For this week, I chose a piece by a composer with whom I am very familiar, Franz Schubert (who has two works on my list of Top 100 Classical Music Favorites, his Unfinished Symphony and his Piano Trio No. 2 in E Flat Major), and of course, this was a piece by Schubert that I had never heard before. In this case, the “Fantasie in F Sharp Minor” came to me as one of those recommended videos in the queue of suggestions in the right column when you watch a YouTube video. I believe I was watching and listening to a video of Muzio Clementi’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major -- last week’s selection for this blog -- and there at the top right corner of the screen was Fantasie in F Minor, a work by Schubert which I had never heard. What was interesting, too, was that the the video showed two pianists at the piano. Was this work for one piano and four hands? Or was this just a version of a solo work arranged as a duet? It turns out that, indeed, the Fantasie (or Fantasia) is for “piano four hands,” a work for two players at one piano. Composed in 1828, the last year of Schubert's life, the composer dedicated the piece to his pupil, Caroline Esterházy. The Fantasie is divided into four movements, that are played without pause:
I have now listened to the piece three times, and I love it. It is a beautiful piece -- but certainly a very mournful and grief-stricken piece. The Fantasie opens with a slow, lyrical melody that is very somber, almost funereal at times. The mood evokes some great loss, and it called to mind some lines by Emily Dickinson:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs The two pianists in the video reflected this mood, as they played with mournful anguish. There were points in the movement where the composition shifts to F Major, so there are sections where the work is not entirely solemn, but overall the mood of the piece reflects such loss that I wondered what in the world could have been going on in Schubert’s life at the time he wrote it? An article about Schubert on Wikipedia says, “By the late 1820s, Schubert's health was failing and he confided to some friends that he feared that he was near death. In the late summer of 1828, he saw the physician Ernst Rinna, who may have confirmed Schubert's suspicions that he was ill beyond cure and likely to die soon.” Was that on his mind when he composed the Fantasie? He did die in November of the year he composed the piece. He had also dedicated the work to his pupil, Caroline Esterházy, and a separate Wikipedia article about the Fantasie itself states that she was someone “with whom Schubert was in (unrequited) love.” Austrian dramatist Eduard von Bauemfeld, a close friend to Schubert, wrote the following: "He was, in fact, head over heels in love with one of his pupils, a young Countess Esterházy [...]. In addition to his lessons there, he also visited the Count's home, from time to time, under the aegis of his patron, the singer Vogl. [...] On such occasions Schubert was quite content to take a back seat, to remain quietly by the side of his adored pupil, and to thrust love's arrow ever deeper into his heart. [...] Countess Caroline may be looked upon as his visible, beneficent muse, as the Leonore of this musical Tasso." Supposedly the countess once teased Schubert that he had never dedicated a piece to her, and he replied, “Why do that? Everything is dedicated to you anyway.” He did, though, dedicate the Fantasie to her, so is the grave tone of the piece a reflection of his unrequited love? The second movement continues the somber mood of the piece, and it opens with fortissimo chords and trills “ben marcato,” with strong accentuation, before transitioning to a quieter lamentation. The third movement, a scherzo, is livelier -- and certainly much brighter than the rest of the piece -- but it is not long before is transitions into the final movement which restates the original, sorrowful theme from the start of the song. It them moves on to a fugue of a second theme from the first movement. According to the article in Wikipedia, “the fugue builds to a climax, ending abruptly on the C major dominant, instead of resolving into either F major or minor. After a bar of silence, the first theme briefly reprises, building rapidly to concluding chords that echo the second theme before subsiding into a quiet end. It has been called ‘the most remarkable cadence in the whole of Schubert's work,’ as he manages to condense the dichotomies of the two themes into the final eight bars of the work.” Evidently, musicologist Christopher Gibbs described the work as "among not only his greatest but his most original" compositions for piano duet -- and I would have to say that I second that statement.
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A few months before everything shut down due to the COVID pandemic, I went to a concert at the Kennedy Center to listen to a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. For the first half of the concert, though, the National Symphony performed “The Tempest” by Tchaikovsky. “The Tempest”? By Tchaikovsky? I was not familiar with this work at all. I knew, of course, that Tchaikovsky had composed a piece based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but “The Tempest”? I had no idea he’d composed something based on that play. I’ll be honest. I suspect I know why I was unfamiliar with this work. It was awful. It’s one of the few pieces on my “never again." list. Anyway, in a similar vein for this week, I thought I’d select a piece I’ve never heard before, but one by a composer with whom I am very familiar. While I was researching possibilities, I came across this article, “38 Classical Hidden Gems You Should Listen To Right Now” (HERE) -- and there on the list was Muzio Clementi’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major. A symphony by Muzio Clementi? I had no idea.
I listened to the symphony a few times this week, and when it first started playing on my initial time listening, I thought, “uh oh -- this is just going to be a set of variations on a D major chord”; however, a little more than a minute into the piece -- just after its cumbrous opening -- the work takes off. It is lively and exuberant -- and is there any key more lighthearted than D Major? Yeah -- I said it. I’m talking to you, all you A Major folks!
Okay, okay -- so maybe Clementi’s symphony isn’t as exhilarating and exuberant as Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, but it's opening movement is high-spirited and sparkling to be sure. The second movement reminds me of a movement or two for some of his sonatina’s -- only for full orchestra -- and the third movement is a jaunty “Menuetto” with a similar sunniness of Shirley Jones' rendition of “Oh What A Beautiful Morning” in "Oklahoma." The final movement, marked “Presto,” was respectable enough, but a little undistinguished, nothing special. It certainly did provide an upbeat end to the piece. It was just a little too...predictable? Still, overall the symphony was cheerful, bouncy and blithe -- and I did enjoy it! WFMT definitely got it right when they included this symphony in their list of hidden gems.
Since it is Black History Month, I thought I would listen to a work by an African-American composer -- and isn’t sad that when it comes to classical music, I had to run a Google-search to discover some possibilities? So that’s what I did. I went to Google, typed in “African American composer of classical music,” and reviewed what popped up. By coincidence, one of the names was familiar to me because I had just recently heard a piece by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on American Public Media’s “Performance Today,” hosted by Fred Child, so I decided to listen to another piece by him. Lo and behold, though, it turns out that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) was not African-American as he was English, born in London in 1875. However, according to Wikipedia (HERE), he “achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the ‘African Mahler’ when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s.”
To be honest, I’m not a fan of Longfellow’s poem. I realize that with the “The Song of Hiawatha,” Longfellow did set out to honor and praise Native American heritage, but what he really did -- even with the trochaic tetrameter of the poem -- was lay the foundation for stereotypes of Native Americans that still persist today. Similarly, Coleridge-Taylor’s piece seemed more “old Hollywood” than anything evocative of anything truly Native American -- though I will say that Coleridge-Taylor must have felt a fervent and emotional attachment to the poem and/or his musical interpretations of it because he and his wife Jessie Walmisley named their son “Hiawatha” (they also had a daughter, Avril). Sooo... I stopped in the middle of the "Hiwatha Overture," and I decided to listen to Coleridge-Taylor's Symphony in A Minor -- and as you can see by the rating below, I did enjoy it very much! I suspect if I were to play the Symphony in A Minor for someone who did not know it was composed by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and I asked them to guess the composer, I might hear responses like Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, or maybe even Elgar and Ralph Vaughn Williams. Sections of the symphony definitely call to mind such composers -- but still I wondered what sort of reception Coleridge-Taylor, this piece, and much of his other works received at the turn of the twentieth century? This thought called to mind the poem “Yet Do I Marvel” by African-American poet Countee Cullen (below on the left). That poem ends with the couplet, “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!” I wondered if Coleridge-Taylor ever marveled at “this curious thing” of his command to compose such wonderful music -- especially for an unreceptive or unwelcoming (perhaps even hostile at times?) public?
NOTE: I suspect that the author of the Classical-Music.com article meant “PL” Dunbar, for “Paul Laurence,” and not “PJ.” The years would fit (Paul Laurence Dunbar lived from 1872 until 1906, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor lived from 1875 until 1912), and I could not find any information on an American poet “PJ Dunbar.” I’ve contacted the site to confirm that they did, in fact, mean Paul Laurence Dunbar -- who, by the way, wrote the poem “Sympathy,” the very poem from which Maya Angelou borrowed the line to title her autobiography, “I know why the caged bird sings!” (below the photographs, on the left). Below left to right: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Countee Cullen, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The second movement is a “lament"; however, to me it is more pastoral than overly mournful. I believe I read somewhere -- although I cannot find the article now -- that the tune for this movement was based on an African folk song or spiritual, but I am not certain of that. Whether or not it was, the movement is very lyrical and sweet. The third movement is a lively scherzo, and with Coleridge-Taylor’s use of patterns of eighth notes with two sixteenth notes, it has a very English feel to it.
I enjoyed Coleridge-Taylor's symphony so much that in the coming days I plan to explore even more of his music. And here's an interesting note to end on: I told my wife about my discovery of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's works for Black History Month, and in our discussion she asked about African-American conductors. Of course, I explained that the paucity of known African-American composers in the field of classical music was mirrored by a similar lack of celebrated conductors -- so I had to run a Google-search.
I opened up Google, typed in "African-American orchestra conductors" (below), and lo and behold, look what popped up: a musician by the name of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Turns out the this Coleridge-Taylor's mother was active in music and the arts as a piano teacher and church organist, and she named her son "after the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor" (info HERE). Seems that I need to read up and him, too! : ) A funny thing happened on my way to listen to Boieldieu’s Harp Concerto in C. However, before I explain that, let me say that I chose the Harp Concerto this week because I thought I’d listen to a work for an instrument that I rarely, if ever, listen to -- and the harp certainly fit that bill. When does one ever listen to a piece for harp? And to be honest, in this case, I had never even heard of the composer, François-Adrien Boieldieu. Have you ever heard of him (and how in the world do you pronounce that last name)? Born in 1775 in Rouen, France, François-Adrien Boieldieu received his musical education first from the choirmaster and then from the organist of the local cathedral. During the Revolutionary period in France, Boieldieu left for Paris and worked as both a piano tuner and a composer. Described as “the spiritual heir” of André Grétry, a French composer most famous for his opéras comiques, Boieldieu “focused on melodies which avoided too much ornamentation, set to light but intelligent orchestration. Hector Berlioz described his music as possessing ‘a pleasing and tasteful Parisian elegance.’” (Info HERE). As such, he came to be known as “the French Mozart.” Boieldieu is mainly known as a composer of operas; however, he also composed other works, including his Harp Concerto in C, now thought to be one of the masterpieces of the harp repertory. Okay, so now the bit of humor. When I went to listen to Boieldieu’s Harp Concerto, I searched for it on YouTube on my cell phone. Various videos popped up, so I selected one, plugged in my ear buds, and listened. The concerto was a very pleasant and lyrical piece, and as it progressed I could not help but notice parallels to Mozart’s music. Some of it even sounded -- what should I say? -- “borrowed” directly from some of Mozart’s works. I did think, though, that Boieldieu made some inspired decisions to keep the orchestra’s accompaniment very light so that the harp could heard. Plus, he often paired the harp’s delicate strains with a flute, so that, again, it could be heard. Well, later in the afternoon, I thought I would listen to the piece once again, and when I went to click “play,” I realized that I hadn’t listened Boieldieu’s Harp Concerto in C at all. Instead, I had unknowingly listened to the Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major by Mozart. No wonder the piece sounded so much like Mozart’s music. No wonder all the flute. Oops. I re-ran a search on YouTube for “Harp Concerto in C,” but this time I included the name “Boieldieu” -- and this time I made sure I actually listened to Boieldieu’s work. And I did listen. And as you can see from my rating below, I enjoyed it.
The first movement is a joyous piece in C major (not so exuberant as Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, but joyous nonetheless), and Boieldieu composed a piece that is well beyond the bromidic notion of a cherub strumming out chords on a harp. The work is full and mellifluous, and the spirit is light and lively. Why, I even found myself tapping my foot -- to a harp concerto. Can you imagine that?
The second movement shifts to a minor key and is slow and somewhat solemn, but not maudlin. At the end of this movement, a cadenza (a solo passage for the harpist) leads into the final movement, a more pensive and ethereal work -- but fast paced. I was very impressed with Boieldieu's concerto and enjoyed it very much. I cannot imagine what it takes to play something like this on a harp, and I don't even want to think about the calluses harpists must develop on their fingers -- so let’s not! Instead, let’s focus entirely on the beauty, grace and joy such a piece brings to the world. Oh, but there is one other strange and indelicate matter to discuss. When reading about François-Adrien Boieldieu I learned something perhaps more crude than a discussion of harpists' calluses. It turns out that after Boieldieu died in 1834 at age 58 in Varennes-Jarcy, his body was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but his heart was interred in Rouen, in a tomb paid for by that city. Huh? What’s with that? Was that a thing in the 1800s to bury the heart separate from the body? Okay, enough of this gruesome detail. Let’s think back, instead, to the beauty, the grace, and the joy of Boieldieu's harp concerto. Now would be a good time for you to listen to it if you need to take your mind off of harpists' calluses and entombed hearts. Enjoy! |
A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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