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September 14
Johann Michael Haydn
Birth: September 14, 1737 in Rohrau, Austria
Death: August 10, 1806 in Salzburg, Austria
Largely overshadowed by his older brother Franz Joseph,
Michael Haydn was a prolific composer who was much admired. He influenced
both Mozart and Schubert, and he was the teacher of such notable
composers as Carl Maria von Weber and Anton Diabelli. Haydn was
an extremely versatile composer who wrote in both the "stile antico"
and in more modern styles. Although he wrote a great deal of secular
music for use at court, Haydn's greatest contribution was to sacred
music. Michael left home around 1745 to attend the choir school
at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he received instruction
in general subjects, singing, keyboard and violin. It was at St.
Stephen's that Haydn gained a reputation for his remarkably clear
and beautiful voice, as well as for its extremely wide range of
three octaves. In 1757 Haydn was appointed Kapellmeister to the
Bishop of Grosswardein in Hungary. He served the Bishop until 1763,
when he accepted the position of court musician and Konzertmeister
to Archbishop Sigismund Schrettenbach of Salzburg, who was renowned
as a generous patron of the arts. This appointment put Haydn in
a position to have a profound impact on the young Mozart, who spent
his formative years in Salzburg. It was also through this appointment
that Haydn met the woman he would marry, Maria Magdalena Lipp, a
singer in the archbishop's court and daughter of the court organist
Ignaz Lipp. Haydn was appointed as first organist at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche
in 1777. During the last years of his life, Haydn was frequently
ill. He died in 1806 and was buried at St. Peter's in Salzburg,
where, in 1821, his friends erected a memorial in his honor.
Luigi Cherubini
Birth: September 14, 1760 in Florence, Italy
Death: March 15, 1842 in Paris, France
Much admired by his fellow musicians, Cherubini was Beethoven's
favorite contemporary composer. What Beethoven and many others admired
was Cherubini's ability to blend his polyphonic virtuosity, Classical
stylistic polish, and a truly Romantic sense of drama into music
of extraordinary depth and dramatic power. Particularly in his later
sacred works, Cherubini combined his tremendous skill as a contrapuntalist
with a facility for expression, tempering his passionate dramatic
impulse with the discipline of religious contemplation. Cherubini
began studying music with his father. Luigi's his first work, a
mass and Credo, was performed in 1773. Five years later, he went
to study with Giuseppe Sarti, composing his first opera, Il Quinto
Fabio, during this apprenticeship. In 1785, following a successful
visit to London, Cherubini took up permanent residence in Paris.
At the beginning of the French Revolution, Cherubini was named director
of a new opera company, a venture initiated under the auspices of
the future King XVIII. In 1792, however, the opera company, viewed
by revolutionaries as a royalist relic, closed and Cherubini found
refuge at a friend's country house in Normandy. Despite the volatile
political situation, he returned to the capital in 1793, hoping
to resume his career. The turning point in Cherubini's career was
the 1797 production of Medée, based on the harrowing tragedy by
Euripides. Cherubini's work, while conveying the sheer horror of
Medea's actions, focuses on the chilling, sinister, yet profoundly
human, nature of his protagonist's rage. In 1805, Cherubini traveled
to Vienna, where he met Haydn, Beethoven, and Napoleon, who had
come to Vienna as a conqueror. The French Emperor, who never fully
appreciated Cherubini's music, urged the composer to return to Paris.
After his return, Cherubini fell into a deep depression, lost all
interest in music, retired to the chateau of the Prince of Chimay,
and turned to painting and botany. Fortunately, he was asked to
compose a mass for the church in Chimay, and this request prompted
a return to music. His inspiration as powerful as ever, Cherubini
devoted himself to composing music for the Church. In 1822, Cherubini
became director of the Paris Conservatory, gaining the reputation
as an excellent administrator. Although very busy at the Conservatory,
Cherubini continued composing, writing, among other works, his great
Requiem in D minor. First performed in 1836, Cherubini's Requiem
was played at his funeral, according to his wishes.
September 21
Gustav Theodore Holst
Birth: September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham, England
Death: May 25, 1934 in London, England
Gustav Holst is well-known today as the composer of The
Planets, which remains extremely popular, but for little else except
perhaps his St. Paul's Suite. However, Holst was the creator of
operas, chamber, band, vocal, and orchestral music of many different
styles. He embraced a wide variety of musical models, from Arthur
Sullivan, Edvard Grieg, and Wagner to the melodic simplicity of
English folk music, Tudor music, Sanskrit literature, astrology,
and contemporary poetry. His great interest in Eastern mysticism
can be heard in his settings of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda and
his short opera Savitri. Gustav's grandfather, Gustavus von Holst
of Riga, Latvia, a composer of elegant music for the harp, moved
to England and became a fashionable harp teacher. Holst's father
Adolph, a pianist, organist and choirmaster, taught piano lessons
and gave recitals. Gustav's mother, who died when he was only eight,
was a singer. A frail child whose first recollections were musical,
Holst was taught to play the piano, violin and trombone, and began
to compose when he was about twelve. Holst met Ralph Vaughan Williams
in 1895 while they were students at the Royal College of Music,
and the two remained lifelong friends, depending on one another
for support and assistance, although there is little similarity
in their music. Shortly after his arrival in London, Holst's neuritis
in his right arm, which had afflicted him in his early youth, had
worsened and now caused him to abandon ideas of a career as a concert
pianist. In 1898, Holst left the RCM to take a position in the Carl
Rosa Opera Company as rehearsal pianist and coach. He completed
his Cotswold Symphony in 1900, and its premiere in April 1902 was
a success. On June 22, 1901, Holst married Emily Isobel Harrison,
whom he had met in a choir he had directed a few years before. In
1903 he was appointed Musical Director at St. Paul's Girls' School,
Hammersmith, his biggest teaching post and one which he kept until
his death. He added another teaching post at Morley College in 1907,
bogging him down and leaving little time for composition. In 1914,
Holst began work on what would become his most popular composition,
The Planets. By 1924, Holst's health was clearly declining, and
he thus lessened his workload. Beginning in late December 1928,
Holst made a series of visits to France, Italy and the U.S. While
In Boston he was diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. On May 23, 1934,
he underwent surgery for the ulcer, but died two days later.
September 28
Giovanni Punto (Jan Vaclav Stich, Johann Wenzel
Stich)
Birth: September 28, 1746 in Bohemia
Death: February 16, 1803 in Prague
Like many Bohemian musicians, Jan Vaclav Stich Germanized
his name and the result was Johann Wenzel Stich. He then went a
step further and Italianized it to Giovanni Punto. He was a violinist
and one of the leading horn players of his time. As a composer,
he wrote 11 concertos for horn and several other works with horn,
as well as some other instrumental chamber music. He also published
pedagogical works, a book of daily exercises for horn, and updatings
of older horn methods. His music is accomplished and effectively
written, particularly for the horn parts. As a youth, he was sent
by Count Thun to study horn with Josef Matiegka in Prague, and then
with Schindelarz in Munich. He finally went to Dresden, where he
encountered other teachers: Hampel, who had introduced new hand-stopping
techniques, and Haudek, who worked on the lad's high register. Virtually
a serf, Stich ran away and escaped across the border into Austria,
to get out of Count Thun's service. He adopted his Italian name
to keep his true identity secret. He secured a permanent position
from 1769 to 1774 at the court of Mainz, which also permitted him
to tour extensively throughout Europe. Punto was in Paris in 1778
and while there, met the visiting Wolfgang Mozart, who wrote his
Sinfonia Concertante with Punto in mind for the horn part. Punto
specialized in the lower horn, playing a silver horn made by Lucian-Joseph
Raoux of Paris. Commentators of the time accounted him the greatest
horn player of his age, an opinion also expressed by Mozart and
Beethoven. There are those who rank him as the greatest horn player
of all time and he was a master of the practice of playing multi-phonics,
or more than one note at a time from the horn, even extending to
full chords. During 1781 and 1782, Punto was a member of the orchestra
of the Prince Archbishop of Würzburg. In 1782, he went back to Paris
in the service of the Count of Artois, the future Charles X. He
was on tour when the French Revolution took place. Evidently he
was not suspect when he returned to Revolutionary Paris, for he
maintained the position of violinist/conductor at the Théâtre des
Variétés Amusantes from 1789 through 1799, right through the Reign
of Terror. In Vienna, he met Beethoven, who wrote his Horn Sonata
for him and the two played the premiere together in 1800. His tour
extended to Prague the next year and he and the Czech composer Jan
Ladislav Dussek toured in 1802. After a brief stay in Paris, Punto
returned to Prague in 1803, where he died after a five-month illness.
He had a large funeral at which Mozart's Requiem was played.
Florent Schmitt
Birth: September 28, 1870 in Blamont, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France
Death: August 17, 1958 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Schmitt was a prolific composer throughout his long life.
He wrote in every genre except for opera, but the works he is remembered
for were written in his youth. His music, characterized by rhythmic
energy, refined orchestration, and tonal harmony, combines his admiration
for impressionism and the beginning of the reaction against it.
It contains echoes of Franck to anticipations of Stravinsky. Schmitt
came to music during his teenage years, and studied in Nancy and
later in Paris with Massenet and Fauré. He won the Prix de Rome
in his fifth attempt at age 30 with his setting of Psalm 47. Three
years later he wrote a ballet, later rearranged as symphonic poem,
La tragédie de Salomé, whose violence was uncommon in French music
and which became his most famous piece. Over the next three decades
he was a member of the Societé Musicale Indépendante, director of
the Conservatoire de Lyon, and music critic for Le Temps. In 1932,
he appeared in Boston as soloist in his Symphonie Concertante for
piano and orchestra. In 1938 he was appointed President of the Societé
Nationale de Musique. Other important works were his Piano Quintet,
a string quartet, the Sonata Libre for violin and piano, and two
symphonies, the last of which was premiered only two months before
his death.
October 12
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Birth: October 12, 1872 in Down Ampney, Gloucester, England
Death: August 26, 1958 in London, England
Ralph Vaughan Williams left a varied output that includes
orchestral works, songs, operas, and choral compositions. While
primarily drawing on the rich tradition of English folksong and
hymnody, Vaughan Williams produced well-loved works that fit into
larger European traditions and gained worldwide popularity. Vaughan
Williams, who lost his father early in life, was cared for by his
mother. Related, through his mother, to both Charles Darwin and
the Wedgwoods of pottery fame, he grew up without financial worries.
He studied history and music at Trinity College, Cambridge, and
finished up at the Royal College of Music, where he worked with
Holst, Parry, Wood, and Stanford. In 1897, the year he married Adeline
Fisher, Vaughan Williams traveled to Berlin to study with Max Bruch,
also seeking Maurice Ravel as a teacher several years later, despite
the fact that the French composer was three years his junior. In
1903, he started collecting English folksongs, which influenced
his approach to composition. Vaughan Williams further developed
his style while working as editor of the English Hymnal, which was
completed in 1906. The composer's interest in and knowledge of traditional
English music is vividly reflected in his song cycle On Wenlock
Edge, based on selections from A.E. Housman's immensely popular
volume of poetry A Shropshire Lad. In his Fantasia on a Theme of
Thomas Tallis of 1910, Vaughan Williams introduced antiphonal effects
within the context of modal tonality, juxtaposing consonant, but
unrelated, triads. Composed in 1914, his Symphony #2 "A London Symphony",
brings to life the sounds of the capital city from dawn to dusk.
When World War I broke out, the 41-year-old composer enlisted as
an orderly in the medical corps, becoming famous for organizing
choral singing and other entertainment in the trenches. The war
interrupted the composer's work but did not, it seems, disrupt the
inner continuity of his creative development. The Symphony #3 "Pastoral",
composed in 1922, conjures up a familiar world, incorporating folksong
motives into sonorities created by sequential chords. While critics
detected pessimistic moods and themes in the later symphonies, Vaughan
Williams refused to attach any programmatic content to these works.
However, the composer created a convincing musical description of
a desolate world in his Symphony No. 7 "Sinfonia Antarctica" (1952),
which was inspired by the request to write the music for the film
Scott of the Antarctic. In addition to his nine symphonies, Vaughan
Williams composed highly acclaimed religious music, as well as works
inspired by English spiritual literature, culminating in his 1951
opera The Pilgrim's Progress, based on the spiritual classic by
John Bunyan. An artist of untiring creative energy, Vaughan Williams
continued composing with undiminished powers until his death at
87.
October 19
Nils Geirr Tveitt
Birth: October 19 1908 in Kvam, Hardanger, Norway
Death: February 19, 1981 in Oslo, Norway
Incorporating folk music into concert music was much in vogue
during the early 20th century, and it seems like every major country
had its native champion. Hungary had Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály;
England had Ralph Vaughan Williams; the United States had Charles
Ives; and Norway had a man named Geirr Tveitt. Tveitt was a composer,
pianist, teacher, and folk music collector who never attained the
fame of those other composers but who has, in recent years, been
studied by Norse music lovers and scholars with ever-increasing
interest. Efforts to paint a clear and accurate picture of the man's
life and work have proven difficult, however: A fire ravaged his
home in 1970, destroying most of his compositions and folk music
collections. Tveitt grew up in the Hardanger region of Norway. He
learned piano and violin from early childhood on, but he went to
the Leipzig Conservatory for formal schooling from 1928-1932 to
focus on composition. After visits to Vienna and Paris, where he
took private lessons from Villa-Lobos and Honegger, he returned
to Norway and supported himself writing criticism in Oslo and teaching
privately. In 1941, he was awarded a Norwegian state pension and
in 1942, he took up residence in the Tveitt family farm in Hardanger,
devoting himself mainly to composition and to the collection and
transcription of the region's folk music. A scandal involving the
Nazis during the German occupation of Norway in World War II resulted
in Tveitt having his state pension taken from him. It was reinstated
in the late 1950s. Tveitt's musical style draws heavily on the folk
music with which he was so familiar. His output was prolific, including
some 29 piano sonatas, five operas, a half-dozen piano concertos,
a violin concerto, several suites for orchestra, miscellaneous chamber
music, and works for various other solo instruments, including harp
and saxophone. There is also a large body of pseudo-folk vocal songs.
His best-known works are those that rely most on folk music: One
Hundred Folk Tunes, a series of orchestral suites; and a volume,
famous in Norway, called 100 Hardanger Tunes.
October 26
Domenico Scarlatti
Birth: October 26, 1685 in Naples, Italy
Death: July 23, 1757 in Madrid, Spain
Domenico Scarlatti began his compositional career following
in the footsteps of his father Alessandro by writing operas, chamber
cantatas, and other vocal music, but he is most remembered for his
555 keyboard sonatas, written between 1719 and 1757. Domenico probably
received most of his musical training from family members, but his
father was the dominant figure in his life. It was Alessandro who
arranged Domenico's first appointment, as organist and composer
for Naples' Cappella Reale, and wanted him to continue with vocal
music despite the enormous talent he had shown for keyboard music.
Domenico was sent to Venice in 1705, where he met Handel, and in
1708 to Rome to become maestro di cappella to the exiled queen of
Poland, Maria Casimira, and later, head of the Cappella Giulia.
In these positions, he composed his operas and serenatas, and some
sacred vocal works. It was also in Rome where he developed a friendship
with the Portuguese ambassador, the Marquis de Fontes, which eventually
led to Scarlatti's being appointed master of the royal chapel by
João V of Portugal in 1719. Scarlatti was also teacher to the royal
family, particularly princess Maria Barbara. Scarlatti had already
written approximately 50 keyboard pieces before coming to Lisbon,
but wrote many more for his students. When Maria Barbara married
Spanish prince Ferdinando, Scarlatti followed her to Spain. His
first publication, 30 sonatas called "Essercizi," was issued in
1738 and sold throughout Europe. Scarlatti supported King and Queen
in their private musical soirées, writing cantatas and working with
singers such as the great castrato, Farinelli. Scarlatti also continued
to teach, and, in the last six years of his life, concentrated on
organizing his sonatas in manuscripts. These one-movement sonatas
are recognized as cornerstones of the keyboard repertoire, a bridge
between the Baroque and the galant styles of keyboard writing. They
demonstrate his facility in adapting rhythms found in contemporary
Iberian popular music and his inventiveness in creating themes and
developing interesting harmonies.
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WWUH: Program Guide 2006
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