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.

Anton Webern: “Music is natural law as related to the sense of hearing”

by Georg Predota, Interlude

Anton Webern

Throughout his short life—having been accidentally shot by an American soldier in 1945—the music of Anton Webern (1883-1945) was almost totally unknown. With the end of WWII, however, the musical world was in need of revitalization and eagerly adopted Webern’s compositional style. His music began to serve as an often-imitated model, and Igor Stravinsky accessed Webern’s influence in 1960. “Of course the entire world had to imitate him, and of course it would fail miserably. Webern was simply too original, too purely himself to worry about the limits of his appeal. Nothing composed since can diminish his strength nor stale his perfection.” The cool and constructive side of Webern’s music, in which economy and extreme concentration reign supreme, provided the stimulus for young composers gathered for holiday courses in new music in the German city of Darmstadt. Hailed as the father of a completely fresh musical movement, Webern’s ideas spawned musical experimentations throughout the world. Webern’s music is inherently poetic, and his uncompromising determination to pursue a new aesthetic established a novel musical syntax entirely his own.

Anton Webern, 1912

One of the great innovative voices of 20th century music, Anton Webern was born in Vienna. His father was a mining engineer, and his mother a competent pianist and accomplished singer. His father’s career brought the family to the provincial capitals of Graz and Klagenfurt, where Webern learned the rudiments of music theory and took piano lessons. He also took cello lessons and played in the local orchestra.

Sketch of Webern

His first compositions, 2 Pieces for Cello and Piano, and several songs date from this period. After graduation, his father rewarded him with a trip to Bayreuth and the operas of Wagner left a deep impression on the young musician. In 1902, Weber matriculated at the University of Vienna, studying musicology under Guido Adler and eventually submitting a dissertation on the Dutch composer Heinrich Isaac. Meanwhile in 1904, Webern became a student of Arnold Schoenberg at the University of Vienna. He progressed quickly under Schoenberg’s tutelage, and he became close friends with fellow student Alban Berg.

Arnold Schoenberg, Otto Klemperer, Hermann Scherchen, Anton Webern and Erwin Stein

Webern’s formal study with Schoenberg ended in 1908, and although he only composed the first two opus numbers during his time of apprenticeship, all of Webern’s subsequent works show a clear influence and deep reverence for Schoenberg. In the years following their apprenticeship, both Berg and Webern worked for Schoenberg during this crucial time in the master’s creative life. They copied parts, made piano reductions and produced numerous arrangements for both his private and professional life. Between 1908 and 1913, Webern took up short-lived posts as coach and conductor, but he loathed the theatre routine and preferred to focus on his creative work. His compositions had been increasingly atonal, but with his settings of poetry by Stefan George, Webern embarked on a novel stylistic direction. Extreme conciseness of form is buttressed by melodic and harmonic fragmentation, wide intervallic leaps, complex cross-rhythms, unusual use of dissonance and timbre resulting in shimmering and quickly changing tone colors.

Alban Berg and Anton Webern

Webern briefly served during World War I but was discharged because of poor eyesight. Unable to secure an academic appointment, he settled on the outskirts of Vienna and began to devote his time to private teaching, conducting and composition. When Schoenberg formulated the 12-tone method of composition, Webern quickly adopted the system and wrote to Berg, “12-tone composition is for me now a completely clear procedure.” He would employ the serial technique for all further compositions, “and developed it with severe consistency to its most extreme potential.”

Anton Webern, ca 1940

Webern was not politically active, but he fell victim to the rising tide of right-wing nationalism. Schoenberg left Europe in 1933, and with Berg’s death in 1935 Webern’s isolation was complete. He music was branded “degenerate art” and performances and publications banned in Germany and Austria. When his son Peter was killed during military service in 1945, Webern and his wife fled to the town of Mittersill in the mountains near Salzburg. Four months after the war had ended, Webern was shot while smoking a cigar on the veranda of his daughter’s house, indirectly the victim of his son-in-law’s black market activities. Webern’s music, to quote the scholar Julian Johnson, “is characterized by an ungraspability of surface, with melodic outlines distributed in a texture of pointillist color, timbre and angularity. Below this seemingly fractured surface, however, his music is organized strictly in accordance with contrapuntal rules that provide the structural frame. For a new generation of composers, including Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Webern’s music “was the cornerstone and model for an entirely new epoch.”

Will You Marry Me?

by Hermione Lai, Interlude

Zero Gravity Proposal

Who said romance was dead? Well, clearly it hasn’t died but simply been updated in the Instagram era. Many of my friends find it very romantic for their partner to tag them in a photo in Instagram or Facebook. They also consider it romantic for their partner to create a Spotify playlist for them, and it is considered romantic to watch something on Netflix together. It seems a bit cliché to get engaged on Valentine’s Day, but for many people, it’s still the perfect day for a marriage proposal. Google analytics tells us that there are an average of 12,000 searches each month on “how to propose.” But in February, around Valentine’s Day, that number jumps to 22,000. “Will you marry me?” is a simple question, but it turns out there are lots of innovative ways to ask it. Just do a quick Youtube search on the weirdest, most wonderful or most bizarre marriage proposals, and you’ll be treated to the whole gamut of human ingenuity.

Victorian Bride and Groom

There is the “Back from the Dead Proposal,” “The Music Video in Your Pants Proposal,” “The Zero Gravity Proposal,” “The Dancing Carrots Proposal,” “The Roller Coaster Proposal,” or the “Stand on an active Volcano Proposal.” I think you get the point. I must have literally watched hundreds of unusual ways of popping the question, and to my surprise, music plays an important role in many of them. But even more importantly, music becomes an essential part of the wedding celebration itself. And since I like Classical Music, I’ve decided to put together a list of Classical Music connected with that very special day.

If you are considering a church wedding, there is a good chance that the organ, the piano, string quartet, or electric guitar will sound one of two stock wedding pieces. One is the “Wedding March” by Felix Mendelssohn, and the other is the “Bridal Chorus” from the 1850 opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner. Both are generally played for the bride’s entrance to formal weddings, and in English-speaking countries we know the Wagner tune as “Here Comes the Bride.” The actual words, written by Wagner himself, read:

Faithfully guided, draw near
to where the blessing of love shall preserve you!
Triumphant courage, the reward of love,
joins you in faith as the happiest of couples!
Champion of virtue, proceed!
Jewel of youth, proceed!
Flee now the splendour of the wedding feast,
may the delights of the heart be yours!

Wagner expressed some lovely sentiments, indeed, but the big surprise comes in the second verse. The women of the wedding party sing the actual “Bridal Chorus” after they accompany the heroine Elsa to the bridal chamber. Next time you hear that tune, remember that it marks the entrance to the bedroom!

This sweet-smelling room, decked for love,
now takes you in, away from the splendour.
Faithfully guided, draw now near
to where the blessing of love shall preserve you!
Triumphant courage, love so pure,
joins you in faith as the happiest of couples! 

Edvard and Nina Grieg

One of the most uplifting and most popular pieces connected with the big day is Edvard Grieg’s “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.” Troldhaugen is not a Norwegian city or district, but actually the name of the house Edvard Grieg shared with his wife Nina. Located near the city of Bergen, Norway, the unusually house name combines the words “trold” meaning troll, and “haug” originating from an Old Norse word meaning hill. Grieg said that local children called the nearby small valley “The Valley of Trolls,” and he thus gave the name to his building. It was actually designed by Grieg’s cousin, the architect Schak Bull, and Grieg called the building “my best composition.”

Troldhaugen, home of Edvard and Nina Grieg

Troldhaugen is a fairly typical 19th century residence with a panoramic tower and a large veranda. The small composer’s hut located nearby overlooks Nordås Lake, and the entire estate now operates as the Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen. But what about the “Wedding Day?” Grieg composed this miniature to commemorate his 25th wedding anniversary. It is part of a collection titled Lyric Pieces, which the composer started after he finished his studies in Leipzig. Together with the Danish composer Christian Emil Horneman, Grieg started a music company with the principle aim of creating a forum for new Scandinavian music. A couple of years later, the “Nordic Music Magazine” enlisted the Swedish composer August Söderman and also Edvard Grieg. In all, Grieg composed 66 “Lyric Pieces,” and he once wrote “I honestly haven’t done anything, other than the so called “Lyrical Pieces,” which are surrounding me like lice and fleas in the country.” And by the way, Edvard and Nina are still together as their ashes were placed in a mountain tomb near Troldhaugen.

Maxwell Davies: Orkney Wedding with Sunrise

The music of Sir Maxwell Davies (1934-2016), according to scholars, “has a depth of symbolism and historical reference rarely encountered elsewhere in contemporary music.” One of the foremost composers of our time, Davies has cultivated a number of styles, ranging “from the unbridled Expressionism of his music-theatre pieces of the late 1960s to the majestically unfolding landscapes of his later orchestral works.” For his Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, Maxwell Davies takes us to Scotland to provide us with a picture postcard record of an actual wedding he attended on Hoy in Orkney. The composer writes, “At the outset, we hear guests arriving, out of extremely bad weather, at the hall. This is followed by the processional, where the guests are solemnly received by the bride and bridegroom, and presented with their first glass of whisky. The band tunes up, and we get on with the dancing proper. This becomes ever wilder, as all concerned feel the results of the whisky, until the lead fiddle can hardly hold the band together any more. We leave the hall into the cold night, with echoes of the processional music in our ears, and as we walk home across the island, the sun rises, over Caithness, to a glorious dawn. The sun is represented by the highland bagpipes, in full traditional splendor.” Partying the night away with music and plenty of whisky while waiting for the sunrise seems like a great way to celebrate a wedding.

Carl Goldmark

The Hungarian composer Carl Goldmark (1830-1915) was famous for his opera The Queen of Sheba. According to a rather infamous anecdote, an older lady asked Goldmark how he made his living. “I am a composer,” he said, “I am the composer of The Queen of Sheba.” “Ah-yes,” the lady responded, “but does the post pay well?” However, when the opera premiered in 1875 in Vienna, Goldmark was the talk of the town. A critic wrote, “ever since 1875, Goldmark has been recognized as the only thoroughly successful German opera composer since Richard Wagner.” Goldmark also dabbled in orchestral compositions, and he left two symphonies, a number of concert overtures, a violin concerto and two symphonic poems, including the “Rustic Wedding.” The work premiered in 1876, and unfolds in five descriptive movements. It predictably starts with the “Wedding March,” with a simply theme subjected to a number of colourful variations. Initially, we hear the rustic theme in the lower strings, and it resurfaces in the winds for the first variation. The strings take over in the lyrical second variation and lead the theme to a cheerful outburst. We are treated to a dramatic minor key version of the melody, and a fanfare returns us to the original “Wedding March.” A tender Intermezzo titled “Nuptial Song” is followed by a light and airy “Serenade.” Subsequently, we are invited to witness a loving dialogue between the bride and groom in the “Garden,” and a cheery “Dance” combining rustic festivities concludes this picturesque work. It is not surprising that this vividly atmospheric symphonic poem was greatly championed by Leonard Bernstein and by Sir Thomas Beecham.

The Language of the Birds (Burgtheater, Vienna)

On 22 March 1911 Jean Sibelius received a telegram from the Swedish playwright Adolf Paul asking for music for his new play. He writes, “Dear Janne, do me the great favour of writing music for my new play… It’s called The Language of the Birds. The main role is Solomon, the heroine is Abishag from Shunem! (You know, the one who was brought to old King David to warm up his dying flames of life, and who was later given by Solomon to his friend Sabud, as his wife.) Just one piece of music, Oriental, drums, harps, cymbals, flutes and other stuff. To be heard first from inside the palace where she is being dressed for the wedding, then the wedding procession approaches (lots of eunuchs and court servants, the whole thing takes five minutes at most).”

Adolf Paul

More specifically, Paul wanted music for the wedding procession in Act II, in which Abishag arrives to marry Solomon. He imagined “the carpets covering the doorway are drawn aside. Out of the distance comes sound of trumpets, flutes and cymbals gradually nearing. The wedding procession approaches. First the musicians with harps, flutes, and cymbals, the girls, strewing flowers, then Abishag, splendidly attired with the royal circlet on her brow, the attending women, and last of all the Palace Chamberlain, all with palm branches in their hands. Solomon standing erect in front of throne, gazing with triumphant mien at spectacle. Just as procession has reached steps of throne, he stretches out his hand commandingly. Abishag falls back a step. All stop. Music ceases.” Sibelius did compose the music in the summer of 1911, but his music “has never been performed together with the play, although numerous attempts have been made.” Sibelius writes in his diary, “It may not be stupefying but it is interesting in the manner of modern commissioned stuff. It is natural and effective in its scoring, and not without poetry.”

Caroline Montigny-Rémaury

Since every wedding needs a cake, Camille Saint-Saëns provided a musical one for the nuptial of pianist Caroline Montigny-Rémaury. She was student of Franz Liszt, and sister-in-law of Ambroise Thomas, director of the Paris Conservatoire. Saint-Saëns’ Wedding Cake was presented on the occasion of her second marriage in 1886, as she proudly became Caroline de Serres Wieczffinski.  

For me personally, Pascal Rogé is one of the great interpreters of French piano music. For several years, Pascal has enjoyed playing recitals for four hands and two pianos with his partner in life and in music, Ami Rogé. They got married in Shimonoseki, Japan on 8 March 2009, and have travelled the world together appearing at prestigious festivals and concert halls. Rogé writes, “I have always said that my ambition was to play the music I love with the people I love; this has never been more true than today, since I have met Ami. With her I have been able to continue my search of sounds and colours throughout the French repertoire, but now with four hands and two hearts. I believe that the love we share every day in our life together is an inspiration for interpreting the music, and I feel as though our emotions could transform a double black and white piano recital into a single colourful dream.” On a recent tour of Japan they performed the premiere of the Ami Suite, a work for four hands specifically written for them by the Japanese-American composer Paul Chihara. The composer writes, Ami is in five movements, which outlines a story. The first movement is like a piano lesson, or musical game, between two pianists just meeting. It is fun and bouncy, and a touch academic… Movement two is a “Love Song,” the soul of Ami.

© brideandbreakfast.hk

It is in the style of an American pop ballad, with references to Tristan und Isolde and the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Movement three is the “Pascal Rag,” a portrait of the male protagonist in this romantic comedy. It is youthful and confident, and filled with love for his musical partner, whose music is full of counterpoint and commentary… The fourth movement, “Aka Tombo” (Dragonfly), is based on the well-known and beloved Japanese folk song of the same name. It travels through many keys and transformations, suggesting the discovery and adventure of new love. The final movement is the longest and most complex of all the movements. Its emotionally troubled first theme is in the minor, leading to a quote from the wonderful Poulenc Piano Concerto. The clouds soon part when the “Love Song” from the second movement returns, more romantic and developed than before. This leads in turn to the original “game theme” from the first movement, then to the happy cowboy melody, now gloriously transformed and joyous. The piece ends with a final, quiet version of the love theme, in the intimate key of A-flat: a happy ending.

Valentine’s Day 2022 “You Say It Best When You Say Nothing at All”

by Hermione Lai , Interlude

 

Pierre-Auguste Cot: Springtime

I have never been that interested in American country music, because I naively connected it with bar fights, drinking whisky and plenty of flag waving. To be sure, it has nothing to do with the music or the lyrics, but my dislike was primarily based on my own unfamiliarity with the many styles and subgenres. I read that many of the country ballads had their origin in the “folk music of working class Americans and blue-collar American life, but that it can also touch on cowboy Western music, Southern gospel and spirituals, and other influences.” A good many ballads deal with overcoming hardship, family pride, heartbreak, and love. Basically, it all is very down to earth, and I’ve come across some lyrics that perfectly express what the celebration of Valentine’s Day is all about.

Pierre Auguste Renoir:
Country Dance

It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word, you can light up the dark
Try as I may I can never explain
What I hear when you don’t say a thing

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall
You say it best, when you say nothing at all

Notting Hill is a district of West London, known for its diverse communities and long association with artists. It provides the backdrop for bookshop owner William Thacker and famous Hollywood actress Anna Scott to fall in love. In the featured clip, the stars of the film, Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant do a marvelous acting job expressing emotional love in a non-verbal way. As viewers we immediately understand these emotions, and of course it helps to hear the music and the appropriate lyrics at the same time. Music can help us to express emotions that are hard to verbalize, “we are compelled by it, moved by it, and inspired by it.” Music certainly has the ability to touch us in very special ways, and it has frequently been described as “the language of emotions.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Neither love nor music actually needs words to express significant emotions, and one of the most intimate forms of classical music sounds in the combination of two instruments. While the term “Duet” is frequently applied to pieces for two voices, the “Duo” is primarily considered an instrumental work. As you lovingly gaze into the eyes of your beloved on Valentine’s Day 2022, you might consider reinforcing your emotional bond with some Duo music. And what better way to start than with a duo for violin and viola composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed this duo during a rather stressful time in his life in the summer of 1783. For one, he had just been fired from his Salzburg job by getting a “kick in the behind” from Count Arco, the chief steward of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. Additionally, against the expressed wishes of his father, he had hurriedly married Constanze Weber in Vienna. In 1738, Mozart returned to Salzburg to introduce his new wife to his father, which went surprisingly well. Mozart also met his old friend, the court music director Michael Haydn. Sadly, Haydn was suffering from a long and severe illness and was unable to complete the Archbishop’s commission for six duos for violin and viola. Always the tyrant, the Archbishop threatened to cut off Haydn’s salary until the two remaining duos were complete. As such, as a favor to his old friend and deeply in love with his wife, Mozart composed the missing duos and gave them to Haydn to pass off as his own. The Archbishop, believing them to have been composed by Haydn, was full of praise. In the G-major duo, Mozart treats both instruments as equal partners in the musical discourse, and in the lyrical slow movement he expressed his lifelong love of opera, the human voice, and for his wife Constanze.

Friedrich Hermann

Friedrich Hermann (1828–1907) was one of the first students at the newly established Royal Conservatory of Music in Leipzig. Founded in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn and Moritz Hauptmann, the institution responded to the growing professional demands of musical life in Germany. All its resources were aimed at meeting the demand for highly skilled orchestral musicians, instrumental soloists and opera singers. However, there was also a need for music teachers to serve the expanding middle class, especially in piano and vocal training. Hermann entered the Conservatory as a violinist, violist, and composer and studied with Moritz Hauptmann, Niels Wilhelm Gade, Felix Mendelssohn- Bartholdy, and Ferdinand David. How is that for an impressive line-up of teachers for your resume? Ferdinand David wrote of Hermann that he “worked diligently and with good conduct, and that he deserved the highest praise. Upon graduation, Hermann became first violin of the Leipzig Orchestra, and in 1847 joined the Conservatory as a Professor. A member of the Gewandhaus Quartet, he also became an important editor for the companies of Peters and Augener, and he composed a symphony, a quartet for wind instruments, and various other works. Among them is a delightful Grand Duo Brilliant for Violin and Cello, published in 1858. Scored in three movements, the work is full of romantic tendencies, and the meditative “Adagio” surly speaks the language of love. We don’t know if Hermann had a specific love interest in mind, but we do know that it was dedicated to one of the great violinists and composers of the mid-nineteenth century, Louis Spohr.

Talking about Louis Spohr. He was a man with an insatiable love of life and thirst for knowledge about everything and everyone. He loved to attend parties, was a gifted painter and enthusiastic rose-grower. A keen swimmer and hiker, Spohr played chess, billiards, dominoes and all matter of ball games. He loved to visit cultural attractions, arts galleries and churches, but he also toured factories, mines and industrial installations. In addition, Spohr had an enormous reputation during the 19th century as a composer, violin virtuoso, conductor and teacher. He traveled to Switzerland, Italy, and even took on a job in England with the London Philharmonic Society; the public absolutely adored him. For his contemporaries he was equal to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and ranked among the greatest composers of his time.

Dorothea Schneider

One day, as he was visiting the town of Gotha he “heard a young girl execute a difficult harp fantasy with the greatest confidence, and with the finest shades of expression. I was so deeply moved,” he writes, “that I could scarce restrain my tears. Bowing in silence, I took my leave; but my heart remained behind!”

That young girl turned out to be Dorothea Schneider, and she would eventually be remembered as the premiere harp virtuoso of the early nineteenth century. Spohr soon became Dorothea’s accompanist, and one day they rode to a venue in a carriage together. “Thus alone for the first time with the beloved girl, I felt the impulse to make a full confession of my feelings towards her; but my courage failed me, and the carriage drew up, before I had been able to utter a syllable. As I held out my hand to her to alight, I felt by the tremor of hers, how great had also been her emotion.” Spohr eventually married Dorothea in 1806, and his deepest emotions are expressed in his Duo for Violin and Harp—you say it best, when you say nothing at all.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) finished his Sonata for Violin and Cello in 1922, and he initially simply called it “Duo.” While string duos are often lightweight pedagogical works, “this piece is a tour-de-force, the thinned instrumentation highlighted by blazing string crossings, piercing harmonics, and snapping pizzicatos.” Ravel wrote, “This sonata marks a turning point in my career. The music is stripped to the bone. The allure of harmony is rejected and more and more there is a return of the emphasis on melody.“ Ravel had started his “Duo” in 1920, following the First World War. He had been desperate to join the armed forces, and tried to enlist with the French infantry. However, he came in two kilos under the official weight limit. So he passed his driving test and was declared fit for service as a truck driver. Ravel delivered supplies under artillery fire at Verdun and wrote, “For a whole week I have been driving days and nights – without lights – on unbelievable roads, often with a load double what my truck should carry. And even so I had to hurry because all this was within range of the guns.” Ravel had always harbored ambitions of joining the flying corps, but a diagnosed heart condition made that impossible. While his Sonata does leave Romantic yearning and lushness far behind, it nevertheless looks back tenderly to the memory of Claude Debussy, who had died in 1918, and to whom the work is dedicated. In addition, the two musical voices are united as they speak with one voice against the travesty of war.

Reinhold Gliére (1875-1956) is frequently described as “among the vast torrent of Russian second-raters who had long and distinguished teaching careers yet remained competent composers without much individuality or distinction manifest in their music.” That assessment sounds a bit harsh to me, because Gliére had a well-known gift for expressive melodies and colorful orchestration inspired by Russian folklore. Composing during the early days of the young Soviet Union, his music found favor with the political establishment, and Stalin and his cultural ministers appointed him chairman of the organizing committee of the Soviet Composer’s Union. As such Gliére is almost exclusively described as a political composer. In reality, however, he seems to have been a non-political person and he was certainly conservative as a musician. He was repeatedly criticized for his lack of interest in politics, but he had a special gift of writing music for the cello. His Cello Concerto, Op. 87 is the first-ever Soviet Russian cello concerto and, like so many others, it was dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1909 he composed his intimate Eight Duets for Violin and Cello, Op. 39, and in 1911 he wrote Ten Duets for Two Cellos, Op. 53. This composition is considered one of the few original cycles for this delightful combination, “and while their form and harmony could not be called ground-breaking, Gliére’s melodic richness and talent in his skill to make two string instruments sound like an orchestra, is unique.”

Francis Poulenc

Enter Francis Poulenc, who composed his Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon between August and October 1922. Tellingly the work is dedicated “to Madame Audrey Parr.” We know that Poulenc’s personality, psyche, music, and sexual behavior contained contrasts and contradictions that were not alternating but simultaneous. Is it too far-fetched to describe his sonata as an onlooker’s musical description of the Claudel-Audrey relationship?

Carl Maria von Weber

Please allow me to conclude this Valentine’s Day article with a movement composed by one of the most significant composers of the Romantic era. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) is best known for his romantic operas, but he also composed a number of intimate pieces for the clarinet. His Grand Duo Concertant might not be the greatest duo in the history of music, but just listen how the musical lines intertwine in the language of love. And as in real life, there has to be a bit of bravado and drama. Of course it helps that the piece is performed by two of the hottest artists on the concert stage today. Music can communicate a whole myriad of expressions and feelings without the aid of spoken words. Nevertheless, you should still say “I Love You,” and buy some flower and presents for your beloved on Valentine’s Day .