Happy Belated Birthday to German pianist and composer Fanny Mendelssohn, who was born 206 years ago. Fanny was the older sister of Felix Mendelssohn, but she was a talented composer and pianist in her own right.

Fanny Mendelssohn’s musical talent was tolerated by her father, but she didn’t receive the musical training and encouragement that her brother did. She was primarily self-taught. Fortunately her husband was supportive of her composing and performing in private salons. Her first, and probably only public performance took place when she was 33, performing her brother’s first piano concerto. Fanny composed over 450 pieces, most of them solo piano works. Most of her works were unpublished during her lifetime, or published under Felix’s name, but the year before her death she decided to publish a song collection under her name.

Fanny wrote many solo piano works entitled Song Without Words. Here’s one of them:

We are very excited for the performance this weekend – Berlioz’ Childhood of Christ. If you’ve noticed a bit more Berlioz being programmed lately, it’s because our Music Director, Thierry Fischer, is a huge Berlioz fan. In his own words:

“I don’t just like Berlioz, I need to perform Berlioz very regularly. He’s a composer very close to my inspiration. He wrote music by putting his own life in music, so it’s very easy to identify all his troubles, fears, hopes, nightmares. His imagination was absolutely stupefying.”

Childhood of Christ is a very interesting work for many reasons. First, Berlioz was not a religious man, so the fact that he composed a “sacred trilogy”, as he called it, was unusual. But he was a huge fan of church music, so that was his inspiration. Second, it’s one of the few works of his that the audiences and critics of the time actually liked! They usually felt that his music was bizarre sounding, but they loved how simple and melodic this work is:

During the second performance on December 24, calls of “encore” drowned out the Alleluias at the end of “The Repose of the Holy Family,” prompting the composer to turn to the audience and shout, “We’re going to play the piece again, but this time please allow it to finish.”
- John Mangum, Program Designer/Annotator, Los Angeles Philharmonic

For such a beautiful work, it doesn’t get performed very often, perhaps because of the large chorus and soloists needed. If you’re a fan of choral music, this is a concert you won’t want to miss!

NPR Music had a great article two years ago about the piece, which includes a complete recording! Check it out!

To wrap up National Opera Week, we’d like to wish a late happy birthday to opera composer Vicenzo Bellini, who was born November 3, 1801.

Bellini was a musical prodigy, and it is claimed that he could sing an aria by 18 months, was studying music theory at age two, and the piano at age three. Whether it is true or not, he did grow up in a very musical household, and spent his rather short life studying and composing music. Bellini died at the age of just 33. He is known for very long, lyrical melodic lines, and he is one of the best examples of the bel canto style of opera. His operas, including La sonnambula, I puritani, and Norma, are still quite popular today.

This is probably his most famous aria, “Casta Diva” from Norma.

And from La sonnambula, “Ah! non credea mirarti”.
The first line of this is engraved on Bellini’s headstone – “Ah! non credea mirarti Sì presto estinto, o fior”, which translates roughly to “I did not believe you would fade so soon, oh flower”.

Vaughan Williams was an English composer with a lengthy oeuvre of often pastoral-sounding music. His father, a vicar, died when he was just three years old. She moved in with family, the Wedgwoods, to raise young Ralph. Her great-grandfather was the famous potter John Wedgwood, and the family’s china and pottery is still highly prized and collected. He wasn’t just related to one famous family but two: Charles Darwin was his great uncle!

Vaughan Williams studied the piano and violin as a young boy, of which he said, “I never could play [the piano], and the violin…was my musical salvation.” He attended the Juilliard of the UK, the Royal Conservatory of Music as well as the Trinity College at Cambridge University. At the Royal Conservatory, Vaughan Williams became friends with the likes of Leopold Stokowski (the great composer who championed many of his symphonies) and Gustav Holst. Despite this, Vaughan Williams didn’t publish any music until the age of 30. If you’re frequently depressed by the fact that you will never be Mozart, just remember Ralph Vaughan Williams!

Vaughan Williams married Adeline Fisher in 1896. She was herself an accomplished cellist and pianist. She was even a first cousin of Virginia Woolf. It seems to be a fairly open marriage as he began an affair with Ursula Wood in the late 30s. Wood even cared for Adeline when her health declined in the 1940s due to arthritis. Wood and Vaughan Williams married in 1953, two years after the death of Adeline.

Upon discovering English folk music in the early 1900s, Vaughan Williams compositional style permanently changed. He found his voice, purpose, and passion. His music is typically traditional in sound and largely tonal, very different from what the younger composers of his time (such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg) were writing. Vaughan Williams is sometimes dismissed by academic musicians because of his lack of experimentation but it’s important to remember that he was 30 before he started writing published music and by the time he wrote his most famous works he was in his 40s and 50s. He belonged to a different compositional school of thought than the more experimental types writing at the same time as him. One well known music theorist said than when listening to Vaughan Williams, “one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new.” Indeed, Vaughan Williams’ music is frequently lush and gorgeous; the kind of music that orchestras love to play and audiences love to hear.

Vaughan Williams started becoming known nationally and internationally in 1910. This was largely due to his choral fantasy: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Listen here:

He also started gaining prominence with the Sea and London Symphonies.

“The Waves” from A Sea Symphony

Vaughan Williams actually volunteered for military service during WWI even though he was 41 and could have avoided conscription. Being surrounded by constant gunfire as an ambulance driver caused a hearing loss that progressed to almost complete deafness in his old age. Most of his most famous works come from the years following the war and include the ballet Job, the Pastoral Symphony (No. 3), his Piano Concerto, and his Symphony No. 4.

Scene 8 from Job: A Masque for Dancing

Vaughan Williams remained prolific well into his 60s and 70s and wrote a number of beautiful and interesting works including four symphonies (No. 6 received over 100 performances in its FIRST YEAR of existence) , the Christmas oratorio Hodie (Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir have performed this together as part of the OC Tanner Gift of Music concert recently), and the opera The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Symphony No. 6 in E Minor

Parts 8 – 12 of Hodie

A native of Tokyo, Takemitsu actually spent a few of his early ears in China before returning to Japan for elementary school. His education was cut short when he was conscripted into the Japanesse military at the mere age of fourteen! Although he described his military service as “extremely bitter,” it was in the military that he was first exposed to western Classical Music since it was banned in Japan during WWII.

Takemitsu joins the ranks of the Russian 5 and other great composers who are primarily self-taught. He didn’t even have an instrument! While working for the U.S. Armed Forces after the war, he listened to as much western Classical Music as he could and began to compose at sixteen. At the time he often stayed away from traditional Japanese music as it reminded him too much of the war, and said of composing “”… I began writing music attracted to music itself as one human being. Being in music I found my raison d’être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity.”

It’s truly remarkable how on-trend he was despite being so isolated. Being self-taught and on the other side of the world certainly allowed him the freedom to try ideas that other composers never dreamed of. And yet, he started experimenting with electronic music (music nerds sometimes call it musique concrete) in the 1940s at the same time that Europe was just starting to think about electronic music. All in the day before twitter and instant world-wide communication!

Takemitsu’s 1958 Requiem for Strings made him hit the big time. Listen to it here:

Stravinsky was in Japan at the time and just happened to hear a recording. Stravinsky spread the news of Takemitsu in the U.S. and soon, Takemitsu was receiving commissions. Takemitsu’s music started changing in the 1960s after exposure to the indeterminacy of John Cage, the rigorous practice of Anton Weber, and a returning interest to Japansese music and instruments. Yes those are incredibly disparate influences.

1967’s November Steps (using Western and Japanese instruments):

Always miraculously anticipating (or perhaps setting?) the latest musical trends, the 1980s saw a return to a semi-tonality in works such as Far Calls and Dream/Window.

Rain Tree Sketch from 1982:

Takemitsu wrote over 130 concert works, over 100 film scores, all sorts of chamber works, AND wrote a detective novel and made frequent appearances on Japanese television as a celebrity chef. A philosopher, he also wrote about aesthetics and musical theory.

He composed over 100 film scores^[4][5] and about 130 concert works^[5] for ensembles of various sizes and combinations.^[6] He also found time to write a detective novel and appeared frequently on Japanese television as a celebrity chef.

We give you the opportunity to hear Takemitsu this season on March 2 – 3. Our principal violist Brant Bayless will perform his A String Around Autumn. Click here for more info!

by Luke Howard

Many consider the ensemble pieces the most successful examples of vocal writing in Fidelio. The Act 1 quartet (discussed in Lesson 2), the “Prisoners’ Chorus,” the final trio, the concluding rejoicing—these are precisely the places where Beethoven can treat the voices symphonically, and that is his métier.

Caption: Image of the Prisoner’s Chorus from Utah Opera’s 1999 production of Fidelio

Next, the famous “Prisoners’ Chorus:”

(Music starts at 0:57)

There is no question this is gorgeous music—a terrific 7-minute chorus in the style of a German Männerchor. But how does it propel the drama? It doesn’t. Absolutely nothing happens on stage during the chorus, and the theme of its text is only incidental to the opera. For all the lofty philosophizing about freedom and liberty in this chorus, the opera itself is about the love of a woman for her husband, and her bravery. A brave wife’s love is what the final chorus celebrates, and what the original subtitle of the opera underscored. This is another example where Beethoven’s remarkable music is far more important than the dramatic pacing or the story at this point.

Finally, the “stand-off” in Act II, “Er sterbe”:

The music in this scene is amazingly vivid—impassioned, emotional, moving—and yet Pizzaro, Leonore, Florestan, and Rocco stand there virtually stock-still for a full five minutes, with daggers and pistols drawn, making sure to reveal their true identities to all before the drama can continue. Then everyone freezes when the trumpet signals the arrival of the Minister, and they sing at length again about Leonore’s love and courage. The most exciting scene of the story, and the most musically animated, is actually one of the most visually static parts of the opera.

There is no issue at all with Beethoven’s musical instincts. He develops themes, varies the melodies, sustains the musical interest with masterly perfection. That is Fidelio’s greatest strength, and undoubtedly the reason for its continued success. But dramatically, in terms of the action on stage, these scenes are weak. (I personally find them almost farcical, for opposite reasons. The Act I quartet is a comic scene, but is treated as a very serious theme and variations. “Er sterbe,” on the other hand is a serious scene, the most intense of the opera, but the dramatic pacing so attenuated as to make it almost ludicrous on stage.)

Caption: Fidelio, Act II, Scene 3 (”Er sterbe”), an engraving from 1815

What carries the day is Beethoven’s music. It is proof, if it were needed, that opera is essentially a musical genre, not a dramatic genre. Otherwise (as a critic once claimed) Meryl Streep would be hired to sing every mad scene, and Sigourney Weaver would do everything else. We forgive opera for not being totally realistic because there is compensation in the music itself. And with Beethoven’s Fidelio, there is more than enough compensation for the weaknesses in dramatic pacing and libretto. Wilhelm Fürtwangler, the great German conductor, once observed, “Fidelio is not an opera in the sense we are used to, nor is Beethoven a musician for the theater, or a dramaturgist. He is quite a bit more, a whole musician, and beyond that, a saint and a visionary.” So the struggle Beethoven experienced in producing Fidelio wasn’t so much a struggle to write a good opera. It was the struggle to write an opera on his own terms, a symphonic opera that breaks all the “rules” of staged drama and allows the music itself to be the lead character. It is what he excelled at in his symphonies, and in that struggle to symphonize the opera genre with Fidelio, he succeeded beautifully.

Lesson 1: Composition and Disastrous Premiere(s)
Lesson 2: Beethoven’s Struggle with Fidelio

So why precisely did Beethoven, the great musical genius, struggle so much with Fidelio? First, Beethoven was not a natural dramatist—certainly not in the way that, for example, Mozart, Wagner, and Verdi were. He did not possess an innate understanding of the stage, and his sense of dramatic pacing in a theatrical context (as opposed to a purely musical context) was clearly lacking. Second, his choice of genre created its own problems. Though the story itself is decidedly serious, Beethoven wrote it as a singspiel—a lighter form of musical drama with spoken dialog and an expectation of some comic content. Beethoven did include comedy, particularly in the first act, but the effect was to dilute the seriousness rather than highlight it. Mozart understood how comedy can enhance drama, and demonstrated that marvelously in a work such as Don Giovanni. But trying to tell a serious story through a genre designed for light entertainment creates a tension between content and form that Beethoven never really grasped and never fully solved.

Margaret Jane Wray as Leonore in Utah Opera's 1999 Production

George Gray as Florestan in Utah Opera's 1999 Production

What saves this opera from potential mediocrity is the music. But this isn’t simply a case of great music compensating for a composer’s lack of stage know-how. It is a different kind of opera from those being produced in the early 19th century, an opera in which music dominates completely and dramatic integrity is secondary. When Gluck attempted to reform opera from the excesses of baroque artificiality in the mid-18th century, he had suggested that dramatic integrity should be returned to opera—that music should serve the drama. And except for Mozart (who would never let music be subservient to anything!), that notion was beginning to catch on in Romantic-era operas with passionate stories and vivid musical settings. But—and again, Mozart is the exception here—opera composers tend not be great symphonists (think Wagner, Verdi, Puccini), and great symphonists (Haydn, Brahms) tend not to write great operas. For Beethoven to write a successful opera, I believe, he had to approach it as if it were a symphony. And there is no major opera quite that is quite so symphonic as Fidelio.

Some examples might be useful to illustrate this. First, the quartet from Act I, “Mir ist so wunderbar”:

(2000 Met production with Utah’s own Jennifer Welch-Babidge as Marzelline!)

The story has been all light-hearted to this point. And the plot devices of love triangles and mistaken gender are straight out of opera buffa. But this ensemble set piece is written as a theme and variations, shifting the main theme from voice to voice while adding counter-melodies that weave through it, and later putting the accompaniment in triplets. It is exactly the same musical process, though with different emotions entirely, that Beethoven had used in the finale to the “Eroica” Symphony, and again later, in the second movement from his Symphony No. 7.

(especially from 0:19 to 1:58)

(0:00 to 2:42)

Beethoven seems to be thinking instrumentally in the Fidelio quartet rather than vocally (which should come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to sing Beethoven).

This quartet is immediately followed by a buffa aria from Rocco, which makes it something of an odd little insertion of quasi-symphonic seriousness into an essentially comic series of scenes in the first act. Of course, the act takes another oddly serious turn when Pizarro appears. And then there is no (intentional) comedy in the second half of the opera at all. Dramatically it’s a bit of a mess, but musically it’s stunning.

Now, you may be scratching your head in wonder about who Václav Nelhýbel might be. His name may not be familiar, but if you’ve ever played in a student orchestra, concert band, wind orchestra, marching band, or ever attended a sports event that had a band of some sort, you’ve heard a Nelhýbel piece. Guaranteed.

He primarily wrote for student performers, and because of the plethora of such organizations around the world, he is one of the most prolific composers of the 20th Century. Nelhýbel was born in the Czech Republic, studied in Switzerland, and emigrated to the US in 1957.

His music is certainly accessible, and since it’s primarily for students, it tends to be in a simpler vein while still communicating a great deal of sophistication. In terms of harmonic structure, Nelhýbel thought in a modal manner. This means that he used older versions of scales rather than the typical major or minor. Learn about modality here. In addition to his works for students, he also wrote 3 operas, 3 ballets, and a symphony. Three is clearly a favorite number!

Enjoy this popular work, “Danza” for student orchestra:

Learn more Nelhýbel about here through his official website>>

Here is a student concert band of “Festivo” which you’re certain to hear sometime at a HS concert band or sports event at least a few times in your lifetime!

Happy birthday to Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was born yesterday in 1874. Schoenberg was an incredibly important and influential composer and music theorist who experimented with atonality and invented the twelve-tone music technique (serialism).*

Schoenberg was born in Austria, but later moved to Berlin, where he lived until the 1930’s when Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power. After a vacation to France he learned it wouldn’t be safe to return to Germany, and came to the United States. He settled in Los Angeles, and lived there until his death in 1951. An interesting story is that Igor Stravinsky also emigrated to the U.S. around the same time and also settled in Hollywood, just a few blocks from Schoenberg himself. The two were musical rivals and they never spoke while living so close to one another. Indeed, musicians often had to choose between the camps sort of similar to the great musical divide in the 19th Century between Brahms and Wagner. It wasn’t until Schoenberg’s death in 1951 that Stravinsky finally began to experiment with serialism.

Schoenberg developed what is now the twelve-tone technique, a way of using all the 12 notes of the chromatic scale in a way that none has more or less importance than another, and avoids putting music in a specific key (see a more detailed definition below). He was also an influential composition teacher and some of his students were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Together, the three form the Second Viennese School. This is a reference to the so-called First Viennese School comprised of the great German and Austrian composers of the 18th and 19th centuries (think Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, etc.). Of course, those composers weren’t exactly a solidified school of musical thought, but we suppose it made Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern happy to lump themselves with those luminaries. His American students include Lou Harrison, Rogers Sessions, and John Cage. John Cage is the infamous (or famous, depending on your view!) composer of 4′33″ and frequently spoke about the importance of his teacher Schoenberg upon his musical voice. The truth, however, is that — at best — Cage only audited a class or two from Schoenberg!

Here are two of my favorite Schoenberg pieces. First, Verklärte Nacht – one of his earliest works.

and second, Gurre-Lieder, another early work, right before he transitioned into twelve-tone compositions.

*twelve-tone or serial music attempts to equalize the twelve notes of the chromatic scale that are in an octave. In tonal music, one note is prioritized as the key or home page. In serial music, all twelve notes are equal. Hence, Schoenberg often referred to it as the, “emancipation of dissonance.” The twelve notes are usually arrange in a row and are manipulated by transposing them up a note or two, arranging them backwards (retrograde), or even flipping them inside out (inversion), among other options.

Monday was the birthday of French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)! Milhaud was a member of a group of French composers called “Les Six“, inspired by the group of Russian composers known as “The Five”.

Milhaud studied at the Paris Conservatory, but during a trip to the United States he discovered Jazz music, which would have an influence on his compositions throughout his life. Milhaud emigrated to America in 1940, and after the war he would bounce back and forth between California and France.

Milhaud was also a music teacher and some of his well-known students include jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, and songwriter Burt Bacharach.

Here’s my absolute favorite work by Milhaud – Le bœuf sur le toit:

And here’s an excerpt from another ballet, La création du monde: