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Tag: Lost Composer

Ernest Fanelli Mummy Rediscovered

By the time his music was performed publicly, it had been 18 years since the composer had stopped writing.

Ernest Fanelli is one of those poor, unsung prophets of music history who wrote works brimming with colorful ideas, expressed well ahead of their time. He was underappreciated, unnoticed, or fell short of his overall potential, yet later masters capitalized, either wittingly or unwittingly, on his remarkable innovations. Others undoubtedly lifted his discoveries to greater heights, but that doesn’t change the fact that Fanelli got there first.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” just in time for Halloween, we rediscover this forgotten composer and exhume his seminal masterpiece, “The Romance of the Mummy.”

It’s fairly obvious that Fanelli’s unpublished manuscript fueled the imagination of Claude Debussy, who in turn not only influenced the course of French music, but also changed the way artists and audiences thought about music heading into 20th century. That’s not to say that Fanelli was of the same caliber as Debussy. But like Hans Rott, whose lone symphony clearly influenced Mahler, he is an essential footnote in the history of a new kind of music.

Episodes from “The Romance of the Mummy” anticipate not only Debussy and Ravel, but also Paul Dukas and Florent Schmitt, Holst, Sibelius, Respighi, Richard Strauss and even Stravinsky, a figure Fanelli would not have known. Not all of these composers were familiar with Fanelli’s work – in many cases, it’s simply a matter of music history finally catching – but Debussy most probably was. When Fanell’s “Mummy” was finally given its first public hearing, Debussy did his best to distance himself from the composer. He was even known to have done an about-face if he happened to walk into a café and saw Fanelli sitting at the piano.

Fanelli lived from 1860 to 1917. A French composer of Italian descent, he studied at the Paris Conservatory for a stint – allegedly under Charles-Valentin Alkan (although it’s unlikely, since Alkan had already quit the Conservatory by the time he entered). Later, he returned to study under Léo Delibes. Fanelli was unable to complete either course, due to lack of funds. In the meantime, he eked out a career as a percussionist.

He was seeking employment as a copyist in 1912, when he showed Gabriel Pierné an example of his handwriting from one of his unpublished manuscripts, written some 30 years earlier. Pierné was so taken by the actual music that he arranged for the “Mummy’s” belated premiere.

“The Romance of the Mummy,” based on a novel by Théophile Gautier, tells the tale of an English archaeologist, who exhumes and falls in love with – well, a mummy. Papyrus rolls in her mausoleum reveal her back-story and fate. She is Tahoser, who falls in love of Poeri, a handsome Hebrew. The Pharaoh (unnamed, though it would have been Ramses II) desires Tahoser for himself. However, the lovely young woman falls ill when she finds Poeri is in love with Rachel. She is healed by the prophet Moses, who initiates her into the cult of Jehovah. Pharaoh becomes an enemy of the Jewish people and abducts Tahoser. When he dies in the Red Sea, in circumstances described in the Book of Exodus, Tahoser is crowned Queen of Egypt. Hence, her presence in the pharaoh’s tomb.

The first set of tableaux is titled “Thebes,” and is made up of the subsections “Before Tehoser’s Palace,” “On the Nile,” and “Triumphal Return of the Pharaoh.”

It was the conductor Adriano who discovered a second set of tableaux in the music library of Radio France, titled “Festivities in the Pharaoh’s Palace.” The three subsections of the second set are called “In a Room in the Palace – The Naked Jugglers,” “Grotesque Dance of the Egyptian Jesters,” and “Triumphant Hymns – Orgy.” The music received its first performance only in 2002 for this release, issued on the Marco Polo label.

Is it love or infatuation? Peer behind the bandages of music history on “Mummy Dearest,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

October 27, 2019
Reznicek Beyond Donna Diana A Lost Composer

It’s always sobering to read back over biographies and histories of composers who have devoted their entire lives to music – and who actually made a pretty good living at it – only to be remembered in the present by but a single work, often a short one, and perhaps not really representative of the whole.

Such is the case with Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, author of that sparkling pops favorite, the “Donna Diana Overture” – five minutes of high spirited fun. But what about his five symphonies, his ample orchestral music, the violin concerto, his ballet, his chamber music, and his at least 12 operas?

Reznicek liked to have fun, all right, though his sense of humor more often than not tipped over into the sardonic. While his works were often favorably received by audiences, those in the musical establishment were frequently offended by the composer’s transparent sarcasm. It’s not for nothing that his Second Symphony was subtitled the “Ironic.”

Further controversy touched his personal life when he became involved with an unhappily married woman, who divorced her husband and became Reznicek’s second wife. There was a scene in his opera, “Till Eulenspiegel,” that was deemed in some circles anti-Semitic, though he himself was married to a Jew. He was helped in his career by his friend, Richard Strauss, with whom, however, he shared an ambivalent relationship. With the rise of the Nazis, Reznicek determined not to become involved in the Party, yet he remained in Berlin.

He died there, of typhoid fever, after the city’s infrastructure was destroyed by the Soviets in 1945. His daughter was released by her Soviet captors when it was learned that her father was the composer of the “Donna Diana Overture,” the favorite piece of the Russian commanding officer.

When thinking about what to program in anticipation of the New Year, my own ambivalence toward the impending celebrations has found a perfect match in Reznicek’s Symphony No. 5, written in 1924, which he subtitled “Dance Symphony.” Everyone dances on New Year’s Eve, right? Well, Reznicek offers up in the work’s four movements a polonaise, a csardas, a ländler, and a tarantella. However, if as you’re merrily tapping your toes something begins to strike you as a little askew, it’s because Reznicek conceived the piece as a “dance of death.” Rachmaninoff would have loved that idea. Whatever it is, it’s a corker.

In the time remaining, we’ll hear some contemporaneous historic recordings of Reznicek himself conducting, including a vintage performance of his “Donna Diana Overture.” All of these have been issued on cpo.de – classic production osnabrück (or CPO, for short), a German record label that has done much to explore the forgotten byways of classical music, in general, and Reznicek’s output in particular.

I hope you’ll join me for “Emil With Dancing” (say it aloud to better understand the pun), “The Lost Chord” New Year’s celebration, this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

December 30, 2018

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