I can’t imagine a better way to start the day. From Carl Nielsen’s incidental music to “The Mother,” “The Fog is Lifting” is two minutes of atmospheric bliss.
Nielsen, of course, is widely regarded as Denmark’s foremost composer. You wouldn’t know it from this serene miniature, but “The Mother” is an allegorical play written for a patriotic occasion: the reunification of Southern Jutland with Denmark. In the play, which is couched as a fairy tale, a mother’s son is kidnapped. Their climactic reunion is celebrated with a rousing march and choral anthem.
The fiery spirit with which the work concludes is nowhere in evidence in its best-known cues – “The Fog is Lifting,” “Faith and Hope are Playing,” and “The Children are Playing” – which can be heard at the first link below. For years, these were all I knew of the complete score. I kind of wish all of the numbers were of the same character. I’m always up for a dreamy wallow.
The complete incidental music was recorded for the first time in 2020, and I was surprised – and I confess a little disappointed – to find the rest of the work does not sustain the mellow and mysterious character of the seven-minute suite. Hardly surprising, I suppose, when you learn that Nielsen was also at work at the time on his turbulent Symphony No. 5. That’s the one with the implacable snare drum.
Sometimes a piece of music is so ineffably beautiful, it has the power to suspend time, and you wish it would go on forever. That’s the case with “The Fog is Lifting.” Enjoy it as the first of three movements from “The Mother” here:
Then shatter the mood with 30 minutes of highlights from the complete score
The Symphony No. 5, with its menacing snare
A tip of the blond brush cut to Carl Nielsen on his birthday!
Having featured highlights from the composer-supervised recording of Gustave Charpentier’s opera, “Louise,” today on my radio show, “The Lost Chord,” I was moved to search for the Abel Gance-directed film version that came out a few years later, in 1939. Gance is probably best known for his silent masterpiece, “Napoleon” (1927; once running close to 9-and-a-half hours; the latest restoration puts it at 7). And what do you know? I found it on YouTube, clocking in at a comparatively lean 1 hour and 25 minutes.
American soprano Grace Moore, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in “One Night of Love” (1934), sings the lead. (“One Night of Love” was the first recipient of an Academy Award for Best Original Score, even though much of the soundtrack is devoted to opera arias and traditional songs.) Tenor Georges Thill and bass André Pernet recreate their stage roles as Julien and Louise’s father, respectively.
Charpentier was very hands-on throughout the production, as he was with the 1935 recording, making cuts and alterations, coaching Moore, and advising Gance. At the time, the composer would have been about 79 years-old.
Charpentier died in 1956 at the age of 95. Until then, he lived pretty much as he always had, since at least 1885 (the year “Louise” is set) – an eternal bohemian in an artist’s garret in Montmartre.
“La bohème” – all those artists, creating and loving and freezing in their Parisian garrets. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take Paris in the spring!
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear highlights from Gustave Charpentier’s operatic masterpiece, “Louise.”
Charpentier himself was an inveterate Bohemian. Intoxicated by the artist’s life of Montmartre, he remained virtually suspended in time – the time, as a matter of fact, that is the setting of his most famous work.
Although “Louise” was not given its premiere until 1900, Charpentier had read an early draft of the libretto to a group of friends in the early 1890s. The action is set in 1885, the year Charpentier, like the poet Julien in the opera, fell profoundly in love with a seamstress. It was also the year he entered the composition class of Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatory.
Charpentier was a surprise choice to win the Prix de Rome in 1887. He achieved several high-profile successes throughout the 1890s. “Louise” was finally completed in 1897. The composer’s fame, and the anticipated notoriety of the opera, with its independent heroine who follows her heart in defiance of convention, made “Louise” a box office smash.
The opera is touching in its conviction, and – although already a period piece at the time of its premiere – a prime example of Romantic subjective realism, actually conceived in advance of its verismo cousins by Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini. (Puccini composed “La bohème,” based on Henri Murger’s 1851 novel “Scènes de la vie de bohème,” between 1893 and 1895.)
Charpentier revised his libretto and music incessantly. We’ll enjoy selections from a 1935 recording, tailored specifically to the needs of the gramophone by the composer, who arranged and abridged the work in a manner he thought most conducive to listening at home. Soprano Ninon Vallin is Louise; tenor Georges Thill is Julien; bass André Pernet is Louise’s father; and mezzo-soprano Aimée Lecouvreur, her mother. The Raugel Orchestra is conducted by Eugene Bigot.
The enterprise was so highly regarded, both as an artistic and as a technical achievement, that it was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in 1936. Charpentier was 75 at the time of the recording, and still living in his garret.
An abridged film version of “Louise” was made four years later, in 1939, again under the supervision of the composer. The esteemed Abel Gance directed, with Thill and Pernet again in the cast.
After “Louise,” Charpentier took one more stab at the theatre with his opera “Julien,” a sequel describing the artistic aspirations of Louise’s suitor, but thereafter he fell virtually silent as a composer, as if in acknowledgment that his earlier blockbuster success was a matter of luck, of his being perfectly in tune, for but a moment, with the spirit of the times. He lived out the remainder of his days in Montmartre, sporadically feted for his most popular achievement. Charpentier died in 1956, at the age of 95.
I hope you’ll join me for “Jeez, Louise” – highlights from Gustave Charpentier’s operatic masterwork, in an historic 1935 recording – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
I really missed a trick this morning in not including Robert Schumann on my radio show, “Sweetness and Light.” Today is Schumann’s birthday anniversary, and my theme is June weddings. It would have been perfect had I included Franz Liszt’s arrangement of “Widmung” (“Dedication”), a song Schumann had written for his bride, Clara, as I had four or five minutes to fill at the end of the program. But perhaps it’s best that I didn’t.
For whatever reason, Liszt really rubbed Clara the wrong way. Essentially, everything about him ran counter to what she and her husband thought music should be. But it wasn’t always the case.
Clara first met Liszt in 1838, prior to her marriage. Clara Wieck was 19 years-old. Like everyone else, she was in awe of his superhuman technique, but it also made her feel inadequate, especially when they played piano four-hands.
For his part, Liszt was very complimentary. In a letter to his mistress, Marie d’Agoult, he wrote, “Her compositions are truly remarkable, especially for a woman. They contain a hundred times more inventiveness and real feelings than all former and present fantasias by Thalberg.” Sigismond Thalberg was one of Liszt’s chief rivals. But this wasn’t simply “trash talk.” Liszt was consistently impressed by both Schumanns.
In 1840, he dedicated his “Transcendental Etudes” to Clara. She continued to include his music on her concert programs until 1847. Sadly, familiarity bred contempt, and increasingly she came to find everything about him repugnant. She didn’t like that he was a showboat. She recoiled when he took liberties with the scores he played. And she was totally put off by the indelicacy with which Liszt described her husband’s Piano Quintet as “typically Leipzig.”
Liszt, clueless, continued to make friendly overtures, championing Robert’s music. Robert, for his part, responded cordially. Liszt published a long essay in praise of the artistry of both Schumanns in 1855, but Clara remained implacable.
As the War of the Romantics began to heat up in 1860, with heightened antagonism between the Brahmsians (including the Schumanns) and the New German School (followers of Liszt and Wagner), contact became rare.
In 1884, Clara wrote to Liszt with the aim of copying the correspondence he maintained with her husband, who had died in 1856. Liszt responded that he hadn’t saved any of the letters. That essentially ended all interaction between them.
45 years earlier, in 1839, Schumann completed his “Fantasie in C major,” during an imposed separation from his future wife. Clara’s father, Schumann’s piano teacher, flew into a rage when he discovered their relationship and forbade any further contact between them. (Clara had not yet reached her majority and had no say in the matter.) Following a protracted and acrimonious legal battle, the court found in favor of the young lovers, and the two married the day before Clara turned 21 – at which age she could have done as she pleased!
Schumann wrote to Clara about the “Fantasie,” “The first movement is the most passionate I have ever composed; it is a profound lament on your account.”
Ironically, it was Liszt who received the dedication. Liszt returned the favor by dedicating his own Piano Sonata in B minor to Schumann in 1854.
Clara confided to her diary, “Today, Liszt sent me a Sonata dedicated to Robert and some more pieces, together with a polite note. But those pieces are so creepy! Brahms played them to me and I felt really miserable… This is only blind noise – no more healthy thoughts, everything is confused, one cannot see any clear harmonies! And, what is more, I still have to thank him now – this is really awful.”
Of course, Robert, at 44, had already lost his grip on sanity and was by then confined to an asylum.
With that in mind, on Robert Schumann’s birthday, enjoy his Fantasy in C major.
Henry Daniell, one of Hollywood’s most supercilious villains, hilariously cast as Liszt in “Song of Love” (1947), with Katharine Hepburn as Clara Schumann and Paul Henreid as Robert. As if this weren’t ridiculous enough, Robert Walker plays Brahms!
Hepburn pantomimes selections from Schumann’s “Carnaval.” That’s Arthur Rubinstein on the soundtrack.
Van Cliburn in concert, playing Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s “Widmung,” written as a wedding present for Clara.
Happy birthday, Robert Schumann!
“Sweetness and Light” streams on KWAX Saturday mornings at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT.
I’ve always been a fan of Karl Goldmark’s “Rustic Wedding Symphony.” It’s always made me happy. Back when I had a live radio air shift, I used to program it every spring. Apparently, I’m in good company. It also received the imprimatur of Johannes Brahms, Goldmark’s walking companion, who thought it the best thing the composer ever wrote.
This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the work will form the centerpiece at a June wedding.
The “Rustic Wedding Symphony” has been recorded a number of times, but you don’t really seem to hear it much anymore. We’ll enjoy a performance by the Utah Symphony conducted by Maurice Abravanel.
The work falls into five movements: “Wedding March,” “Bridal Song,” “Serenade,” “In the Garden,” and “Dance.” It’s unusual for me to devote so much of a “light music” program to a symphony, but really, it’s like serving up 40-minutes of smiles.
We’ll also have a party favor in the form of Edvard Grieg’s “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen,” from his delectable “Lyric Pieces” – Troldhaugen being the composer’s home outside Bergen, Norway. Peter Katin, who released all of Grieg’s “Lyric Pieces” over three discs, will be the pianist.
Nothing rustic about Charles-Marie Widor: for 63 years, Widor was organist at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. We’ll conclude with the Toccata from his Symphony No. 5, a work frequently performed at ceremonial functions, whether they be related to Christmas, graduations, or – for our purpose – weddings. It’s been especially popular at royal weddings, so it’s apt that we hear it performed by Simon Preston on the organ of Westminster Abbey.
Say “I do” to “Sweetness and Light,” a program of music calculated to charm and to cheer, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
