Happy Birthday to German opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck!
Attention: There is a huge different between Engelbert Humperdinck the opera composer and Engelbert Humperdinck the pop crooner. They were born about 80 years apart on completely different continents. So yeah, two completely different guys, I promise.
Humperdinck (The opera composer. He’s the only one I’ll be talking about from here on out), had a pretty great musical career, even though we only really know him for one work, his opera Hänsel und Gretel. When he was in his 20’s he befriended Richard Wagner, and ended up helping him out on a production of Parsifal, and also tutored Wagner’s son, Siegfried, in music.
Hänsel und Gretel was premiered when Humperdinck was 39, and Richard Strauss conducted it. It was a huge hit because it had some influence from Wagner, but also used a lot of traditional German folk melodies. It’s a standard for opera companies, and was the first complete opera broadcast on the radio (Royal Opera House, London) and the first opera to be broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera.
He spent his adult life composing and teaching, but none of his other works gained the same popularity as Hänsel und Gretel.
This is probably the most famous moment from the opera, the Evening Prayer, with an amazing performance by Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade.
And here’s a performance from the Royal Opera House. Jump forward to 8:30 for the witch’s “Hurr hopp hopp hopp” aria.
As promised, here’s some of the men’s fashion from La Bohème. During the 30’s almost all the men would be wearing hats, so here are some of the assorted styles the men of the chorus will be wearing:
Here is the hat of Colline, the philosopher:
And here is the hat of the toy vendor, Parpignol, show off by our milliner, Carmen.
Although the hat looks finished from this view, Carmen explained that she still have to make the lining for the cap, but she’s waiting for the actor to coming in for the costume fitting. Then she can make any changes to the cap’s size, then finish the lining!
I have a small fascination with the different ways composers have died. With all the discussion and speculation about what caused Mozart to die, I wanted to share the accidental death of another opera composer, Jean-Baptiste de Lully.
Lully’s death in March of 1687 was due to disease, but not one you’d necessarily expect. Two months earlier he was conducting an orchestra, but in those days, rather than using a baton, conductors would bang a large stick on the floor to keep time. In his excitement he struck his toe, rather than the floor. The wound went gangrenous, but he refused to has his toe amputated, so he died two months later from blood poisoning.
He’s the overture from one of his most famous works, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Happy late birthday to Claude Debussy, who was born on August 22, 1862.
Debussy was a hugely talented pianist and composer, who attended the Paris Conservatoire, and the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He was quite adventurous and experimental, even as a student, and his use of dissonances and strange intervals was not enjoyed by his teachers. Of him, French composer Jules Massenet said “He is an enigma.” Quite a good summary of the man, and his music.
This is the first movement of his String Quartet in G Minor, one of his earlier works, performed by the Cypress String Quartet.
Debussy started to compose one of his most famous works, La Mer, in 1903 in France and completed it in 1905 on the English coast in Eastbourne. (He was in England at the time because his fashion model wife tried to kill herself after he abandoned her for his also-married lover, who was carrying his unborn child. Quite the scandal.)
Happy Birthday to one of the great villians of classical music – Antonio Salieri. Salieri was born on August 18, 1750, but instead celebrated the day of his baptism (August 19) as his birthday. So acknowledge him today or tomorrow; either works!
Salieri was a Venetian composer, but he moved to Vienna at the age of 16 and spent almost 60 years there before his death, so most of his contemporary musicians and critics considered him to be a German composer.
Salieri was primarily an opera composer (with 37 operas to his credit), but he wrote some great chamber music and sacred music as well. In his later years, once he stopped writing, he was still in high demand as a teacher, and he counts Beethoven, Liszt, and Schubert among his students.
Salieri probably would have disappeared into near musical obscurity if it weren’t for the famous play and movie Amadeus, with it’s fictional portrayal of Salieri out to crush his musical rival, Mozart. As they were both working in Vienna at the same time they did compete as rivals for different composition and teaching jobs, but evidence shows that they supported each other as colleagues and even friends.
At one of his big appointments, Salieri revived Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, rather than write a new opera himself. And although the work has since been lost, Salieri and Mozart even composed a piece for voice and piano together.
So here’s a couple of musical clips from Salieri’s operas. Enjoy them and know that Salieri wasn’t really the bad guy the movie made him out to be!
Here’s the overture to his opera Il Talismano, performed by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra with Michael Dittrich conducting.
And here’s the first movement from his Piano concerto in C major, performed by Aldo Ciccolini with the Solisti Veneti, conducted by Claudio Scimone.
Finding some music trivia to celebrate Friday the 13th is harder than you’d expect! But I did find this awesome tidbit:
You might be familiar with George Crumb’s Black Angels for electric string quartet. No? Well, here’s a quick sample of the first movement played by the always amazing Kronos Quartet:
Black Angels is subtitled “Thirteen Images from the Dark Land.” Crumb was influence by numerology, and Black Angels is no exception. It was completed on Friday the 13th of March, 1970.
Yesterday was the birthday of Russian composer, Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936). Glazunov was a popular composer in his early life, who went on to become the director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory for almost 25 years. He had a great influence on some of the early Soviet composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich.
Glazunov tried his hand at conducting, and, while he loved it, and was an active conductor throughout most of his life, he was never terribly good at it. Glazunov reportedly had quite a problem with alcohol. According to Shostakovich, Glazunov would drink a hidden bottle of alcohol through music classes, and Shostakovich’s father would sometimes supply him with bootleg liquor.
Although he wasn’t the most sober Conservatory director, he cared greatly about the students, and would make it a point to know all of their work. At one point the government offered him a nicer apartment to benefit his position, but instead he asked them to send firewood to the Conservatory so the students could have an easier time studying.
Glazunov left Russia in 1928, and eventually settled in Paris. Many composers and the general public associated Glazunov with an older generation of music, so when he died in 1936, people were surprised because they assumed he was already dead.
His most popular works are his ballets and later symphonies. His Violin Concerto was a favorite of Jascha Heifetz, but it is not often performed these days. Here’s the beginning of the first movement, performed by Heifetz.
His last work was a Saxophone Concerto. Here’s a section of the first movement:
The hats from La Bohème are amazing, but this one has to take the cake! It’s Musetta’s hat, and Carmen Killam, our milliner, has created these beautiful leaves with beadwork and embroidery. Fantastic!
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