Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Haydn

Back to School with Classical Music on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’re headed back to school.

We’ll have frothy music on scholastic themes. None frothier than a head of beer, conjured perhaps by Emil Waldteufel’s “Estudiantina,” or “Band of Students.” Listeners of a certain age may associate this music with a popular jingle for Rheingold Beer. Clearly its inclusion suggests a double-significance – not that I condone riotous student behavior (unless, of course, I’m invited)!

I’ll also share one of my favorite lesser-heard works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: the “Charterhouse Suite,” a collection of light dances for strings, named for the public school the composer attended, beginning at the age of 15. Pedants will add that the work was actually arranged from an earlier “Suite of Six Short Pieces” for piano.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 is often referred to as the “Schoolmaster.” Passages are said to be strikingly similar to those in a lost Haydn divertimento, identified as “The Schoolmaster in Love.” In particular, it’s been suggested that the dotted rhythm of the second movement of the symphony calls to mind a schoolmaster’s wagging finger – disrupted at intervals by musical sighs as he swoons with love.

Along the way, we’ll also enjoy music by Richard Addinsell, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Sigmund Romberg.

Put on your school clothes, boys and girls, and learn your lessons well. You’ll get a gold star when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 6, 2025
Haydn Symphonies Tower Records and Discovery

I got to know Franz Joseph Haydn through his symphonies. Although his oratorios aired on the radio occasionally, I was still too young to appreciate their excellence. It wasn’t until after I won Christopher Hogwood’s recording of “The Creation” in a drawing at one of Tower Records’ epic Presidents Day sales that I began to grasp their genius.

The location was the late, lamented Tower Classical Annex, at 6th & South Streets in Philadelphia. On Presidents Day, the doors would be propped open in an attempt to mitigate the heat generated by teeming shoppers crazed at the prospect of rare deals on labels that never went on sale. This was before the proliferation of internet outlets destroyed the industry and quashed the thrill of the chase.

The event was simulcast over Philadelphia’s classical music station of nearly 50 years, WFLN (now defunct). I quickly deduced that the time to cram the submissions box was whenever announcer Henry Varlack began to weave his way across the sales floor to retrieve a handful of slips. I won many treasures over the years (a friend of mine, who doesn’t even really listen to classical music, followed my example and won some audio equipment), but none more cherished than Hogwood’s “The Creation.” I saw the light with the chorus’ resounding “Let there be light!”

The L’Oiseau-Lyre release features Emma Kirkby, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, and Michael George, in their respective prime(s), at a time when historically-informed period instrument recordings were still gaining traction in the mainstream. It’s a set I enjoy to this day.

I can’t find the complete recording posted as a single file on YouTube, but here’s a contemporaneous concert performance, artfully illustrated by footage of our miraculous world and the wondrous creatures that inhabit it.

Happy birthday, Franz Joseph Haydn!

March 31, 2025
Back to School with Sweetness and Light

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’re headed back to school.

We’ll have frothy music on scholastic themes. None frothier than a head of beer, conjured perhaps by Emil Waldteufel’s “Estudiantina,” or “Band of Students.” Listeners of a certain age may associate this music with a popular jingle for Rheingold Beer. Clearly its inclusion suggests a double-significance – not that I condone riotous student behavior (unless, of course, I’m invited)!

I’ll also share one of my favorite lesser-heard works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: the “Charterhouse Suite,” a collection of light dances for strings, named for the public school the composer attended, beginning at the age of 15. Pendants will add that the work was actually arranged from an earlier “Suite of Six Short Pieces” for piano.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 is often referred to as the “Schoolmaster.” Passages are said to be strikingly similar to those in a lost Haydn divertimento, identified as “The Schoolmaster in Love.” In particular, it’s been suggested that the dotted rhythm of the second movement of the symphony calls to mind a schoolmaster’s wagging finger – disrupted at intervals by musical sighs as he swoons with love.

Along the way, we’ll also enjoy music by Richard Addinsell, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Sigmund Romberg.

Put on your school clothes, boys and girls, and learn your lessons well. You’ll get a gold star when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 7, 2024
Haydn’s Easter Symphony No 30 Alleluia

In the name of all that’s holy – not only is it Easter; it’s also Haydn’s birthday!

Having done Easter morning radio broadcasts for 19 years – some of them lasting up to six hours – I became quite adept at pulling together varied and, I like to think, interesting, wholly enjoyable Easter programs.

One of the staples of these broadcasts was always Haydn’s Symphony No. 30, composed in 1765. The work was nicknamed “Alleluia,” for a Gregorian Holy Week plainsong chant quoted in its first movement.

Now that the kids are done with their egg hunts, it’s high time for a little Haydn seek.

Enjoy the symphony, happy Easter, and happy birthday, Franz Joseph Haydn!

March 31, 2024
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf A Gift of Cheer

RICK: “You said it for her, you can say it for me. Say it!”

ILSA: “Say it, Sam. Say… Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf.”

It’s true, Dittersdorf is good for anything that ails you. Even if you’re a guy standing on a station platform in the rain, with a comical look on your face, because your insides have been kicked out. The very act of pronouncing of his name can’t help but make you smile.

Dittersdorf (1739-1799) was one of the closest friends of Franz Joseph Haydn. He played first violin in a superstar string quartet, with Haydn (second violin), Mozart (viola) and Dittersdorf pupil Jan Křtitel Vaňhal – a.k.a. Johann Baptist Wanhal – (cello). Imagine being a fly on a wall at those performances, or even rehearsals! Though killjoy Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor who created Don Basilio and Don Curzio in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” claimed the ensemble played well enough, but was not really anything exceptional. Oh, Michael. It sounds like you need to make “Dittersdorf” your mantra.

Among Dittersdorf’s enormous output, which includes some 120 numbered symphonies (it’s possible he may have composed 90 more) are twelve programmatic works inspired by Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”

Personally, I find more enjoyment in his chamber music. Here is his String Quartet No. 3 in G major.

But perhaps you’d prefer his Harp Concerto, once his most-frequently encountered work (which admittedly isn’t saying much).

Dittersdorf was actually just “Ditters” until 1773. Where’s the fun in that? When he was granted a musical position that required a noble title, he was sent to Vienna, where fortuitously he was dubbed “von Dittersdorf.” And the world has been smiling ever since.

Here’s looking at you, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, on your birthday. Your very name is a gift that bestows a sense of the kind of cheer your music embodies.

November 2, 2022

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