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November 2
Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf
Birth: November 2, 1739 in Vienna, Austria
Death: October 24, 1799 in Neuhof, Czech Republic
Karl Ditters was a contemporary of Haydn and one of the most
admired composers in Europe in his day. His popularity was said
to rival that of Haydn, Gluck, and Mozart. He composed over 120
symphonies and 45 operas, as well as concertos and sacred and chamber
works. Although his music circulated all over Europe, he never found
the stable patronage that Haydn did, and he reportedly died in near
financial ruin. Ditters began his career at age 10 as a violin virtuoso
in a church orchestra, then moved to the court orchestra of the
Prince of Sachsen-Hildburghausen. There he met Haydn, and Gluck,
a fellow violinist. In the early 1760s, Ditters was appointed court
violinist and made his first trip abroad, traveling with Gluck to
Italy. Ditters left the imperial court in 1764 after a dispute to
become Kapellmeister at the court of the Bishop of Grosswardein,
in present-day Romania. After a dispute with Empress Maria Theresia,
the Bishop disbanded his chapel, leaving Ditters unemployed. The
following year, Ditters secured a post as court composer to the
Prince-Bishop of Breslau, Schaffgotsch. The court was located in
the small hamlet of Johannisberg, and to persuade Ditters to remain
in such a remote locale, the prince bestowed upon him many honors
and titles, including noble status for which he appended "von Dittersdorf"
to his surname. The Johannisberg years were his most creative, and
for a time Ditters was in the running for Kapellmeister at the court
of Emperor Joseph II. In the middle 1780s, several of his compositions
were presented in prestigious settings, including the imperial palace
for performances of six of his twelve "Ovid" symphonies. The year
1786 was a defining one for Ditters. His comic opera, Der Apotheker
und der Doktor (The Pharmacist and the Doctor) premiered in Vienna
with overwhelming success. It soon became the most popular opera
in Europe, rapidly spreading to opera houses across the continent.
In the middle 1790s, Ditters' employment with the Prince-Bishop
Schaffgotsch ended and his popularity began to fade. Facing an uncertain
future, Ditters found another patron in Baron Ignaz von Stillfried,
who installed the composer in his castle in southern Bohemia. His
final years were spent editing his works and writing his autobiography,
which he completed two days before his death.
November 23
Manuel De Falla
Birth: November 23, 1876 in Cádiz, Spain
Death: November 14, 1946 in Alta Gracia, Córdoba, Argentina
Manuel de Falla is widely regarded as the most distinguished
Spanish composer of the early 20th century. His output was small
by choice, and revolved largely around music for the stage. Falla's
reputation is based primarily on two lavish ballet scores - El amor
brujo (Love, the Magician), and El Sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered
Hat). His evocative piano concerto, Nights in the Gardens of Spain,
has also gained a permanent place in the concert repertory. Falla
first took piano lessons from his mother in Cádiz, and later moved
to Madrid to continue the piano and to study composition with Felipe
Pedrell, who had earlier influenced Isaac Albéniz. Under Pedrell's
guidance, Falla was drawn to Renaissance Spanish church music, folk
music, and native opera. The latter two influences are strongly
felt in Falla's opera La Vida breve (The Short Life), for which
Falla won a prize in 1905. A second significant influence resulted
from Falla's 1907 move to Paris, where he met and fell under the
Impressionist spell of Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel.
It was in Paris that he published his first piano pieces and songs.
In 1914 Falla returned to Madrid to compose El amor brujo and El
sombrero de tres picos. In between the two ballets came Nights in
the Gardens of Spain, a suite of three richly scored impressions
for piano and orchestra, evoking Andalusia. In the 1920s, Falla
altered his stylistic direction, coming under the influence of Stravinsky's
Neo-Classicism. Works from this period include the puppet opera
El retablo de Maese Pedro (The Altarpiece of Maese Pedro) and a
harpsichord concerto, with the folk inspiration now Castilian rather
than Andalusian. After 1926 he essentially retired, living first
in Mallorca and, from 1939, in Argentina. He spent his final years
in the Argentine desert, at work on a giant cantata, Atlántida,
which remained unfinished at his death in 1946.
November 30
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Birth: November 30, 1813 in Paris, France
Death: March 29, 1888 in Paris, France
Charles-Valentin Alkan was one of the great composer/pianists
of the 19th century and a major influence on many subsequent musicians.
He wrote some of the most peculiar and technically demanding music
of his time, an output that compared favorably to the piano music
of Liszt. Alkan was an extraordinary prodigy. He entered the Paris
Conservatoire when he was 6 years old and won numerous prizes for
solfège, piano, harmony, and organ. He quickly made a name for himself
in the Paris salons as a gifted young pianist and performed in London
to great acclaim. Alkan was acquainted with the likes of Victor
Hugo, George Sand, and Frederic Chopin, but he was always something
of an introvert and misanthrope. At age 25 he dropped out of society,
the first of his frequent and sometimes lengthy withdrawals. Over
the next 35 years he rarely appeared in public. Only in 1873 did
he make a return to the concert stage, playing a series of concerts
at the Salle Erard. Alkan published his first music at age 14. His
earliest compositions were in the familiar forms of the day - opera
paraphrases and collections of studies that showed off his remarkable
facility. His compositions started to get more ambitious in the
1840s and many of the works called for extravagant, nearly superhuman
technique. Perhaps his most ambitious opus is the set of Twelve
Études in all the minor keys, Op. 39. Alkan rarely played his own
works in public, choosing instead to perform the then-unfashionable
late Beethoven sonatas, Schubert sonatas, and Baroque music. His
playing style was noted for its clarity, its restraint in rhythm
and dynamics, and its intellectual quality. Alkan and his music
were largely neglected during his lifetime, and he was nearly forgotten
upon his death. But with the attention of a few 20th century composers
and pianists, Alkan's position in music history has been restored.
December 7
Pietro Mascagni
Birth: December 7, 1863 in Livorno, Italy
Death: August 2, 1945 in Rome, Italy
Though regarded by many as a "one-hit wonder", Pietro Mascagni
wrote several operas of interest and quality. Aside from the well-known
Cavalleria Rusticana, the charmingly comic L'amico Fritz, the wrenchingly
dramatic Iris, and Il Piccolo Marat manifest a diversity of mood
and manner. Still, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana was so successful
that subsequent works have lapsed into obscurity. Although encouraged
by his parents to pursue a career in law, Mascagni did receive some
private musical training. However, when he began to study with the
director of the newly formed Istituto Musicale Livornese, his father
forbade further musical studies until an uncle interceded to offer
young Pietro a home and means to finance his musical education.
After only two years at the Milan Conservatory, Mascagni embarked
on an unsettled career as an orchestra member and occasional conductor
of touring operetta companies. In 1889 he married and settled in
Puglia as a music instructor. To a competition mounted by the music
publisher Sonzogno, Mascagni submitted his third opera, Cavalleria
Rusticana, in February 1890. At its Roman premiere, an unprecedented
success propelled the composer from provincial hopeful to overnight
celebrity. The following year, Mascagni enjoyed more muted approval
with L'Amico Fritz. In 1895 he staged the verismo Silvano, although
its reception was less positive than that accorded Iris. In 1903
he began an illicit relationship with Anna Lolli, which lasted until
Mascagni's death in 1945. In his later operas, including the overblown
Nerone, written in 1935 to please the Fascist regime, Mascagni often
explored the outer limits of vocal possibility with punishing tessituras
and unrelentingly high volume. His subsequent association with Mussolini's
regime seemed self-serving and it left Mascagni discredited and
impoverished.
December 21
Zdenek Fibich
Birth: December 21, 1850 in Vseborice, Czech Republic
Death: October 15, 1900 in Prague, Czech Republic
Fibich is regarded as the third
of the leading Czech composers of the last half of the 19th century,
after Dvorák and Smetana. His music is strongly Romantic and often
intensely personal. Less nationalistic than was fashionable for
much of his later life, his works have recently seen a revival of
interest. Fibich's mother came from a cultured Viennese family,
while his father was a Czech forestry official. Fibich was home-schooled
by his mother until he was 9. She also taught him piano, and then
referred him to a local priest for studies in music theory. He later
attended a private music school in Prague. By the end of his schooling,
Fibich had written over 50 compositions. Most were piano pieces
and songs, but some were more ambitious, including sketches for
the final part of Romeo and Juliet and a symphony. In 1865 he entered
the Leipzig Conservatory, studying with Ignaz Moscheles and others.
He returned to Bohemia in 1870, lived with his parents a year until
he had turned 21, and then moved to Prague to compose. In 1873 he
married Ruzena Hanusova and took a position directing a choir in
Vilnius, Lithuania. The couple had twins, but Fibich suffered the
loss of his wife, her sister, and both babies over the next two
years. Fibich took a job at the Provisional Theater in Prague, and
married a third Hanusova sister, Betty, in 1875. Finding that his
theatrical duties took him away from composition, Fibich gave them
up in favor of a position at the Russian Orthodox Church in Prague
in 1878. He wrote a modestly successful opera, Blanik, and became
interested in the unusual musical form of the melodrama. In 1881
Fibich resigned from his church position and devoted himself full-time
to composing and teaching. Soon he fell in love with a pupil, a
singer named Anezka Schulzova, and eventually abandoned his wife
and son for her. Miss Schulzova was a well-read young woman who
directed Fibich toward texts with a feminist orientation. Indeed,
of his last four operas, she wrote the texts for three of them.
Sarka, about a Czech female military leader, was his most successful
work, in part due to its patriotic theme. Fibich also began writing
an immense series of short piano works called Moods, Impressions,
and Reminiscences, composed between 1891 and 1899. They form virtually
a musical diary of his affair with Schulzova, and often are exceptionally
intimate and passionate. In 1899 he returned to a position as producer
at the Provisional Theater, now called the National Theater. He
died unexpectedly of a kidney infection in 1900.
December 28
Roger Sessions
Birth: December 28, 1896 in Brooklyn, NY
Death: March 16, 1985 in Princeton, NJ
One of America's musical icons, Roger Sessions had an immeasurable
influence on the evolution of composition in the 20th century. A
deeply passionate composer of rare accomplishment, he attained a
level of craftsmanship which nearly 75 years of work honed into
profound knowledge and skill. In addition, the achievements of his
numerous students, including such luminaries as Milton Babbitt and
David Diamond, reveal Sessions as a teacher of uncommon stature.
Sessions was a precocious lad. By the age of 14, he had already
composed a complete opera, and entered Harvard University, where
he studied music with Edward Burlingame Hill. Following graduation
from Harvard in 1914, Sessions enrolled for further studies at Yale
with Horatio Parker. Accepting a position at Smith College in Massachusetts,
Sessions worked privately with Ernest Bloch in New York, and when
Bloch was invited to become director of the newly-formed Cleveland
Institute of Music, Sessions went along as his assistant, remaining
there until 1925. From 1925 to 1933 Sessions lived and worked in
Europe, first in Florence, then later in Rome and Berlin. During
these years the musical establishment began to take notice, and
Sessions scored a notable success with his Suite from the Black
Maskers in 1928. Sessions' earliest music had been written in a
lush, chromatic style. By the time of the Black Maskers, however,
he had begun to favor a leaner, neo-Classical language. Following
his return to the US in 1933, Sessions accepted teaching positions
at a number of American institutions including Boston University,
Princeton, Berkeley and Juilliard. Beginning with the Violin Concerto
of 1935, Sessions' music became increasingly complex, and during
the 1950s he adopted serial compositional techniques, though he
used them with great flexibility, always suiting the techniques
to match his own highly unique musical voice. Sessions was awarded
a special Pulitzer citation for lifetime achievement in 1974, and
in 1982 received an actual Pulitzer Prize for his magnificent Concerto
for Orchestra. No further works appeared after this notable musical
achievement, and Sessions died in 1985 at the age of 88.
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WWUH: Program Guide 2006
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