Cape Classic 2008: Composers
Johann Sebastian Bach
(Germany / Eisenach 1685 – Leipzig 1750)
Johann Sebstian Bach was a prolific German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style, which arose from his extraordinary fluency in contrapuntal invention and motivic control, his flair for improvisation at the keyboard, his exposure to South German, North German, Italian and French music, and his apparent devotion to the Lutheran liturgy. He found a control of harmonic and motivic organisation from the smallest to the largest scales, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.
His access to musicians, scores and instruments as a child and a young man, combined with his emerging talent for writing tightly woven music of powerful sonority, appear to have set him on course to develop an eclectic, energetic musical style. Throughout his teens and 20s, his output showed increasing skill in the large-scale organisation of musical ideas, and the enhancement of the Buxtehudian model of improvisatory preludes and counterpoint of limited complexity.
However, Bach’s works experienced a great turning point during the period 1713–14 - when a large repertoire of Italian music became available to the Weimar court orchestra. From this time onwards, he appears to have absorbed into his style the Italians’ dramatic openings, clear melodic contours, the sharp outlines of their bass lines, greater motoric and rhythmic conciseness, more unified motivic treatment, and more clearly articulated schemes for modulation.
He is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.
Ludwig van Beethoven
(Germany / Bonn 1770 – Austria / Vienna 1827)
Beethoven is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of music, and seen as a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music. He moved to Vienna, Austria, in his early twenties where he studied with Joseph Haydn, under whom he quickly gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. Despite gradual hearing loss which already accorded during his twenties, Beethoven continued to produce notable masterpieces throughout his life, even when he was almost totally deaf.
Today, Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the great masters of musical construction. He was one of the first composers to systematically and consistently use interlocking thematic devices, or "germ-motives," to achieve inter-movement unity in long compositions. Equally remarkable was his use of "source-motives," which recurred in many different compositions and lent some unity to his life's work. Beethoven made innovations in almost every form of music he touched. He composed in a great variety of genres, including symphonies, concerti, sonatas for piano and various other instruments, several chamber music pieces such as his famous string quartets, masses, an opera, lieder, and various other genres. As far as musical form is concerned, Beethoven worked from the principles of sonata form and motivic development that he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but greatly extended them, writing longer and more ambitious movements.
Beethoven was also one of the first composers to work freelance — arranging subscription concerts, selling his compositions to publishers, and gaining financial support from a number of wealthy patrons — rather than to seek out permanent employment by the church or by an aristocratic court.
Johannes Brahms
(Germany / Hamburg 1833 – Austria / Vienna 1897)
Johannes Brahms, who was born in a very poor quarter of Hamburg, made his career as one of the most appreciated artists of the nineteenth century, through skilful training and high musical qualities. He was discovered by Liszt and Schumann during the mid 1800’s, who regarded him as the best new young composer of that time.
Although Brahms started with piano compositions, he soon went over to greater musical forms in chamber and orchestra music. In later years Brahms, like Beethoven - whom he always followed as his great “master”, moved to Vienna to make his living in the town of Mozart and Schubert. However, he had his greatest inspirations during his summer holidays in Baden-Baden or in Carinthia. In later years the optimistic verve of his “Hungarian Dances” or “Liebeslieder” was substituted by a certain bitterness in sound, which might be due to the fact that Brahms never had married any of the women that he had loved, such as the beloved Clara Schumann. Thus, Brahms became the exponent of what one might call the spirit of the decaying age. In reaction to the economic prosperity and social superficiality which Brahms experienced at the time, he started searching and exploring the depth of the human soul in his music. To the Viennese audience Brahms became the first composer to explore these realms in music.
Ernest Chausson
(France / Paris 1855 – Limay 1899)
Chausson studied composition at the Conservatoire de Paris, under César Franck. Franck became Chausson's main mentor and in return, Chausson became an ardent disciple. However, other than his mentor who eschewed the fashionable avenue to opera, Chausson took the lonelier path of composing orchestral and chamber music.
Chausson enjoyed travelling and in 1882 and 1883, he made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth to attend the operas of Wagner. On the first of these journeys, Chausson saw the premiere of Parsifal. These journeys must have influenced his music. For, although Chausson's works are deeply original, it does reflect some technical influences of both Franck and Wagner. Stylistic traces of Massenet and, more surprisingly, Brahms can also be detected sometimes.
The creative work of Chausson is commonly divided into three periods. Of those, the first was dominated by Massenet and exhibits fluid and elegant melodies. The second period, dating from 1886, is marked by a more dramatic character, deriving partly from his contacts with the artistic milieu in which he moved. The third period dates from his father's death in 1894, and was influenced by his reading of the symbolist poets and Russian literature, particularly Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. Chausson's compositional idiom bridges the gap between the Romanticism of Massenet and Franck and the Impressionism of Debussy.
At the age of 44, Chausson died in Limary as a result of an accident. It appears that on a downhill slope he lost control of the bicycle he was riding, ran straight into the brick wall of his estate, and perished instantly.
Luigi Cherubini
(Italy / Florence 1760 – France / Paris 1842)
Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His instruction in music began at the age of six with his father, himself a musician. By the age of thirteen, he had composed several religious works. From 1778 to 1780, he studied music in Bologna and Milan. Cherubini's early operas adhered closely to the conventions of opera seria. Although his music is not well known today, it was greatly admired by many of his contemporaries, such as Beethoven who considered him to be the greatest dramatic composer of his time. Thus, the most significant part of Cherubini's work is his operas and sacred music.
However, disappointed with his lack of success in the theatre, Cherubini turned increasingly to church music, writing seven masses, two requiems and many shorter pieces. Cherubini's Requiem in C-minor (1816) was a huge success. The work was greatly admired by Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. During this period, he was also appointed “surintendant de la musique du roi” under the restored Napoleon monarchy in France. However, with the arrival of the brilliant operas of Rossini in Paris in the 1820s, the classically austere operas of Cherubini fell out of fashion.
Louis Francois Dauprat
(France / Paris 1781 – Paris 1868)
Dauprat was a horn player from France, who became the first horn player to win the "premier prix” (first price). Dauprat travelled with military bands before completing his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris. As an assistant professor at the Conservatoire, Dauprat became a full professor in 1816 until 1842. During these years he also played in the "courts" of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis-Phillipe. After these positions Dauprat went into semi-retirement in Egypt until shortly before his death. He concentrated on teaching and wrote several treatises on music teaching. This corpus of studies conveyed detailed methods and performance instructions. Dauprat composed five horn concertos and several other works, such as a few unpublished symphonic works.
Antonin Dvorák
(Czechia / Nelahozeves 1841 – Prague 1904)
Antonín Dvorák received his musical upbringing from his father, who sent him to Prague to study the organ. In 1875 Dvorák received a scholarship to study in Vienna, where he made his acquaintance and friendship with Brahms. He soon attracted attention with his ‘Slavic dances“ and the “Stabat mater“, which had its first performance in 1881 in London and which laid the foundation of his international fame. He was called a “New Händel“ and was awarded a honorary doctor at Cambridge University.
However, in 1892 Dvorák followed an invitation to America, where he became the principal of the New York conservatory for three years. It is here were he composed “From the New World”, his most famous 9th symphony. In this symphony he mixed reminiscences of American folklore with typical Slavic motifs. This opus appeared like a message to European music at the end of the 19th century. It was like an invitation to find back to spontaneity and pureness.
After returning to his home country Dvorák was received triumphantly. For the University of Prague not only revered him with an honorary doctor, but also appointed him as the president of the Prague conservatoire. During these times his operas were played at the National Theatre, among which was his most famous opera Rusalka.
Oscar Franz
(Germany / Dresden 1843 – 1886)
Oscar Franz was one of the most prominent teachers and performers of the horn in the late nineteenth century. Franz spent most of his career in Dresden, where he taught at the Dresden Conservatory. Franz was well respected in his time, and it is to him that Richard Strauss (1864-1949) dedicated the orchestral score of his Horn Concerto No. 1, Op. 11
Oscar Franz wrote a number of teaching materials for the horn. His Grosse theoretisch-practische Waldhorn-Schule [Complete Theoretical and Practical Horn Method] was first published around 1880. In this method Franz put forth many of his ideas for performing on the horn.
Teachers such as Oscar Franz left students whose teaching and performing careers would last well into the twentieth century. Some of his technical ideas have fallen by the wayside: beginners no longer start on the natural horn, right-hand technique is limited to harsh sounding stopped notes, and crooks are only rarely used on valve horns. These techniques, while no longer generally employed by hornists today, are by no means lost. They can be relearned and applied to appropriate nineteenth century literature. Some horn players have already begun this study in an attempt to re-create the authentic sounds of that century.
Joseph Haydn
(Austria / Rohrau 1732 – Wien 1809)
Joseph Haydn showed his unparalleled musical talent even as a young boy. At the age of eight years he was chosen as a choirboy for the Stephansdom in Vienna. In 1761, he entered the service of the dukes of Esterházy who maintained an orchestra of about 20 musicians and a troupe of singers for their Hungarian court theatre at Esterháza. Haydn spent nearly 30 years in the service of the Esterházy court, highly regarded and celebrated, while the publications of his works made him famous all over Europe. He was admired by both Mozart and Beethoven, whom he had taught music for a short time.
However, in 1790 Duke Nicolaus died, and his son dissolved the orchestra and dismissed Haydn with a life-long pension. Haydn spent the winters 1791/92 and 1794/95 in London, where he had a commission for several symphonies. Here he was enthusiastically received and awarded the honorary doctor at Oxford University. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, which established one of the most prominent genres in 19th century music. He is also considered as the creator of the string quartet. Apart from these, he wrote oratorios (“The Creation”, “The Seasons”), operas, masses and church music in general, concerts, sonatas, songs and much more.
Michael Haydn
(Austria / Rohrau 1737 – Salzburg 1806)
Michael Haydn was born in 1737 in the Austrian village of Rohrau near the Hungarian border. He was the younger brother of Joseph Haydn. Michael Haydn, like his brother Joseph, was a chorister at St. Stephen's in Vienna. Shortly after leaving the choir-school, he was appointed Kapellmeister at Großwardein and later, in 1762, at Salzburg. The latter office he held for forty-three years, during which time he wrote over 360 compositions for the church and many instrumental music. Here he was acquainted with Mozart, who had a high opinion of his work, and the teacher of both Carl Maria von Weber and Anton Diabelli.
Haydn's sacred choral works are generally regarded as being his most important. However, he was also a prolific composer of secular music, including forty symphonies, a number of concerti and chamber music, including a string quintet in C major which was once thought to have been by his brother Joseph. In fact, Michael Haydn was the victim of another case of posthumous mistaken identity: for many years, the piece which is now known as Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 25 was thought to be Mozart's Symphony No. 37 and assigned KV 444. The confusion arose because an autograph was discovered which had the opening movement of the symphony in Mozart's hand, and the rest in somebody else's. It is now thought that Mozart had composed a new slow opening movement for reasons unknown, but the rest of the work is known to be by Michael Haydn. The piece, which had been quite widely performed as a Mozart symphony, has been performed considerably less often since this discovery in 1907.
Georg Friedrich Händel
(Germany / Halle 1685 – England / London 1759)
George Frederic Händel was born in the Saxonian city of Halle - Germany. His father was a surgeon and valet of the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. He had wanted his son to become a lawyer, so he was rather uncomfortable about his son’s early interest in music, which is said to have been discovered by the duke himself having heard the 10-year-old Händel playing the organ. Händel got his first music lessons with the local organist. After studying law for a year, Händel went to Hamburg to play violin at the public opera house. In 1705, he seized the opportunity to write his first opera “Almira”, which was quite a success.
After this success, he was invited by the duke of Florence to come to Italy, where he stayed for several years. Here he visited all major musical centres and met composers such as Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Corelli, from whom he learned a lot about Italian musical style. After a short time as court composer in Hanover, Händel went to England, where he lived for the rest of his life. Here he was a co-founder of the Royal Academy of Music - an institution which tried to establish Italian opera in London. After writing 42 operas, including famous ones like Giulio Cesare (1724), Alcina (1735) and Serse (1735), Händel went on to write 22 oratorios (like Messiah in 1742). Besides his operas and oratorios, Händel wrote orchestral music and chamber works, such as his famous “Water Music” (1717) and “Music for the Royal Fireworks” (1748/49).
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
(Germany / Hamburg 1809 – Leipzig 1847)
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born into a cultured and prosperous Jewish family. However, their conversion to Protestantism became their “Entrée-billet to European culture”, as Heinrich Heine would call it.
Mendelssohn spent his childhood in Berlin. As a nine-year-old he had his first public concert. Intensive musical studies made him rediscover and newly assess the German sacred musical tradition. His first public appearance as a conductor was in 1829, when he put on the long-forgotten St. Matthew’s Passion by Bach. After several travels through Europe, Mendelssohn settled in Leipzig in 1835. He worked as a composer and conductor of the local Gewandhausorchester. At the age of seventeen he had drawn attention to his compositions with the overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. He composed oratorios in the spirit of Händel and Bach (“Eliah”, “Paulus”) and several symphonies. At the height of his success, at the early age of 38, he died from a stroke.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Austria / Salzburg 1756 – Vienna 1791)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is simply one of the greatest musical geniuses ever to have lived. Already at the age of four or five years he was regarded as a prodigy and his father Leopold, who was court composer in Salzburg, proudly presented him to the all of Europe, on several great journeys. At this time, Mozart already knew the state of the art in music, being in contact with such musical authorities as Johann Christian Bach in London, Padre Giambattista Martini in Bologna and Joseph Haydn in Vienna, whom he adored very much.
Mozart’s excellent musical education allowed him to write his first music at the age of six years. He was appointed concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra in 1769, and made his first steps into opera as an eleven-year-old. But his great successes came after he had broken with the Salzburg court in 1781. He went to Vienna, where he tried to make a living by introducing himself as a piano virtuoso and giving concerts to an amazed Vienna audience, after he was unsuccessful in getting a post at the Viennese Imperial court. Although, Vienna was the place that saw the birth of his greatest masterpieces, like “The Abduction from the Seraglio” (1782), “The Marriage of Figaro” (1786) or “The Magic Flute” (1791), Prague was the city of his greatest successes, with a triumphant “Figaro” (1786) and “Don Giovanni” in 1787. Mozart excels in every genre of music, from symphonies to chamber music, making him one of the most versatile composers in music history. His last work is the unfinished “Requiem”, an anonymous commission by the count Waldegg, which gave rise to much Romantic speculation about his untimely death. As was the custom of his day, his funeral was executed without much pomp, and no grave is left of one of the greatest musicians in Western history.
Joachim Quantz
(Germany / Oberscheden 1697 – Potsdam 1773)
Joachim Quantz was a German flautist, flute maker and composer. Quantz began his musical studies as a child with his uncle (his father - a blacksmith - died when Quantz was young), later going to Dresden and Vienna. It was during his time as musician to Frederick Augustus II of Poland that he began to concentrate on the flute, performing more and more on the instrument. He gradually became known as the finest flautist in Europe, and toured France and England. He became flute teacher, flute maker and composer to Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great) in 1740. He was an innovator in flute design, adding keys to the instrument to help with intonation (playing in tune), for example.
Although Quantz wrote many pieces of music, mainly for the flute (including around 300 flute concertos), he is best known today as the author of a treatise on flute playing. His Essay of 1752 is less a tutor for the flute than a compendium covering musical taste and execution on all sorts of instruments. Because of this broad scope it became and has remained the most widely-known instrumental method of the 18th century and is of great interest today as a source of information on performance practice and flute technique in the 18th century
Franz Schubert
(Austria / Vienna 1797 – Vienna 1828)
Six years after Mozart’s death, while Haydn was at the height of his fame and Beethoven was a rising star in Viennese musical life, another genius was born: Franz Schubert. He had musical instructions since his early years, was a member of the “Wiener Saengerknaben”, and studied composition with Antonio Salieri. The heart-piece of his oeuvre is his “lieder”, of which he had written 500 before his 20th birthday. Schumann quite sarcastically commented that “little by little, he would have set the whole German literature to music”. As a 17-year-old he wrote music for Goethe’s “Erlkoenig”, revealing him just as skilful as in his later works. For some time, he was employed by the Esterházy family as music adviser to the princesses, but apart from that he was mostly jobless, living from his friends’ support. Since 1822 he intensively dedicated himself to instrumental works. Unlike his classical ancestors, Schubert did not write music for the noble society, but for bourgeois entertainment. Among his most famous compositions are the piano quintet D667 (“The trout”), the “Unfinished symphony” (Nr. 8 b-minor), the quartet D804 (“Death and the maiden”). But his fame mostly stems from lied cycles such as “Die Schoene Muellerin” ("The fair Maid of the Mill”), the moody and dark “Winterreise” ("Winter journey”) and “Schwanengesang” ("Swan Songs”). His chamber and piano oeuvres are proof of his extreme mastery. In 1828, on the age of 31, Schubert died of typhoid fever.
Robert Schumann
(Germany / Zwickau 1810 – Endenich near Bonn 1856)
Robert Schumann was the son of a bookseller and raised in an educated and cultured environment which endowed him with a broad intellectual basis for his later career as a musical writer. At the age of 24, he founded the “Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik” (New Musical Journal). Initially, Schumann studied law in Leipzig, but he also gained a thorough knowledge in composition, which he expanded in Leipzig with Friedrich Wieck. Having heard Paganini play, he decided to abandon his law studies and become a full-time musician. He fell in love with his teacher’s daughter Clara, who was to become a famous pianist, and married her despite her father’s interventions. At that time, Schumann had composed some piano works, for example “Papillons”, but had published only few of them. 1841 was his “year of songs”, for he wrote most of his lied oeuvre in a very short period that year. This is the first time a psychic disorder became apparent. Schumann was highly regarded in artistic circles and was a close friend of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. That is why finally he was offered the post of music director in Duesseldorf. He composed his cello concerto and the last two of his four symphonies there. But his mental state deteriorated more and more. On a holiday in the Netherlands he was visited by Johannes Brahms, whom he had always patronized (and who had a secret yearning for Clara). After a fit of mental derangement, which made him jump into the Rhine river, he was brought to a mental asylum in Endenich near Bonn, where he died two years later. Among his most prominent works are the “Kinderszenen” ("Children’s scenes") for piano and the song cycles “Dichterliebe” ("Poet’s love") and “Frauenliebe und Leben” ("A Woman's Life and Love").
Franz Strauss
(Germany / Parkstein 1822 - München 1905)
Born in Parkenstein, Bavaria, Franz Strauss had begun his musical career at the age of 7, playing the violin at a wedding dance. After musical studies with his uncles at the age of 15, in which he learned to play the clarinet, guitar, and all brass instruments, Franz Strauss entered the service of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria as a guitarist. His studies on the horn continued, and it was the horn that would become his major instrument. In 1847 he joined the Bavarian court orchestra, a position he held until his retirement in 1889. Franz Strauss also served as a professor at the Academy of Music in Munich.
He lost his first wife and two children and did not remarry until 1863, at which time he married Josephine Pschorr, a daughter of the wealthy brewer Georg Pschorr. To this union two children would be born, and the elder, Richard Strauss (1864-1949), was destined to become a great composer.
Although a musical conservative, Franz Strauss nevertheless performed in the premiere performances of several important operas of Richard Wagner in Munich, including Tristan und Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger (1868), Das Rheingold (1869), and Die Walküre (1870). The conductor of the first two of these premieres, Hans von Bülow (1830-1894), called Franz Strauss "the Joachim of the horn," and also commented, "The fellow is intolerable, but when he blows his horn you can't be angry with him." Wagner mirrored Bülow's comments, and is quoted as saying, "Strauss is an unbearable, curmudgeonly fellow, but when he plays his horn one can say nothing, for it is so beautiful."
Antonio Vivaldi
(Italy / Venice 1678 – Austria / Vienna 1741)
The “red priest”, as he was called due to his hair colour and the fact that he had become a cleric in 1703, Antonio Vivaldi is one of the few baroque composers to have survived the ages. He is most famous for his numberless concerti, although he was as much of a vocal and opera composer. He learned to play the violin from his father, who was in the orchestra of San Marco in Venice. His main career was in teaching music, but he was also a conductor and composer in residence at the Ospedale della Pietà (a girls’ orphanage). The girls had to fulfil many musical tasks there. Vivaldi wrote most of his cantatas and concerti for them, usually performed on Sundays. His sacred music was composed for San Marco, with special regard to its unique acoustics.
Vivaldi was not restricted to Venice, though. He travelled quite frequently through Europe, like Prague, Vienna and Amsterdam to make known his works and have them printed. His oeuvre is immensely vast. So far, more than 450 solo concertos are known, 49 operas, symphonies, sonatas and sacred music.
