Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Deadline Driven Saying No

Pressed as I am today by deadlines and obligations, my answer to all questions shall be…

August 20, 2014
William Henry Fry American Music Pioneer

Remember the big celebrations last year for the bicentennial of the birth of William Henry Fry? Neither do I.

Fry was born in Philadelphia in 1813. A pioneering figure in American music, he was the first native-born composer to write on a large scale. He composed orchestral works and the first opera by an American to be performed publicly in his lifetime (“Leonora,” in 1845). He was an outspoken advocate of American music – that is, music composed by Americans – at a time when German imports ruled the roost. It would be decades before American music would gain a toehold in the concert halls, which makes Fry an even more remarkable figure.

He studied music with a former bandleader in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, who went on to become the head of Philadelphia’s Musical Fund Society. Fry himself would become the society’s secretary.

Fry was also a journalist, a writer on music, and the first music critic to write for a major American newspaper. He was a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and acted as music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.

Fry composed seven symphonies, all of them of a descriptive nature. His “Santa Claus Symphony,” after Clement Moore, is more of a Straussian tone poem. My personal favorite is the “Niagara Symphony,” written for P.T. Barnum, conceived for enormous forces augmented by a mindblowing eleven timpani.

Fry died of tuberculosis, “accelerated by exhaustion,” in Santa Cruz (Saint Croix) in the Virgin Islands in 1864, at the age of 51.

There is some discrepancy regarding the date of his birth, with some sources giving August 10, and others August 19.

Happy birthday, perhaps belatedly, William Henry Fry.

The “Niagara Symphony” (it begins quietly):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNe4IiuMhJ0

August 19, 2014
Salieri Beyond the Mozart Myth

Poor, maligned Antonio Salieri. He was a second-rate hack. He murdered Mozart. You know the drill.

While it’s true there’s no such thing as bad publicity, it would be nice if the man could transcend his notoriety to be recognized for his achievements. Especially since none of the charges happen to be true.

I like “Amadeus” very much, and while I am happy it has served to keep Salieri’s name alive and perhaps lend a greater degree of commercial viability to subsequent recordings of his music, it is worth looking into the historical facts.

In reality, Salieri was a generous teacher, who fostered Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and even Franz Xaver Mozart, the composer’s son, who was born the year after his father’s death.

Salieri was also a prolific and successful composer. He wrote 37 operas, in addition to orchestral works, concertos, chamber music and sacred pieces. While he was no Mozart – who was? – his music is finely crafted and often quite enjoyable, certainly no worse than that of a majority of his contemporaries.

Yes, Mozart believed Salieri and the Italian faction ensconced at the Viennese court (including future Mozart librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte) were against him, and there may have been something to it at first. However, beyond a rivalry over certain specific jobs, Mozart and Salieri appeared often to be better than cordial acquaintances. The two even collaborated on a cantata (now lost), “Per la ricuperata salute di Ophelia,” a venture which was apparently entered into voluntarily (as opposed to an earlier juxtaposition of one-act operas composed for the edification of the emperor).

When Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788, his first act was to revive “The Marriage of Figaro.” He was responsible for arranging first performances of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482, the Clarinet Quintet and the Symphony No. 40. He was full of praise for “The Magic Flute.” And as I said, he took it upon himself to educate Mozart’s son.

Sadly, Salieri’s enormous compositional output gradually faded from memory already during the latter years of his life. Ironically, it is the scandalmongers who kept his name alive.

Rumors of Salieri’s involvement in Mozart’s death were codified by Alexander Pushkin in 1831, a few years after Salieri himself had passed, in the tragedy “Mozart and Salieri.” This was later set as an opera, in 1898, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Peter Schaffer picked up the thread in 1979, when he wrote the play “Amadeus,” which of course was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film in 1984.

As the compact disc era progressed, more and more of Salieri’s repertoire became available for first-hand assessment – and guess what? A lot of it is quite good!

Here’s one of my favorite Salieri works, his Concerto for Flute, Oboe and Orchestra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJK87k7jlHo&list=PL653040801EF6DF3A

And Cecilia Bartoli, from the documentary “Why Salieri, Signora Bartoli?”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq1Fj77eqDw

Happy birthday, Antonio Salieri!

August 18, 2014
Bulgarian Music on The Lost Chord

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’re off to Bulgaria.

Pancho Vladigerov – despite his Mexican-sounding first name and Swiss birth – was a seminal figure in Bulgarian music. He was the country’s first major composer to harness the idioms of Bulgarian folk traditions to classical forms.

Fairly well known in Central Europe during the 1920s, when he was an associate of the theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt, Vladigerov had many of his works published by Universal Edition and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon. He was a composer of opera, ballet, symphonic music, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, chamber music, songs, choral works and piano pieces.

We’ll be listening to a generous selection from Vladigerov’s “Bulgarian Dances” of 1931.

Also on the program will be American composer Derek Bermel’s musical recollections of his studies in the region, his “Thracian Echoes” of 2002. Bermel served as artist-in-residence at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study from 2009 to 2013. His “Thracian Echoes” was performed locally,by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, in 2011.

Join me tonight for “The Lost Chord,” as we seek the cream of Bulgarian music – “Bulgar Wheat.” The show airs at 10 ET, with a repeat Friday morning at 3. Or you can listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

Be sure to don colorful national costume!

August 17, 2014
Vampires Never Die Marschner’s Opera & Byron’s Curse

Proof – if proof be needed – that vampires, like wingtips, never go out of fashion: as far back as 1828, the year of Schubert’s death (not by vampires), Heinrich Marschner’s opera “Der Vampyr” was given its premiere in Leipzig and became a sensation.

The libretto was by Marschner’s brother-in-law, Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, who adapted the 1821 play “Der Vampir oder die Totenbraut,” by Heinrich Ludwig Ritter, who in turn based it on the short novel “The Vampyre,” by John Polidori, who lifted the idea from an unfinished mood piece composed by Lord Byron.

Byron’s fragment was written in response to a night of German ghost stories shared around a fire at his Lake Geneva villa during the rainy summer of 1816, an unusually cold, dreary season, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year. This was the same night, by the way, which gave rise to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Shelley was one of Byron’s guests, along with her poet husband and Polidori, who acted as Byron’s personal physician.

Marschner’s opera is still revived on occasion, and is regarded as an important link between Carl Maria von Weber’s seminal romantic chiller, “Der Freischütz,” with its stormy night pact-with-the-devil, and Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman,” with its undead wanderer damned for his blasphemy. Wagner had conducted “Der Vampyr” in Würzburg in 1833.

Marschner’s opera capitalizes on a lurid fascination with the supernatural, with its opening Witches’ Sabbath; a proclamation by a Vampire Master that Lord Ruthven (the titular bloodsucker) must claim three virgins within 24 hours, lest he cease to exist; Lord Ruthven’s curse on the hapless Aubry that if he should reveal Ruthven’s secret, Aubry himself will become a vampire; and the spectacular conclusion involving lightning and hellfire.

Happy birthday, Heinrich Marschner! Thanks for the chills (and chuckles).

Overture to “Der Vampyr”:

A modern update of Lord Ruthven’s aria “Ha! Ha! Welche Lust!” — in English, complete with wolf and vampire teeth!

August 16, 2014

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