* DECEMBER 1
Birth of GIUSEPPE SARTI
1729 in Faenza
Italian composer.Despite periods of activity in his native Italy(especially at Venice and Milan),he worked principally at the courts of Denmark (1753-65 and 1768-75)and Russia(from 1784).Court intrigues brought about his dismissal from Copenhagen and dogged him at St Petersburg;in the early 1790s he was exiled to Ukraine.On the strength of the thriving music school he founded there Catherine the Great recalled him to the capital to direct the conservatory,which was modelled on Italian lines.He died while visiting his daughter in Berlin.
Sarti was one of the most successful composers of Italian opera in the 1770s and 80s.His opera seria'Giulio
Sabino'(1781) had more than 20 productions and his opera buffa'Fra i due litiganti(1782) more than 30 during
his lifetime.
Birth of FRANZ XAVER RICHTER
1709 in Holesov
German composer of Czech descent.(SEE details on September 12th at music diary).
Death of JEREMIAH CLARKE
1707 in London
English composer.He began his career as a Child of the Chapel Royal under Blow,singing at the coronation of James II in 1685.From 1692 to 1695 he was organist at Winchester College,and in 1699 he was made a vicar choral and organist of St Paul's Cathedral.He became Master of the Choristers there in 1704,later that year becoming joint organist,with Croft,at the chapel Royal.According to Hawkins,Clarke shot himself when in a state of acute mental depression after an unhappy love affair.He was buried in St Gregory's vault in the crypt of
St Paul's.Among his other works are instrumental music (including'The Prince of Denmark's March',better known as the 'Trumpet Voluntary'and formerly attributed to Purcell),songs,odes,and other choral music.His first ode was ''Come,come along'',on the death of Henry Purcell.
Death of FERDINANDO(Gasparo)BERTONI
1813 in Desenzano del Garda
Italian composer.He wrote mainly operas and sacred music,and may have been the first to introduce the cavatina to opera.He spent much of of his working life in Venice,composing many cantatas and serenatas for state occasions;he also wrote some instrumental music.He travelled twice to London,where he worked at the King's T heatre(1778-80 and 1781-3).In 1785 he was appointed maestro di cappella at St Mark's,Venice;
He retired in 1808.
Death of Amadeu Vives i Roig
in Madrid, Spain (18 November 1871 – 1 December 1932)
A Catalan Spanish musical composer, creator of over a hundred stage works. He is best known for Doña Francisquita, which Christopher Webber has praised for its "easy lyricism, fluent orchestration and colourful evocation of 19th Century Madrid. (Wikipedia)
Doña Francisquita. Coro de románticos
* DECEMBER 2
Death of SIMON(Johannes)MAYR
1845 in Bergamo
German composer.The son of an organist,who taught him in his early years,he studied at the Jesuit College and then at the university of Ingoldstadt.In 1787 he went to Bergamo from where a patron,Count Pesenti,paid for him to go to Venice in 1789.Mayr was successful there as a composer of oratorios and church music,but on the death of his patron in 1793 he turned to opera composition,having such a success with 'Saffo'(1794) that he became one of the most sought-after composers until the rise of Rossini 20 years later.In 1802 he returned to Bergamo as 'maestro di cappella' of the rpincipal church,remaining there until his death in spite of attractive offers from Napoleon to go to France.In his later years he wrote mostly church music.He was Donizetti's teacher from 1806 to 1815.
Birth of MARIA(Cecilia Sophia Anna)CALLAS(Kalogeropoulou)
1923 in New York
Greek soprano.(SEE details September 16th at music diary)
Birth of Sir JOHN BARBIROLLI 1899 in London
English conductor.Born into a family of musicians of Italian origin,he began his career as a distinguished cellist.
Teaching himself conducting,he formed his own string orchestra in 1924 and within three years was established as a demanding and imaginative orchestral and opera conductor.He conducted the Covent Garden Touring
Company(1929-33).In 1936 he succeeded Toscanini as music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra,and in 1943 returned to England to rebuild the depleted Halle Orchestra in Manchester.
His interpretations of Elgar,Vaughan Williams,Verdi,Puccini,and Sibelius were renowned,and he introdused many works to English audiences.He arranged much music and in 1949 was knighted.
Death of Sir PAOLO(Francesco)TOSTI
1916 in Rome
Italian composer and singing teacher.After studying in Naples he taught there until 1869.He soon became a prolific writer of ballads and light songs and moved to Rome,where he was appointed singing-master to Queen Margherita of Italy. From 1875 he made many visits to London,settling there in 1880 and becoming singing master to the royal family;he was knighted for those services in 1908.He wrote a vast number of songs to Italian,French,and English texts,many of which had a great vogue in Victorian times-such as 'Goodbye',
'Ideale','La serenata',and'Mattinata'.
Death of VINCENT D'INDY
1931 in Paris
French composer.Born into a military aristocratic family,he entered the Paris Conservatoire,where Franck's unique organ and composition class made a lifelong impression on him.Eager to widen his experience,he visited Liszt at Weimar and heard Wagner's 'Ring'and 'Parsifal' at Beyreuth.He was highy critical of the Conservatoir's limited methods and general outlook,so he joined Charles Borders and Alexandre Guilmant in 1894 in founding the rival Schola Cantorum.His own composition classes were solidly based on a historical foundation of Gregorian chant,Palestrinian and Bachian polyphony,Beethoven's symphonic language, and Franck's technique of cyclic themes.
Much of his work was admirably open and progressive.An interesting variety of pupils included Roussel,Albeniz,Turina,Satie,a
nd Varese,and as secretary of the Societe Nationale he generously encouraged other young composers of advanced tendencies,notably Debussy and Dukas.He was also active in reviving the operas of Monteverdi and Rameau,making new editions and directing performances.Notable compositions include three operas and a quantity of chamber music
Death of TOMAS BRETON
1923 in Madrid
Spanish conducter and composer.His works include two symphonies,tonepoems,a Violin Concerto dedicated to Sarasate,and the delicate orchestral serenade'En la Alhambra'(1888),as well as some crafted chamber music.
His operas'Los amantes de Teruel(1889) and 'La Dolores(1895) are still ocassionally heard in SWpain and abroad,but the most successful of his many stage works is the classic one-act zarzuela'La verbena de la paloma'
(1894),composed in 19 days and hugely popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Death of AARON COPLAND
1990 in Westchester,NY.
American composer.(SEE details November 14th at music diary)
* DECEMBER 3
Birth of ANTONIO SOLER
1729 in Olot,Gerona
Catalan composer.He showed early promise at the Montserrat choir school and was appointed maestro de capilla at Lerida when he was about 30.In 1752 he became a monk at the monastery of the Escorial,and a year later was admitted to holy orders.He spent the rest of his life there,as maestro, organist,and a highly respected teacher;his pupils included the royal children.Much of his music was destroyed in 1808 when the Escorial was
ransacked by French troops. The influence of Domenico Scarlatti,with whom he studied,is apparent in the 120 or so keyboard sonatas for which he is best known.He also wrote organ works,six concertos for two organs,six quintets for strings and organ,dramatic works,sacred vocal music,and a celebrated treatise''Llave de la
modulacion y antiguedades de la musica (Madrit,1762).
Birth of NINO(Rinaldi)ROTA
1911 in Milan
Italian composer.A precocious composer(he had an oratorio performed at 11 and wrote a three-act lyric comedy at 13),he studied at the Milan Conservatory(1923-5),privately
with Pizzetti(1923-6),and then with Casella at the Accademia S.Cecilia in Rome.After graduating he attended the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia(1931-2),where
he studied composition with Rosario Scalero and conducting with Fritz Reiner.On his return he took a degree in literature at the University of Milan.His own teaching career began in Taranto(1937-8);in 1939 he began to teach at the Liceo Musicale in Bari,later becoming its director(1950-78)
Rota's compositions are noteworthy for their melodious appeal.His concert music is uneven:his three symphonies
,for example,are fluent but indistinguished,whereas his Concerto for Strings has a strong melodic profile.It is
his film music that he is chiefly remembered,not least because of his 30-year association with Federico Fellini.
Death of WILHELM PETERSON-BERGER
1942 in Ostersund
Swedish composer and critic.He studied the organ and composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm(1886-2),then went to Dresden,where he studied composition.After a brief period as a language teacher he
settled in Stockholm,where he became a critic for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter,working there only two short breaks into 1930.Already active as a composer,he was stage manager at the Royal Stockholm Opera(1908-10)
completing his own opera'Arnljot(the second of four) during this period.The national-Romantic idiom of his early works was coloured by a knowledge of Wagner,whose writings he translated and of whom he wrote;the discovery of Sami jojkar chants in 1913 introduced a modal freshness into his music,beginning with'Same-Atnan
(Lapland',1913-15),the third of his five symphonies.
Death of CHRISTIAN (August)SINDING
1941 in Oslo
Nprwegian composer.After studying the violin in Leipzig(1874-8) he turned his attention to composition.
His Piano Quintet(1882-4),written in Munich,gained the advocacy of Busoni and the Brodsky Quartet.
He then attracted attention with his Piano Concerto(1889) and First Symphony(1890).Later in life he taught
composition at the newly founded Eastman School of Music in Rochester,New York(1921-22).Sinding was the leading figure of the generation between Grieg and Svendsen on the one hand and Saeverud on the other.
A prolific composer,he wrote four symphonies,three violin sonatas,three piano trios,an innumerable piano pieces,of which the best known is 'Rustle of Spring'.His musical language is rooted in a post-Romantic idiom indebted to Wagner and Strauss.
* DECEMBER 4
Birth of ANDRE CAMPRA
1660 in Aix-en-Provence
French composer.He was the son of a professional violinist.In 1674 he was a choirboy at St Sauveur in his native town under a distinguished teacher,Guillaume Poitevian.In 1681 he was made maitre de musique at
Ste Trophime,Arles,moving in 1683 to a similar position at Toulouse.It was here that he began to make his
name as a composer,of both sacred and secular music,but by 1694 he had moved again to Paris as director of the song school at Notre Dame.In 1697 he wrote his first substantial works for the theatre,using his brother's name because he feared the disapproval of the church authorities.These works were so well received that by the turn of the century Campra felt confident enough to use his own name.He was granted a pension of 500 livres by Louis XVin 1718 and in 1723 was appointed one of three'sous-maitres at the royal chapel.
Campra was one of the major composers for the Frence theatre,writing greatly successful divertissements,tragedies lyriques,ballets,and operas-ballets.He wend beyond Lully in his dramatic use of the orchestra and sometimes anticipated ideas later used by RameauHe also introduced elements of operatic
style into his secular cantatas,and into several 'grands motets'written for the royal chapel towards the end of his life.
Birth of MICHEL PIGNOLET de MONTECLAIR
1667 in Andelot,Haute-Marne
French composer.He served as a choirboy at Langres Cathedral.In his early 20s he entered the service of the
Prince of Vaudemont,in whose entourage he travelled to Italy.By 1699 he was in Paris playing the 'basse de violon'-an instrument he may have brought back with him-in the'petit choeur' of the Opera orchestra.He
retained this position until his death,supplementing his income by teaching,composing,and running a music shop with his nephew,Francois Boivin,in the rue St Honore(1721-8).
Monteclair's published music includes stylish instrumental as well as vocal chamber music,an opera ballet,but
of particular importance are three collections of dramatic French and Italian cantatas,which compare favourably his pedagogocal works are a violin method(1711-12) and Principes de musique(1736),which includes a useful section on French vocal ornaments of the time.
Death of BENJAMIN(Edward)BRITTEN( LORD BRITTEN of Aldeburgh
English composer,pianist,and conductor.
SEE for more details November 22nd(music diary).
* DECEMBER 5
Death of JOHANN FRIEDRICH FASCH
1758 in Zerbst
German composer.He was educated at the Thomasschule and the university in Leipzig,and in 1708 he instituted a'collegium musicum' there is modest rivalry with the one formed six years earlier by Teremann and later directed by Bach.In 1722 he was appointed court Kapellmeister at Zerbst,where he wrote much sacred music,including 12 cantata cycles and a 'Passio Jesu Christi'(1723),as well as symphonies,concertos(in the Vivaldi
manner),and chamber works,many of which provide notable links between the Baroque and early Classical styles.
Birth of Sir HAMILTON(Herbert)HARTY
1879 in Hillsborough,Co.Down
Irish composer and conductor.He studied and worked as an organist in Ireland before moving to London in 1900.Therehe gradually established a reputation as a conductor which led to his appointment to the Halle
Orchestra(1920-33)He prodused a number of original compositions,including an Irish Symphony and many songs
but achieved most success with his arrangements for the modern orchestra of Handel's'Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Music.
Birth of FRANCESCO(Xaverio)GEMINIANI
1687 in Lucca
Italian violinist,composer,and theorist.
SEE more details September 17 (music diary)
Death of WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
1791 in Vienna
Austrian composer.
His full given names were Johannes Chrysostomos Wolfgang Theophilus,Amadeus being a Latinization of the Greek Theophilus;but he usually styled himself'Wolfgang Amade Mozart'
Mozart is perhaps the most beloved of 'classical'composers,and the one whose life and times are most subject to mythical distortion.His inborn musical ability may have been equalled,but no other feted infant prodigy lived to achieve so much.His powers of assimilation were developed when,on the family's travels,he learnt to caltivate
local tastes.At the same time he mastered the universal technical difficulties of musical composition,such as
couterpoint,harmony,fugue,variation,instrumentation,and formal planning(of arias,ensembles,sonatas,and rondos);yet all this learning never suppressed the element of fantasy.Mozart excelled in virtually every genre and style.Expert in the composition of entertainment music,he also produced searching works that suggest a sombre,introspective,evenfatalistic nature;a supreme exponent of ostensibly'abstract'instrument
al design,including such'tours de force'as the combination of fugue and sonata form,he was also a consummate dramatist.His output is not of equal quality in all forms and in all periods of his short life;but theabsence,for instance,of any performed opera between 1775 and 1781,and the virtual absence of sacred music from 1781 to 1790,are explicable by circumstances,rather than by any change in compositional orientation.
During 1790 Mozart's health was poor and his compositional output declined.In 1791 his productivity rose astonishingly;exhaustion may have contributed to his premature death.In his last 12 months he produced two more superb string quintets,in D (K593)and E(k614),his last piano concerto and the Clarinet Concerto,some masonic music,and two operas.Die Zauberflote(The Magic Flute)remains one of his best-loved works.It can be understood equally as an adventure story in pantomime style and as an allegory with srong masonic overtones.It was composed for the suburban theatre troupe of Emanuel Schikaneder and is part of a popular tradition of magic operas which combine seriousness and farce;its repertory of musical styles from the hieratic and neo-Baroque,through conventional operatic modes,to something like folsong in the songs of the bird-man
Papageno.In contast,'La clemenza di Tito is a traditional opera seria by Metastasio,'turned into a real opera',as Mozart noted,by the omission of a good deal of the plot and the inclusion of ensembles and choral finales.It was composed for the Prague coronation of Leapold II,and failed to please its first audience;though successfully performed for several years,seldom in authentic form,it has become the most neglected of Mozart's late operas.
During the summer Mozart was commissioned to compose a requiem,which Count Walsegg planned to pass off as his own.It is uncertain whether Mozart really regarded this commission with superstitious awe,fearing that he had been poisoned.He died of natural causes,probably rheumatic fever,and was given a imple burial in accordance with the law(not a pauper's funeral).But the Requiem was unfinished and had to be completed by his associate Sussmayr as part of his widow,s campaign to realize her late husband's assets.pay his
his widow,s campaign to realize her late husband's assets.pay his debts,and bring up her children;the Requiem was not the only piece quietly completed by another hand and published to her profit.She lived until 1842,outliving her second husband,Georg Nikolaus Nissen,who wrote a slanted but indispensable biography of Mozart.
*DECEMBER 6
Death of VIRGILIO MORTARI 1993 in Rome
Italian composer and teacher.He studied in Milan and Parma,became a pianist,then taught composition,at the Venice(1933-40)and Rome(1940-73)conservatories;
he was superintendent of the Teatro La Fenice,Venice,between 1955 and 1959.He co-wrote
(with Casella)'La tecnica dell'orchestra contemporaneo' (Milan,1950)and completed
Mozart's' L'oca del Cairo' (performed Salzburg'(1936).His own music,elegantly crafted and often good-naturedly lyrical,includes four operas and two ballets;his orchestral output is dominated by concertante works and his choral music encompasses a 'Stabatmater' (1947),Requiem(1959),
and Gloria(1980
Virgilio Mortari: Figurazioni per orchestra d'archi (1988)
Death of GIOVANNI PACINI 1867 in Pescia,nr Lucca
Italian composer.The son of a famous operatic tenor,he studied singing and composition at the Bologna and Venice conservetories.He produced his first opera in 1813 and had a series of successes in the period 1825-35with works in a Rossinian style. After a failure in 1835 he
retired to found and direct a music school in Viareggio.
About five years later he returned to active composition for the theatre,achieving renewed success with 'Saffo(Naples,1842), an opera that showed that he had adapted to the new,
post-Rossinian style of Bellini and then Donizetti.Pacini was,even by early 19th-century Italian standards, enormously prolific,leaving some 80 operas and a lively volume of memoirs.
Giovanni Pacini - L'ultimo giorno di Pompei - "Da te l'estrema volta" (Iano Tamar & Raul Gimenez)
*DECEMBER 7
Death of LEON MINKUS 1917 in Vienna
Austrian composer and violinist.He went to St Petersburg as violinist in 1854, and became leader(1861) and then conductor at the Bolshoy Theatre, Moscow.
His ballet score La fiammetta(1864) for the St Petersburg Bolshoy was also performed at the Paris Opera and gained him a commission for 'La Source(1866),composed jointly with Delibes.
For the Bolshoy and Mariinsky theatres in St Petersburg he composed further scores for the choreographer Petipa,including 'Don Quixote(1869),La Bayadere*1877),andPaquita(1881).
He retired to Vienna in 1891.
Birth of PIEDRO MASCAGNI 1863 in Livorno
Italian composer and conductor.He was the son of a baker who would have liked him to become a lawyer,but an uncle arranged for him to study music and in 1882 he entered the Milan Conservatory,where he was a pupil of Ponchielli.
He left after two years,and conducted a touring operetta company before marrying and settling in Cerignola in Puglia. During the 1880s he composed ''Guglielmo Ratcliff,but he abandoned this comprex,innovatory work to produse ''Cavalleria rusticana'', which was entered by his wife in the competition for a one-act opera held by the publisher Sonzogno in 1888.It won, and was prodused in Rome in 1890; immediately successful,it was soon performed all over the world. Today usually associated with Leoncavallo's ''Pagliacci'', it has a genuine flair for popular melody approaching Italian folksong, a rich orchestral sound,and real passion. Like Leoncavallo, Mascagni was never to have a comparable success,but his other operas are by no means simply attempts at exploiting this verismo vein. ''L'amico Fritz(1891),set in Alsace,disappointed those who expected Mascagni to continue in the style of ''Cavalleria rusticana'', and there were several flops before his next success, ''Iris''(1898)-a piece with a Japanese setting,which exploits exoticism several years before Puccini's''Madama BUTTERFLY''.
Sonzogno's attempt at a publicity stunt,whereby 'Le maschere'was given a
Death of KIRSTEN(Malfrid)FLAGSTAD 1962 in Oslo
Norwegian soprano.She made her debut in Oslo in 1913 and sang regularly in Scandinavia until 1930,when her first appearance at Bayreuth established her as one of the most remarkable Wagner interpreters of the 20th century. She first sang at the Metropolitan Opera, New York,
in 1935 and appeared regularly at Covent Garden in 1936-7 and between 1948 and 1951.
In 1950 she gave the world premiere of Strauss's 'Vier letze Lieder' in London.
She possessed a voice of immaculate beauty and evenness of tone and was famous for the aristocratic dignity of her singing. In addition to Wagnerian roles, she was outstanding as Beethoven's Leonore(in Fidelio), Purcell's Dido, and Gluck's Alceste, as well as being a noted exponent of Brahms's lieder.
Puccini's''Madama BUTTERFLY''. Sonzogno's attempt at a publicity stunt,whereby
'Le maschere'was given a multiple premiere at seven theatres in 1901,was a fiasco;
but it is significant that this opera's adoption of the old commedia dell'arte pre-dates those with the same idea by Busoni(Arlecchino,1914-16) and Malipiero(severalpieces, including
'The commedie goldoniane,1920-2). His only later work to have achieved success is''Il piccolo
Marat(1921). Mascagni was a competent conductor of orchestral music as well as opera.
When Toscanini resigned from La Scala in 1929 as a protest against Fascism, Mascagni took over certain of his duties and was thereafter tarred with the brush of being a supporter of Mussolini. He died in a shabby Roman hotel the year after that regime had perished.
* DECEMBER 8
Death of XAVER SCHARWENKA 1924 in Berlin
Polish-German pianist,teacher,and composer.He was taught by Kullak in Berlin,where he made his debut in 1869.In 1874 he embarked on the many tours that took him across Europe and frequently to North America. He gave the first performance of his most successful work, the
B minor Piano Concerto,in 1877. In 1888 he opened his own conservatory in Berlin, adding a New York branch in 1891.His many piano compositions reflect his energetic, flamboyant virtuosity.
Birth of BOHUSLAV MARTINU 1890 in Policka,Bohemia
Czeck composer. Born and brought up in a small country town, he learnt the violin and began to compose while a boy. In 1906 the local community sponsored him for further training at the Prague Conservatory,but four years later he was expelled for 'incorrigible negligence'. He then earned his living by giving lessons and by playing in the Czeck Phillharmonic Orchestra until, in 1923,he left for Paris. There he took private lessons with Roussel and lived humbly for the next 17 years.Forced to flee by the Nazi invasion he emigrated to the USA in 1941.He spent his last few years in France and Switzerland.
Compared to many 20th-century composers Martinu was prolific,writing in virtually every genre.While he admired Dvorak and Janacek,the major influences on his music were English madrigals,Debussy,Stravinsky, jazz, and composers of the Baroque era.His six symphonies are comoing to be regarded as a major contribution to the genre in the 20th century.
The 14 complete operas, including such full-length masterpieces as 'Julietta' and
'The Greek Passion', cover a wide range of subject and experiment freely with many media including cinema, radio, and television.
Birth of FRANTISEK XAVER DUSEK 1731 in Choteborky, Bohemia
Czech pianist and composer.After studying with Wagenseil in Vienna, he settled in Prague.
He was a good friend of Mozart,who completed 'Don Giovanni'in Dusek's suburban Prague villa, Bertramka.Mozart also wrote the concert aria 'Bella mia fiamma'(k528)for Dusek's wife, the soprano Josefa Dusek.Dusek's own compositions, including some 40 symphonies,keyboard concertos, and much chamber music, show a command of the Classical vernacular sometimes coloured by Baroque features.
Birth of JEAN SIBELIUS 1865 in Hameenlinna
Finnish composer.
SEE details September 20th(music diary)
Birth of EMILE WALDTEUFEL 1848 in Strasbourg
French comoser.After studying at the
Paris Conservatoire he became court pianist to Napoleon III and director
of the court and presidential balls.He gained international fame when the Prince of Wales introduced his music in London in 1874. His best-known waltzes include'Mon rive('My Dream,1877),les Patineurs('The Skaters',(1882),
'Espana(1886, after Chabrier),and 'The Grenadiers(1886
Birth of PETER JOSEPH von LINDPAINTNER
1791 in Coblenz
German composer and conductor.He studied with Peter Winter.Kapellmeister in Stuttgard from 1819 to his
death,he was widely admired as a conductor(the best in Germany,wrote Mendelssohn).After some early cuccess with operas in various genres,he turned to horror opera in the manner popular in the 1820s.
His considerable talent was really better suited to the charming little oriental comedy''DieMacht des Liedes'(The
Power of Song,1836)than to his essays in German grand opera,such as'Die sizilianische Vesper(1843),which
find him overstretching his recources.
* DECEMBER 10
Death of JASCHA HEIFETZ 1987 in Los Angeles
Russian-born American violinist.He joined Auer's class in St Petersburg at the age of ten, played under Nikisch in 1912,and emigrated to the USA in 1917,makinh his New York debut that year. His flawless technique made him ideal for recording all the great concertos .His stance was immobile,the instrument held high,the face directed towards the fingers.He commissioned concertos from Walton and Korngold and was a renowned player of
chamber music with Piatigorsky and Rubinstein.Withdrawing from the concert platform in the 1960s,he then
taught at the University of Southern California.He published numerous transcriptions.
* DECEMBER 10
Death of JONATHAN BATTISHILL 1801 in Islington
English composer.He began his career as a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral.In the 1750s he appeared as a singer in Handel's 'Alexander's Feast'at the Little Haymarket Theatre and was appoinyted conductor at Covent Garden,where he met a singer and actress whom he later married.He wrote music for a pantomime,'The Rites
of Hecate',for Drury Lane in 1763 and collaborated with Michael Arne on an opera,'Almena'(1764):its production
was not a success.In the 1760s Battishill became organist at various London churches and began to compose sacred music;his anthems'Call to remembrance'and'O Lord,look down from heaven'are particularly fine and unusually expressive.He wrote little music after 1777,when his wife eloped with an actor and he found consolation in drink.
* DECEMBER 10
Birth of CESAR FRANCK 1822 in Lieg
Belgian-born French composer
SEE details November 8th at music diary.
http://youtu.be/YBGFg2cqMVE
10.12.1885
ΣΑΝ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΓΕΝΝΗΘΗΚΕ ΤΟ 1885 Ο ΣΥΝΘΕΤΗΣ ΜΑΡΙΟΣ ΒΑΡΒΟΓΛΗΣ.Η ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΙΝΑΙ " ΛΙΓΟΣΤΑΓΗ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΘΑΡΗ ΣΑΝ ΤΟ ΚΡΥΣΤΑΛΛΙΝΟ ΝΕΡΟ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ ΒΡΥΣΟΥΛΑΣ" ΕΓΡΑΨΕ ΕΠΙΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΑ Ο ΦΙΛΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΑΙΜΙΛΙΟΣ ΡΙΑΔΗΣ. ΤΟ ΕΡΓΟ ΤΟΥ ΑΝ ΚΑΙ ΜΙΚΡΟ ΣΕ ΕΚΤΑΣΗ ΘΕΩΡΕΙΤΑΙ ΑΠΟ ΤΑ ΣΗΜΑΝΤΗΚΟΤΕΡΑ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ ΣΥΝΘΕΣΗΣ
Mario Varvoglis: Reflection - Στοχασμός, Christos Mitsakis Conductor
http://youtu.be/eViOgNdmJ84
το πορτραίτο του Μάριου Βάρβογλη από τον ζωγράφο Amedeo Modigliani, που ήταν και ο τελευταίος του πίνακας.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151753943210373&set=p.10151753943210373&type=1&theater
* DECEMBER 11
Birth of HECTOR(Louis)BERLIOZ 1803 in Cote-Saint-Andre,Isere.
French composer.His fanciful and extravagant life is reflected in his music.He was the son of a doctor who taught him the flute,but wished him to study medicine.Sent to the Ecole de Medecine in Paris,1821,he found the studies so distasteful that he decided to give them up for music.His parents made great difficulties,but Lesueur accepted hin as a pupil in 1823,when he at once set to work on an opera and an oratorio,a Mass following the next year.He entered the Conservatory 1826,but failed several times to gain the Prix de Rome,obtaining it at last in 1830 with the cantata''La mort de Sardanapale''.In the meantime he had fallen in love with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson and expressed his feelings for her in the'Symphonie fantastique'.On the point of going
to Rome,he became engaged to the pianist,Marie Moke,who during his absence married Camille Pleyel
He wrote much in Rome,notably the overtures'King Lear'and'Rob Roy',and returned to Paris in 1832,this time meeting Harriet and marrying her in Oct 1833.In 1838 Paganini sent him 20,000 francs to enable him to devote all his time to composition;the Paganini-inspired'Harold en Italie'had been written in 1834 and was followed by
'Romeo et Juliette'and 'Benvenuto Cellini'. He separated from Harriet in 1842 and started a liaison with the
singer Marie Recio.He travelled much with her during the next few years,to Germany,Vienna,Prague,Budapest
,
Rusia and London.His brilliant legende dramatique'La Damnation de Faust' was premiered in 1846 and the massive 'Te Deum'in 1855,but Berlioz continued to suffer throughout his life from lack of public recognition,particularly in his own country.After Harrirt's death he married Marie in 1854.
He composed his masterpiece,the vast opera'Les Troyens',inthe late 1850s.Mary died in 1862 and he suffered much ill health during the 1860s and was greatly depressed by the death of his son Louis in 1867.After
anorher visit to Russia he had a bad fall at Nice,where he had gone for his health in 1868,and he grew gradually
more infirm.
For many years Berlioz's reputation rested on his 'Symphonie Fantastique.It was not until the 1960's when the operas and other large-scale works were widely performed,that his true genius was fully revealed;romantic
feeling and vivid imagination were sustained over huge timespans.
* DECEMBER 11
Birth of LEO ORNSTEIN 1892,1893,or 1895 in Kremenchug
Ucrainian-born American composer and pianist.The confusion over his date of birth began when his father added two years of his precociously gifted son's age so that the boy could enter the St Petersburg Conservatory.In 1907 the family left Russia and settled in the USA.Grainger mentioned him in parallel with Stravinsky and Skryabin and judged his keyboard innovations as pioneering as Debussy's and Ravel's;the critic
James Huneker wrote that Schoenberg sounded tame in comparison.
His output falls into three periods,the third reconciling his first,tonal compositions with the second,extremist phase.Among his handful of orchestral works are a piano concerto(1923)the 'Lysistrata Suite'(1930);his
chamber music includes a powerful piano quintet,three string quarters,and two sonatas each for violin and cello.But it was for his own instrument,the piano, that he wrote most readily,produsing a steady stream of
arresting pieces,often gathered into evocatively named suites,and eight sonatas,the last dating from 1990,when he was at least in his mid-90s.
* DECEMBER 11
Birth of KARLOWICZ MIECZYSLAW 1876 in Warsaw
Polish composer.The son of a leading figure in Warsaw musical life,he studied in Berlin and Leipzig,and was an inspiration to the'Young Poland'group of composers who came to prominence in the early years of the century
including Szymanowski.
His early songs and orchestral works suggest influences from Brahms and Tchaikovsky.In spite of their overt dependence on Straussian orchestral polyphony,these works are increasingly recognized in masterly,and it is regrettable that Karlowicz's promise was cut short by his early death in an avalanche.
Birth of CHRISTIAN CANNABICH
1731 in Mannheim
German composer,violinist ,and conductor.The son of a flautist in the Mannheim orchestra,he joined the ensemble when he was 12.He studied composition up to 1754.In 1757 he became joint Konzertmmeister at Mannheim,writing large numbers of symphonies and ballets for the court and directing the orchestra with a brilliance that drew the highest praise from his contemporaries.During the 1760s he gained an international reputation as a composer with the publication of symphonies and chamber works in Paris,London,and Amsterdam.When the Palatine and Bavarian courts merged in 1778 he moved to Munich as director of the combined orchestras,a post he held for the rest of his life.His last symphony(1794) is in the mature Classical style of works by his friend Mozart.
* DECEMBER 13
Death of SELIM PALMGREN 1951 in Helsinki
Finnish composer. He studied in Helsinki with Martin Wegelius (1895-9) and later in Germany and Italy with Busoni among others. He was an important figure in Finnish musical life between the two world wars,and an accomplished pianist. He toured in the USA in the early 1920s and was for a time professor of composition at the newly founded Eastman School of Music.
He wote extensively for the piano,his output including five concertos
as well as a large number of miniatures, for example'Night in May, which enjoyed great popularity during the 1940s. Among hisbest works,however,are his partsongs,which are of considerable eloquence. His idiom is neo-romantic.
* DECEMBER 14
Birth of Manolis Kalomiris (Μανώλης Καλομοίρης (1883–1962)), was a Greek classical composer. He was the founder of the Greek National School of Music.
The greatest composer of modern Greece, the effective leader of the modern Greek "national school" was born in Smyrna (today's town of Izmir in Turkey) in 1883 and died in Athens in 1962. His activities as composer, author, teacher, critic and manager shaped Greek musical life to a considerable extent during the first half of the 20th century.
He started his musical education in Athens and Constantinople and completed it in Vienna between 1901 and 1906. After spending four years as a piano teacher in Kharkov, in what is today the Ukraine and was then part of Imperial Russia, he settled permanently in Athens, in 1910. He founded two of the most important Conservatories in Greece as well as the Union of Greek Composers, he served for a time as director of the National Opera and in 1945 he was the first musician to be elected member of the Athens Academy. His large output includes 3 symphonies, and 5 operas and hundreds of songs.
(The number of his works is quoted as 100 or as 220 depending on whether individual songs are counted as separate works or are grouped into song cycles.)
Music critic George Leotsakos has said about Kalomiris: «Consciously moving between Wagnerism, the 19th Century Russian School and Greek folklore, he attained especially in his orchestral scores, a style of his own. A polyphonic structure (sometimes over-rich) brilliantly and colourfully orchestrated, is driven forward with a healthy exuberance and an overwhelming sense of dramatic impact and melodic pathos, not unskillfully expanding folksong modes into chromatic structures».
At the turn of the millenium Kalomiris' music remains largely unknown outside Greece but at least two of his works, his 1st Symphony and his opera MOTHER's RING, are relatively well known in Greece.
In the nearly 40 years since his death Kalomiris' music has withstood the onslaught of various fashions of artistic modernism, populism and now cosmopolitanism. It has survived and will survive all of them because, despite its largely borrowed language, it has something unique and sincere to say.
H.Politopoulos
December 1999
Death of GIOVANNI SGAMBATI 1914 in Rome
Italian composer and pianist.He showed early promise as a pianist and achieved a reputation in the 1860s for his playing of the German Classics.He studied with Liszt while the latter was in Rome and begun conducting, introducing the 'Eroica' Symphony to the Roman Public.In 1869 in Munich he heard music by Wagner, with whom he later became friendly. He thus became a leading exponent of German music in I taly when it was unfashionable. In later life he made concert tours and taught. He composed charming songs and piano pieces, his deft arrangement of Gluck's 'Dance of the Blassed Spirits' being popular at one time.
Death of CARL PHILLIP EMANUEL BACH 1788 in Hamburg
The second surviving son of J.S.and Maria Barbara Bach. After studying composition and keyboard playing at the Leipzig Thomasschule with his father,he went on to study law at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder.In 1740 he became harpsichordist at the court of Frederick the Great at Potsdam,with the main duty of accompanying his employer's performances on the flute,a post that proved increasingly unrewarding because of Frederick's ultra-conservative musical tastes and his view that his accompanist should be prepared to accommodate, dutifully, all his errors and anomalies.However,despite his attempts to secure another post, Emanuel was unable to obtain release and remained in Berlin for 28 years.
During that time he published his 'Prussian'and 'Wurttemberg'sonatas,numerous keyboard concertos, and his renowned textbook,the 'Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments' ,a standard source on 18th-century performance practice.
In 1768 he moved to Hamburg, where he succeeded Telemann as Kantor of the Johanneum and director of music at the five principal churches.In the wake of Telemann he found himself commited to a huge workload, involving some 200 performances each year,both in the churches and in the city.
From this period date his oratorios, 21 passion settings,and numerous cantatas and other choral works.In 1750 he inherited his share of his father's manuscripts,which he carefully preserved,ensuring that they would be passed on after his death for safe keeping to a group of his friends,including Marpurg and Agricola.
Birth of CAPEL BOND 1730 in Gloucester
English composer.He was apprenticed in 1742 to the organist of Gloucester Cathedral and acted for a time as sub-organist. From 1749 until his death he lived inCoventry,where he was organist at the churches of St Michael and All Angels and Holly Trinity. He conducted the first Birmingham Festival in 1768 and introduced Handel's oratorios to the Midlands. His own works include anthems and six concertos, four of them concerti grossi for strings and continuo and one each for trumpet and bassoon.
Death of HEINRICH MARSCHNER 1861 in Hanover
German composer.He studied in Prague with Tomasek and in Leipzig with J.G.Schicht.His first success came with a romantic opera,'Heinrich IV und d'Aubigne,produced by Weber in Dresden in 1820. Moving to Dresden, he became Weber's assistant as director of the German and Italian companies,though their relationship soon deteriorated.On being passed over for the succession to Weber's post in 1826,Marschner left for Danzig,where he produced an attempt at grand opera in 'Lucretia'(1827).However,he found a more original vein with'Der Vampyr'(1828),a horror opera in the manner fashionable in the 1820s that owes much to Weber's Der Freischutz' but also anticipates elements in early Wagner.
In 1831 Marschner became Kapellmeister in Hanover, where his operas included'Hans Heiling'(1833).Weber's and Hoffmann's influences show in the hero-villain torn between the real and the supernatural worlds,but the work's originalities include a fine passage of melodrama and some expressively functional orchestration'as well as further Wagnerian anticipations.None of his five remaining operas matches these achievements.
With'Der Vampyr', 'Der Templer und die Judin', and'Hans Heiling', however, he earned
a significant place in operatic history as one of the most original German opera composers
of his generation.
* DECEMBER 15
Birth of MICHEL-RICHARD de LALANDE 1657 in Paris
French composer.The son of a Parisian tailor,he was a choirboy at St Germain-L'Auxerrois.1667-72.He was an accomplished organist and harpsichordist:he taught the royal princesses the harpsichord,and Louis XIV was impressed by his organ playing when he heard him in 1678 but thought him too young for a royal appointment.
He held posts at four Paris churches and in 1683 took up his first royal position,as one of the four 'sous-maitres' (each serving for one quarter) at the royal chapel.
Lalande gradually acquired more court posts.He was much favoured by the king,who directed that all his 'grand motets'be copied by the court copyists. After Louis's death,in 1715,Lalande gradually relinuished his posts,handing some of them on to his best pupils and his brother-in-law,Jean-Fery Rebel. His wife,Anne-Renee Rebel,died in 1722;their two daughters,both gifted singers,died young,in a smallpox epidemic in 1711. Lalande remarried in 1723.His central achievement lies in the'grands motets' he composed for the royal chapel.He wrote 77 in all. They are noted for the richness of their harmony and their textures and for the intensely expressive quality of their solo numbers; the sombre''De profundis'' is particularly admired. Lalande also wrote a considerable quantity of theatre music, including several operas and ballets.
Michel-Richard Delalande (1689) Psalm 130 De Profundis "Out of the Depths" (1/2)
Death of MARTIN JOSEPH KRAUS 1792 in Stockholm
German composer.He was educated in Mannheim.In 1778 he went to Sweden and, as the most gifted composer working there,he eventually became musical director of the Stockholm theatre and Kapellmeister to Gustav III.
His C minor symphony was admired by Haydn and attributed to Mozart; his operas include the fine ''Aeneas i Carthago''. When the king was assassinated, Kraus composed a magnificent funeral cantata; he himself died soon afterwards.
Joseph Martin Kraus - Symphony in C
Birth of JOHANNES CHRISTOPH DEMANTIUS 1567
Germancomposer and writer on music.He studied at the University of Wittenberg,moved to Leipzig,then became Kantor at Zittau(1597) and Freiberg(1604),where he remained until his death. His personal life was bligted:he was married four times and most of his children died during his lifetime. Demantius was one of the most versatile composers of his day. His sacred music, which includes important Lutheran motets,is often strongly descriptive and emotional, showing especially anguished word-painting in the works for Passiontide. His secular music is influenced by Italian models and he was one of the first to introduce elements of Polish dance.
He was the author of the first German music dictionary, published as a supplement to his'Isagoge artis musicae (Freiberg,1632).
Christoph Demantius / Denmark Concentus Musicus, 1965: Five Polish and German Dances (Recorders)
* DECEMBER 16
Death of JOHANN ADOLF HASSE 1783 in Venice
German composer.From the 1730s he was the leading German exponent of Italian opera,with some 62 'opere serie' and numerous shorter dramatic works to his credit.
After cervice as a tenor at the Hamburg opera(1718) he transferred to Brunswick(1721), where he sang the title role in his first opera, 'Antioco'. Sudsequently he moved to Naples(1722), where he converted to Roman Catholicism, studied with Porpora and Alessondto Scarlati, and in 1725 mounted his serenata' Antonio e Cleopatra (1725) , with Carlo Broschi (Farinelli) and Vittoria Tesi in the title roles. In Venice he met, and soon after married, the mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni,one of the finest singers of her time. In 1731 the couple travelled to Dresden,where Hasse was installed as Kapellmeister to the royal court,an occasion enhanced by a performance of his opera'Cleofide'(1731) at which J.S.Bach and his son Wilhelm Friedemann were reportedly present. From their Dresden base Hasse and Bordoni visited several other European cities-Turin, Rome, Milan, and, particularly, Venice and Vienna-where they presented new operas, often in response to royal commissions.
In 1760 on returning to Dresden from Vienna, the couple found the opera house, the court library, and their home destroyed by Frederick's artillery. With musical activities at court severely curtailed, Hasse and his wife were dismissed without pensions and moved to Vienna. In 1773, in serious financial straits, and already largely forgotten, they retired to Venice, where Bordoni died in November 1781, and Hasse just over two years later.
Birth of ZOLTAN KODALY 1882 in Kecskemet,Hungary
Hungarian composer.The son of a railway official and enthusiastic amateur musician,Kodaly began to compose in his boyhood.In 1900 he went to Budapest to study modern languages at the university and composition at the Academy of Music.He took the D.Phil.in 1906 with a dissertation on Hungarian folk music,and from that time he began to collaborate with his friend Bartok,both in collecting folksong and in pressing for a new vitality in Hungarian musical life.Like Bartok he was appointed to a professorship at the Budapest Academy in 1907,and he remained in the city for the rest of his life.
Kodaly's early works,for example the sonatas for cello and piano and for unaccompanied cello can be compared to Bartok's of the same period in their successful attempt to create a style on the basis of Hungarian folk music.
However, Kodaly was the more conservative musician; he did not share Bartok's rigorousness, and he was content to develop at a slower pace.His style changed little after he had established himself in Hungary and abroad with the'Psalmus hungaricus' for tenor, chorus , and orchestra (1923)- a powerful work composed, like Bartok's'Dance Suite', for the 50th anniversary of Budapesr as a unified city-and the witty, brilliant score for his opera 'Hary Janos'(1926), from which he extracted a popular orchestral suite. He was instrumental in developing
a school music curriculum which ensured that every child learned to sing at sight, and he wrote an enormous quantity of choral music and exercises for children and amateurs.
Zoltan Kodaly - (1/5) Nights in the Mountains
Death of CAMILLE(Charles)SAINT-SAENS 1921 in Algiers
French composer.SEE October 9th for details at music diary.
Camille Saint-Saens: "Maestoso" from Symphony No. 3 in c minor, Op. 78 (Organ) (Michael Murray)
Death of GAETANO BRUNETTI 1798 in Madrid
Italian composer.From about 1762 he was in Spain,in the service of Charles III and later of Charles IV,for whom he built up an extensive music library. His output of over 400 works includes 28 symphonies,six overtures,several marches, minuets, galops, church music, and a great deal of chamber music (sextets, quintets, quarters, trios, and violin sonatas). One of Brunetti's most interesting works is a 'programme symphony' ('Il maniatico', 1780) in which a cello is used to portray the hero's madness, rather in the manner of Richad Strauss's 'Don Quixote'.
Birth of ADRIEN(Francois) BOIELDIEU 1775 in Rouen
French composer. SEE October 8th for details at music diary
François Adrien Boieldieu Concerto for Harp and Orchestra Julia Rovinsky , Zubin Metha Mvt2
* DECEMBER 17
Birth of DOMENICO CIMAROSA
1749 in Avera nr Naples
Italian composer. The son of a working couple,he studied music and singing at the Conservatorio di S.Maria di
Loreto,Naples,from 1761 to 1771.In 1772 his first opera was prodused in Naples,and he was soon famous in the city and elsewhere in southern Italy,especially for his comic works. He was maestro at the Ospedaletto,a Venetian conservatory for girls,from about 1782,and five years later his fastgrowing European reputation led to an invitation from Catherine II to work as 'maestro di cappella in St Petersburg. He left Russia in 1791,travelling to Vienna,where he was Kapellmeister for two years.It was there,in 1792,that his most famous opera
''Il matrimonio segreto''was first performed at the Burgtheater. Returning to Naples later that year,he became maestro of the royal chapel.In 1796 his ''Gli Orazi ed i Curiazi'',written for La Fenice in Venice,showed republican sympathies,and when the Franch army took Naples in 1799 he composed a patriotic hymn.After the departure of the French he was imprisoned for a time and narrowly escaped execution.On his release he left to return to St Petersburg,but got only as far as Venice,where he died preparing an opera for the Carnival season.
Cimarosa was one of the most successful composers of 'opera buffa' of his time,completing about 60 stage works,many of which were performed frequently in the principal centres of Europe.Admired by Goethe and Stendhal,he excelled in an emerging sentimental style,and like Mozart helped develop a form of opera in which ensembles were as important as solo arias,and in which the multi-section finale was an important focus of dramatic attention.
* DECEMBER 17
Death of(Quennon)de BETHUNE CONON 1219 OR 1220 in Bethune,nr Lille
Trouvere poet and composer.He was of noble birth,and from the age of 20 was associated with the French court.In later life he became active as a soldier and politician.Like many contemporary trouveres he took part in the crusades,and he was present at the siege of Constantinople in 1204;several of his poems are 'chansons de
croisade,describing or commenting on current events.Some ten songs have been attributed to him,all of them composed in a modest style with much repetition.
* DECEMBER 17
Death of SAVERIO MERCADANTE 1870 in Naples
Italian composer.SEE details September 17th at the music diary.
* DECEMBER 17
Death of DMITRY BORISOVICH KABALEVSKY 1904 in Moscow
Russian composer.He was destined for a career in mathematics and economics,but a flair for the arts encouraged him to devote himself to learning the piano.He also studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory(1925-9) and from about that time began to produce his earliest important works,including the First Piano Concerto(1928),First String Quartet(1928),Three Blok Poems(1927),and First Piano Sonatina(1930);.During the 1930s Kavalevsky wrote his Second Piano Concerto(1936)-perhaps the most striking and invigorating of the three-and launched into writing for the theatre,both incidental music and opera of which
output includes the three -act Colas Breugnon...V ogne...Sem ya Tarasa...Nikita Vershinin and two lightweight
operettas,'Vesna poyot' and 'Syostri'In his later years he devoted much attention to choral works and solo songs.
* DECEMBER 18
Birth of EDWARD MacDOWELL
1860 in New York
American composer,pianist,and teacher.He received musical training as a boy,then moved with his mother to Europe in 1876,returning to the USA 12 years later.A successful performance ofhis First Piano Concerto at Weimar in 1882 encouraged the young pianist to think of himself primary as a composer.For the rest of his life he struggled to find time and energy to compose while making a living as a teacher and performer.
Settling in Boston in 1888,MacDowell taught privately and cmposed his two orchestral suites as well as many piano works.Public appearances as a pianist heightened his impact on American musical life.By 1896,when Columbia University named MacDowell its first professor of music,the trustees' claim that he was 'the greatest
musical genius America has produced'did not seem an exaggeration.His years at Columbia,however,proved frustrating.Throwing himself into his new job,he found that it consumed almost all his time and that only in the summers could he composed seriously.A conflict with university authorities brought about his resignation in 1904.Soon afterwards he showed signs of mental collapse,and he spent the last years of his life in a state of childlike insanity.
* DECEMBER 18
Death of PAUL TORTELIER
1990 in Villarceaux,Val d'Oise
French cellist and composer.His career began in orchestras,but after 1945 he was given solo engagements by Munch and by Beecham,playing 'Don Quixote in London.His marriage to Maud Martin inspired his concerto for two cellos.He was appointed a professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1957.His televised master classes,infectious vitality,and huge enthusiasm remain memorable.He designed an angled spike and a split bridge for the cello.His three children are professional musicians:Yan Pascal is a violinist and conductor,Maria de la Pau is a pianist,and Paloma is a cellist.
Paul Tortelier plays Bach - Sarabande
* DECEMBER 18
DEeath of LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK
1869 in Tijuca,Brazil
American pianist and composer.His life reads like a romantic novel,and much of his music bears the same colourful and fantastic traits. Born of English-Jewish and French Creole parents,he left New Orleans at the
age of 13 to study the piano and composition in Paris.He soon drew acclaim for both his playing and his Creole-inspired compositions(Bamboula,La Savane,Le Bananier).After several years spent giving concerts in Europe,he returned to America in 1853 an international celebrity,touring extensively and impressing audiences with his good looks,charm,and wide-ranging repertory.The last 13 years of his life were characterized by intensive
periods of work and travel punctuated by interludes of languorous dissipation in the Caribbean region.He organized'monster concerts'in Cuba and South America,and died during a strenuous concert tour
* DECEMBER 19
Birth of VENANZIO RAUZZINI
1746 in Camerino nr Rome
Italian soprano castrato and composer.Following studies and performances in Italy,he entered the service of the Elector Maximilian III Joseph at Munich(1766-72).He performed for two years in Italy,then moved to London,making his debut as a singer and composer at the King's Theatre in the pasticcio'Armida(1774).His
most popular opera,'Piramo e Tisbe(1775),was revived three times in London and staged abroad.From 1777 Rauzzini lived mainly in Bath,where he became a concert manager, promoting the careers of Michael Kelly and others as well as continuing to compose.
Death of CARLO MONZA
1801 in Milan
Italian composer.He succeeded Sammartini as organist at the Milan court in 1768 and as maestro in 1775 and held posts in other Milanese churches.He also enjoyed a successful career as an opera composer,concentrating mainly on 'opera seria' for Milan.His fusion of Italian and French elements,characteristic of opera of the period,is notable in 'Ifigenia in Tauride'(1784),which included complex contrapuntal choruses and pantomime as well as lyrical melodies.Appointed maestro of Milan Cathedral in 1787 he abandoned opera and became known as a
leading composer of sacred music.
Death of FRANCESCO ANTONIO BONPORTI
1749 in Padua
Italian composer.He studied music while training for the priesthood in Rome in 1691-5,and may have been a pupil of Corelli.In 1697 he returned to Trent as a minor cleric at the cathedral.Between 1696 and 1745 he published 11 volumes of instrumental music,including a collection of 100 minuets for violin and conyinuo,and a book of solo motets.In 1740 he moved to Padua.His music does not deserve its present neglect;some of it was known to Bach(to whom a number of Veracini's pieces were once attributed,and who may have taken the title'Invention'from him),and Veracini's repertory included one of Bach's sonatas.
* DECEMBER 20
Death of ANTONIO SOLER
1783 in El Escorial
Catalan composer.SEE Dec.3rd for details at music diary.
Death of ARTUR RUBINSTEIN
1982 in Geneva
Polish-born American pianist. His formative studies were with Joachim,Heinrich Barth,and Bruch in Berlin,where
he made his debut in 1900;his American debut was in 1906,his London one in 1912.Blessed with a natural talent,Rubinstein practised little and socialized much before exercising considerable self-discipline to win over his American critics in 1937.His international career lasted into the 1970s,and, in chamber partnerships with Heifetz,Emanuel Feuermann,Szeryng,and the Guarneri Quartet,he made huge numbers of recordings of a wide-ranging repertory,including the complete piano works of Chopin.The last of the great Romantics,yet unmannered in approach,he was in the best sense a natural pianist.He took American citizenship in 1946.
Birth of VAGN HOLMBOE 1909
in Horsens,Jutland
Danish composer and teacher.He studied music theory and composition at the Royal Conservatory in
Copenhagen(1926-30) and at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik(1930).In 1933-34 he travelled in Romania,
studying folk music-an important influence on his own compositions,as was Bartok.Hismusical style turned its back on both national Romanticism and the symphonic tradition of Nielsen:he retained the energy of Nielsen's symphonism,stripping down the orchestration to produce textures of exemplary clerity;he was also a supremely skilled contrapuntist.His output was prodigious:13 symphonies and many other orchestral pieces,two operas and a ballet,concertante works including one of the earliest concertos for orchestra(1929),20 string quartets,choral music,including the large-scale 'Requiem for Nietzsche'(1963-4)and 20 cantatas,solo songs,and much piano music,including the 'symphonic suite' Suono da bardo(1949-50).Holmboe was the most important 20th-century Danish composer after Nielsen's death.
http://youtu.be/6gpfgP5wqsY
DECEMBER 21
Σαν σήμερα γεννήθηκε ο συνθέτης και ιερωμένος Lorenzo Perosi (21 Δεκεμβρίου 1872 – 12 Οκτωβρίου 1956) που έγραψε κυρίως εκκλησιαστική μουσική (είχε διοριστεί Διευθυντής της χορωδίας της Cappella Sistina στο Βατικανό) και πολλοί σύγχρονοί του συνθέτες όπως ο Puccini, ο Mascagni, ο Boito, ο Massenet και ο Debussy θαύμαζαν το έργο του, που γνώρισε επιτυχία και εκτός Ιταλίας.
Το χριστουγεννιάτικο ορατόριό του "Il Natale del Redentore" (Η Γέννηση του Σωτήρα) του 1899 αποτελείται από δύο μέρη, το πρώτο αναφέρεται στον Ευαγγελισμό και το δεύτερο στη Γέννηση.
Lorenzo Perosi "IL NATALE DEL REDENTORE Part I
http://youtu.be/i1lTnrh0mG0
DECEMBER 21
Σαν σήμερα γεννήθηκε ο συνθέτης και ιερωμένος Lorenzo Perosi (21 Δεκεμβρίου 1872 – 12 Οκτωβρίου 1956) που έγραψε κυρίως εκκλησιαστική μουσική (είχε διοριστεί Διευθυντής της χορωδίας της Cappella Sistina στο Βατικανό) και πολλοί σύγχρονοί του συνθέτες όπως ο Puccini, ο Mascagni, ο Boito, ο Massenet και ο Debussy θαύμαζαν το έργο του, που γνώρισε επιτυχία και εκτός Ιταλίας.
Το χριστουγεννιάτικο ορατόριό του "Il Natale del Redentore" (Η Γέννηση του Σωτήρα) του 1899 αποτελείται από δύο μέρη, το πρώτο αναφέρεται στον Ευαγγελισμό και το δεύτερο στη Γέννηση.
Lorenzo Perosi "IL NATALE DEL REDENTORE Part I
http://youtu.be/i1lTnrh0mG0
Birth of CIACOMO PUCCINI
1858 in Lucca
Italian composer.Puccini was the greatest of the'GiovaneScuola' of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and
the last of his countrymen to write operas that form the staple of the international repertory.He was born of a
long line of musicians who had lived in the Tuscan city of Lucca since the early 18th century.His father,Michele,was a respected figure in the community-organist and choirmaster of the Cathedral of S.Martino,
director of the Istituto Pacini(the city's music school),and a prolific if undistinguished composer-who died in 1864 leaving a large family poorly provided for.His widow,Albina,was determined that Giacomo should continue the
family's musical tradition.Accordingly,after lessons in singing and organ playing from an uncle he was enrolled
in the Istituto Pacini,from where he graduated in 1880 with a mass known today as the 'Messa di Gloria'.
A grant from Queen Margherita combined with a generous subsidy from a wealthy cousin enabled him to proceed to the Milan Conservatory,where his teachers were Ponchielli and Bazzini and his fellow students included Mascagni.By the time he left he had written two symphonic preludes,a number of liturgical settings,and a 'Capriccio sinfonico',his passing-out piece, which won high critical acclaim.
Puccini was at the best of times a slow worker,hard to please in the matter of subject and libretto,continually taking up projects only to abandon them.As librettists,Ricordi found for him the accomplished team of Luigi Illica
and Giuseppe Giacosa.The fruits of their collaboration were'La boheme(1896),based on Henry Murger's stories
of impoverished Parisian artists;'Tosca'(1900),a version of Victorien Sardou's drama of that name;and 'Madama
Butterfly'(1904),taken from a play by David Belasco.All would become favourites worldwide,though the last was badly received at its premiere.
In 1904 Puccini married the recently widowed Elvira Gemignani,with whom he had lived since 1886 and who had
already borne him a son.It was not a happy union.Puccini was frequently unfaithful;Elvira grew jealous and
embittered,eventually driving to suicide a former maidservant of theirs,whose innocence was proved by a subsequent autopsy.The resultant legal proceedings and scandal,though followed by reconciliation,held up the
composition of 'La banciulla del West'(1910),another Belasco subject,given its premiere in New York.
The years of World War I were fruitful for Puccini,though he was criticized for showing insufficient patriotism-witness'La rondine'(1917),originally a Viennese commission and first performed in Monte Carlo.During this time he also worked on the trio of one-act operas entitled'Il trittico:Il taberro,based on a Grand Guignol story by Didier Gold;and'Suor Angelica'and the comic'Gianni Schicchi',both brainchildren of the librettist Giovacchino
Forzano.In the aftermath of the war only New York possessed the necessary resources for the premiere,which took place in the composer's absence in December 1918.Of his final opera'Turandot',based on a 'fiaba'by
Carlo Gozzi,Puccini completed all but the final duet.He died while undergoing treatment for cancer of the throat in a Brussels clinic.
Death of JAN DISMAS ZELENKA
1745 in Dresden
Czech composer.In 1710 he moved to Dresden and became a violone player in the royal chapel.He had lessons with Fux in Venice,then returned to the Dresden royal chapel,where he stayed for the rest of his life.His output
includes 20 masses and mass fragments,responsories,two Magnificat settings,psalms,and three oratorios.His
highly original instrumental music includes six chamber sonatas,five orchestral capriccios,and a chamber concerto.He also wrote an opera in Latin.His considerable stature was recognized only towards the end of
the 20th century.
Birth of FRANZ SCHMIDT
1874 in Bratislava
Austrian composer,teacher,cellist,and pianist.After early piano lessons in Pressburg,he studied privately with Leschetizky in Vienna and from 1890 with Bruckner at the Vienna Conservatory.He produced two operas,an
apocalyptic oratorio,a considerable amount of chamber music,and works for piano and organ,as well as the orchestral music that brought him to public notice.His first opera,'Notre Dame'(1914),which draws elements of the music of Bruckner and Bach into a theatrical context,remains in the Austrian repertory.
Death of JOHANN PETER PIXIS
1874 in Baden-Baden
German pianist and composer.He began a concert career at a young age,touring with his brother.From 1808 to 1823 he mostly lived in Vienna.He moved to Paris in1824 and soon gained a reputation as a fine pianist and as a composer.Piano pieces as the concert rondo'Les Trois Clochettes'maintained considerable popularity for decades.His typical approach to piano writing can be seen in 'Hexameron,a set of variations on a theme from Bellini's'I Puritani'compiled by Liszt with contributions from Pixis,Herz,Czerny,and Chopin.
Death of JEAN-JOSEPH MOURET
1738 in Charenton
French composer and musical administrator.By 1707 he was in Paris,where he began his career as maitre de
musique to the Marshal of Noailles;by 1711 he was in the service of the Duke and Duchess of Maine.In 1714 he
was appointed director of the orchestra at the Paris Opera,where his opera-ballet'Les Fetes,ou Le Triomphe
de Thalie' was performed with great success.At the height of his career his fortune suddenly deserted him:he
lost his posts at the Concert Spirituel,Sceaux,and the Theatre Italien in rapid succession between 1734 and 1737.Reduced to living on the charity of friends,he suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to the asylum at Charenton.
Birth of GIOVANNI BOTTESINI
1821 in Crema nr Milan
Italian double-bass player,composer and conductor.He was given a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory at a very early age on condition that he take up the double bass,this offering the only vacant place.He became a leading virtuoso on the instrument and travelled the world,being for a a time principal double bass at the Teatro Tacon ,Havana,where his first opera,'Cristoforo Colombo(1848) was given.He visited England frequently,writing an oratorio-The Garden of Olivet-for the 1887 Norwich Festival;he was also a prolific composer of virtuoso double-bass pieces and a distinguished conductor,giving the first performance of Verdi's'Aida' in Cairo(1871)
He died shortly after being appointed director of the Parma Conservatory.
Birth of CARL FRIEDRICH ABEL
1723 in Cothen
German composer and viol player.In his early years he was probably taught by his father,who also played the viol.He had joined the court orchestra there until 1758,when he set out on the travels that were to take him to London the following year.In 1765 he and J.C.Bach began a successful and renowned series of subscription concerts,known as the Bach-Abel concerts,which ran until 1781,latterly at the Hanover Square Rooms.
Abel was one of the principal early exponents of the Italianate galant style in London,and his symphonies and concertos had some influence on the early symphonic style of Mozart.He also composed pieces for viol and much other chamber music.His death was hastened by overindulgence in alcohol.
* DECEMBER 23
Death of VINCENZO TOMMASINI 1950 in Rome
Italian composer.Amember of a rich family,he studied in Rome,and in Berlin with Bruch.His early works were
influenced by Impressionism,his later music also by neo-classicism.He wrote operas,orchestral and chamber music,choral music and songs.But he was besr known for his score for the ballet'Le donne di buon umore,based on harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti;this was prodused by the Diaghilev company in 1917,three years before Stravinsky's Pergolesi adaptation'Pulcinella'.
Vincenzo Tommasini: Il Carnevale di Venezia (1928)
* DECEMBER 23
Birth of JOSEPH BODIN de BOISMORTIER 1689 in Thionville
French composer.He spent his early years in Metz and Perpignan,settling in Paris in 1723.He was an immensely prolific and technically polished composer whose opus numbers run to over 100,mostly sets of six sonatas.Instyle his music shows marked Italian influence.His sacred works include a Christmas motet that incorporated well-known 'noels' and was popular at the Concert Spirituel.Boismortier held positions leading the orchestra at the fair theatres,St Germain and St Laurent.His highly successful career left him a rich man.
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier: Quatrième ballet des Villages (Op. 52) / Le Concert Spirituel
* DECEMBER 24
Death of OSCAR NEDBAL 1930 in Zagreb
Czech composer,viola player,and onductor.He studied the violin in Tabor and later with Antonio Bennewitz at
the Prague Conservatory,where he was also a pupil of Dvorak.He contucted the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra(1896-1906) and the Tonkunstlerorchester in Vienna(1907-18).After World War I he returned to Prague and in
1921 went to Bratislava as head of opera at the newly founded Slovak National Theatre.Until his death by
suicide he was a major figure in the city's musical life,doing much to encourage the new generation of Slovak composers.
* DECEMBER 24
Death of JOHN DUNSTAPLE 1453
English composer.His biography is obscure.According to his epitaph(which firmly stablishes the day of his death),he was respected in his lifetime as an astronomer and mathematician as well as a 'prince of music'.
His earliest known music dates from about 1420,suggesting a birthdate in the late 14th century.He was the most eminent English composer in the first half of the 15th century.His surviving works consist chiefly of polyphonic masses,single mass movements,mass pairs(Gloria-Credo),and motets,mostly for three or four
voices;there are also a few secular songs.He was sngled out for praise by a number of 15th-century writers.
Dunstable was buried in the perish of St Stephen Walbrook in the city of London,and probably had a residence
there,though he seems also to have owned property in Cambridgshire and elsewhere.
Today,Dunstable is often mentioned alongside Byrd and Purcell as one of the great names in the early history of English music.
* DECEMBER 24
Death of ALBAN BERG 1935 in Vienna
Austrian composer.Born into a Viennese bourgeois family,he began to compose songs,without instruction,when he was 15.In 1904 one of his older brothers showed some of his efforts to Schoenberg,who thereupon
accepted him as a pupil.His formal studies with Schoenberg came to an end in 1910,yet for the rest of his life he
revered his teacher as a musical father,and dedicated to him four of his small output of 20 major works.His op.i,
the single-movement Piano Sonata(1907-8),reflects the crisis of the time,overreaching its tonal foundation in a manner that shows Berg's personal enthusiasms for Mahler and Debussy.The influence of Mahler,especially in the Thee Orchestral Pieces(1914-15).He began his first opera'Wozzeck'while serving in the Austrian army during
World War I.Completed in 1921,the opera was first staged in Berlin in 1925 and immediately established Berg's reputation.It was soon being performed across the world,and thereby gave him financial security.
In1928 Berg began work on his second opera,'Lulu',constructing his own libretto from two plays by Frank
Wedekind.Berg died before the first performance of the Violin Concerto(1935),leaving the final act of 'Lulu'
unfinished(it was completed by Friedrich Cerha for the first performance of the whole opera in 1979).'Lulu' is
about the classic operatic subjects-love,death,and sexual power- treated in a manner that is typically at once
sumptious and sardonic.
Alban Berg - Wozzeck
* DECEMBER 25
Birth of SOPHIE-CARMEN ECKHARDT-GRAMATTE 1898 in Moscow
Russian-born Canadian composer,pianist,and violinist.A childhood prodigy rumoured to be the daughter of Tolstoy(her mother was governess to the Tolstoy children),she studied,'inter alia',chamber music with d'Indy at the Paris Conservatoire(1909-13).In 1914 she and her mother moved to Berlin,living in some poverty until
Joachim's daughter -in-law heard her and enabled her to study with Huberman.She married the painter Walter Gramatte in 1920(he died in 1929)and Ferdinand Eckhardt,an art critic,in 1934.They moved to Vienna in1939
and to Winnipeg in 1953;she became a Canadian citizen in 1958.Her death was a result of a road accident
Her music is highly contrapuntal and charged with rhythmic energy.She wrote orchestral music including two symphonies(1939,1969-70) and chamber and instrumental works.
Eckhardt-Gramatté - Piano Sonata No. 1 [Marc-André Hamelin]
* DECEMBER 25
Death of MARSEILLE de FOLQUET 1231 in Toulouse
Troubadour,later a cleric and bishop.He may have been born in Genoa,the son of a marchand.As a troubadour his career spanned only the period c.1180-95;29 songs by him survive,half of them with their music intact.In
later life he entered the church,rising to become Bishop of Toulouse.He established the university in that city,and was one of the founders of the Dominican order
Folquet de Marseille (1150-1231) - Flores on 'Tant m'abellis l'amoros pessamens'
* DECEMBER 25
Birth of JEAN-JOSEPH CASSANEA de MONDONVILLE 1711 in Narbbonne
French violinist and composer.The son of the organist at Narbonne Cathedral,he published his first set of violin sonatas in Paris in 1733 and made a successful debut at the Concert Spirituel the following spring.He took up an appointment as leader of the Concert de Lille before aquiring a post as violinist of the royal chamber and chapel at Versailles in 1739. By then he had published several sets of chamber music.But with the new opportunities
afforded by his court appointment,he turned to composing'grands motets',influenced by those of Lalande,for performance at Versailles and the Concert Spirituel in Paris.He became involved in the administration of the Concert Spirituel(1749-62),serving as its conductor from 1755.He wrote three oratorios:Les Israelites a la
Montagne d'Horeb(1758),Les Fureurs de Saul(1759),and Les Titans(1760).He also composed operas,of which 'Isbe(1742) was the most successful.At Versailles,Madame de Pompadour took the leadibg role in performances of 'Bacchus et Erigone(1747) in her own Theatre des Petits-Cabinets.For his pastoral 'Daphnis
et Alcimadure(1754)Mondonville wrote his own libretto.
Mondonville - Sonata for Harpsichord & Violin in C - Mov. 2&3/3
* DECEMBER 26
Death of KNUDAGE RIISAGER 1974 in Copenhagen
Danish composer.He took classes in theory and composition with Otto Malling and studied the violin.He went to Paris to continue his musical training with Roussel and Paul Le Flem(1921-3),later(1932) taking instructions in counterpoint from Hermann Grabner in Leipzig.His copious output includes 14 ballets,among them the well-known'Slaraffenland(1942) and'Etude',based on Czerny's studies(1948),five symphonies,and much other orchestral and chamber music;it reveals a sure contrapuntal hand and a lively sense of fun.
Knudåge Riisager: Piccola Ouverture (1934)
* DECEMBER 26
Death of PABLO SOROZABAL 1988 in Madrid
Basque composer He wrote orchestral works,song cycles,and choral music before his first zarzuela,'Katiuska(Barcelona,193),brought him fame at home and abroad.A steady stream of stage works followed,of which the ost successful were 'La del manojo de rosas(Madrid,1934),'LA taverna del puerto(1936), and a version of the Don Juan story,'Los burladores(1948).Succulent lyricism,sharpened by sophisticated musical wit,make Sorozabal the last major composer of zarzuelas.
No Puede Ser - Pablo Sorozabal (2006) High Quality
* DECEMBER 26
Birth of RICHARD MUDGE 1718 in Bideford
English composer.He studied at Oxford University from 1735.After ordination he became curate at Great Packington,near Birmingham,and in 1756 rector of Bedworth.He was probably involved in the musical life of Packington Hall,seat of the Earl of Aylesford.He wrote a set of six concertos for two solo violins and strings(1749):in the first a solo trumpet is added;the sixth features a solo keyboard;and the set concludes with a string Adagio that leads into the canon'Non nobis Domine'formerly attributed to Byrd.
Richard Mudge - Concerto for Trumpet and Strings 1/3
* DECEMBER 27
Death of AMY BEACH 1944 in New York
American composer and pianist.She made her debut as a pianist in 1885 with the Boston Symphony,but on her marriage later that year she retired from the concert platform and concentrated on composition-though she
re-emerged to introduce her Piano Concerto in 1900,again with the Boston Symphony.Other works of this period include a large-scale Mass(1890),and a Piano Quintet(1907).She was widowed in 1910 and resumed her performing career in Europe,where the fine quality and traditional correctness of her music caused astonishment-whether more for her sex or her nationality it is hard to say. In 1914 she returned to the USA,
WHERE SHE PRODUSED,AMONG OTHER WORKS,A String Quartet(1929),the opera'Cabildo(Athens,GA,1932),
and a Piano Trio(1938) She published her music under her married name of Mrs H.H.A.Beach.In the 1980s there
was a revival of her work by feminist historians and performers.
Amy Beach "Gaelic" Symphony Op 32 I. Allegro con Fuoco (1/5)
* DECEMBER 27
Death of LARS-ERIK LARSSON 1986 in Halsingborg
Swedish composer,teacher,and conductor.After success in examination as an organist,he enrolled at the Stockholm Conservatory,studying composition with Ernst Ellberg and conducting with Olalla Morales(1924-9)
before further instruction in Vienna with Berg(1929-30) and in Leipzig with Reuter(1930-1).Back in Stockholm he worked for Swedish Radio(1937-53).In the meantime he had become professor of composition at the Musikhogskola in Stockholm,and he was later appointed director of music at the University of Uppsala.
Larsson was a romantic composer;although his idiom was neo-classical,his was a lyrical instinct and his music is tuneful and direct.His breakthrough as a composer came in 1938 with his 'Pastoral Suite' and was consolidated in 1940 with the'lyric suite''Forkladd Gud'for narrator,soprano,baritone,and orchestra. He also composed three symphonies(1927-8,1936-7,1945)
as well as a number of other orchestral works,and his concertante music includes 12 concertinos op.45,for various solo instruments,all with string accompaniment(1954-7);there are
three string quarters(1944,1955,1957)in his chamber output.
Lars-Erik Larsson: Pastoral Suite (with meadow elves) / Slovenian Symph.Orch.
* DECEMBER 27
Birth of Sir JOHN GOSS 1800 in Fareham,Hants
English organist and composer.A Child of the Chapel Royal under John Stafford Smith and a pupil of Attwood,he
was an operatic tenor before devoting himself to church music.He was appointed organist at St Paul's(1838) and
composer to the Chapel Royal(1856).His output consisted mainly of sacred music,'If we believe(for the funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852)and O Saviour of the world(1869) being among several fine examples.Goss also edited three collections of hymns.
See, Amid the Winter's Snow — Anthony Way & The Choir of St Paul's Cathedral
* DECEMBER 28
Death of MAURICE RAVEL 1937 in Paris
French composer.Of mixed Swiss-Basque parentage,he grew up in Paris and studied at the Conservatoir(1889-1904),notabl
y with Faure.Several of Ravel's early scores gave rise to accusations that he was imitating Debussy,though the glittering cascades of 'Jeux d'eau',for example,stemmed rather from Liszt and in fact preeded Debussy's'Impressionist'piano pieces.'Sheherazade' is more Debussian in its vocal style and its use of whole-tone harmony,and yet this dream-picture of the East has a firmness which marks it as Ravel's.The
ballet'Daphnis et Chloe'(1909-12),which benefits from Debussy's cool evocations of ancient Greece,is also utterly characteristic in the smoothness of its development;with some justice Ravel called it'choreographic symphony'.However,his gifts were not primarily for symphonic music.His musical ideas tend to be sharply defined and self-sufficient,his music to grow more by constant and varied repetition than by continuous evolution.The classic instance of this is his orchestral'Bolero'(1928),in which a single melody is constantly repeated in a crescendo of colour.The stresses of World War I,in whichRavel served as a lorry driver,and especially the death of his beloved mother in 1917,were traumas from which he perhaps never fully recovered.
Maurice Ravel - Pavane for Dead Princess
Birth of FRANCESCO TAMAGNO 1850 in Turin
Italian tenor.He sang in the chorus at the Teatro Regio,Turin,where in 1870 he made his debut as Nearco in Donizetti's'Poliuto'.He first appeared at La Scala,Milan,in 1877,creating a strong impression as Vasco da Gama
in L'Africaine and the title role of Don Carlos,In 1881 he sang Adorno in the first performance of the revised Simon Boccanegra,and Verdi chose him to create the title role in Otello(1887).He was associated with the role for the rest of his career,though he was admired more for his intense'trumpet tone' than for his dramatic and psychological insights.In 1902 he recorded some short extracts from 'Otello'.
Francesco Tamagno - 'Morte d'Otello' from 'Otello' (1903)
* DECEMBER 28
Death of PAUL HINDEMITH 1963 in Frankfurt
German composer
SEE more details on Nov.16th at music diary
Hindemith conducts Hindemith (vaimusic.com)
* DECEMBER 29
Death of FERRUCCIO TAGLIAVINI 1995 in Reggio nell'Emilia
Italian tenor.He took lessons from Amadeo Bassi and made his debut as Rodolfo in 'La Boheme'in Florence in 1939.By 1945 he was one of Italy's most sought-after tenors for lyrical bel canto roles,and his fame spread
internationally when he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera,New York,in 1947.One of his greatest successes was as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore,in which he was praised for his agile and mellifluous singing and his engaging comic acting.He was also imressive in the tragic title role of Massenet's 'Werther'.
Ferruccio Tagliavini "Una furtiva lagrima" L'elisir
* DECEMBER 29
Birth of GEORG CHRISTOPH WAGENSEIL 1715 in Vienna
Austrian composer.He was the son of an official at the Habsburg court.His most important teacher was Fux,on
whose recommendation he was appointed court composer in 1739.In 1745 he travelled to Venice for the premiere of his first opera 'Ariodante',and over the next 15 years he cemented his reputation as an opera composer with a series of successful works.
Wagenseil played an important role in the development of the Viennese Classical style.With their fusion of aria,ensemble,and recitative his operas paved ythe way for Gluck's reforms of the 1760s.His symphonies
exhibited formal clarity and fluency,were models for some of Haydn's early works. Most of his numerous keyboard concertos influenced the style and form of Wolfgang's earliest concertos.
GEORG CRISTOPH WAGENSEIL.- Concierto arpa sol mayor. ARPA
* DECEMBER 29
Death of VASILY SERGEYEVICH KALINNIKOV 1900 in Yalta
Russian composer.He grew up in impoverished circumstances,and it was probably during his youth that he contracted consumption,the cause of his early death.He studied music in Moscow and in 1893 was appointed conductor of the Italian Opera.However,he had to resign through ill health,and he spent the rest of his life in the warmer climate of the Crimea.There he devoted himself to composition,making his name especially with his accomplished First Symphony(1894-5),which displayed the influence of Tchaikovsky and The Five.He also composed a Second Symphony(1895-7),some stage music,chamber works,piano pieces,and songs.In his final years he was sustained by the generosity of friends,especially the critic Semyon Kruglikov(1851-1910);he
also received the attention of Rakhmaninov,who in 1900 persuaded Pyotr Jurgenson to publish his First Symphony and some other works.
KALINNIKOV, Vasily Sergeyevich : Symphony No. 1 in G minor 1. Allegro moderato
* DECEMBER 29
Birth of PEGGY GLANVILLE-HICKS 1912 in Melbourne
Australian composer. She studied with Fritz Hart at the Melbourne Conservatorium and later at the RCM(1931-5)
with Vaughan Williams(composition),Arthur Benjamin(piano),Lambert,and Sargent(conducting).She also worked with Wellesz in Vienna and Boulanger in Paris.She began to develop her reputation as a composer with the
'Three Gymnopedie(1934) and the 'choral suite'(1938)Between 1948 and 1959 she lived in the USA where in
addition to composing she was an influential journalist.''Letters from Morocco(1952),the''Sinfonia da Pacifica(1953),and her first opera ''The Transposed Heads(1953) show a penchant for orientalism,a preoccupation that persisted after she settled in Athens in 1953.Hea interest in Aegean demotic music and the folklore of East Asia
is evident in her operas ''Nausicaa(1961) and ''Sappho(1965).She also produced orchestral works and ballet scores.
Come sleep - Peggy Glanville-Hicks - Elena Xanthoudakis
* DECEMBER 30
Birth of PAUL WRANITZKY 1756 in Nova Rise,Moravia
Czech composer,conductor,and violinist.He was educated locally.A fine violinist ,he went to Vienna at the age of 20 and studied composition with J.M.Kraus.He supervised many court opera productions and was much admired by both Haydn and Beethoven as a conductor.His many symphonies and quartets were popular in their day and possessed of a marked originality occasonally anticipating early Romanticism.
Paul Wranitzky "Overture" (to Oberon) The New Dutch Academy
* DECEMBER 30
Birth of WILLIAM CROFT 1678 in Nether Ettington,Warwicks
English composer.A chorister in the Chapel Royal and pupil of Blow,he became in 1700 a Gentleman-Extraordinary of the chapel,with Jeremiah Clarke.Four years later Croft and Clarke were appointed joint
organists there,and after Clarke's death in 1707 Croft became sole organist.The following year he succeeded Blow as composer and Master of the Children at the Chapel Royal and as organist of Westminster Abbey.
He graduated D.Mus. from Oxford in 1713 and was among the first members of the Academy of Vocal Music.
Croft is the most significant composer of English church music between Purcell and Greene.His sectional verse anthems incorporate solos,duets,trios,and passages for organ alone.He also wrote services,including a fine Burial Service,some theatre music,instrumental pieces,songs,and odes,including one for Queen Anne's
birthday .
David Watkins plays William Croft Sarabande and Ground on the harp
* DECEMBER 30
Birth of JOSEF BOHUSLAV FOERSTER in 1859 in Prague
Czech composer.He received his earlier training from his father Josef,himself a composer and one of Prague's
most respected choirmasters and organists.In 1893 he moved to Hamburg where his wife,the soprano Berta Lautererova(1869-1936),had been engaged at the Stadttheater.In 1903 the couple moved to Vienna where Foerster continued working as a critic and teaching composition.In 1918 he returned to Prague,teaching composition at the Prague Conservatory.His strongly lyrical idiom betrays the influence of his countrymen
Fibish and Smetana,and in his orchestral music that of his friend Mahler.The finest of his six operas,Eva and Jessica,not only display a melodic gift but also show genuine dramatic abilities.
Foerster, Josef B. 1th violinc. mvt1(begin) Allegro moderato
* DECEMBER 31
Birth of E.J.MOERAN 1894 in Heston,Middx.
English composer,of Anglo-Irish descent.His studies with Stanford at the RCM(1913-14)were interrupted by World War I,during which he was severely wounded.After his discharge from the army he returned to the RCM to work under Ireland(1920-3).Always an eclectic,Moeran was powerfully influenced by the music of Delius and
Ireland,and his friendship with Peter Warlock drew him towards English 16th-century music,as is evident from'Whythorne's Shadow (1931).Warlock's death in 1930 affected him deeply and marked a new creative phase of substantial symphonic works,many of them written in Ireland.These include the Symphony in G minor
(1934-7),concertos for violin(1942) and cello(1945),and the Sinfonietta(1944),arguably his masterpiece.
E. J. Moeran: Violin Concerto (Lydia Mordkovitch violin, Ulster Orchestra, Vernon Handley conductor)
* DECEMBER 31
Death of GIOVANNI MARIA TRABACI 1647 in Naples
Italian composer and organist.He was appointred organist to the royal chapel at Naples in 1601,and became
its maestro di cappella in 1614.He also served at various times as organist at the oratory of the Filippini.His keyboard pieces foreshadow Frescobaldi in their virtuosity and adventurous harmonic language.His similarly bold motets of 1602 may have influenced Gesualdo;his madrigals,though on the whole les chromatic and intense,demand considerable vocal virtuosity.
Giovanni Maria Trabaci (c1575-1647): Gagliarda Seconda detta La Scabrosetta [a5]
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