as it was the song he and his peers at the orphanage sang the day soon-to-be mayor, Thomas Wayne, announced the ‘renewal fund’; a billion pound investment into the city, part of which would go to the orphanage.

Wayne however, was murdered a week later, meaning the money promised to the orphanage from the renewal fund was never invested, and the orphaned children had to continue living in squalor while the criminals and corrupt police in the city profited.

What does Ave Maria represent in The Batman?

The Riddler’s children’s choir sings Ave Maria to Schubert’s melody, one of the Latin prayer’s most common modern-day settings. The lyrics for Ave Maria (Hail Mary in English), revere Jesus’ mother, the Virgin Mary, in the Christian religion.

Schubert’s melody and the Latin prayer text is a popular choice for funerals, making the repetitive appearance of the song throughout the film an eerie one.

The song is also visually associated with death throughout the film, with the first time it plays preempting the death of Mayor Don Mitchell Jr., and the second time preempting the death of Thomas Wayne.

Batman (aka Bruce Wayne) attends the Mayor’s funeral. Picture: Warner Bros. Pictures

There are various settings of the Latin prayer, and it is poignant that the music team chose the Schubert melody for the film, due to the original lyrics associated with this music.

Although today, the Schubert melody is most commonly sung with the Latin prayer lyrics, the German composer originally wrote the tune as part of a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's popular epic poem The Lady of the Lake.

This melody was from song number six, Ellens dritter Gesang (Ellen’s third song), and the original German lyrics were actually a call to the Virgin Mary for help.

Schubert’s lyrics plead, “Thou canst hear though from the wild; Thou canst save amid despair. Safe may we sleep beneath thy care, Though banish'd, outcast and reviled.”

In Arkham State Hospital, the Riddler recounts in the orphanage, 30 children would sleep in one room, and every winter a baby would die because it was so cold, and the institution was unable to properly care for the infants.

The despair and wish for safety during sleep in Schubert’s lyrics are echoed by the Riddler in his description of his childhood, and perhaps explain why this melody was chosen to soundtrack his character.

What other classical music is heard in The Batman?

The Tiffin Boys’ Choir also perform Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament (When I am laid), a song about preparing for death, which is heard during the funeral of Mayor Don Mitchell Jr. As well as appearing on the soundtrack, the choir appear on screen in white chorister robes during the scene.

The school choir have lent their voices to multiple other Hollywood films before including The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and Dumbo (2019).

Another famous choral piece is heard as Batman races back to his penthouse to save his butler, Alfred, played by Andy Serkis, from a bomb threat.

In a dramatic scene, where the action unfolds under the crescendoing soundtrack, the piece playing is Fauré’s Requiem (Requiem Op. 48 7. In Paradisum (I)). Yet again, this is another classical piece of music often played at funerals, and has the viewer concerned that Alfred will die due to the death-associated music playing.

Although Alfred ends up surviving, it is an intensely emotional scene, and pulls at the viewers heartstrings as the huge orchestral and choral melody blocks out all other sound and makes you think you’re about to witness a main character death.

Earlier in the film, we also hear Alfred listening to classical music as he works on trying to break one of the Riddler’s cyphers. As he decodes, the music playing is the second movement of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto No. 5.

Who wrote the music in The Batman?

Away from the featured classical music (and the Nirvana track Something in the Way) the score for the film was composed by Michael Giacchino.

Giacchino told Collider in 2020 that he felt “total freedom to do whatever [he wanted]” when it came to music for the film.

It was clear that director, and Giacchino’s friend, Matt Reeves trusted the composer with the task, as the two have worked on multiple films together such as Cloverfield (2008), Let Me In (2010), and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014).

Giacchino’s mostly minimalistic score, uses mainly strings and brass to emphasise the plot’s overarching theme of vengeance.

Like the Riddler’s theme, The Batman’s theme also centres in on a short phrase. The Batman’s theme is made up of a four-beat phrase, with just two notes, and is a repetitive and somewhat unusually simple theme for the composer.

However, Giacchino’s score uses dynamics and texture to create a theme out of this limited phrase. The music lifts from a mysterious, low four-note pattern to an unstoppable orchestral force incorporating brass and percussion to illustrate the power of the film’s hero.

Arguably the most developed theme, melody-wise, comes in the form of the second protagonist of the film, Catwoman. Her theme is a slinky syncopated smooth shared strings and solo piano melody. The lounge piano style music reflects Catwoman’s job as a hostess at a criminal club, while the stealthy strings illustrate her cat-like tendencies.

The soundtrack was released on 25 February 2022, just over a week before the film, and fans across multiple platforms, from the music alone, were already declaring the movie to be a “masterpiece”, and that this was Giacchino’s best score yet.

With the composer’s award-winning track record, critics are already suggesting The Batman could be on the cards for an Oscars nomination for Best Original Score in 2023.

The Batman is out in cinemas now.

The Carnival of the Animals: a guide to Saint-Saëns’ humorous musical masterpiece

Saint-Saens – Carnival of the Animals. Picture: Getty

By Siena Linton, ClassicFM London

 

Lions, swans, donkeys and… pianists? Here are all 14 movements of The Carnival of the Animals, and what they’re about. 

The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns took himself quite seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he banned one of his best-known pieces from being performed in public until after he had died, in case it damaged his reputation as a composer of “serious” music.

Thankfully, the wishes set out in his will were granted, and The Carnival of the Animals was published in 1922, a year after his death, and received its public world premiere on 25 February that year.

The Carnival of the Animals is a comedic musical suite, comprised of four short movements, that was written for a bit of light relief after the composer returned from a fairly disastrous concert tour.

Originally written in 1886, the piece is now one of the works Saint-Saëns is best remembered for, and has provided a staple for the cello repertoire as well as inspiration for John Williams’ score to the Harry Potter film franchise.

Here are each of the 14 movements in order, their titles, and what they’re all about.

1. Introduction and Royal March of the Lion

   A bold and stately introduction, fit for the king of the jungle. Piano tremolos with dark and brooding strings open the introduction before a dramatic piano glissando heralds the arrival of the roaring ruler.

   Enter: the lion. A regal major chord fanfare rings out from the two pianos, before union strings play out the big cat’s theme, ornamented by marching piano triplets and high trills.

   
   

2. Hens and Roosters

   Persistent pecking is immediately brought to mind when the piano and violins begin their incessant staccato quavers, interrupted by irregular chirrups.

   The two pianos pass between them a parody of the rooster’s ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’, and stretched out scratchy string glissandos mimic the cooing and braying of the hens.

3. Wild Donkeys (Swift Animals)

   Saint-Saëns portrays the skittishness of wild donkeys with a hurricane of racing semiquavers, played in octaves by two pianos.

   The flighty creatures are gone almost as quickly as they arrived, as the whole movement only lasts around 30 seconds.

4. Tortoises

   Ah, to be a slow-moving tortoise lazing around in the afternoon sun. Saint-Saëns was really having a laugh when he wrote this one.

   Over pulsing piano chords, in a triplet rhythm, a string quartet plus double bass plays an agonisingly slow rendition of Jacques Offenbach’s Can-Can from his opera Orpheus in the Underworld. Well played, Camille, well played.

5. The Elephant

   Saint-Saëns clearly felt as if he hadn’t ridiculed the animal kingdom enough, as his scornful gaze next fell on the poor elephant.

   In a duet between the double bass and the piano, the Carnival’s elephant is cruelly taunted into dancing by a heavily satirical waltz. Famously not known for being light on their toes, Saint-Saëns characterises the elephant in a juxtaposition of light piano notes and staccato melodies with the deep, weighty tones of the double bass.

   There are more thinly veiled musical jokes here too, as Saint-Saëns quotes melodies from Felix Mendelssohn’s sprightly ‘Scherzo’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as ‘Dance of the Sylphs’ from Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, both originally written for high-pitched instruments with light tones.

6. Kangaroos

   The kangaroo isn’t often represented in Western classical music, and it’s hard to imagine any composer capturing their bounding energy quite as well as Saint-Saëns did.

   Two pianos pass between them two melodies: a sprightly staccato scale, complete with grace notes, that gets louder and faster as it rises and softer and slower as it falls.

7. Aquarium

   From the Australian desert to the depths of the ocean, Saint-Saens’ Aquarium effortlessly captures the beauty and wonder of the underwater world.

   The twinkling high notes of the piano and glass harmonica, the pure and open tone of the flute, and the shimmery mystical sound of muted strings all come together to wash over the listener in a stream of swirling notes.

8. Characters with Long Ears

   Enough with this serious music malarkey, thought Saint-Saëns, and after that brief but beautiful watery interlude, he returned to his musical jokes. Although the title is a little cryptic, many believe it to be a taunt at music critics, comparing them to braying donkeys.

   A duet between two violins, they alternate between high notes at the very top of the instrument’s range and sliding notes towards the bottom of the register, mimicking the animal’s signature “hee-haw”.

9. The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods

   Two pianos play steady, soft quaver chords, replicating the calm, vast expanse of the forest.

   A single offstage clarinet interjects occasionally with a two-note calling card, mimicking the cry of the cuckoo.

10. Aviary

    Quietly buzzing tremolos on violins and viola set the scene for this movement, a flurry of airborne activity as the flute takes to the skies in a whirlwind of notes.

    With a melody that spans nearly the entire range of the instrument, the flute swoops and dives in relentless runs of demi-semi-quavers as two pianos join the chorus of the skies with intermittent chirrups and trills.

11. Pianists

    Saint-Saëns wasn’t satisfied with only poking fun at the animal kingdom and takes a jibe at pianists. Ooh, burn.

    This must have been more than a little tongue-in-cheek, as Saint-Saëns was a pianist himself. This movement is just like listening to simple piano finger exercises, and on the original score, the editor even specified that the two performers “should imitate the hesitant style and awkwardness of a beginner”. In some performances, the pianists even deliberately move out of sync with one another.

12. Fossils

    As all good things come to an end, so do animals become fossils. In Leonard Bernstein’s iconic narration of The Carnival of the Animals recorded with the New York Philharmonic he pointed out the joke, which is that all the pieces quoted in this movement were the ‘fossils’ of Saint-Saëns’ time.

    Beginning with a bit of self-deprecation, the movement opens with a bone-rattling xylophone melody that quotes Saint-Saëns’ own work, Danse Macabre, written just over 10 years earlier, before moving on to poke fun at French nursery rhymes, including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and ‘Au clair de la lune’, as well as an extract from Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville. The click-clack of the xylophone is also joined by a clarinet, two pianos, a string quartet and double bass.

    
    

13. The Swan

    Perhaps the most famous of the 14 movements and certainly the most graceful, Saint-Saëns couldn’t stay away from writing beautiful melodies for too long.

    Two pianos evoke the rippling flow of a body of water, over which glides the soaring and elegant swan. Even Saint-Saëns himself could recognise the brilliance of this work, and it was the only part of The Carnival of the Animals that he permitted to be published during his lifetime. 

14. Finale

    Saint-Saëns’ dazzling finale sees all 11 performers come together for the first time in the entire piece. It opens with the same piano trills as in the introduction and is soon fleshed out by the piccolo, clarinet, glass harmonica and xylophone.

    The movement cycles quickly through the animals that have appeared before with spirited interjections from the lions, hens and kangaroos, before the donkey has the last laugh with six “hee-haws” that bring the piece to a close.

Brahms and His Symphony No. 1

by Georg Predota, Interlude

  

The young Brahms

In 1900, when Boston’s Symphony Hall was being built, Philip Hale, a distinguished American music critic working for the Boston Herald, suggested that a sign should be fitted over the central doorway reading, “Exit in case of Brahms”! Hale’s message is clear, if Brahms is on the program, run away as quickly as you can. We rightfully might dismiss Hale’s suggestion as sour grapes; however, at the turn of the twentieth century music criticism was not alone in expressing a pejorative and highly negative opinion of Brahms. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote: “I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius.” Hugo Wolf suggested, “The art of composing without ideas has decidedly found in Brahms one of its worthiest representatives.” Gustav Mahler, after his first composition failed to win a prize, with Brahms at the head of the selection committee, wrote “I have gone through all of Brahms pretty well by now. All I can say of him is that he’s a puny little dwarf with a rather narrow chest.” And Benjamin Britten quipped, “It’s not bad Brahms I mind’, it’s good Brahms I can’t stand.” Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that the music of Brahms “perspires profusely,” and to George Bernard Shaw it sounded, “extremely constipated.” These exaggerated visceral reactions and earthy comparisons to bodily functions are not merely the result of professional jealousy or the effect Brahms’s music had on his critics. Rather, the vicious and personal nature of the criticism suggests that the real target was Brahms himself. However you look at it, there is a clear disconnect between the way Brahms was perceived at the turn of the 20th-Century, and the way we think of him today. Instead of giving you a play by play of the labored gestation of the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 — and indeed, Brahms spent nearly twenty-one years completing this work — let us briefly untangle the mechanism that fused Brahms the man and Brahms the composer into an idealized and naïve package for easy consumption.

Johannes Brahms

Photographs of the composer, taken by Maria Fellinger in the 1890’s, show a kind and gentle old man with flowing beard, highly reminiscent of imagery associated with Santa Claus. In one of these extraordinary photographs, Brahms is sitting in his personal library surrounded by books and musical scores. And this is exactly how we think of Brahms today; a grand, old master of an extended Austro-German musical traditions, exclusively absorbed with musical history and knowledge, and defending his way of thought against all corrupting influences of a rapidly encroaching and changing world. This particular way of thinking about Brahms was actively shaped and promoted in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Musicologist working at Universities in the United States and Europe, together with historians and politicians were, after the horrors of WW2 and the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, actively searching for a kinder and gentler German. And a German Santa Claus figure whose only goal in life was to compose, perform and live in the service of music did fit that image perfectly. Yet, Brahms was hardly a nice and gentle soul. He had a strong dislike for the French, the Russians, the English and the Americans, really anything that would pose a threat to German cultural and political supremacy. Paired with a strong dose of pessimism as to the future of German culture, he was highly patriotic and militantly opposed to foreign influences. He hated almost everything having to do with technology, especially despised cameras and bicycles, and his relationship with women was ambivalent at best. He publicly embarrassed them whenever he could — telling dirty jokes or making sexually explicit comments — and only began to show real interest in them once they were married to somebody else. In addition, Brahms utterly dominated the Viennese musical scene in terms of administration and governance. He was a highly active member of the most important committees, legislative boards and funding commissions and every appointment at the Conservatory, the University or private music institutions were subject to his approval or venomous contempt. When Hans Rott, a highly talented composer and the natural musical link between the symphonic works of Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler submitted the first movement of his E-major Symphony to a composition contest, Brahms told him that he “had absolutely no talent whatsoever, and that he should give up music altogether.” Unable to deal with this rejection, Rott bought a revolver and threatened a passenger during a train journey, claiming that Brahms had filled the train with dynamite. Rott was eventually committed to a mental hospital, where he died at age 25.

The charges leveled against Brahms by his contemporaries were made in the context of his abrasive personality, his radical nationalist political position, his professional influence, and against his music, which was seen as old-fashioned, introvert, dry and complex. Many composers and critics wanted Brahms and his music to be swept away by a new wave of music, commonly referred to as the “music of passion.” Proponents of Brahms’s music stubbornly and innocently maintained that his music came from intuition, that is, he composed music exclusively for the sake of expressing music. This conception clearly clashed with those who promoted compositions that sought overt connections to extra-musical elements — be it poetry, literature or architecture — seeking a programmatic content that involved a process of conscious reflection. Ironically, Brahms’s passions — which are best understood in terms of his personality and convictions — are clearly present in his music; he simply did not feel like providing written explanations. His patriotism, aggression, yearning, ambivalence towards women — frequently juxtaposing the idealized image of the Virgin Mary against the common prostitute in the street — and even his “constipation” are essential aspects of his compositions. So let’s not get stuck in some artificially constructed musical Disneyland but rather discover what makes the music of Brahms one of the most powerful, tightly strung, and abrasive musical expressions of the 19th century.

How COVID-19 made Germany’s classical music industry more sustainable

By Gaby Reucher

The pandemic prompted many German classical music festivals and orchestras to adopt more sustainable practices.

How COVID-19 made Germany’s classical music industry more sustainable

    

The coronavirus pandemic has had a major impact on the classical music industry in Germany, and around the world — yet there are lessons to be learned from the crisis. At least that's how Christian Höppner, Secretary General of the German Music Council, sees it: "We should now view the pandemic period as an opportunity and make cultural life fit for the future; from the point of view of sustainability, as well." It's not just about protecting nature and the environment, but also about sustainably promoting young musicians, he added.

The financial aid provided by Germany during the pandemic has been exemplary, according to Höppner. Nevertheless, many musicians have given up their profession and sought more crisis-proof work. Some prospective students who had passed notoriously difficult entrance exam even chose not to start studying music. "That would have been unthinkable before COVID-19. Then, passing an entrance exam was like winning the lottery. There has since been a very strong reorientation," says Höppner in an interview with DW.

Christian Höppner in a blue suit with a red bow tie and glasses.

Christian Höppner of the German Music Council says the pandemic has provided an opportunity for change

Sustainability from the office to the orchestra

A number of German festivals and orchestras are leading the way when it comes to how they treat both the environment and their artists. The entire staff of the Dresden Music Festival, for example, is participating in the city's "Culture for Future" pilot project on sustainability in cultural enterprises. "It starts with our attitude. We have to keep sustainability in mind in every planning process," explains artistic director Jan Vogler in an interview with DW. This is done in the office, in marketing initiatives and even in concert design.

More tickets are being sent out digitally, as are newsletters, brochures, program booklets and the festival magazine. The buffets for the artists feature regional cuisine, and glass bottles are used instead of plastic ones. The festival also relies on electric vehicles to transport artists and their instruments. It's still early in the process, says Vogler, but the team is enthusiastic about the new green steps.

A reduced carbon footprint

When air traffic came to a near global standstill in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, orchestras were forced to cancel their tours. The question arose as to whether ensembles actually needed to do so much jet-setting.

Naturally, following the loosening of coronavirus restrictions, many people are longing to hear live music again, says Höppner. "But no one can avoid asking themselves how sustainable what we're actually doing is anymore" he adds.

The fact that the music touring industry needed a reboot was apparent before the pandemic, says Steven Walter, artistic director of the Beethovenfest Bonn. He would like to move away from having large orchestras go on tour and also have musicians travel less and instead spend more time at a destination — for example staying at a festival for one or two weeks and leaving their mark. "For us, this is also interesting artistically — to develop specific projects and ideas for a unique profile for the festival," says Walter.

Compensating for CO2 emissions

Yet avoiding air travel isn't always possible for the Dresden Festival or the Rheingau Music Festival, which aim to bring international artists to audiences around the world. Nevertheless, it is possible to make artists' travel more sustainable, says Dresden Music Festival artistic director Jan Vogler. "We try to take advantage of Dresden's location: Berlin, Prague and even Vienna are nearby," he adds.

Orchestras are also scheduling tours so that distances between venues are as short as possible. Recently, the Berlin Philharmonic toured Austria, Slovenia and Croatia, taking a bus between destinations. "In fact, artists also prefer this," says Vogler, "Before, they were often sent zigzagging nonsensically around the world. As long as it was feasible, no one thought about the fact that it was often an ordeal for them to manage these travel routes and the concerts."

A forest for Bach

Offsetting CO2 emissions is one way of compensating for distances driven and flown. The money goes to environmental protection projects. This allowed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen to be certified as climate neutral in 2020, even before the pandemic. Now, the ensemble only travels by train within Germany.

The Leipzig Bach Festival, which prior to the pandemic attracted a large international audience of 73,000 visitors to Leipzig, has also made environmental commitments. Director Michael Maul is raising funds to support the "Forest for Saxony" project and to have a "Johann Sebastian Bach Forest" planted near a former lignite mining area.

Music streaming as a solution?

Streaming and videoconferencing have been a major part of the current digital transformation, which was accelerated by the pandemic. Many industries, including the music industry, turned to streaming. Together with the Thuringia Bach Festival and the Köthener Bach Festival, the Leipzig Bach Festival founded their own platform last year to present selected concert streams that will continue after the coronavirus pandemic.

In the longer term, however, streaming, with its high energy consumption, is not all that sustainable either. Jan Vogler of the Dresden festival tries to combine meetings with concerts. "It's almost no longer conceivable for me to leave directly after a London or Paris concert. I usually stay an extra day and meet the partners we work with there."

COVID-19 restrictions in the arts industry inevitably raised the question: What is the value of culture?

"Is the music business dominated by a few big stars who make millions from it, or is culture really the daily bread one needs to live?" If the latter is true, then musical life has all the more reason to be underpinned by sustainable structures, says Christian Höppner. This is also done in relation to educating musicians.

Currently, music lessons are often substituted for short-term projects done at many schools, and funding for up-and-coming artists also tends to flow into temporary projects that are not sustainable. The pandemic, however, has shown how quickly young talent is lost.

"As an organizer, you have a responsibility in terms of human resources to protect the artists," says Beethovenfest Bonn director Steven Walter. This also applies to dealing with talent. "You can't burn them out and then drop them. It's about investing in their careers in a sustainable way, even when things aren't going so well at the moment."

This article was originally written in German.

Musicians and Artists: Robert Jager and Edvard Munch

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

 

The art of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was always conducted in the shadow of illness – both his own and hereditary mental illnesses that ran in his family. In his art, we find out hidden fears, the shadow thoughts that haunt us, and, in his most famous painting, The Scream, a response to ‘the enormous, infinite scream of nature’ that is always around us.

Edvard Munch: Self-Portait with Cigarette (1895) (Nasjonalmuseet)

American composer Robert Jager (b. 1939) is known for his band and choral music, as well as his many works for wind ensemble. One work that’s only recently entered his repertoire is his 1996 Suite from ‘Edvard Munch’.

Robert Jager at work

We wrote to the composer about this work and he said it was originally written for a 1967 documentary on Edvard Munch. He reassembled the work 20 years later as a suite.

It opens with Introduction and Nature Tableau. ‘Nature Tableau’ isn’t any one painting but refers to Munch’s habit of grouping similar paintings together to form a tableau. We can see this kind of grouping in this 1943 photograph of Munch in the house on his estate at Ekely, where he spent the last 20 years of his life.

From the first note of his Suite, Jager tells us that we will be in uncomfortable territory. The music is pensive and melancholy and also edgy.

Munch at Ekely, 1943

The second movement takes us through one of Munch’s most haunting paintings, The Sick Child. Munch’s sister Sophie died of tuberculosis at age 15, when Edvard was 14. To create this painting, he used as a model a young girl who was the sister of one of his doctor-father’s patients. Munch painted many different versions of the subject over a period of 40 years, for the first time in 1885 and the last in 1925 when he was 62 years old. It is one of his most famous paintings and commentators speak about how the sensation of grief and pain that emerge from the painting are palpable. In Jager’s setting, we can hear how the child is fatally ill through the sense of isolation and melancholy conveyed through the music.

Munch: The Sick Child (1896) (Gothenburg Museum of Art)

The mid-point of the Suite is one of the most famous paintings of the modern era, which portrays a radical and fundamental expression of fear and of the pressure of the world with few equals. Even if the painting is silent, Jager gives voice to that scream of nature – the sharp sound of the violins contrast with the background noise of the percussion until we, as the audience, need to clap our hands over our ears with the artist.

Munch: The Scream (193) (National Museum Oslo)

The Kiss was created as part of his Frieze of Life, which depicted the stages of relationships between men and women. A common motif for Munch was the fusing of the couple’s faces into one unity. In Munch’s painting, the couple are crowded into the corner of a dark room full of dark hangings and the only light is that of the outside world, coming in through the window. This is an obsessive affair, not one of light but of possession. In Jager’s music, we tetter on the edge of love and being consumed by the other.

Munch: The Kiss (1897) (Munch Museum, Oslo)

In the final painting, also part of the Frieze of Life series, we have a representation of relationships from the single young girl in white on the left, through the courting couple, the married couple with the woman in a red dress, the older couple, and the widow in black on the right. As an illustration of a metaphor, any number of interpretations can be read into it. The woman on the left and right seem to be images of Tulla Larsen, a woman Munch had an affair in 1899 before rejecting her in 1900. Munch himself may be the man in the center. Yet, as a painting of a progression, it’s distorted, the beautiful young girl with red hair becomes a grotesque woman in the middle with overly dyed red hair whose corresponding red dress seems to engulf her companion. On the far right, the woman is alone, hair cut short, where all she has now is herself, but without her former bright future. Time has distorted everyone and everything. The same is given in Jager’s music.

Munch: The Dance of Life (1899) (National Museum of Art, Norway)

What we are left with at the end is the sun, which casts a pale shadow in Dance of Life but was more gloriously represented in Munch’s mural done for Oslo University’s assembly hall.

Best Puccini operas: the Italian composer’s greatest works

Best Puccini operas – from Turandot to Tosca. Picture: Alamy

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London

 

From ‘Tosca’ to ‘Turandot’, we explore Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s greatest operas.

When it comes to tragic opera and heart-wrenching arias, it has to be Giacomo Puccini.

Young Giacomo was born in Lucca, Italy in 1858, into a family of musicians and composers. On seeing his first opera, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, a 15-year-old Puccini said he “felt a musical window had opened”.

Now widely considered the ‘heir’ of Verdi, Puccini is known as one of the great composers of Italian opera. While his early work is traditional, late-19th-century Romantic Italian opera, Puccini became better known for writing in the verismo style – Italian for ‘realism’.

He wrote 12 operas in total – Le Villi (1884), Edgar (1889), Manon Lescaut (1893), La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), La fanciulla del West (1910), La rondine (1917), Il trittico (Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi) (1918) and Turandot (1926). Here are his very best...

1. Manon Lescaut (1893)

   After Puccini’s first full-length opera, Edgar, premiered to an underwhelmed audience at La Scala in 1889, the composer decided that for his next work, he would write both the music and the libretto, so that “no fool of a librettist” could spoil his masterpiece.

   Manon Lescaut was very well received, and established Puccini’s reputation in Italian opera – although in the end, four other librettists came on board, including Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who returned for his three greatest successes (La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly). Collaboration wasn’t such a bad idea in the end...

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3. La bohème (1896)

   Joyful beginnings lead to ultimate heartbreak in Puccini’s crowning jewel of an opera. Over 120 years after its conception, La bohème continues to be one of the 21st century’s most frequently performed operas, with Rodolfo’s exquisite song ‘Che gelida manina’ giving just a hint of what Puccini would be capable of when it comes to tenor arias.

   When writing his characters Mimì and Rodolfo, Puccini was inspired by the poverty he experienced as a young man in Milan. The shortage of food, clothing and rent money he lived through is played out by the bohemians in his opera, which went on to inspire the hit musical Rent on Broadway.

   Tosca (1900) 

4. Vissi d’arte!’, ‘I lived for art!’, Floria Tosca cries as drums signal her lover, Mario Cavaradossi’s impending execution in the second act of Puccini’s glorious turn-of-the-century work. And in the following act, with an hour left to live, Cavaradossi responds in song with one of Puccini’s greatest romantic tear-jerkers: ‘E lucevan le stelle’.

5. In a tale of passion and romance ending in tragedy, both arias are proof of Puccini’s capacity to write a heart-wrenching melody, cementing Tosca’s place in the list of great Puccini operas that continue to sell out the world’s opera houses today.

   
   

6. Madama Butterfly (1904)

   In 1903, Puccini had a car accident that left him house-bound for eight months, with nothing to do but write. Just under a year later, Madama Butterfly premiered, but to a lukewarm audience response, and was withdrawn immediately.

   Now, it is considered one of his great successes. Listen to the stunning, emotive melody of the soprano aria ‘Un bel dì vedremo’ (One fine day we’ll see), sung by Cio-Cio San as she imagines the return of her absent love, Pinkerton.

   
   

7. La fanciulla del West (1910)

   A sweeping romance based on the 1905 play The Girl of the Golden West by American author David Belasco, La Fanciulla del West was the first of two Puccini works to have its world premiere at the New York Metropolitan Opera.

   The brilliant, late Mexican tenor Rafael Rojas explained to Classic FM in 2018 why Minnie’s final aria in this opera, is his favourite Puccini moment.

   “It is a difficult task to choose the opera or scene from Puccini that moves me the most, but this time it comes to me strongly, the last Minnie’s aria from La fanciulla del West when she is talking to all the men that will soon kill her beloved and convincing them one by one to forgive him and let them go in peace by appealing to their compassion,” Rojas said. “It is a very deep and powerful scene.” 

8. Gianni Schicchi (1918)

   One third of ll trittico, a collection of three one-act operas that premiered at the Met Opera in 1918, Gianni Schicchi is perhaps better known for its show-stopping soprano aria, ‘O mio babbino caro’.

   In a video for Classic FM, Renée Fleming singled it out as one of her six favourite soprano arias. “Favourite arias for soprano start with Giacomo Puccini. And ‘O mio babbino caro’ is definitely my go-to.

   “[It’s] an exquisite melody with a beautiful sense of longing as [the protagonist] asks her father if she can marry the boy that she loves and she threatens to jump in the river if he says no. It’s incredibly charming but also an immediately recognisable melody.”

   
   Turandot (1926)

9. Puccini wrote fantastic tenor leads and gave them some of his most poignant and harrowing arias. Among them, none are more memorable than Turandot’s ‘Nessun dorma’, which we have all come to associate with the great Luciano Pavarotti.

   Turandot was Puccini’s final opera, which was unfinished when he died of throat cancer in 1924. It was completed in 1926 by the Italian composer-pianist Franco Alfano, and in the same year, Italian maestro Arturo Toscanini honoured the late composer by performing the opera at the New York Met, gently laying down his baton after the last note Puccini had written.