Posts Tagged: CSO

Chicago Symphony Extras: Missa Solemnis

The Dedicatee

In many ways, we who enjoy the music of Beethoven’s late period owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to an otherwise insubstantial member of the minor nobility.  As the sixteenth child of the Emporor Leopold II, Archduke Rudolf of Austria could be pretty well certain that he was not going to inherit his father’s title, land, or fortune; as such, he did what so many younger sons of the nobility did and went into the priesthood, becoming archbishop (and then Cardinal) of Olmütz in 1819.

Rudolf seemingly got a pretty sweet deal, because while his older brother went down in history for losing his empire to Napoleon, Rudolf began studying piano and composition with the most famous composer in Europe, Ludwig van Beethoven.

Though Beethoven complained about his obligation to give the Archduke daily lessons (sometimes lasting more than two hours), the two grew to be friends at a time when Beethoven needed friends most.  Napoleon’s wars had caused many of Beethoven’s most reliable patrons to abandon imperial Vienna for fear of losing their heads.  Beethoven had insulted, cheated, or otherwise alienated the majority of the princely families who remained in their Austrian palaces.

The Lawsuit

It wasn’t just other people’s families who Beethoven alienated.  The death of Beethoven’s younger brother Kaspar in 1815 precipitated the ugliest, most productivity-stifling event in his life: the fearsome custody battle he waged against his sister-in-law Johanna for the guardianship of his nephew, Karl.

The five years he spent engaged in litigation revealed the ugliest, least redeemable sides of Beethoven’s personality.  In the days leading up to his brother’s death from tuberculosis, Beethoven strong-armed his brother into granting him sole custody of the child on multiple occasions, only to have his brother revert his will back to co-guardianship between Beethoven and Johanna in moments of lucidity.

Beethoven’s initial reaction to his brother’s death was to accuse his sister-in-law of murder by poisoning.  When this turned out to be a dead end, he began the battle for sole custody of Karl.  He won decisive early victories against his sister-in-law in the Landsrecht, the court of the nobility.  Beethoven’s fates reversed in 1818 when he accidentally let slip in the course of a deposition that the “van” in his Dutch surname was not equivalent to the Germanic “von” which automatically conferred nobility.  As such, his case was sent down to commoner’s court, which was much more sympathetic to Johanna van Beethoven’s cause.

Though Beethoven finally won custody over Karl, his insane, possessive love took a perilous evinced itself again a few years later when the teenage boy attempted to take his own life with a pistol on a high hill overlooking Beethoven’s summer home.

The Second Mass

Though he sometimes played around with themes for decades before turning them into full pieces, the four years it took Beethoven to complete the Missa Solemnis (1819 – 1823) represented the longest sustained period of work Beethoven spent on any single composition.  Strangely for a composer who often went back and forth between projects, Beethoven did not work on individual movements and sections simultaneously; he composed it from beginning to end, beginning with the Kyrie and ending with the Agnus Dei.

This was in fact Beethoven’s second setting of the traditional Latin mass text, having written his first in 1807, the lesser known Mass in C.  Aside from obvious stylistic differences, the main difference between the two works is length: whereas the Mass in C clocks in at a respectable 45 minutes, performances of the the Missa Solemnis usually last about twice as long.

As such, Beethoven languished considerable attention on every word and phrase of the Latin text.  [N.B. the “Kyrie” is the only part of the Roman mass not in Latin; it’s in Greek.]  Let’s take as an example his setting of the phrase qui sedes ad dexteram patris (“who sits at the right hand of the father”).  Here’s how Beethoven set it in the earlier Mass in C:

And here it is magnified in every dimension in the Missa Solemnis:

The Difficulties

Beethoven rarely took into account the technical limits of the musicians he was writing for.  He was as difficult and irascible a composer as he was a human being, especially when it came to writing for singers.  The Missa Solemnis is arguably the most daunting challenge in the choral repertoire.  It’s not exactly easy for the soloists or the orchestra either.

Here is an excellent performance of the Gloria given by the august London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Sir Colin Davis.  It’s high order music-making, but you’ll still hear the sopranos straining, the orchestra struggling, and the soloists straying from their ideals of intonation.  And yet the overall effect is, well, glorious:

CSO Addenda: Trumpet Treasures

Since the trumpet is the major feature of this week’s concert, which features the brilliant playing of CSO principal trumpeter Christopher Martin, I thought we might take a further look at the history of the instrument and why there are so very few trumpet concertos in the repertoire.

Ancient Trumpets

Trumpet were in use at least 3,500 years ago, and from there earliest days, they had a regal association.  How do we know?  Well, two of the earliest trumpets that we have come from the tomb of King Tut.  They were played on a special broadcast by the BBC in the 1930’s:

Notice that each of those trumpets sounds about three or four notes.  This is an inherent physical property of the trumpet – and of any vibrating body, really – that without recourse to keys or valves, it is limited to the notes of the harmonic series.  So for an awfully long time, trumpets – even of the European variety – were limited to sounding about five notes with any consistency.  Hence the very familiar sound of the trumpet fanfare.

Clarino Playing

Around the time of Bach, however, some very diligent players developed a technique known as “clarino” playing.  This takes advantage of the fact that the higher up you play on the trumpet, the more notes become available.  The ascent in pitch is a perilous one though: the higher the note, the easier it is to crack, slip, or outright miss.  The practice of clarino playing lasted from perhaps the High Renaissance to the High Baroque, and it is a fortuitous fact of history that it coincided with the lifespan of one Johann Sebastian Bach.

Because of this, we are left with such gems as the second Brandenburg Concerto (check out the third movement which starts at about 3:40):

Nota bene, the group playing above is called the Freiberger Barockorchester, a so-called “period instrument” ensemble.  However, there’s a dead give-away that the trumpeter here is playing on a modern recreation of a trumpet from Bach’s time rather than an original instrument.  Do you notice little holes that the trumpeter covers with his fingers while he plays?  Those little finger holes are a modern improvement that allow the trumpeter to play the high notes more in tune, and they are not an original feature of the trumpets of Bach’s time.

Now, make no mistake – the bearded gentleman above is a complete virtuoso, and he is in fact using the very same clarino technique that was used by the players of Bach’s time.  This little enhancement simply makes the notes sound more mellifluous to the ears of the Auto-Tune Generation.

[Full disclosure: There is significant debate about just what sort of instrument Bach composed this part for.  Some people think it was a written for a more horn like instrument.  Toscanini, for some reason, had it played on a piccolo clarinet.]

The Keyed Trumpet

The first step towards the modern valve trumpet was an endeavor called the “keyed trumpet”, invented by (or perhaps, for) the great Anton Weidinger, trumpeter of the court orchestra of Esterházy family, who also happened to employ one Franz Joseph Haydn.  So it’s no surprise that Haydn himself wrote the first major piece for this new instrument, his Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major.  Incidentally, this is also the first major concertate piece for the trumpet that is still played today (excepting Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto).

[Like all esoteric brass instruments, the keyed trumpet has a major following in Britain.  This web site is sort of amazing – whoever wrote the text of the front page did everything in his or her power to make you follow the link to the rest of the site.]

The keyed trumpet never gained traction, despite the concertos written for Weidinger by Haydn and his successor at the Esterházy court, Johann Nepomuk Hummel.  The instrument was said to have sounded like a “demented oboe”.  The English trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins, one of the few contemporary champions of the instrument, does at least as well as that in his recording of the Haydn Concerto:

The Cornet

The modern trumpet is really an amalgamation of the old trumpet and the piston cornet.  The cornet is a slightly obsolete instrument now – most listeners can not distinguish its sound from that of the modern trumpet.  Earlier in the past century though, before trumpets were regularly made with valves, the cornet was a highly prized virtuoso instrument.  Hence the dazzling solo that Igor Stravinsky wrote for it in his 1911 ballet Petrushka:

CSO Addenda: Golijov, Sibelius, Shostakovich

Osvaldo Golijov (1960 – )
Sidereus

Osvaldo Golijov is the composer of such blockbuster classical hits as The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and the toe-tapping Pasión según San Marco:

Mr. Golijov’s pieces often have more the flavor of an ethnomusicological exploration, which makes a certain amount of sense for a composer of Argentinian birth who grew up on klezmer and tango and who has also lived in Israel and the U.S.  [Although, is it really ethnomusicological if it’s actually your ethnicity?  Discuss.]

Anyone who attended Thursday’s lecture was privy to insights from the work’s dedicatee, Mr. Henry Fogel.  Boosey & Hawkes has provided an equally enlightening interview with the composer about the genesis of the work.  You can listen to the work online in a performance conducted by Mei-Ann Chen (who gave the première in October 2010 in Memphis) with the New England Conservatory Philharmonia.  Also of note is Mr. Golijov’s growing filmography since becoming the go-to composer of Francis Ford Coppola.

Lest there be any confusion, the title of Mr. Golijov’s latest work, Sidereus, is in no way meant to sound like an hilarious mispronunciation of the next composer on the program.

Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957)
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 (1903, rev. 1905)

Sibelius’ violin concerto is far and above my favorite work in the genre, and one of my favorite works by the composer.  In fact, it’s one of the first pieces that got me into classical music.  You can view an introduction to the work here by the violinist Ida Haendel, who actually received a letter of appreciation from Sibelius after he had heard her performance of the work, and whose Wikipedia entry actually says the following:

She has the reputation of being as accomplished and brilliant a violinist as Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern; but has said that had she been more photogenic, she would have been as famous.

Ida Haendel

Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, two violinists who Ida Haendel was not as attractive as

People sometimes said the same thing about Sibelius himself, but never to his face (see above).

But seriously folks, if you’re really into the Sibelius concerto, it’s worth your 10 bucks to invest in Leonidas Kavakos’ recording of the 1903 and 1905 versions of the work.  He is still the only artist to record the 1903 version, due to the Sibelius family’s wishes, which is pretty impressive.  He is also way, way hotter than Ida Haendel.

You’ll get to hear the intricate, Bach-like second cadenza that Sibelius later cut from the first movement of his concerto:

amongst many other interesting tidbits.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)
Suite from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District


OK, first of all, if you’re anything like me, you’ve always wondered just where IS the Mtsensk District.  It’s here:

The rest of this discussion I’m gonna cut and paste from my March 4, 2010 post about Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11:

Shostakovich’s troubles with the government began in the year 1936, at which point Joseph Stalin, eager to send a message to the artistic community, denounced Shostakovitch’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as immoral and anti-soviet.  Let’s watch a bit of the opera and see if we can spot anything that Stalin may have found objectionable.  Remember to look very closely now:

At first glance, it looks pretty tame, but that Stalin always had a fine eye for detail.  Anyhoo, that led to this very famous headline from the Soviet newspaper Pravda:

which roughly translates to “Muddle instead of Music”, and which began a nightmarish 20 year period of heavy government repression and scare tactics aimed at keeping Shostakovitch in line.

I’d like to recommend two more valuable resources pertaining to Shostakovich’s music and life:

The first is the audio guide to chapter 7 of Alex Ross’s phenomenal book, The Rest is Noise.  Even if you haven’t read the book or don’t have a copy handy, the audio guide gives you a nice synopsis of the chapter on music in the 1930′s and 40′s USSR.

The second is an article by everybody’s favorite Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian-psychoanalytic philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, entitled “Shostakovich in Casablanca“.  In this article, Žižek compares Soviet repression of classical music to the Hollywood Hays code, in terms of what the censors expected and how an artist was meant both to abide by the code and simultaneously to circumvent it.  He posits that Shostakovich found whatever success he could with the Soviet regime because he understood this Janus-faced censorship, whereas Prokofiev just couldn’t figure it out.

Sins sartorial

Readers of my blog will know that I was just in Chicago this past weekend giving talks for the CSO’s Rachmaninoff/Shostakovich concerts.  What they won’t know, unless they actually attended the concerts themselves, and what I am committed to exposing right now, is that the soloist, one “Kirill Gerstein“, showed up wearing the least appropriate attire possible.  See below:

Do you see That, what he is wearing in that photo?  Yes that, THAT exact outfit (OK fine, plus a black suit jacket) is exactly what he wore to play a concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  No tie, no tails, just all black, open-collar.  Many of Mr. Gerstein’s bios mention that he has extensive experience in jazz as well as classical music.  Well, if that be true, he should sure as hell be able to tell the difference between a cocktail lounge and the stage of Orchestra Hall!

I’ve ranted about men’s fashion in the classical music industry many times before, and certainly Mr. Gerstein is not the only offender.  Mr. Gerstein is merely representative of a larger problem, namely that soloists and conductors seem to think that their individuality stems from their wardrobe rather than their musicianship.  And maybe with some of these artists, that is the case.  But look at our great forbears in the field:

Mssrs. Heifetz, Rubinstein and Giulini were all perfectly content to dress in uniform.  And would we say that these gentlemen were lacking in individual style?  Quite to the contrary!  They each exuded style and grace and they were positively dripping with musicality.  And yet, like other great performers of yesteryear, these men were perfectly content to make their public statements with their music rather than with their wardrobe.

When conductors and soloists do dress in uniform with the orchestra, it sends an important message to the members of the ensemble: we’re in this together.  It shows the orchestra members that you are not so arrogant that you must have some vulgar costume to draw attention towards yourself – rather, you are prepared for the exalted business of making music.  You are willing to abide by the same code as the rest of the musicians in front of you in order to share in this experience.

And to the Charlie Roses of the world: looking purposefully unkempt (i.e. CR’s infamous un-buttoned/cuff-linked shirt sleeves) takes just as much effort as looking presentable.  We’re on to you.

Men of the musical world: glam it up!  GLAM IT UP!!!

Mr. Gerstein: on behalf of ticket-holders everywhere, when we pay upwards of $100 both to hear and to see you perform, we expect you to look presentable.  Put on a tie for goodness’ sake.

CSO Addenda: Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich

As is usually the case when I prepare my pre-concert lectures at the Chicago Symphony, I end up with way more information than I can share in the 30 minutes allotted.  Here are some extra insights on the March 4-6 concerts. Welcome CSO patrons!

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor

Any piece with as many gorgeous tunes as Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto is just asking to be pillaged for its melodies, and thus we have Wikipedia’s list of several works as being derived from or inspired by this piece.  Let’s see if we agree with them:

1st movement


Frank Sinatra’s “I Think of You“

Here’s the Rachmaninoff:

OK, no argument there.  [BTW, does anyone else agree that the Hollywood session player in Nelson Riddle’s orchestra sounded WAY better on the horn solo than the principal in the New Philharmonia Orchestra?]

The Wik then goes on to list no fewer than four songs by Muse which supposedly quote the first movement:

1. “Space Dementia”:

which is pretty obviously an homage to the opening of the concerto:

[BTW, does anybody agree that Moshe Atmon is a way better pianist than the guy from Muse?]

then #2. “Butterflies & Hurricanes

and #3. “Ruled by Secrecy”

which both quote the end of the movement’s first theme:

As for “Megalomania”, the closest thing I could find was this:

which I would hardly call a “quote”, but does share certain melodic and harmonic ideas with the concerto.

2nd movement

Unfortunately it can’t all be Frank Sinatra and English alt-prog-art rock.  When it comes to the gorgeous second movement,

we go from the semi-decent:


(which has a questionable connection to the original),

to the bad:

to the truly, spine-cringingly, awful:

Interestingly, that last excerpt is nothing but the original Rachmaninoff with some cheeze-fried vocals laid on top.  It comes out the absolute worst because it puts the original composition in such stark relief.

3rd movement

Let’s cleanse our ears, shall we, with some more grade-A Frank:

which, it hardly needs saying, is this:

Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 (“The Year 1905”)

As it’s title would indicate, Shostakovich took the 1905 Russian Revolution as the subject of his 11th Symphony.  Theories abound as to other, hidden meanings behind this work (especially the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the communist government).

Perhaps the most widely known piece of art concerning the 1905 Revolution is Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark silent film from 1925, Battleship Potemkin.  Below is the much acclaimed “Odessa Steps” sequence.

(Please note that this clip contains music from Shostakovich’s 11th and 5th symphonies – not the original score by Meisel which was lost and has since been restored.)  The whole film can be viewed here.

The Symphony “1905” was a turning point for Shostakovich — he had outlived Stalin and was now in the position to regain some sense of sanity and ease, if not full official favor.  His troubles with the government had begun in the year 1936, at which point Joseph Stalin, eager to send a message to the artistic community, denounced Shostakovitch’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as immoral and anti-soviet.  Let’s watch a bit of the opera and see if we can spot anything that Stalin may have found objectionable.  Remember to look very closely now:

At first glance, it looks pretty tame, but that Stalin always had a fine eye for detail.  Anyhoo, that led to this very famous headline from the Soviet newspaper Pravda:

which roughly translates to “Muddle instead of Music”, and which began a nightmarish 20 year period of heavy government repression and scare tactics aimed at keeping Shostakovitch in line.

I’d like to recommend two more valuable resources pertaining to Shostakovich’s music and life:

The first is the audio guide to chapter 7 of Alex Ross’s phenomenal book, The Rest is Noise.  Even if you haven’t read the book or don’t have a copy handy, the audio guide gives you a nice synopsis of the chapter on music in the 1930’s and 40’s USSR.

The second is an article by everybody’s favorite Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian-psychoanalytic philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, entitled “Shostakovich in Casablanca“.  In this article, Žižek compares Soviet repression of classical music to the Hollywood Hays code, in terms of what the censors expected and how an artist was meant both to abide by the code and simultaneously to circumvent it.  He posits that Shostakovich found whatever success he could with the Soviet regime because he understood this Janus-faced censorship, whereas Prokofiev just couldn’t figure it out.

That’s all the extra goodies for this concert series.  Feel free to leave a note in the comments section to share your opinions of the concert!  Also, feel free to peruse the rest of my site at your own risk, in full awareness that hereafter, the Chicago Symphony has nothing to do with the content on this site…