I have been reading enthusiastic reviews of Aria Code, a new series of podcasts sponsored by WQXR, the Metropolitan Opera and WNYC Studios. And after listening, I agree.
Each podcast discusses one aria. Just one. Afterward, the aria is presented in its entirety without interruption.
For those looking for an introduction to opera, this is what I would call an easy on-ramp. The presenters provide diverse views and insights into each aria, revealing details one might not have heard otherwise. Each podcast lasts around 30 minutes.
Arias from Verdi’s La Traviata and Otello, Puccini’s La Boheme and Tosca, and Saint-Saën’s Dalila have been presented thus far.
Luminous music,
Tender, calm, and so peaceful:
Gabriel Fauré
A requiem that dwells on
Eternal rest and light, peace,
Mercy and welcome.
Grace and elegance,
Music that soothes and comforts:
Gabriel Fauré.
The more I have read about Gabriel Fauré, the more I have wanted to read. And the more I have listened to his music, the more I have wanted to hear. What a fascinating fellow!
He was drawn to music at an early age, and was sent to study at a music school in Paris, which in time was headed by Camille Saint-Saëns. At first, Saint-Saëns was Fauré’s teacher, but the two became close friends.
After graduation, Fauré worked as a church organist…until he showed up one Sunday morning in his evening clothes after partying all night. Thereafter, he became the organist at a different church.1
He fought in the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. 1
After the war, he was choirmaster at Saint-Sulpice, where Charles-Marie Widor was organist. The church had two organs, and the two would improvise together, trying to trick each other with unexpected key changes. Saint-Saëns described Fauré as “a first-class organist when he wanted to be.” 1
As a professor at the Paris Conservatory, Fauré taught Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger, among others. He later became the school’s director, and modernized procedures and updated the curriculum to include works by Debussy and Wagner. Old-timers were not amused by the inclusion of this newfangled music. However, the group of contemporary composers known as Les Six adored him. 1
Fauré’s music spanned the period between Romanticism and 20th century music. His later music hints at the changes that were occurring at the time, away from a fixed tonality and traditional chord progressions, and toward more amorphous harmonies. His last work was his first string quartet, finished less than two months before he died. 1
An example of Fauré embracing the modern is now a great treasure. He recorded a number of piano rolls, and through them, we can hear him playing his own music. At the links you can hear Fauré play his Pavane (Op. 50), a Valse Caprise from Op. 38, a Valse Caprice from Op. 59, and Nocturne No. 7 (Op. 74).
I would be remiss to omit Fauré’s Requiem. I could write an entire post on it—and I will, because I am currently learning to sing it. But I need to immerse myself in it more first to be able to adequately describe it to you. It is a towering work, a giant, but one that whispers. A deeply emotional work, yet one that Fauré said that he wrote “for nothing—for fun, if I may say so!”2 The Requiem departs from the traditional requiem text, and focuses on eternal rest and perpetual light. In a way, it is reminiscent of the Brahms German Requiem in its comforting tone. It is beautiful, and I look forward to singing it and telling you more about it soon.
It is hard to know what to highlight, there are so many works I could present for you. I’ll pick two. First, his lovely song Aprés Un Rêve, sung here by Pumeza Matshikiza with pianist Simon Lepper.
And, for now, I leave you with Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine (Op. 11) for orchestra and choir. Fauré wrote this when he was 19 years old, and it took first prize in a composition competition (imagine his competitors!).
Letter from Fauré to composer Maurice Emmanuel, quoted in Nectoux, Jean-Michel, Gabriel Fauré – A Musical Life, trans. Roger Nichols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p 116.
Saint-Saëns wrote five
Piano concertos and…
You gotta hear this.
Piano Concerto No. 2 is famously described as starting like Bach and ending like Offenbach, and is a very popular piece. Saint-Saëns wrote it in 17 days in 1868.
Georgi Li was the pianist. Joshua Weilerstein conducted the Verbier Festival chamber orchestra. Spectacular performances all around.
George Li’s performance was exciting and precise, it was brilliant. By the way, Li has been playing this piece since he was 12 (yes, there’s a video at the link–and he was already good at age 12).
So what performance should you listen to? If you want to hear and see, there’s the Li performance mentioned above. Or this performance by Arthur Rubinstein. There are abundant choices on YouTube. Gramophone devotes an entire article to the various audio choices.
On August 6, 2016 at 7PM CEST (UTC+2) (that’s 1PM EDT in the US) Medici.tv, in conjunction with The Violin Channel, will present a free live webcast from the 2016 Verbier Festival in Switzerland. The webcast will feature Joshua Bell, violin; George Li, piano; Emmanuel Krivine, conductor [postscript: Joshua Weilerstein was the conductor, although Krivine was originally listed on the announcement]; and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. Here’s the program:
Saint-Saens: Piano Concerto No 2 in G Minor, Op. 22
Bizet: Symphony No 1
Saint-Saens: Violin Concerto No 3 in B Minor, Op. 61.
It’s getting toward Halloween here in the US and I got to thinking about spooky music.
Why is it that organ music is always considered mad scientist/evil mastermind music?
I mean, think about it: do these guys have time to be practicing their arpeggios and pedalwork?
Do they really want their hands tied up with massive nasty, gnarly chords?
Is it easy to come up with byzantine evil plans while playing the intricate counterpoint of a fugue?
Can we picture an evil mastermind wearing sensible organist shoes?
Photo via OrganMasterShoes.com
C’mon, really?
I guess we’re stuck with that image though.
So, ok, we’re going with it. What are our options here to make folks think an evil genius lives at your house while you’re handing out candy at Halloween?
Everyone thinks of the Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor first. Recordings of ALL of Bach’s organ music are available for free. Or you can download a subset of more familiar pieces. The pieces were recorded by Dr. James Kibbie on baroque organs in Germany (learn more about the project here).
Looking for something different and original? Try Frederik Magle’s music. Delectably dark and hair-raising, from traditional Gothic organ to rock/classical fusion. Here’s Origin.
When you think of music that children listen to, you might think of nursery rhymes, folk tunes, jump-rope songs. The music of my early childhood can be summed up in two words.
Jackie Wilson.
You probably have at least two questions. Possibly the first is “Who is Jackie Wilson?” He was an American pop singer of the 1950s who influenced singers from Elvis to Michael Jackson to Van Morrison. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 26th among the 100 greatest singers. But I’m not going to count that question. So, 1. Why Jackie Wilson? 2. What does this have to do with classical music? I’ll answer both.
1. My mother was a huge Jackie Wilson fan. Huge. She had all the records. My father took her to New York City to see a show. They never went to New York City. She also had a stereo that surpassed mine in sheer volume, not to mention size. My stereo rattled the blinds. Hers rattled the windows…in the neighbor’s house. And you could stack LPs and play one right after the other. Which she did. A lot.
I didn’t realize how much this music had sunk in until something like 20 years had passed, and a Jackie Wilson song came on. And I still remembered all the words. I don’t know any nursery rhymes or folk tunes (“Oh do you remember sweet Betsy from Pike?” No, not really).
2. So it came as a great astonishment to me the first time I listened to Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera I Pagliacci when the aria Vesti la Giubba began. I knew it. But I knew it as My Empty Arms, sung by Jackie Wilson. And now I wish I could have heard him sing it in the original, because he had a spectacular voice. Later I came to equate Alone at Last with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Night with an aria from Camille San-Saëns opera Samson and Delilah (Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix).
Someone once said (I wish I could remember who) that Jackie never met a song he didn’t like. He would sing anything because he could sing everything; he had an operatic range. Particularly unexpected is his rendition of My Yiddische Mama, but it was part of a tribute to Al Jolson, whom he admired.
But that voice. The voice of a man who had once been a Golden Gloves boxer (his athleticism shows on stage), whose opportunities to sing classical music were at that time non-existent. Lonely Teardropsindeed.
For each of the composers in the illustration I have selected a piece of music or two for your listening pleasure. I deliberately tried not to pick the pieces the composers are best known for, so there will be no Carnival of the Animals here. The exception is Widor’s Toccata, because, well, it’s a cool piece of music, and that’s the instrument I started on (and no, I never got that far—not even close. But one can dream).
While I was researching Maurice Ravel for last week’s Haiku Wednesday, I kept seeing connections between various French composers, more so than I had seen with other composers (or maybe I haven’t looked hard enough yet). So I started reading about them to learn more, and found the connections fascinating.
Of course we know now about Ravel (1875-1937). Ravel studied with Émile Decombes, a student of Chopin’s, as did Alfred Cortot, whom I mentioned in a previous post. Later Ravel studied with Gabriel Fauré. Ravel’s father introduced him to Erik Satie (1866-1925). Satie at some point turned his back on Ravel, and Satie’s student Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) said (after Satie had also turned against Poulenc) “I admire him as ever, but breathe a sigh of relief at finally not having to listen to his eternal ramblings on the subject of Ravel.”1
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) studied organ under the tutelage of Camille Saint-Saëns, and the two remained close friends. In 1871 he took the post of choirmaster at a church where the organist was Charles-Marie Widor. The two frequently improvised organ duets. Fauré was a charter member of the Société National de Musique founded by Saint-Saëns. Also members were Georges Bizet (1838-1875), Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), Jules Massenet (1842-1912), and César Franck (1822-1890). 2 One of Franck’s students at the Paris Conservatory was Claude Debussy (1862-1918)3
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) studied organ at the Paris Conservatory (organ was emphasized over piano because of the greater career opportunities for organists). As an organist he came to the attention of Hector Berlioz. After the collapse of his marriage, Saint-Saëns became attached to Gabriel Fauré’s family.4
Charles-Marie Widor received his first organist post with the support of Saint-Saëns and Charles Gounod. When César Franck died, Widor took his post as professor at the Paris Conservatory. Widor was a staunch proponent of Bach’s organ music and one of his students was Albert Schweitzer. Widor founded the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau and served as its director until 1934, at which time Maurice Ravel succeeded him.5
Charles Gounod (1818-1893) was introduced to Bach’s music by Fanny Mendelssohn. One of Gounod’s students was Georges Bizet. When Gounod died, the music for the service was conducted by Fauré with Saint-Saëns at the organ.6
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) became friends with Franz Liszt, when both attended a performance of Shakespeare’s The Tempest with an overture composed by Berlioz. Liszt was a witness at Berlioz’s marriage to Harriet Smithson.7 Liszt was also in attendance at a mass where organ improvisations were performed by César Franck. Liszt highly praised Franck’s work and began including Franck’s work in concerts in Germany.8 Liszt is said to have called his friend Camille Saint-Saëns “the greatest organist in the world.” Saint-Saëns dedicated his third symphony to Liszt.9
Tune in tomorrow for more on the music behind these French connections.
Resources
Kelly, Barbara L, Music and Ultra-modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913-1939. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2013, p 57, Wikipedia entry on Maurice Ravel.
Vallas, Leon, Cesar Franck, Trans. Hubert J. Foss. New York: Oxford Universty Press, 1951, p 127. Trans. of La veritable histoire de Cesar Franck, 1949, via Wikipedia article on Cesar Franck.
Catapulting into Classical 