Sorry for being such an idiot. I confess to feeling total disappointment when your music is listed on a concert program or announced on the radio, yet when I actually listen to it, it almost always yields rewards.
You wrote my favorite opera of all time (“The Marriage of Figaro”). You wrote the favorite opera of my youth (“The Magic Flute”). You wrote a piece I could not stop listening to when I was in high school (“Eine kleine Nachtmusik”). There are pieces you wrote that I adore. So why do I bear so much prejudice against you?
Maybe it’s for the same reason some people hate John Williams or Stephen King. If it’s popular, it can’t be good, right? Right?
(Please note: I adore John Williams.)
Happy birthday, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
With a shout-out to poor Edouard Lalo (1823-1892)!
The first part of my day has been spent racing to meet yet another deadline (and losing, of course, but my editors are used to it). Now I sit here, drinking my tea and watching the snowfall, awaiting the imminent blizzard and lazily thinking of music to suit the storm.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we honor the accomplishments of Gordon Jacob.
Jacob’s is perhaps a name most frequently encountered these days as an orchestrator. He did a popular arrangement for full orchestra of Vaughan Williams’ “English Folk Song Suite,” originally composed for symphonic band; he orchestrated Sir Edward Elgar’s Organ Sonata; and his arrangement of the ballet “Les Sylphides” has been eclipsed only by that of Roy Douglas.
But he was also a prolific composer himself. In all, he wrote some 400 works. In fact, when weighing the size of his output against his reputation, it’s tempting to underestimate – as the Angel did his Biblical namesake – Jacob’s tenacity.
We’ll be listening to an example of his work as an arranger, his “William Byrd Suite,” in a classic recording on the Mercury label, and his rarely-heard Symphony No. 1, dedicated to the memory of his brother, who died in the First World War, in its world premiere recording on the Lyrita label.
I hope you’ll join me as we grapple with the range of Jacob’s accomplishments, in “Wrestling Jacob,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6 – or that you’ll enjoy it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
In the meantime, follow the link for a witty survey ranking the various depictions of Jacob wrestling the angel in Western Art:
Today is the birthday of E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822), and what a good day for it! Mid-winter is the perfect time to enjoy Hoffmann’s tales of madness and obsession.
Not only was Hoffmann a seminal author of dark fantasy and horror, he was also a jurist, a draftsman, a caricaturist, and of course a composer and music critic.
Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say “of course.” Hoffmann is most famous for his writings, and justifiably so. None of his musical compositions have attained anything like repertoire status. However he did manage to turn out a lovely Harp Quintet, and his opera, about the water spirit “Undine,” certainly shows promise, though given the source – after all, he was the author of “The Sandman” and “Mademoiselle de Scuderi” – it is a mite disappointing.
Perhaps that is the viewpoint of someone looking back from a more jaded era, when the fantastic is routinely hammered home in all its CGI vulgarity. By contrast, Hoffmann’s tales are dream-like and insinuating in ways that still have the power to haunt across the centuries.
Musically, from our perspective, Hoffmann is perhaps more important for having inspired other, more enduring composers, who wrote works like “Coppelia” (Delibes), “The Nutcracker” (Tchaikovsky) and of course “The Tales of Hoffmann” (Offenbach). Even so, these works seldom reflect the spirit of Hoffmann’s originals.
Of the Romantics, surprisingly, only Robert Schumann seems to have really got it. You can really hear how Hoffmann got into his head in works like “Kreisleriana” and the “Nachtstücke.” But Schumann was perhaps one step away from “Sandman” material anyway.
Hoffmann’s tales have had a more palpable influence on 19th century literature, firing the creative imagination of writers from Dostoyevsky to Dumas to (least surprisingly) Edgar Allan Poe.
If all you know is “The Nutcracker” or the Offenbach opera, you don’t really know Hoffmann. Though Tchaikovsky had an intuitive grasp of the idiom, he was working from a watered down adaptation by Dumas. It took Maurice Sendak to bring the story back to its roots.
Sadly, I just learned via Google that Pacific Northwest Ballet has just concluded its final run of this gutsy production. Apparently, it was too freaky for audiences expecting to be spoon-fed sugar plums, so next season the company will take up the insipid Balanchine version, which inexplicably thrives like fungus on a fruitcake. Is this really the same artist who choreographed “Agon?”
Fortunately, the PNB Sendak version was made into a feature film in 1986.
This is a “Nutcracker” that will put hair on your chest.
Anyway, “The Nutcracker, “The Tales of Hoffmann,” and especially “Coppelia” are almost like children’s book versions of the originals. If you have a taste for such things, you owe it to yourself to at least read “The Sandman.” Here it is, though it’s really not the kind of story you should read off of a computer:
One of William H. Scheide’s final acts of musical beneficence will be made manifest this Tuesday, when Mark Laycock conducts the English Chamber Orchestra at the The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
The program will include Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major, K. 364, and the Symphony No. 29 in A Major, along with English composer Robin Holloway’s “Ode for Four Winds and Strings” and Sir Edward Elgar’s “Serenade for Strings.” The event will mark the English Chamber Orchestra’s first appearance in Philadelphia.
Proceeds from the concert, which will coincide with the 248th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, will benefit the Philadelphia-based non-profit organization Musicopia. Musicopia is devoted to providing music education and opportunities to the young, with the intent to inspire lifelong involvement in music and the application of related skills to all aspects of a child’s life.
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