Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Mozart

Birds in Music From Mozart to Eighth Blackbird

This one goes out to all the red-winged blackbirds, grackles, starlings, and cowbirds that have been swarming my feeders for the past week.

Jennifer Higdon’s “On a Wire,” named for the familiar sight of birds, well, hanging out on a wire, was composed for the contemporary music sextet eighth blackbird (which markets itself all in the lower-case). Interestingly the piano part includes passages that have adjacent musicians bow the strings inside the instrument. The technique is called (wait for it) “bowed piano.” You can identify the members of eighth blackbird by their instruments: flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello.

eighth blackbird is named for Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” a poem that’s been set by many composers. Lukas Foss’ response is one of the more frequently encountered.

Starlings aren’t always an annoyance. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was so charmed by one during a visit to a Viennese pet shop that he brought him home to his family. From the evidence of one of the composer’s diary entries, we know that a theme used in his Piano Concerto No. 17 was inspired by a song that his fine feathered friend had sung to him. Admittedly, Mozart tidied it up a bit first. (Originally, there had been an out-of-place G-sharp.)

I understand that everyone needs to eat, and I don’t begrudge a handful of any of these birds, but when it becomes a winged mob in leather jackets with chains, then I’m compelled to throw up the sash and trumpet through an old wrapping-paper tube.

Gentle birds, be reasonable! Eat well, but then, please – go in peace!

More about Mozart’s starling here

https://interlude.hk/mozart-inspired-pet-starling/

BONUS: From “Where’s Charley?” “My darling, my darling, I’ve fluttered and fled like a starling…”

February 22, 2023
Star Trek Opera Mozart’s Abduction

In 2016, Pacific Opera Project boldly went where no opera company went before. But since I’ve been caught in a wormhole, I guess, I am only just now catching up with POP’s bridge-rocking spin on Mozart’s comic singspiel “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” presented “Star Trek” style.

In Mozart’s original, Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman, attempts to rescue his beloved from the seraglio of Pasha Selim, a scenario that would have capitalized on the 18th century European fascination with orientalism, with the added savor of salaciousness in setting the piece in a harem.

Now, Belmonte is reimagined as Captain Kirk (replete with Shatnerisms), his servant Pedrillo is Mr. Spock, Constanze is Lt. Uhura, and Blonde is the iconic Star Trek “green girl.” The Ottomans? They’re all Klingons. There’s even an appearance by the Gorn!

Mozart is given an assist on a couple of occasions by Alexander Courage, whose music was featured prominently in the original television series (along with that of Fred Steiner, Gerald Fried, and George Duning, among others).

Unusually for opera, the singers are all miked, but I assume it’s more for documentary purposes than for amplification, since there’s another performance posted on YouTube with the same cast without the mikes, and it’s very difficult to make out the dialogue.

I imagine this would have been a gas to see live. On video, you have to make the extra leap of imagining yourself in the house.

Mozart and “Star Trek?” Salieri would have been so envious.

February 13, 2023
Mozart’s *Leck mich im Arsch* at the DMV

I was at the Motor Vehicle Commission a few days ago, and this was my ticket. Of course, I thought immediately of Mozart’s K. 231. This canon in B-flat major was composed in Vienna in 1782. One of Mozart’s most scatological creations, it’s identified in the Köchel catalogue as “Leck mich im Arsch” (literally, “Lick Me in the ***”). Here’s the jolly text:

Lick my *** nicely,
lick it nice and clean,
nice and clean, lick my ***.
That’s a greasy desire,
nicely buttered,
like the licking of roast meat, my daily activity.
Three will lick more than two,
come on, just try it,
and lick, lick, lick.
Everybody lick their *** for themselves.

I didn’t sing it at the MVC, but it was definitely running through my head.

Happy birthday, Mozart.

January 27, 2023
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
Radu Lupu Legendary Pianist Dies at 76

It was all I could do to whip together a post about the passing of Harrison Birtwistle last night; but we also lost another major musician yesterday – the reclusive Romanian pianist Radu Lupu.

Lupu is still a frequent presence on classical radio playlists, despite the fact that he hasn’t made a commercial recording since the mid-‘90s. Most of those performances are from his years as a Decca recording artist. Lupu continued to appear in concert, though he shunned publicity, denying interview requests and, when possible, permission for his concerts to be broadcast.

He retired in 2019, after a long period of ill health, during which he frequently wound up canceling his engagements. He was a widely-respected interpreter of the core repertoire, especially fine in music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, among others.

Radu Lupu was 76 years-old.

As soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19

Joined by Murray Perahia in a superb performance of Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor

From a Carnegie Hall recital in 1994, Schumann’s Fantasy in C

Brahms’ Ballade in G minor

More Brahms: his final encore, from February 2019

April 19, 2022

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