Study Music 24 July

Speaking yesterday of people who deserve more recognition, today I decided to listen to Louise Farrenc who is becoming one of my firm favourite composers. She was a French pianist and composer in the 19th century and had a good reputation in her lifetime, mostly for piano works. I love her larger works though. Her symphonies are grand and so is her chamber music. Today I went with her Piano Quintets No 1 and 2 performed by Quintetto Bottesini. Her mastery and love of the piano is clear, it dances around and drives the rest of the instruments along beautifully. The others are not forgotten however and all have their moments to shine.

The Romantic period is probably my favourite, and this music captures its very essence, on the brighter side. It is optimistic and dramatic, bubbly without being airy, strong but not demanding. Farrenc's music is full of energy and I encourage everyone to listen to it more often.

Today's Study Music - January 14

Hello, this year I plan on sharing a little on what music I'm listening to while studying. Brief album reviews basically.

Today I face the choice of which album I want to download from the Naxos Newsletter this month. There are three options every month from the considerable catalogue Naxos has grown over the years. Sometimes I find the choice straightforward, but today I'm listening to two of them before I decide.

The first is a 1990 recording of Famous Operetta Overtures by J. Strauss Jr, Offenbach and Suppe, performed by the Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Alfred Walter. It opens with Strauss's Die Fledermaus, which I'd always assumed meant The Field-mouse, but apparently means The Bat, so there's a childhood image shattered. The music is as lively and enjoyable as ever though and sets the tone for the rest of the album.

Operetta, being a light form of opera, has wonderful overtures of vim and vitality, and jolly brass to match the rollicking strings. The music can be wonderfully evocative too of course, as the opening of The Gypsy Baron shows with its images of romantic intrigue and cloaked anti-heroes. Naturally, Suppe's Light Cavalry Overture is included and given a typically thrilling rendition, although I think I have heard stronger ones. The album ends with Offenbach's overture to Orpheus in the Underworld, featuring the famous can-can, which is a deserving conclusion to the music.

The second choice is The Art of the Vienna Horn, part of a series of albums featuring soloists from the Vienna Phil, in this instance Wolfgang Tomboeck. Apparently the Vienna horn was a precursor of the double horn, but because of its distinctive sound the Vienna Philharmonic have kept it, particularly for works by Bruchner, Brahms and others who wrote specifically for it.

The album opens with Beethoven's Horn Sonata, Op 17, gives us a Schubert lieder, then a horn/piano duet by Schumann, and ends with a Trio for Piano, Horn and Violin by Brahms. The Vienna horn seemed to me more muted than most brass and this gave the music a damper touch. It felt like I was listening to Romantic-era chamber music (as I was) through a hollow tree. There was something green and earthy there, but also removed and vaguely dissonant. Or perhaps that's my protracted mind listening to something while hot, tired and reading about imperial historiography.

So which to get? Despite the former album's energy and my nostalgia for an overture that has nothing to do with field mice except in my mind, I'm going to download The Art of the Vienna Horn. The music is less familiar, less commonly played, and I feel deserves further listening to appreciate its subtleties and beauty that may have been tarnished by distraction.

Beethoven Sonata Course in Reflection

The course on Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas finished up recently. It was a fun and insightful series of lectures and if it runs again I recommend doing it. Aside from learning about Beethoven and his music you get to listen to snippets of works played by Jonathon Biss and that’s well worth it too (here's a sample).

So what did I learn? Quite a bit to be honest and I’m not going to go into all the detail and everything here. What I want to talk about is how the course helped shape something of my idea of the history of music because I’ve come to see Beethoven as a pivotal figure in ways I didn’t understand previously.

I studied a course on the Ancient Greeks at the same time as this one and in it was discussed that history works out in big forces and movements – migrations, economic upheavals etc, etc – but there are also certain individuals who manage to alter the course of history through sheer force of will or some similar manifestation of their brilliance. Alexander the Great was one standout example.

From what I learned in the Sonata course this is also very much the case. There were big movements taking place during Beethoven’s lifetime, but his talent and his unrelenting personality played their own role in shaping music’s path heading into the 19th century.

At the beginning of his lifetime music was still largely a court affair. Joseph Haydn spent most of his career in the employ of one such court; he wrote what his employer wanted, he managed the court’s musicians etc. Late in his life his employer did give him incredible freedom and allowed him to write what he wanted instead. Mozart, unable to cope with the strictures of being a court composer tried his hand as a freelancer but with variable success.

The way was becoming clear however and courts were no longer the bastions of classical music. If we consider the social and political upheavals that were happening at this time, it’s little wonder Beethoven never had to consider being employed as a court musician. He was free from the beginning to do his own thing. The individual was free.

And free from such constraints, Beethoven’s talent and strong personality led him to explore musical forms in all new ways. He took the sonata form, perfected it, toyed with it to test its limits, then tore it apart and reshaped it in his own way. He broke all the rules and paved the way for further experimentation down the track. And he allowed music to truly ambitious and completely about self-expression. He could paint emotional landscapes freely in ways previous composers could not and in so doing he set the Romantics up to do what they did.

So while history’s big movements were most certainly in play – it’s one of the most dramatic shifts in Western history in all fields of endeavour – Beethoven’s individuality and precocious talent shifted the history music very much to follow his footsteps and no-one else’s.

Henri Duparc

It's been a while since I posted and I think the whole French music thing is moving on now, but I meant to write a bit of a post-countdown thing so here it is. Mostly I was interested in checking out some of the composers whose names kept coming up but whose music didn't make the countdown. From my viewpoint Henri Duparc was by far the most-mentioned no-show so let's start there.

Just a quick look on Wikipedia tells me a talented man ended up with a tragic life. A neurological condition stopped him from composing in his late 30s and sent him slowly blind. And in that tragic circumstance and who knows what else, he destroyed a lot of his work.

He was usually mentioned in terms of his songs and indeed the list only let you vote for songs he wrote. I confess to having no real interest in listening to them, but he did write some orchestral and piano music. Sadly a lot of this is lost, but there is his symphonic poem Lenore, based on a Gothic ballad about Death riding a lover to his grave - she thinking him a knight leading her to their marriage bed. While it conveys the haste of the ride and is dramatic and certainly a fine piece of music, it isn't quite as dark as its morbid subject matter would suggest. That said, it is very much a Romantic piece, and the sorrowful revelation, the slow and soft conclusion as Lenore learns of her lover's death and dies herself is quite chill and haunting.

There is also his Aux Etoiles, which seems to have had two lives at the least. It seems to be the only surviving part of a symphonic poem written in 1874, and the Entracte for an unpublished play, for which it seems to have been written in 1911, the same year he released a solo piano reduction of the work. Given this is all coming from Wiki which says he stopped writing in 1885, I assume the Entracte phase was a salvage job, 'here's something I wrote earlier that might suit'. That or there are two works with the same name by the same man, and Wiki is missing some vital information.

Whatever the case, it is sublimely beautiful. Aux Etoiles apparently translates to "To the Stars" and the gentle music does have the sense of floating in the eternity of space with the stars shining all around you. It's very evocative.

I said composers, but for now at least I think I'll leave it at just Duparc. Anything after that last piece is superfluous. Listen to it and swoon away.

French Epitome of Moustachios

One name that cropped up several times while reading about other French composer was Vincent d'Indy. He sounded quite important and influential but to be honest I'd not heard of him before. Back to the research.

Firstly, I just have to say he had a fantastic moustache, the ideal 19th century Frenchman. Which is fitting as he sounds like a very patriotic Parisian. His most famous work is the Symphony on French Mountain Air, with some folk tunes as a base, and it really has that mountain countryside feel. I guess a bit of a predecessor to Strauss's Alpine Symphony, but not as dramatic, probably more pastoral really. What's really interesting about it is it uses a piano, so it has some resemblance to a piano concerto, but the piano works with the orchestra in a much more integrated way. This should get played more - I hope people vote for it in the countdown.

The reason he keeps turning up however is his influence as a teacher. Along with a couple of others - and inspired by his admiration for his teacher, Cesar Franck - he founded a second music school in Paris, the Schola Cantorum de Paris. The famous Paris Conservatory had become almost entirely focused on opera, so even Franck essentially didn't fit there. d'Indy and his fellows were much more interested in orchestral work so the school provided that focus. He had many students who were successful composers in the late 19th/early 20th century, including Satie, Milhaud and it seems Cole Porter which is interesting.

He was a huge admirer of Wagner and there's some signs of that in his work - I'm told, but I can hear it in the brass section of the Symphony on French Mountain Air. He also seems to have been quite forward looking in his composition, so a pioneer of the 20th century revamp on Romanticism - there's no doubt his music still falls into that classification though. Take his symphonic variations, Istar for instance. I can't find any more info on the piece but I'm assuming it's inspired by the Assyro-Babylonian goddess of the same name, the one of love and war, but more her loving side.

Well worth exploring further and clearly an influential man even if he has become somewhat obscure now.

The Importance of Listening to Ernest

The name Ernest Chausson rang bells in my mind but I couldn't think why so he's my next choice of French composers. Turns out I have very little reason to know the name, I have a couple of tracks by him on some compilation albums put out by the ABC, and not ones I'm overly familiar with. But I've done a little research and discovered an artistic soul.

He lived a cultured life and studied law because his father wanted him to, but he didn't follow that direction. He tried drawing, he tried writing, then he came to music and he found his calling. He studied under Massenet and Franck, was influenced by Wagner and hung out with artistic types including Faure, Debussy and Monet. Tragically he died after his bicycle hit a brick wall, he was only 44 and he left only a comparatively small collection of works.

Most of his stuff is in the vocal oeuvre and not really something I'm that into but it sounds nice enough. His biggest success these days seems to be his Poeme for violin which is a strong piece I would say fits pretty well into the Romantic style. Apparently he was asked for a concerto by a prominent violinist of the day but he replied that he did not feel equal to writing such a big piece and would write a smaller one instead. Self-doubt or modest truth we'll never know but the result is truly worth it. Interestingly though he did write some major works including a Symphony. I've only heard the third movement but it's strong dramatic stuff with a beautiful finish.

He also seems to have had a love for Arthurian legends. He wrote a symphonic poem on Vivianne fairly early in his career and towards the end an opera on Arthur himself. So an artistic and romantic soul, who drove himself on with a passion to write. He said he had periods where he felt an almost feverish need to write as there was not enough time - tragically prophetic sentiment, but it hints at the passion behind the work.

I will certainly pursue his orchestral and chamber works. And I have to say I feel like I've found a somewhat kindred spirit in this man, I'm touched to have learnt about him, as weird as that might sound.