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Tag: the Romantic Period

April 22, 2018

String Quintets – Mozart / Beethoven

3889-2014-2

 
           Claude Monet
 
               ________
 
 
concerned about presenting Beethoven’s 
Opus 59, the next significant string quartets 
of the early 19th Century, too early – 
Beethoven had, incidentally, at that point no 
rivals – I preferred to establish his credentials, 
rather than to enter his next phase, equivalent 
to the move from representational art to 
Impressionism in painting, a sea change,  
people would’ve balked at the very concept   
of an alternative vision, and indeed they 
were confused
 
this sea change, I should point out, challenged 
the very notions of what not only art should be, 
but also music, and literature, indeed very life 
perspectives, philosophies
 
therefore the Romantic Period, when 
expressions of personal epiphanies began 
to crowd the new democratic environment 
after the French Revolution, 1789, all of 
which would lead to, eventually, our own 
allegiance to, at least in the West, the 
concept of human rights
 
music was already, in other words, talking,
and with Beethoven, indeed vociferously 
 
 
still adheres to Classical conditions, 
but bursts through them emotionally
 
written only 14 years earlier, one of six
of his
 
you won’t find them, perhaps, on the 
surface, to be very different, wouldn’t 
be able to even tell them apart in a
blind pinch 
 
but juxtaposing, as I always urge, 
sharpens one’s aesthetic pencil, ask
yourself, in this case, according to 
your senses, which of the compositions 
is earlier, you’ll find your senses have 
already told you
 
everything flows from that initial 
answer, when you ask yourself why  
you think that
 
 
I’d asked my mom at Belvedere, 
Vienna, whose painting hung across 
the hall we’d just entered
 
she demurred, of course, considering 
herself not up to the challenge, despite 
several visits together we’d had among 
a wonder of other European art galleries
 
I insisted
 
she tossed off, okay, Renoir, an easy 
answer, though it turned out to be a 
Degas, or the reverse, or whatever 
 
but upon reaching the painting, of 
course, Degas, she said, knowing full 
well it was him, having lacked only the 
pluck and the confidence 
 
who’s that, I asked, turning to another
master
 
Monet, she replied, confidently
 
and was, as I’d anticipated she would 
be, correct, she can now tell her 
Rembrandts from her Courbets, her
Canalettos from her Vermeers also
 
we know of a lot more than we 
think we do
 
 
R ! chard
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April 2, 2018

Cello Concerto no 1 in C major – Joseph Haydn

st-george-and-the-dragon.jpg!Large

     “St. George and the Dragon“ (c.1470) 

                Paolo Uccello

                    ________

it isn’t easy for me to leave Bach behind
whenever I start listening to him, I could 
ride his musical train forever

but the middle of the 18th Century did, put 
him aside, for about a hundred years, until 
Mendelssohn rediscovered him

Bach’s Cello Suites were themselves only 
reinstated in the 1930s by Pablo Casals,
the Classical 18th Century had considered 
Bach too fussy, his pieces, they thought, 
were technical exercises rather than 
actual entertainments, form was  
overtaking, for them, function 

there’s a wonderful book about all this,
“The Cello Suites“, written by Eric Siblin, 
a Canadian journalist, which is not only 
amazingly informed and probing, but also 
beautifully written, it holds a place of 
honour on my bookshelf, along with other 
inspired, and inspiring, texts

not only was Bach set asunder, dismissed,
during the Classical Era, but all of the 
formative music also he had written, for 
cello, violin, keyboard, in other words,
the entire curriculum

which, since Bach’s reinstatement, has 
become, paradoxically, the very  
foundation for learning these instruments

imagine playing a tune with the right 
hand, then a few notes later, picking 
it up in the left hand while the right 
hand keeps on going, imagine what
that does to your fingers, never mind  
to your mind, that’s what his Two-Part
Inventions are all about, fifteen of 
them, eight in major keys, seven in
minor, consider the technical 
difficulties, intricacies, imposed 
both compositionally and upon 
the harried performer 

then Bach follows through with his 
Three-Part Inventions to top it all 
off, for the keyboard at least, and 
only for the moment – there’ll still 
be his transcendental “Goldberg 
Variations” among other 
incandescent masterpieces – 
wherein one juggles three tunes at 
a time, and all of them in the same 
assortment of fifteen contrasting, 
foundational, keys, the “Inventions“
 – if you can do that, you’re on your 
way, one would think, to knowing 
entirely what you’re doing

but time marches on, the Classical
Era hits, Haydn takes over, not
unimpressively

the same thing happened in my 
generation to Frank Sinatra via 
the Beatles, not to mention, a little 
later, to either, with Pink Floyd

listen to Haydn’s First Cello Concerto,
note the bravura inherent in the 
composition, this is not Bach’s 
meditative music, the very Romantic 
Period is, through Classical reserve, 
expressing already its imminence, 
individual prowess is taking over 
from community, which is to say 
religious, affiliation, the same way 
the Renaissance artists, Duccio, 
Giotto, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, 
Uccello had stood out, incidentally, 
from their brethren in the standard 
communal art schools dedicated to 
decorating the ever burgeoning 
churches sprouting out in the still
fervent European environment 

musical, though unaristocratic, 
talents, this time, were beginning, 
within a German context, to flex 
their decidedly not unimpressive 
muscles, and gaining some 
significant purchase

and who wouldn’t when a Cello 
Concerto would’ve sounded like 
this, listen


R ! chard

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March 2, 2018

String Quartet in C major, opus 76, no 3, “Emperor” – Joseph Haydn

Ludwig_Streitenfeld_001.jpg

    “Francis II as Holy Roman Emperor“ (1874)

          Ludwig Streitenfeld

               _____________

Haydn’s String Quartet, opus 76, no 3, 
is nicknamed the “Emperor“ cause the 
second movement, the poco adagio;
cantabile, is a recapitulation of an 
anthem Haydn had earlier written for 
Francis ll, the Holy Roman Emperor
– not, incidentally, for Napoleon, the 
Emperor of the moment, who was to 
defeat Francis ll, eventually, at the 
Battle of Austerlitz, December 2, 1805, 
thereby dissolving that Holy Roman 
Empire, which had been established 
by Leo, the very Pope, lll when, on 
December 25th, 800, which is to say 
preceding Austerlitz by a thousand 
years, he crowned Charlemagne its 
Emperor 

Haydn must’ve been a monarchist


you’ll recognize that second movement
as the present day anthem of Germany

but listen to how Haydn makes it glisten, 
explicitly, with articulations and filigree 
that render it utterly irresistible

the adagio is usually the moment that
remains immutable, if the composer
is doing hir stuff, it’s the one you walk 
home singing, the faster movements,
however histrionic, are nearly a dime 
a dozen, though ever nevertheless 
often dazzling 

this adagio is utterly Romantic, though
I’m sure Haydn didn’t know what he 
was doing, cause despite their push
against the democratic surge, even 
monarchists, princes, dukes, dutiful 
composers, were finding, and voicing, 
their personal, and individual, which 
is to say, their democratic, opinions, 
however aristocratic their pedigree

artists had done a similar thing when 
their personalities began to single 
themselves out as especially gifted 
when the Renaissance was 
happening, it was now music’s hour, 
individual voices were staking their 
claim, Haydn’s manifestly superior 
based on talent and, after widespread 
economic affluence, audience appeal, 
Haydn’s commercial boots were made 
for walking, and he filled them both
magnificently and incontrovertibly

the poco adagio; cantabile is not 
courtly music, it reaches for not
merely elegance, but the heart,
we’ve entered another 
transformational generation, 
something like the revolution 
that triggered change in the 
cultural upheaval of the1960s 

our first step then was the Beatles, 
theirs was Haydn, or rather Elvis
Presley shoring up the Beatles, 
Beethoven was more aptly John,
Paul, George and Ringo 


but watch the rapture on the players’ 
faces, Francis ll would’ve been 
appalled, much like parents in my 
generation facing the pill, drugs, 
unorthodox sexual couplings, and, 
of course, raucous and unruly rock 
music

today, under the spell of the 
Romantic Period, and encouraged
by that very Sexual Revolution, the
Calidore String Quartet’s Elysium, 
their evident bliss, emotionally 
manifest, and utterly arresting, sells 
tickets, for better or, hopefully not, 
for worse

but you call the shots, to decorum or 
not to decorum, that is the question

watch, wonder, listen 


R ! chard

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February 28, 2018

String Quartet opus 74, no 1, in C major – Joseph Haydn

minuet-in-villa.jpg!Large.jpg     

         “Minuet in Villa“ (c.1791)  

                Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

                                _____________

                                          for my father

the Opus 74, along with the Opus 71, were
written as a unit, to deliver to the English 
public for presentation, if the opus numbers 
differ, it’s probably to do with publication 
dates, the 74‘s being later than the earlier, 
but they fit the bill together, batches of six
string quartets for Haydn’s opuses up until
now being the standard, each opus here 
comprising only half the normal number, 
just three

Haydn’s sponsor, Prince Nicholas Esterházy, 
had died, leaving his son, Anton, to preside, 
but being tone deaf, the descendant fired 
the orchestra, however until then illustrious 
the fact that these works were no longer,
therefore, court pieces but intended for 
larger, paying, audiences, changed the 
dynamics, Haydn is not only peripheral 
music at an aristocratic court any longer, 
he’s the host, and you can hear it

fermatas, where the note, or the pause, 
are accentuated, deliver drama, so does 
volume, and sudden tempo changes

therefore the Romantic Period

but, interestingly, the Classical 
foundation remains, the established 
structure – a musical statement, an 
elaboration, a second musical, 
related, statement, in usually a 
complementary key, it’s own 
elaboration, then a recapitulation 
of either, or both

the minuet, incidentally, stalwart
still, holding on to the very end of 
the 18th Century, still applies, a 
sure enough, though residual 
sign of the earlier Classical 
supremacy, even as that era was 
inexorably disintegrating

music is an entertainment, it 
inspires, however so incidentally, 
though it ever, perhaps even 
intentionally, makes you often, 
indeed, cry, it’s needed, even in 
the direst circumstances, for 
courage, however ironically, 
however contrapuntally, in any 
particular moment, it might even 
seem cynical so to arouse spirit, 
inspiration, I mean the French had 
just turned the world upside down, 
and here was sparkling creativity

Haydn was doing his stuff, keeping 
us musically integrated, speaking 
music instead of politics, turning a 
bad situation into pearls, keeping 
the world going, the very stuff of 
oracles
  
listen


R ! chard

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February 20, 2018

Cyprien Katsaris in Budapest

Katsaris-Cyprien-01

       Cyprien Katsaris

               ________

if there’s only one concert you see 
this week – I would’ve said this year 
but I have way too many irresistible 
concerts to promote – make it this 
one, like none I’ve ever seen before, 
Cyprien Katsaris, who wowed us in 
my last encomium, delivers, not one, 
but two concertos, when emotionally 
I can usually deal with only one

but you can pause between the pieces, 
like I did, to wipe a tear or two away 
after the adagios, which remind me,
always, of my beloved, John

but that’s another story

Katsaris starts with an improvisation,
which he elucidates as an art form 
much more expertly than I would, 
then delivers a stunning rendition of
his mastery of that gift 

though I couldn’t identify the first part
of it, the melting melody in the last 
section of his homage to, essentially, 
the Romantic Period, rushed back 
memories for me of a piece I could 
never forget, the music from Fellini’s 
heartbreaking masterpiece “La Strada“ 
– listen, listen – right out of Romantic 
Period idioms, its very story even, like 
Dickens’ “Oliver Twist“, his Little Nell 
from the “The Old Curiosity Shop“, 
staples of my adolescence, married  
to a nearly mythic lyrical invention 

let me add that improvisations have 
been an integral part of concertos for 
a very long time, the cadenzas, an 
interpolation by the performing artist, 
hir riff, a strutting of hir stuff, late  
in the, usually final, movement, a 
consequence, incidentally, of the 
more forward, individualistic, 
18th-Century progression towards 
individual rights, some left to the 
performing artist, but many 
prescribed by the composer himself,
where, here, I must, gender sensitive 
myself, unceremoniously interject to 
explain my deference to the
designation above, “himself“, to male 
merely composers, who were then the 
only ones, however culturally ignobly, 
to nevertheless shape our quite, I 
think, extraordinary musical trajectory, 
for better, of course, or for worse

in this instance, I suspect Katsaris 
wrote his own cadenzas for the 
Mozart, notice his arm at the end of 
the first movement fly up in an 
especial transport, and in the last 
movement, watch his very 
exuberance mark the spot, but I 
couldn’t put it past Mozart to have 
written something so historically 
visionary

Bach, incidentally, wasn’t doing 
cadenzas, so don’t look for them 

the two concertos that follow the 
improvisation, Bach’s, my favourite 
of his – you’ll understand why when 
you hear it – then Mozart’s 21st – 
everyone’s favourite – are both 
played transcendentally 

consider the difference in period, 
the earlier Baroque, with Bach’s 
notes skipping along inexorably,
the pace required by the 
harpsichord, which didn’t have 
hold pedals to allow notes to 
resonate, the music moves along
therefore nearly minimalistic tracks, 
a pace, and musical motif, that don’t 
stop, they keep on chugging, until 
they reach their destination, their,
as it were, station, or even their
stasis

Mozart’s music is as effervescent,
but conforms to a different cadence,
where a theme is presented, then a
musical, and contrasting, second,
with recapitulation, sometimes
merely partial, which is to say that
the call and response dynamic of 
the dance, or for that matter, by 
extension, modern ballads, is  
being established, codified, and 
elucidated

an era has intervened

then as an encore, Katsaris delivers,
not a cream puff, but Liszt, of all 
people, we’re used to performers
giving us trifles at this point, but not
Katsaris

then to top it all off, he plays the Chopin 
you thought you’d never ever hear again, 
but here immaculate and utterly 
inspirational

the orchestra alone performs after the 
intermission, works by Ravel and Bizet,
surprisingly similar, I thought, the two
composers, in their musical idiom, the 
use of the winds as metaphors, for 
instance, for originality, eccentricity, 
unmitigated poetry within the context 
of what is not unnatural

neither is either composer adverse to 
atonality, they work in textures, instead 
of melodies, all of which is very 
Impressionistic, see of course Monet
and others for historical reference

did I say I want to be Cyprien Katsaris 
when I grow up, well there, it’s said,
he’s lovely 


R ! chard

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April 30, 2015

on odes

"The Daphnephoria" - Frederic Leighton

“The Daphnephoria“ (c. 1875)

Frederic Leighton

________________

odes, with their suggestion of music
– despite a history of merely words
spoken in the intervening interim,
counting on meaning and rhythm
without music’s attendant tonality –
go back to the Greeks, the Seventh
Century, BCE, Sappho, for instance,
one of history’s most honoured
women poets, surely quite an
achievement for her in an age of
predominant, indeed
disenfranchising, masculinity

the ode was meant to accompany
tributes to people, events, things,
thereby acquiring an element of
acclamation and praise within its
dimensions, Pindar, ca 552 – 442
BCE, wrote odes for heroes of the
original Greek Olympics, for
instance

by the time of Horace, 65 – 8 BCE,
odes had become stylized,
independent of music, here’s one,
not inappropriately in this season’s
vernal context, to spring

odes remained spoken throughout
their resurrection in the wake of the
rediscovery of the Ancient World
during the Renaissance, onwards
through some famous Romantic
ones, Shelley, for instance, Keats,
up to even this one, by Stanislaw
Barańczak, which I found in the
New Yorker, April 20th, a gem, I
think, and in the very spirit of our
Age of Irony

Plywood

O plywood, second best to the real stuff,
believe me, one day I will say “Enough”

to my stooping shoulders, my slouched spine;
my sloped shape and your stiff boards will align,

and you’ll see how my backbone will unbend
and I’ll be standing straight until the end

of my makeshift but rectilinear
prayer, one stiff-backed as a chest of drawers

when we shove heavy furniture around;
I will rise from the dead, though on what ground

and which I, I don’t know; I’ll stand erect,
though my vertebrae’s hierarchic sect

won’t outlive plywood, no, it just can’t win
against that vertical eternity, so thin

and yet so sturdy in its ersatz pride;
as if the moon had shown me its dark side,

I lean, my ear glued to a cupboard’s back,
and I can hear its hollow and exact

hymn to its own cheap immortality;
no, wait, I still can straighten, still can be

square with this upright world (you knew I could),
just as plumb as four planks of real wood.

Stanisław Barańczak

(Translated, from the Polish,
by Clare Cavanagh and the author.)

__________

though you mightn’t’ve caught an “Ode”
in the title, the clue to its essence is in
the initial “O”, an acclamation

and yes, “O, Canada” is therefore also
an ode, as would be most anthems

incidentally Beethoven put the music
back into the form with his incendiary
use of Schiller’s poem for his vocal
triumph in his ninth Symphony, “An
die Freude“, the “Ode to Joy“,
incomparable in this rendering for
an improbable 10,000, yes 10,000, just
click

Richard

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March 19, 2015

Paganini’s First Violin Concerto – Akiko Suwanai‏

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres - "Niccolo Paganini" (c.1819)

“Niccolo Paganini“ (c.1819)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

_____________

for Apollo, who alerted me to my error

having egregiously misspelled “Akiko”
in my recent commentaries about Ms
Suwanai, since, however, corrected, I
can only heap upon her greater praise
now for again an immaculate
performance of, this time, Paganini’s
First Violin Concerto, itself an event,
as atonement

not only does she play this thrilling
masterpiece with precision and
consummate artistry, this is the
performance with which she wins
the Tchaikovsky Competition, the
one Van Cliburn had secured so
illustriously back in the late Fifties,
at the height of Soviet Communism,
she in 1990, moments only after its
fall, a full, now, 25 years ago

it astounds me that such a talent
would’ve taken so long to reach my
ears, which have been attuned to
Classical music and its
peregrinations for as long as I can
remember

then again there was no ticker tape
parade for Ms Suwanai when she
triumphed, the world has changed,
it seems such excellence is no longer
so universally paraded, not even
much advertised

the Paganini Violin Concerto was
composed around 1818, late
Beethoven, early Chopin, Paganini
defines for the violin the Romantic
Period, what Chopin did for the piano,
Beethoven had given them the push

if you can get past your astonishment
you’ll note that the foundation of the
piece is Classical, tight tempi, tonality,
no discordant notes, and repetition
always of the themes, still the triple
pillars of our understanding of music,
its Trinity, despite some strong forays
into their deconstructions, see, for
instance, the haunting George Crumb

what Paganini adds to Classicism is
personality, Romanticism, same as
Beethoven did, and at about the
same time

aristocratic formality was giving way
to the voices of the crowd, some highly
articulate, representative, formidable,
as the shackles of servitude fell with
the French Revolution and human
rights became central, and
indomitable

Richard

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