Composer Illustrated: JOHN PHILIP SOUSA

John Philip Sousa - 1854 - 1932

Some Facts on LISZT

Life

Liszt was born in Raiding, near Sopron, on Oct. 22, 1811. While still a boy, his prodigious talents won the patronage of local Hungarian aristocrats, and his family took him to Vienna in 1821. There he studied piano with Carl Czerny and composition witdh Antonio Salieri. In 1823 Liszt was refused admission to the Paris Conservatory because of a regulation barring foreign students, but he stayed in Paris and took composition lessons from Anton Reicha. Liszt's one-act operetta Don Sanche was performed at the Academie Royale de Musique when he was only 14.

Franz Liszt, portrait by Miklós Barabás, a Hungarian painter, 1847
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After a number of dazzling European concert tours, Liszt again settled in Paris and became a well-known member of the highest social and intellectual circles. He abandoned a passing thought of becoming a priest to remain a musician, evolving a style of virtuoso piano technique and composing music to serve it. From 1835 to 1839 he lived with the Comtesse Marie d'Agoult, who wrote historical and philosophical works under the name Daniel Stern. They had one son and two daughters. One daughter, Cosima, became the wife first of pianist-conductor Hans von Bulow and later of Richard Wagner.

From 1839 Liszt again traveled throughout Europe, having become-with violinist Niccolo Paganini, with whom he was often compared-the most sought-after of all performing musicians. From 1848 he was kapellmeister to the ducal court at Weimar, where he performed and staged many new musical works-especially those of his friend and future son-in-law, Richard Wagner-and generously helped fellow musicians. When his tenure at Weimar was disturbed, in part by scandal connecting his name with that of Princess Karoline Sayn-Wittgenstein, he gave up piano playing almost completely to devote himself to composition and teaching. From 1859 to 1870 he lived chiefly in Rome, where Pope Pius IX in 1866 made him an abbe.

In 1870 Liszt returned to Weimar to conduct the music festival honoring the centennial of Beethoven's birth. In 1875 he accepted the presidency of the Hungarian Academy of Music at Budapest. His later years were spent in Weimar, Rome, and Budapest and were occupied largely with composition and with numerous pupils and hangers-on. He died in Bayreuth, Bavaria, on July 31, 1886, while attending a Wagner festival.

Works

Liszt's compositions comprise original works and transcriptions of other composers' music. His most popular original compositions are the 20 Hungarian Rhapsodies, which are in part Gypsy rather than truly Hungarian. Although written for the piano, many of the rhapsodies have been orchestrated.

Notable among Liszt's piano works are numerous Etudes; three Liebestraume (originally composed as songs); the Sonata in B Minor; three albums of short pieces called Annees de pelerinages; three Valses oubliees; and the Legends, entitled St. Francois d'Assise predicant aux oiseaux and St. Francois de Paul marchant sur les flots. His organ music includes the Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H (1855) and Variations on Bach's Weinen, Klagen (1862). For solo voices, chorus, and orchestra in varying combinations, Liszt composed Hungaria, Die Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth, psalms, several Masses, and over 60 songs.

Liszt wrote several books on musical subjects, the best known of which are Des Bohemiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859; Eng. tr., The Gipsy in Music), and the partly ghostwritten Frederic Chopin (1852).

Evaluation

Although the artistic quality of much of Liszt's enormous body of compositions remains the subject of argument, his importance is unquestioned in the development of modern piano technique; in the introduction into music of the Mephistophelian element of eerie, mischievous, and elusive tempi called diablerie; in the evolution of harmony and of musical forms; and in the formation of the high romantic musical idioms of the era. He shared with Frederic Chopin and Robert Schumann domination over the composition of specifically pianistic music, inventing many techniques directly related to the keyboard. He developed for orchestra the single-movement, semiprogrammatic form that he called symphonic poem, thus assisting other composers in solving problems raised by music inspired by extramusical materials.

Liszt's harmonic innovations were of prime importance as leading away from the Viennese rococo-classic style of the 18th century to the Romanticism of the 19th and the breakdown of tonality in the 20th century. He prefigured not only the whole-tone scale but also both atonality and polytonality. With Wagner he incarnated and preached the "music of the future" and advocated an almost religiously intended synthesis of the arts. Liszt left scarcely an established musical usage unquestioned or unchanged.

By Victor W. Sam For more information about Liszt or Franz Liszt, please visit Liszt.org Article Source: EzineArticles

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Composer Illustrated: FRANCOIS ADRIEN BOIELDIEU

François Adrien Boieldieu by Joseph Kriehuber

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COLE PORTER's Song "True Love"

Cole Porter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"True Love" was written by Cole Porter and performed by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in the 1955 film, "High Society," which also starred Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. "True Love" was the first and only gold record for Grace Kelly and was the 21st gold record for Bing Crosby. The song stayed on the charts for 22 weeks, rising as high as number 3. "True Love" was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Song in 1956, although it lost to Doris Day's "Que Sera, Sera."

Cole Porter was a highly experienced songwriter when he wrote "True Love." The decades of the 1930's and 1940's were full of Cole Porter hit musicals. During the 1930's alone, Porter wrote music and lyrics for ten Broadway musicals for New York and two film musicals for Hollywood.

Cole Porter was born in Indiana in 1891 to parents who were wealthy. He received an extensive musical education, learning the piano and the violin by age six. His favorite of the two was the piano which he practiced two hours daily. By age ten he was writing words and music to original songs, and by age seventeen he published his first song.

Porter also received an impressive academic education which carried him through Yale and into Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Music. While at Yale, Porter became the president of the Glee Club and a cheer leader, and, among the 300 songs he wrote while at Yale, he wrote two football fight songs that are still played today. Despite being the roommate of Dean Acheson, the future Secretary of State under President Truman, Porter dropped out of Harvard Law School to continue with his music education.

After World War I, Porter moved to Europe where he met and married Linda Lee Thomas, a beautiful and rich divorcee and a descendant of the Lees of Virginia. Their relationship was a loving, supportive, lifelong partnership. Cole Porter was gay and had numerous male interests which Linda had agreed to allow. However, the marriage was at times unstable when Porter's gay interests threatened the couple's carefully maintained social appearances.

Following their marriage in 1919 in Paris, the Porters lived an extravagant lifestyle in Europe through the 1920's. Their palatial home in Paris had floor to ceiling mirrors and zebra skin upholstery. Later, they moved into a famous palace in Venice where their lush parties included fifty gondoliers, circus acrobats, and a ballet company. They also built a night club outside their palace which accommodated 100 guests.

Back in New York, Porter's first few contributions to Broadway musicals were poorly received. However, by the end of the 1920's Porter gained recognition, and through the 1930's and 1940's he was one of the brightest stars on Broadway. He worked excessively and tirelessly on his musical productions and spent time in both New York and Hollywood.

In 1937 a terrible horse riding accident crushed both of Porter's legs. As the story goes, while waiting for hours for help to arrive he composed the lyrics to a verse of his song, "At Long Last Love." The accident left him crippled and in pain for the rest of his life. He underwent more than 30 leg operations until his right leg was finally amputated in 1958. Following his leg amputation, Cole Porter dropped out of music production until his death in 1964.

In 1955 Cole Porter wrote the lyrics and music for "High Society," starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong. The film was a musical remake of the classic 1940 award winning movie, "The Philadelphia Story," which won a Best Actor Oscar for James Stewart and which also starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. "High Society" featured nine musical numbers, plus there were five additional songs written by Porter which were not included in the movie.

"High Society" was one of MGM's greatest musicals. Grace Kelly was the movie's luminous star, and the romantic exchange with Bing Crosby in "True Love" was one of the movie's highlights.

Here are the lyrics to Cole Porter's "True Love."

Sometimes wind blows

a new moon moves at last alone

feeling far above her

oh how lucky we are

while I give to you

would you give to me

true love true love

so on and on it will always be

true love true love

for you and I have a guardian angel

on high with nothing to do

but to give to you as you give to me

love forever true

love forever true

for you and I have a guardian angel

on high with nothing to do

but to give you as you give to me

love forever true

love forever true

give me more true love oh yeah

true love true love

true love true love

got to give me your oh yeah oh yeah

true love true love

true love true love

for you and I have a guardian angel

on high with nothing to do

but to give to you as you give to me

love forever true

love forever true

love forever true love.

By Garry Gamber Garry Gamber is a public school teacher and entrepreneur. He writes articles about politics, real estate, health and nutrition, and internet dating service Article Source: EzineArticles

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JOSEPH HAYDN - From Peasant to Fame and Wealth

Haydn was one of the first composers to write a pitch change as well as a written out solo for the timpani in a symphonic movement. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Austrian world, to which Haydn was born, in 1732, was beginning a new life, free from foreign Turkish oppressors, full of religious zeal, and expanding boundaries, living under the talented rule of the Habsburgs. Charles VI, reigning emperor, was a fine violinist, harpsichordist, and operatic composer.

The class system especially poignant at this time, gave little opportunity for poor peasants to rise in stature and riches. However, Joseph Haydn, born to a peasant family, achieved recognition and wealth uncommon, not only to those of his social rank, but also of composers and musicians of the time. Haydn's father, Mathias, was a wheelwright and his mother, Anna Maria Koller, had been a cook in the Harrach Castle. Haydn was the second of twelve children born to the wheelwright and his wife. Two of Haydn's brothers, Johann Michael and Johann Evangelist also became musicians.

As a young boy, Haydn was taught to love music; his father played the harp and had been granted the gift of a beautiful tenor voice, and his mother also enjoyed singing. Haydn went to the school rector at Haimburg and there studied for two years reading and writing, catechism, singing, wind and string instruments. At the age of eight he was enlisted to become a pupil in the Choir School at St. Stephen's Cathedral, where he continued his musical studies, though no instruction in musical theory was given. At sixteen his voice began to break, and one of Haydn's practical jokes, cutting off the pigtails of a fellow classmate, served as an excuse for the director to dismiss him from the choir. Thus without food, money, clothing, or home, Haydn was forced into the world to work as a freelance musician.

As a freelance musician, Haydn played for dances, arranged compositions for a variety of instruments, taught music for a meager amount, served as an accompanist, composed, and took part in serenades. "Like Italy, old Austria had a great fondness for open-air music at night, and many musicians were needed to fill the continuous demand. Haydn made the best use of this fashion. He earned a little money this way and drew from the rich well of Viennese fold music."

House of Joseph Haydn in Vienna,
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Through the money he earned as a freelance performer and through the graciousness of Anton Buchholz, who lent him unconditionally one hundred-fifty florins, Haydn was able to take a room and set about filling in the gaps in his theoretical knowledge. He studied Johann Josheph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, Johann Mattheson's Der vollkommene Kapellmeister, David Kellner's Unterricht im Generalbass, and works by Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach.

In 1758, Haydn became Kammer-compositeur to the Bohemian Count, Karl Joseph Franz von Morzin. This was a social and financial step forward, he was now regularly paid, a sum of two hundred florins a year, besides receiving free board and lodging. Haydn's great fortune was not over, as an offer was given to become vice-conductor, and later becoming head conductor, at the court of Gregorius Joseph Werner, Prince Esterhazy, in Einstadt. Haydn readily accepted this new post.

The Esterhazy's stood at the head of Hungary's powerful nobility. Haydn's duties included not only composing nearly all the music presented at the court, be he was also in charge of the orchestral members, making sure they wore clean, white stockings and tidy uniforms, and seeing that they did not get into mischief. This orchestra consisted, in the beginning, of five violins, one cello, one double bass, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, and two horns. While under the service of Esterhazy court, Haydn was given freedom to experiment with new musical ideas of form and harmony. He developed a style of motivic development, tone painting, independence of instrumental lines, and use of "daring keys," such as B Major, F-sharp Major, and C-sharp Major.

Haydn was a prolific composer with 83 string quartets, 104 symphonies; 52 piano sonatas; many concertos for piano (15), violin (13), horn (2), trumpet (1), flute (1), and cello (2); 35 piano trios; more than 175 divertimentos; 19 operas; 14 masses; part songs and canons for voice; and 5 oratorios. Haydn's oratorios have been a subject discussed, dissected, and speculated upon by many scholars, most particularly The Seasons and The Creation.

Haydn's compositions were some of the most beautiful written during the Golden Age of Music.

By Cindy Lee Smith Find quality resources for piano teachers, students, and parents at Piano Discoveries. http://www.pianodiscoveries.com Article Source: EzineArticles

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Some Notes on the Life of ROBERT SCHUMANN

Schumann was a great composer of the Romantic era and an influential music critic of his day. As with Beethoven, Schumann suffered a big disappointment in his early career which forced him to abandon his plans to become a famous concert pianist. He led at times a turbulent life and before his death and an attempted suicide he committed himself to a mental institution.

Robert Schumann in an 1850 daguerreotype. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Having suffered a hand injury in an accident Schumann was made to re-evaluate his life direction and instead he choose to focus his energies into composition. Had this not happened to Schumann or indeed deafness to Beethoven it's entirely debatable whether or not these two giants of the Romantic era would have composed at all, both preferring instead to be performing pianists.

His love life was eventful to say the least however his true love was Clara Wieck whom he met when she was just 15. The pair quickly declared their love for one another however when Schumann asked her father for permission to marry her he was refused and banned from any further meetings with her. This did not stop them and they continued to meet in secret. In 1840 and after a long battle the pair did finally marry and would have 8 children together.

Until 1840 all of Schumann's compositions were for piano however in this special year of marriage to Clara a tremendous outpouring of songs came forth from Schumann and he would also write many other works later in his life within all the various musical forms of the day including an opera.

His influence as a composer is considerable and he was admired by many of his, now famous, contemporaries and successors such as Brahms, Mendelssohn and Elgar. He was a composer who evolved throughout his life and rightfully deserves his place among the great composers for the sincerity and beauty he left to the world through his music.

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WAGNER's Influence

To discuss the influence of Wagner on operatic traditions in the latter part of the 19th century is a challenging task. It is challenging because it requires us to make some distinctions about what Wagner's unique influence was and what it was understood at the time to be which was not always the same thing. This distinction is important because in critical circles, charges of "Wagnerism" flew frequently and often acidly and it is important to know how much of this is just and how much was part of a growing frenzy that his music (and more so his personality) had caused.

Richard Wagner, Munich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The general trajectory of Wagner's influence begins with him as polemicist. He wrote ceaselessly on many topics, but his manifesto Oper und Drama, was particularly important. Written in 1852, nearly a decade before the Paris Tannhauser, this tract was the principal vehicle by which most people even new what Wagner was about. It served as a primer by creating an artistic framework with which Wagner felt his works should be judged. Political hostility, linguistic and practical performance requirements as well as current musical tastes kept productions of his operas limited. Wagner was still mostly theoretically understood, in fact most of his own earlier operas and familiar operas, including Tannhauser, were written before Oper und Drama. Because of the very gradual way Wagner pervaded musical life, there was an enormous lag time between his polemics and his premieres. By the time of the controversial Paris Tannhauser, in 1861, he had already finished the first two operas of the Ring Cycle and the landmark Tristan und Isolde yet the international public was still acclimating itself to this sixteen year old work. But, once Wagner conquered, he was indomitable and his ideas, or more often how people understood his ideas were the standards by which all operatic works were judged.

The first signs of the coming sea-change were in Italy, a decade before your question. Lohengrin was the first Wagner opera to be performed there (in Bologna), on November 1st 1871. At the Italian premiere of Aida three months later, some critics, perhaps with Lohengrin still in their minds, thought they had detected hints of Wagner circa 1850 in Verdi's new opera, a sign that even a celebrated and mature a composer as Verdi would not be given the benefit of the doubt in the new music circles.

The 1880's was the first climax of Wagnerism particularly in France. It was the decade that Wagner died, the decade of Bayreuth, Parsifal and the complete Ring and the introduction of one more Wagner work, Lohengrin, into France: Nice 1881. The internationalist and assimilative French style (Verdi referred to the Paris Opera House as "La grande Boutique") was swamped with reactions to the tide of Wagner. This tide manifested itself in a number of different ways.

Because Wagner broke so much new ground, French composers took what they thought was most striking. Among these were the subjects for the operas themselves. Wagner's operas were inspired by Celtic legends and mystical stories a world away from the quasi or faux-historical plots from an earlier generation. France (as well as Italy) abounded with mythological or epic stories almost all forgotten of which D'Indy's Le Roi D'Ys and Chabrier's Gwendoline remain (barely).

Cartoon of Richard Wagner
with exaggerated 'Jewish' features
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wagner's musical vocabulary and orchestration also tantalized the French. It was de rigeur for French artists and intellectuals to make their pilgrimage to Bayreuth and there they could listen, be overwhelmed and scrutinize all of the Wagner canon. Those that went had a life changing experience in one way or another but when they came back the French musical language particularly in opera was imbued with deeper chromaticism and a wider vocabulary of modulation. These traits are seen famously in Massenet who rivals and critics termed "Mademoiselle Wagner." While Manon and Werther hardly seem ripped from the pages of Seigfried, critics could detect a greater subtlety of musical shading and range of expression that they believed had come from studying Wagner. The ecstatic singing of Manon and Des Grieux in the finale of Manon, particularly at "Ah, Je sens une pure flamme" may have struck them as having a Wagnerian tinge complete with trademark turn. In Werther, The entre-acts especially the one leading to the letter scene have a boldness of chromatic harmony, a richness of orchestral timbres and a contour that seems not out of place with such preludes as the act III one in Parsifal.

Perhaps the most famous innovation that Wagner is associated with is the leitmotiv technique. The idea of unifying a work through flexible interwoven motives provided a way out of the "number opera" approach that was inherited from the Classical Period. If there was one outstanding reason that made Wagner the most compelling influence of his time it was his acute awareness of the problem confronting Romantic Opera in the latter half of the 19th Century: How to free opera from its dependence on easily recognizable and limiting structural forms, arias, duets, ensembles and recitative, and replace it with a more flexible yet recognizable system based on the drama of the story as opposed to the structure of the music. The problem preoccupied most composers of the time, but Wagner was public and prolific about it and his solutions were the ones that were disseminated.

It is easy to see then, what was attractive about his influence. Wagner saw the same problems they all did and he arrived at a solution that was practical and innovative. This solution of course, was not entirely unique and not strictly speaking always Wagnerian. In his career we can see Verdi, Wagner's contemporary, talk and write privately about the limitations of opera as he saw it. We can view his works, from Nabucco to Rigoletto then to Aida, operas written before the taint of Wagnerism can be imputed, as another solution to this dilemma. Conceiving of his operas in larger and larger uninterrupted sections, Verdi was arriving at his own unique solution. But Wagner put himself at the forefront of this debate and having famously championed it he became indelibly associated with the Lietmotif system (a name he didn't even create) regardless of how it was employed. This point is important because in the 1880's when the use of motives was now to differing degrees prevalent in all important operas of the time Otello, Manon, Andrea Chenier, critics and listeners simply judged its "Wagner Quotient" by whether it employed leitmotifs at all, an exceedingly elastic criteria.

By Sammy Higgins Sammy Higgins lives in New York City where he runs http://www.operadepot.com Article Source: EzineArticles

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GERSHWIN, Ravel, Grofe - How Blue Can You Get?

George Gershwin was a songwriter of popular music, a talented pianist and entertainer and wished to be a great classical composer. He had some success in that field with his folk opera Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F.

Birthday party honoring Maurice Ravel, New York City, March 8, 1928. From left: Oscar Fried, conductor; Eva Gauthier, singer; Ravel at piano; Manoah Leide-Tedesco, composer-conductor; and composer George Gershwin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He was something of a playboy and didn't always tend to his assigned tasks. He didn't finish Rhapsody in Blue till the day before it was to be premiered and there was no time to write out all the sheet music the orchestra needed. This was the job of Ferde Grofé, later to become well known for his Grand Canyon Suite. Grofé knew he would never be able to finish the copying chores so he gathered the orchestra together and asked them if they knew the names of all the chords in music. 

Of course they did. So instead of writing everything out, he simply wrote the names of the chords over the notes of the melody. Everybody understood and went right into rehearsal and the premiere went off beautifully. That was the start of using chord symbols such as A, Bminor, etc. A set of symbols was soon developed and standardized and now musicians frequently use what are called fake-books which have only melodies and chord symbols.

Gershwin spent a lot of time in France along with writers and painters of the time. He met the great composer Maurice Ravel, best know for his Bolero. Gershwin asked Ravel if he could study music with Ravel the master. Ravel said no. Gershwin asked why. Ravel said that Gershwin was a first-rate Gershwin; there was no point in him becoming a second-rate Ravel.

That's a satisfying story, but it makes me wonder who Ravel would accept as a student; only someone who was not creative and unique? That would make all of his students preordained to be imitation Ravels. I wonder if Ravel was really just ducking the matter because he was afraid he would have a student on his hands he couldn't manage.

Gershwin did just fine on his own, with a little help from his brother Ira who wrote the lyrics to most of George's songs.

By Jack Wilson Jack Wilson is a writer and artist in Tempe, Arizona: http://jackwilson-links.blogspot.com/ Article Source: EzineArticles

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