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Bay-Atlantic Symphony
Education Concerts: May 2013
How Music Talks: Many Voices, Many Stars
Bellini—Oboe Concerto
Weber—Concertino and Andante & Rondo Ongarese
Fauré—Fantasie
Mozart—Sinfonia Concertante
A Note to the Teachers
Dear Music Teacher,
Thank you for participating in the Bay-Atlantic Symphony’s Education Concert Series!
I am extremely grateful for and appreciative of the tremendous effort, skill, stamina, and artistry
it takes to be a classroom teacher. I believe I have provided all materials that you would need to
give students an excellent doorway into the pieces we are performing. The only supplies the
classroom teacher should need are the ability to download 5 mp3 files (iTunes or Amazon) and
play them on loud enough speakers, and crayons if desired. The pre- and post- concert activities
have been kept simple in part because I understand that some “classrooms” are not all that wellequipped. That said, this simplicity also fits my educational philosophy. I believe the activities
supporting these concerts should not be a distraction from the event the concert. As teachers, of
course, you are in the position of developing many skills and sensitivities that go into musicmaking and music appreciation. The point of taking students to the concert hall is to reinforce
just that non-classroom side of art—the open-ended, slow-breathing, undistracted, concentrated
joy of an encounter with something sublime. Once students taste this nectar, they are more
inspired to sit down in the classroom and learn about the composer, the instruments, or even
math, science, and the history and culture that could lead some one to create the Eroica
Symphony, Guernica, or Hamlet.
“Many Voices, Many Stars” continues Bay-Atlantic Symphony’s “How Music Talks” series,
ongoing and with constant development since 1998. I have scripted these online guides as well
the concerts, which I will narrate and conduct. The guides are designed to be easy to use, and to
work in conjunction with the NJ State Board of Education Curriculum.
“Many Voices, Many Stars” features six soloists who will play five movements of concertos––
the last concerto highlighted is Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, involving two soloists at once.
The concerto is a form that highlights a soloist who stands in front of the group. Orchestras are
famous for synthesizing many individual voices. In the concerto, we have the opportunity to
showcase some of these voices as stars, which, though featured, partner with the rest of the
orchestra to make beautiful music. In fact, the term “concerto” comes from the words “to sing
together” in Italian. Music does talk in many voices. We celebrate their uniqueness even as we
join together. Bay-Atlantic Symphony proudly present soloists from the Symphony itself,
including our Principal Woodwinds, Principal Violist, and Concert Master. Students and teachers
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will be dazzled by their virtuosity and artistry in a program spanning Weber, Bellini, Fauré, and
Mozart.
Please keep in mind that our orchestra, though doing well in these tough times, runs on a small
budget, with a small staff. We don’t have an “education department.” I wrote and put together
these materials myself, with guidance from many public school teachers.
On the basis of overwhelming positive feedback I am maintaining a feature we introduced in
previous years: As discussion becomes in depth, optional discussion is set off, allowing you to
quickly choose whether to press on, or elaborate.
Sincerely,
Jed Gaylin, DMA
Music Director, Bay-Atlantic Symphony
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Table of Contents
Letter to teachers.........................................................................................................1-2
Table of Contents.........................................................................................................3
Concert Program and recordings.................................................................................4
Concert Objectives......................................................................................................5
Pre-Concert Activities and Objectives........................................................................6-7
Post-Concert Activities and Objectives.......................................................................8-9
Primary Pre-Concert Activity: SCRIPT for classroom instruction..........................10-21
Bellini and the Oboe..................................................................10-12
Weber and the Bassoon..............................................................12-14
Weber and the Clarinet...............................................................14-16
Fauré and the Flute.....................................................................16-18
Mozart, the Violin, and the Viola...............................................18-20
Additional Pre-Concert Activity....................................................................................20-21
Composers’ Biography Historical Background.............................................................22-42
Bellini................................................................................................22
Weber.................................................................................................23
Fauré..................................................................................................26
Mozart...............................................................................................34
Map of Europe..............................................................................................................42
Composers' countries, and other countries mentioned are circled
(Germany, Hungary, France, and Austria)
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Bay-Atlantic Symphony
Education Concerts: May 2013
Study Guides
PAGE 4: CONCERT PROGRAM ( = ACTIVITIES), AND OBJECTIVES
CONCERTS: 5/3/2013, Cumberland Co. College; 5/7/2013 Stockton College
PROGRAM: Many voices, many stars
REPERTOIRE: Bellini––Oboe Concerto, Weber––Andante & Rondo O(U)ngarese,
Weber––Concertino, Fauré––Fantasie for Flute, Mozart––Sinfonia Concertante for Violin
and Viola, last movement
NOTE: It is STRONGLY suggested that you use the Amazon or iTunes mp3 files listed here.
The script works off of timings that are specific to these recordings.
Vincenzo Bellini––Oboe Concerto
Suggested recording:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/classical-dinner-music/id462925664
or identical recording on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Oboe-Concerto-E-Flat-Bellini/dp/B008M9SW92/ref=sr_1_20?
ie=UTF8&qid=1360606604&s=dmusic&sr=1-20
============================================================
Carl Maria von Weber––Andante e Rondo Ongarese (Ungarese)
Suggested recording:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/andante-e-rondo-ungarese-per/id263087650?i=263090810
or identical recording on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Andante-ungarese-fagotto-principale-Op-35/dp/B0013AFH86/
ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1360608389&s=dmusic&sr=1-6
=============================================================
Carl Maria Von Weber––Concertino for Clarinet in C minor/Eb major, op. 26
Suggested recording:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/concertino-in-c-minor-e-flat/id284712639?i=284713235
or, identical recording from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032BZSR4/ref=dm_dp_trk7?
ie=UTF8&qid=1360606068&sr=8-2
==========================================================
Gabriel Fauré––Fantasie for Flute and Orchestra
Suggested recording:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fantaisie-for-flute-orchestra/id312385890?i=312385901
or, identical from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Fantaisie-for-flute-and-orchestra/dp/B0022F4HYQ/ref=sr_1_4?
ie=UTF8&qid=1360609594&s=dmusic&sr=1-4
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart––Sinfonia Concertante Finale
Suggested recording, only on Amazon:
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http://www.amazon.com/Sinfonia-Concertante-E-flat-Violin-Orchestra/dp/B001BHXDCI/
ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1360611057&s=dmusic&sr=1-3
Concert Objectives:
1) To expose students to an exciting live performance of great symphonic music, and subtly
interweave notions of instrumentation, structure, music history, and other disciplines.
2) To give students the chance to concentrate on something aesthetic, multifaceted, and openended without feeling limited by an encounter that is purely quantitative.
3) To provide the opportunity for students to develop an emotional, aesthetic, or even analytical
response to music.
4) To help provide a context—rhythmic patterns, metaphors, or a parallel art forms such as
abstract visual imagery—that foster an engaged response to the works.
5) To teach students elements of theme (tune) and variation (development), musical meter, and
develop the ability through singing to discover musical texture simple form.
6) To bring home the idea that “just listening,” concentrating with an interactive imagination and
absorbing, IS participating. This is how artists, composers, writers synthesize and interact with
their environment. Only after such immersion is “creativity” or the visible, tangible side of the
creative act possible.
7) To give some historical and factual background to the music being performed. Other
disciplines that are involved in this concert and pre-concert activities are: visual abstraction,
written expression, aesthetics, world history, geography, political theory, philosophy,
ethnomusicology, anthropology, computer technology
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Bay-Atlantic Symphony
Education Concerts: May 2013
Study Guides
PAGE 6: PRE-CONCERT ACTIVITIES (P-CA) AND OBJECTIVES
Possible Pre-Concert Activities
P-CA) PRIMARY Pre-Concert Activity (P-CA1, P-CA2)—Script: Read aloud and discuss
the background notes/musical examples provided (pages 5 — 9). Background notes have some
historical information, but they primarily discuss the pieces. NB: Optional P-CAs are my
suggestions as to those that you might omit if you are short on time. Clearly, you as the
teacher should pick and choose those P-CAs that you feel are most appropriate (and
enjoyable!) for you and your classes.
NB: The remaining P-CAs are found directly below AND ALSO embedded in the text of the
script (PAGE 9). You only need to follow the script, which will guide you as to appropriate
times to undertake the following activities . The script will refer at appropriate moments to
activity P-CA2), activity P-CA3), etc.
P-CA3) After having completed the script (P-CA) and having gone over all three pieces
extensively, you might want to ask students to draw abstract images according to the music they
hear. Discuss what abstract art is—art that does not try to show objects. Ask them to draw
according to what they hear. They could draw several different pictures for one piece, or one
picture that has different moods in different areas of the picture. Then ask students to discuss the
various parts of the their pictures and how their drawings matched what they heard in the music.
(If it does NOT match particularly, that is OK, too. Some quite successful painters I know paint
to classical music with no correlation between what they hear and what they are painting.) This
activity should help prepare the student for their concert hall experience.
P-CA4) (Optional) Ask students to color in pictures of musical instruments.
P-CA5) Play excerpts again (if needed); ask students to write or discuss further their reactions to
the music. Questions can be direct (with clear choice) as well as open-ended. Also, please feel
free to point out any observations that will help them remember and have closer contact with the
music. Here is a chance to really show enthusiasm for the music, too. Here are some questions,
but please feel free to explore others as they arise:
Direct: I) Is this piece (one selection at a time) generally
a) loud or soft?
b) fast or slow
c) (if applicable) bumpy or smooth (or both, at different times)?, awkward
or graceful?
d) beautiful? scary? grand (big) or secretive (private, mysterious)?
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Open-ended: II) How does the music make you feel?
Open-ended: III) When you shut your eyes, do you see anything in particular? (I would
try NOT to steer them towards any specific image.)
Direct:
IV) What instruments do you hear?
Open-ended: V) Which piece do you like better (or best) at this time? Why? After hearing
several pieces again, do you still have the same preference? Any preference?
OBJECTIVES of pre-concert activities:
1) To familiarize the students with the music they will hear in the concert.
2) To provide context—artistic, historical, musical, cultural for the music they will hear so the
students can more easily relate the music to other disciplines they are studying.
3) IMPORTANT: To allow students the chance to explore the non-quantitative and intuitive side
of music, the mysterious, magic of art and music.
4) To give students several different ways of listening to the music: open-ended/multi-sensory,
instrumentational, structural (basic), comparative (using different elements of rhythm, melody,
tempo, orchestration, dynamics) as they come up.
5) To develop students’ ability to discuss music, art, and other non-quantitative subjects.
6) To develop students’ ability to write about art, music in a subjective manner.
7) To develop students’ understanding that performing (singing) and listening to orchestral music
are just different facets of the same basic activity.
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Bay-Atlantic Symphony
Education Concerts: May 2013
Study Guides
PAGE 8: POST-CONCERT ACTIVITIES AND OBJECTIVES
Possible Post-Concert Activities could include:
1) Playing the excerpts again and having students voluntarily identify the titles to the excerpts.
You might ask the students who could successfully identify what piece it was what they
remembered or what visual imagery looked like, and how that seemed to match the music.
2) Asking the students to draw, again, to the excerpts (playing them again on CD) they heard,
free-form. (IMPORTANT: Though this activity may seem a needless repetition of previous
activities, it is usually during exactly this kind of reinvestigation that true discovery—artistic,
athletic, scientific—occurs. Illustrious examples who have documented this process include
Einstein, Da Vinci, Tolstoy, Scott Hamilton, Beethoven, etc.) Asking them if they had a different
sense of the music, now after hearing it more and in concert. Asking them, if so, how it is
reflected in their drawings.
3) Asking the students to draw pictures of the orchestra and conductor.
4) Asking the students to write about any or any combination of the following—Probably better
to give them lots of time for a couple questions, rather than too many questions and no time:
a) How does this piece (probably one excerpt at a time) make you feel?
b) What sounds did you hear?
c) How do the musicians of the orchestra communicate with each other? with the
audience? with the conductor?
d) How different is it seeing the orchestra live, from listening to the music on the
CD?
e) Why do you think the composer wrote for so many instruments?
f) How did the visual imagery captured the same feeling as the music? How did the
experience of listening to the music differ from seeing the imagery?
g) Which instrument(s) is/are your favorite? Why?
h) Why do we need to have music? art? concerts? dance?
I) Which was your favorite piece? Why?
j) Why do we need to have audiences?
k) Which would you most want to be: a composer, a conductor, orchestral musician?
Why?
l) Contemporary Playwright Bridget Carpenter described in an interview the fact that
people did not understand that a large part of her “work” was just sitting and thinking,
absorbing, letting ideas come. Then the other half her time she spends writing after she
has slowed her thinking down so she can really hear her thoughts. What do you think of
that idea? Is listening to music like that?
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m) After hearing the music of Weber, Bellini, Fauré, and Mozart, how would you
describe the each of their lives? their worlds? Do you think Mozart's Sinfonia
Concertante
OBJECTIVES of post-concert activities:
1) To reinforce the excitement of an engaging (I hope!) live performance of great symphonic
music.
2) To give students further chance to concentrate on something aesthetic, multifaceted, and openended without feeling limited by purely quantitative encounter.
3) To provide the opportunity for students to deepen an emotional, aesthetic, or even analytical
response to music they have heard and studied. To deepen their budding relationship to these
pieces.
4) To deepen the students’ contexts (metaphor, or a parallel art form such as abstract imagery)
that illuminate the works.
5) To bring home the idea that “just listening,” concentrating with an interactive imagination,
absorbing, IS participating. This is how artists, composers, writers synthesize and interact with
their environment. Only after such immersion is “creativity” or the visible, tangible side of the
creative act possible.
6) To gently reinforce some cultural or historical background to the music being performed. Such
points, I think, are most effective when lightly scored. The students will probably respond well to
question m (above), which should accomplish this objective.
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Bay-Atlantic Symphony
Education Concerts: May 2013
Study Guides
PAGE 10: PRIMARY PRE-CONCERT ACTIVITY (P-CA1-PCA2P):
Script
Background, musical examples,
(To be read to students, and possibly discussed)
One note: These pre-concert activities will probably need three (3) full @45-minute class
periods, I think easily extended to four (4) if desired. It is a more detailed version of the script I
will use for the concerts. You will be the best judge as to how much time you have to devote to
this, and how much you will need. It will work most effectively with the suggested CDs mentioned
(p. 4) under repertoire
"Today we will start exploring great pieces written for orchestra. All the pieces we will hear
are called concertos, or in Italian concerti." (pronounced "cun-CHAIR-toe"). "That means
each piece features one instrument as a standout or solo. They are the 'lead' and we will
hear pieces of music that feature them. One of these pieces features two soloists, or stars at
once."
Vincenzo Bellini––Oboe Concerto
"Our first piece features the oboe. Let's listen to the beginning of the Oboe Concerto, by
Vincenzo Bellini, a composer from Italy. The piece starts with a short introduction in the
orchestra that kind of stops and starts. Then we hear the oboe."
Play Bellini until 00:00 - 01:09. PAUSE AT 1:09. (the oboe enters at 00:26; you can show
a motion to indicate the entrance)
"How does the music sound to you? Did you hear the oboe? Did it sound soft or
loud?" (soft) "slow or fast?" (slow). "Right slow and very melodic. Let's hear some more.
It's very peaceful beautiful music, patient, and calm:"
Play from 1:09 - 3:59, and PAUSE AT 3:59
"Bellini was famous as an opera composer. Operas are like musicals or plays that are sung
from beginning to end. So Bellini liked to write for the human voice. The music we have
heard till this point is very much like a long song without words for oboe. Oboes are a part
of the WOODWIND instruments. These instruments are called woodwinds for two reasons.
Can you guess (or do you know) why they are called that? Right! They are made of wood,
or were thousands of years ago when they came into being, and of course you blow through
them, so that's where the 'wind' comes in. They are very ancient instruments. Older than
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brass instruments. Today we have added metal so they can play more notes, faster and
more in tune. Here are pictures of the oboe:
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Because the player blows through the instruments, they are closest to the human voice.
Violins are played very differently, and so are guitars or drums. So the oboe and other
woodwinds often have the role of singing a song without words. A beautiful song, where
your imagination allows you to discover and invent the mood of the music we have just
hear. BUT, oboes can also be perky and cheerful. The music is not always slow and
thoughtful. Let's hear:
Play from 4:00 to the end
"Much more playful––and dramatic even, in a gentle way. Opera is known for its drama,
and we get a taste of it here. But this period of Italian Opera is most known for its
beautiful, singing quality––bel canto in Italian. And that is what we hear in this piece. Let's
hear the whole thing again, starting with the quick introduction in the orchestra, the
beautiful singing, slow section with the oboe solo, and then the faster, more dance-like
conclusion. You may notice the orchestra is not large....we'll talk about it some more....."
Play the whole Bellini, indicating the oboe entrance at 0:26 and the fast section at 4:00
"Did you hear the orchestra? What instruments did you hear in the orchestra, not counting
our solo instrument, the oboe? Right it was only violins, and cellos, violas, basses, just
string instruments. No other wind instruments. That is unusual, and it is the smallest
orchestra we will hear. 'Concerto' in Italian means 'a piece where we work together.'"
Carl Maria von Weber––Andante e Rondo Ongarese (Ungarese)
"Next up is piece for Bassoon. Bassoon, like the oboe, is a double reed instrument. A reed is
a piece of dried cane, like bamboo. Double reeds work very similarly to the human voice,
and many people feel the oboe and bassoon sound more like a human voice than other
instruments. They are very expressive, as we saw in the Bellini Oboe Concerto. Here is a
picture of the bassoon, and two bassoon reeds.
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"The bassoon is the largest, and therefore the lowest instrument we will hear. The concerto
we will hear for bassoon is called, 'Andante e rondo ongarese' (An-DAN-tay ay ROND-o
on-ga-RAY-say). It is also a piece in two sections; the first is with calm motion, and the
second is a Hungarian Rondo. A 'Rondo' just means that there is one musical idea or tune
that keeps returning, or coming around again. All of our pieces except for one start with
slower music and get faster in the second large section."
Play Weber Andante e Rondo Ungarese: 00:00 - 1:00, and PAUSE!!
"How would you describe this music? Right, quiet, thoughtful, expressive, maybe sad,
looking inward. This tune is the building block for what happens next. We have what is
called 'Theme and Variations.' That means a tune, which is then repeated several times
(three times here), but with changes. It is not very different from a jazz musician jamming
on a tune, or a rock musician, jamming on a set of chords. We will now hear the tune
played in three different ways, in three 'variations.' In the first, variation, you can hear the
tune in the violins, while the bassoon weaves beautiful patterns around the melody.'"
Play Weber Andante e Rondo Ungarese: 1:00 - 3:51
- at 1:50 WITH THE MUSIC PLAYING, point out how beautiful this 2nd variation is
- at 2:49 WITH THE MUSIC PLAYING, point out how fast and fiery the music for the
bassoon is in this 3rd variation. PAUSE at 3:51!
"Now we will hear the second, faster section. This is the Hungarian Rondo. The composer
of this piece, Carl Maria von Weber was German. The Hungarian people in the 1800's were
thought of the1800's as very direct. The more rigid, 'proper' royalty in Germany often
looked to their Hungarian neighbors to be more joyful and spirited. That is the case in this
Hungarian Rondo. A Rondo just means the main melody (or theme) returns, repeatedly
with other melodies in between. Let's hear this spirited, playful Hungarian Rondo:"
Play Weber Andante e Rondo Ungarese: 3:52 - end, just let them listen
"Wow! Did you hear how fast the bassoonist plays at the end? That takes a lot of practice!"
Carl Maria von Weber––Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra
"Next we will hear a work, also by Weber, but this time for Clarinet. The piece is called
'Concertino,'" (Con-chair-TEE-no) "which just means a little, or a short, concerto. In
Italian, the ending "ino" or "ina" mean 'little.' So for instance, the name 'Angelina' just
means, little Angel. Let's look at a picture of the clarinet. It looks kind of like an oboe:
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"The clarinet, like the oboe and the bassoon, is a reed instrument. The oboe and bassoon
are double reeds: two parts of cane vibrate against each other to make a sound. The
clarinet, and its cousin the saxophone, have single reeds. They make sound with the reed
vibrating against the instrument, or mouthpiece. Let's hear the slow introduction to the
Concertino. I think you will find the clarinet is also expressive and beautiful, but perhaps a
little more mellow or gentle in tone than the oboe."
Play Weber Concertino: 00:00 - 2:20
"Did you hear how low the clarinet can play even though it is something of a short
instrument? Next we will hear a faster more lively tune. It is another theme and variations"
Play Weber Concertino 2:21 - 6:31
- at 3:27 WITH THE MUSIC PLAYING, indicate variation 1, playful and gentle
- at 4:12 WITH THE MUSIC PLAYING, indicate variation 2, fast and exciting
- at 5:07 WITH THE MUSIC PLAYING, indicate variation 3, slow and mysterious
PAUSE at 6:31
"The last section, the one we are about to hear, is the fastest and most exciting. It starts like
another variation and then just takes off! It's as though the clarinetist says, 'that was
beautiful, but now it is time to cut loose! Let's hear:"
Play Weber Concertino 6:32 to the end
"That is a very splashy ending. Weber's Concertino really does cover a lot of ground, from
quiet expressive music to fast notes that show how skillful the soloist is, and provide a lot of
musical excitement."
Gabriel Fauré––Fantasie for Flute and Orchestra
"Our next instrument, and the last one we will explore from the woodwinds, doesn't look
like a woodwind instrument at all. But it is. It's the flute. Nowadays, the flute in the
orchestra is made out of silver. But originally flutes were made out of wood. The flute is one
of the oldest instruments. Here is a man playing a modern flute, and a picture of a wooden
flute:
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"Unlike the oboe, bassoon, and clarinet, the flute is NOT a reed instrument. It has no reed
at all, but works just by having air pass over an opening in a pipe or tube. It is like blowing
over a coke bottle. Instead of working like the human voice, it is more like whistling. The
sound is more hollow and cooler than the oboe, and even more so than the clarinet. As a
result, it can have a magic, mysterious, and almost liquid sound.
"Let's hear a little of how the flute sounds in the slow first part of Fauré's Fantasie for
Flute and Orchestra:"
Play Fauré Fantasie, 00:00 - 1:42, and then hit PAUSE!
"Did you hear how liquid the music sounds. The flute (and even more so the piccolo, or
small flute) plays the highest notes of all the woodwinds. The composer of this piece for solo
flute and orchestra is French: Grabriel Fauré (Fo-RAY). The French language is very fluid,
almost liquid sounding, and flexible. French composers often seem to like the flute a lot,
maybe because it shares some of these qualities with their language. The flute can play very
quickly and energetically, perhaps even more than the oboe or bassoon. But it tends not to
show the same funny side that bassoon does. Even the oboe is perkier when it plays fast.
But the flute is the quicksilver, the lightning even, of the orchestra! Let's hear the last
section, the faster section of the Fantasie:"
Play Fauré Fantasie, 01:42 till the end of the piece
"What beautiful, liquid sounds! And still, it manages to be dramatic...."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart––Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra
"Next, we will turn to a concerto for TWO solo instruments: the violin, AND its slightly
larger cousin, the viola. These are not wind instruments. All the other instruments we have
explored till now have been woodwinds. Let's name them" (wait for response). "Right:
Oboe, Bassoon, Clarinet, and Flute. Does anyone know what family the violin and viola
belong to? Right! The strings. The guitar is also in the string family, because, these
instruments clearly have strings running down the length of the instrument. Unlike the
guitar, the violin, the viola, and even the larger cello and double bass, also use a bow, to
make sound. Here is what a violin looks like:
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"Let's hear some of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante" (Sin-FO-nee-ah Con-chair-TAHN-tay).
"Mozart was a composer from German-speaking Austria. The piece actually has three
separate 'movements' to it. A 'movement' is like a chapter in a book. It sounds complete by
itself. But when you place three movements next to each other, you have about half an
hour's worth of beautiful music. We only have time to hear one movement, the last
movement––also called the 'finale.' This is a cheerful movement, you will hear the brilliant
violin, and the darker, lower, and rich sounding viola play off of each other. This movement
is another Rondo; we have already heard two other Rondos. Let's put our hand in the air
each time we hear the main tune return."
Play Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, 3rd movement 00:00 - 06:11 (complete)
- main tune lasts from 00:00 - 00:56, it is played by the orchestra without soloists
- a different tune begins at 00:57 and features the solo violin first and then solo viola
- 2:26 main tune returns till 2:57 (have them raise the hands if they recognize it)
- 4:08 main tune returns pretty much till the end, but it gets broken up.
PCA- 2 OPTIONAL ACTIVITY: play the piece again, and have the students indicate
when the hear the violin playing, perhaps by raising a closed fist, and when they hear the
viola playing by raising an open palm. IT CAN BE TRICKY! THEY RANGES OVERLAP.
THAT'S OK, IF THERE IS SOME CONFUSION FOR THEM, AND FOR YOU. The
music is written in that kaleidoscopic way!
"Music can express so many different moods and ideas. The pieces we have gotten to know
highlight solo instruments, but the pieces also express so much more more. As we have
become familiar with these pieces, we have understood more how music and how our
starring instruments really do 'talk' to us. But most importantly, we have seen how music
captures moods that we all experience as human beings. Each solo instrument can show us
many different moods, but at the same time, they all have their own special color, character,
and personality. I look forward to hearing these pieces played for us live by the BayAtlantic Symphony!"
=================
Additional Pre-Concert Activities (P-CAs)
P-CA3) (After having completed the script (P-CA) and after having gone over all the pieces
extensively, you might want to ask students to draw abstract images according to the music they
hear. Discuss what abstract art is—art that does not try to show objects, that does not look "real."
Ask them to draw according to what they hear. They could draw several different pictures for one
piece, or one picture that has different moods in different areas of the picture. Then ask students
to discuss the various parts of the their pictures and how their drawings matched what they heard
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in the music. (If it does NOT match particularly, that is OK, too. Some quite successful painters I
know paint to classical music with no correlation between what they hear and what they are
painting.) This activity should help prepare the student for their concert hall experience, where
computer-manipulated imagery will coincide and reinforce the music being played.
P-CA4) (Optional) Ask students to color in pictures of musical instruments.
P-CA5) Play pieces again (I would do one piece at a time). Ask students to write or discuss
further their reactions to the music. Questions can be direct (with clear choice) as well as openended. Also, please feel free to point out any observations that will help them remember and have
closer contact with the music. Here is a chance to really show enthusiasm for the music, too.
Here are some questions, but please feel free to explore others as they arise:
Direct: I) Is this piece (one selection at a time) generally
a) loud or soft?
b) fast or slow
c) (if applicable) bumpy or smooth (or both, at different times)?, awkward
or graceful?
d) beautiful? scary? grand (big) or secretive (private, mysterious)?
Open-ended: II) How does the music make you feel?
Open-ended: III) When you shut your eyes, do you see anything in particular? (I would
try NOT to steer them towards any specific image.)
Direct:
IV) What instruments do you hear?
After hearing all or several of the pieces and going through the above questions, you might want
to ask them the following comparative questions:
Open-ended: V) Which piece do you like better at this time? Why? After hearing the both pieces
again, do you still have the same preference? Any preference?
For post-concert activities, see pages 8–9 The activities are fully described in the “Activities
and Objectives” section on those pages.
For composers' biographies and a map of Europe, continue to next page(s).
22
Vincenzo Bellini
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (Italian: [vinˈtʃɛntso salvaˈtoːre karˈmɛːlo fran
ˈtʃesko belˈliːni]; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer. A
native of Catania in Sicily, his greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (1830), La
sonnambula (1831), Norma (1831), Beatrice di Tenda (1833), and I puritani (1835). Known for
his long-flowing melodic lines, for which he was named "the Swan of Catania", Bellini was the
quintessential composer of bel canto opera. He died in Puteaux, France at the age of 33, nine
months after the premiere of his last opera, I puritani.
Born in Catania, Sicily, Bellini was a child prodigy from a highly musical family and legend has
it he could sing an aria of Valentino Fioravanti at eighteen months. He began studying music
theory at two, the piano at three, and by the age of five could apparently play well. Bellini's first
five pieces were composed when he was just six years old. Regardless of the veracity of these
claims, it is certain that Bellini grew up in a musical household and that a career as a musician
was never in doubt.
Having learned from his grandfather, Bellini left provincial Catania in June 1819 to study at the
conservatory in Naples, with a stipend from the municipal government of Catania. By 1822 he
was in the class of the director Nicolò Zingarelli, studying the masters of the Neapolitan school
and the orchestral works of Haydn and Mozart. It was the custom at the Conservatory to
introduce a promising student to the public with a dramatic work: the result was Bellini's first
opera Adelson e Salvini an opera semiseria (half-serious) that was presented at the
Conservatory's theatre. Bellini's next opera Bianca e Gernando met with some success at the
Teatro San Carlo, leading to a commission from the impresario Barbaia for an opera at La Scala.
Il pirata was a resounding immediate success and began Bellini's faithful and fruitful
collaboration with the librettist and poet Felice Romani and cemented his friendship with his
favored tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, who had sung in Bianca e Gernando.
Bellini's cenotaph at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris
Bellini spent his last years 1827–33 in Milan, where all doors were open to him. Sparking
controversy in the press for its new style and its restless harmonic shifts into remote keys, La
straniera (1828) was even more successful than Il pirata, and allowed Bellini to support himself
solely by his opera commissions. The composer showed the taste for social life and the dandyism
that Heinrich Heine emphasized in his literary portrait of Bellini (Florentinische Nächte, 1837).
Opening a new theatre in Parma, his Zaira (1829) was a failure at the Teatro Ducale, but Venice
welcomed I Capuleti e i Montecchi, which was based on the same Italian source as Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet.
The next five years were triumphant, with major successes including some of his greatest works,
La sonnambula, Norma and I puritani, cut short by Bellini's premature death just nine months
23
after the premiere of I puritani. Bellini left London for Paris, but never completed the journey
back to Milan.
Bellini died in Puteaux, near Paris of acute inflammation of the intestine, and was buried in Père
Lachaise Cemetery, Paris; his remains were removed to the cathedral of Catania in 1876. The
Museo Belliniano housed in the Gravina Cruyllas Palace in Catania preserves memorabilia and
scores.
The central relationship in Bellini's life was with Francesco Florimo, who came from a village
close to Catania, and the two shared a close correspondence. After Bellini's death Florimo was
treated as his spiritual heir.
Carl Maria von Weber
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (18 or 19 November 1786 – 4/5 June 1826) was a German
composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the
Romantic school.
Weber's operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon greatly influenced the development of the
Romantic opera in Germany. Der Freischütz came to be regarded as the first German
"nationalist" opera, Euryanthe developed the Leitmotif technique to a hitherto-unprecedented
degree, while Oberon may have influenced Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's
Dream and, at the same time, revealed Weber's lifelong interest in the music of non-Western
cultures. This interest was first manifested in Weber's incidental music for Schiller's translation
of Gozzi's Turandot, for which he used a Chinese melody, making him the first Western
composer to use an Asian tune that was not of the pseudo-Turkish kind popularized by Mozart
and others.
A brilliant pianist himself, Weber composed four sonatas, two concertos and the Konzertstück
(Concert Piece) in F minor, which influenced composers such as Chopin, Liszt and
Mendelssohn. The Konzertstück provided a new model for the one-movement concerto in
several contrasting sections (such as Liszt's, who often played the work), and was acknowledged
by Stravinsky as the model for his Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra. Weber's shorter piano
pieces, such as the Invitation to the Dance, were later orchestrated by Berlioz, while his Polacca
Brillante was later set for piano and orchestra by Liszt.
Weber compositions for woodwind instruments occupy an important place in the musical
repertoire. His compositions for the clarinet, which include two concertos, a concertino, a
quintet, a duo concertante, and variations on a theme (posthumously), are regularly performed
today. His Concertino for Horn and Orchestra requires the performer to simultaneously produce
two notes by humming while playing—a technique known as "multiphonics". His bassoon
concerto and the Andante e Rondo ungarese (a reworking of a piece originally for viola and
orchestra) are also popular with bassoonists.
24
Weber's contribution to vocal and choral music is also significant. His body of Catholic religious
music was highly popular in 19th century Germany, and he composed one of the earliest song
cycles, Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten ([Four] Temperaments on the Loss of a
Lover). Weber was also notable as one of the first conductors to conduct without a piano or
violin.
Weber's orchestration has also been highly praised and emulated by later generations of
composers – Berlioz referred to him several times in his Treatise on Instrumentation while
Debussy remarked that the sound of the Weber orchestra was obtained through the scrutiny of the
soul of each instrument.
His operas influenced the work of later opera composers, especially in Germany, such as
Marschner, Meyerbeer and Wagner, as well as several nationalist 19th-century composers such as
Glinka. Homage has been paid to Weber by 20th century composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky,
Mahler (who completed Weber's unfinished comic opera Die drei Pintos and made revisions of
Euryanthe and Oberon) and Hindemith (composer of the popular Symphonic Metamorphosis of
Themes by Carl Maria von Weber).
Weber also wrote music journalism and was interested in folksong, and learned lithography to
engrave his own works.
Childhood
Weber was born in Eutin, Holstein, the eldest of the three children of Franz Anton von Weber
and his second wife, Genovefa Brenner, a Viennese singer. The "von" was an affectation; Franz
Anton von Weber was not actually an aristocrat. Franz Anton began his career as a military
officer in the service of the Duchy of Holstein, and after being fired, went on to hold a number of
musical directorships. In 1787 Franz Anton went on to Hamburg where he founded a theatrical
company.
Franz Anton's brother Fridolin, married Cäcilia Weber and had four musical daughters, Josepha,
Aloysia, Constanze and Sophie, all of whom became notable singers. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
attempted to woo Aloysia, composing several pieces for her. But after she rejected his advances,
Mozart went on to marry Constanze.
A gifted violinist, Franz Anton had ambitions of turning Carl into a child prodigy like Franz's
nephew-by-marriage, Mozart. Carl was born with a congenital hip disease and did not begin to
walk until he was four. But by then, he was already a capable singer and pianist.
Weber's father gave him a comprehensive education, which was however interrupted by the
family's constant moves. In 1796, Weber continued his musical education in Hildburghausen,
where he was instructed by the oboist Johann Peter Heuschkel.
On 13 March 1798, Weber's mother died of tuberculosis. That same year, Weber went to
Salzburg to study with Michael Haydn, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn, who agreed to
25
teach Carl free of charge.[1] Later that year, Weber traveled to Munich to study with the singer
Johann Evangelist Wallishauser and organist Johann Nepomuk Kalcher.
1798 also saw the twelve year old Weber's first published work, six fughettas for piano,
published in Leipzig. Other compositions of that period, among them a mass, and his first opera,
Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins (The Power of Love and Wine), are lost; but a set of
Variations for the Pianoforte was later lithographed by Weber himself, under the guidance of
Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the process.
In 1800, the family moved to Freiberg in Saxony, where Weber, then 14 years old, wrote an
opera called Das stumme Waldmädchen (The Silent Forest Maiden), which was produced at the
Freiberg theatre. It was later performed in Vienna, Prague, and Saint Petersburg. The young
Weber also began to publish articles as a music critic, for example in the Leipziger Neue Zeitung
in 1801.
In 1801, the family returned to Salzburg, where Weber resumed his studies with Michael Haydn.
He later continued studying in Vienna with Georg Joseph Vogler, known as Abbé Vogler, founder
of three important music schools (in Mannheim, Stockholm, and Darmstadt); another famous
pupil of Vogler was Giacomo Meyerbeer, who became a close friend of Weber.
[edit]Early career 1803–1810
In 1803, Weber's opera, Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (Peter Schmoll and his Neighbors)
was produced in Augsburg, and gave Weber his first success as a popular composer.
Vogler, impressed by his pupil's talent, recommended him to the post of Director at the Breslau
Opera in 1806. Weber sought to reform the Opera by pensioning off older singers, expanding the
orchestra, and tackling a more challenging repertoire. His attempts at reform were met with
strong resistance from the musicians and the Breslau public. Weber's time at Breslau was further
complicated one night when he accidentally ingested engraver's acid that his father had left
stored in a wine bottle. Weber was found unconscious and took two months to recover. The
incident permanently ruined his singing voice.[2]
He left his post in Breslau in a fit of frustration and from 1807 to 1810, Weber served as private
secretary to Duke Ludwig, brother of King Frederick I of Württemberg. Weber's time in
Württemberg was plagued with troubles. He fell deeply into debt and had an ill-fated affair with
Margarethe Lang, a singer at the opera. Furthermore, Weber's father Franz Anton
misappropriated a vast quantity of Duke Ludwig's money. Franz Anton and Carl were charged
with embezzlement and arrested on 9 February 1810. Carl was in the middle of a rehearsal for
his opera Silvana when he was arrested and thrown in prison by order of the king. Though no
one doubted Carl's innocence, King Frederick I had grown tired of the composer's pranks. After a
summary trial, Carl and his father were banished from Württemberg. Nevertheless, Carl
remained prolific as a composer during this period, writing a quantity of religious music, mainly
for the Catholic mass. This however earned him the hostility of reformers working for the reestablishment of traditional chant in liturgy.
26
Later career 1810–1826
In 1810, Weber visited several cities throughout Germany; from 1813 to 1816 he was director of
the Opera in Prague; from 1816 to 1817 he worked in Berlin, and from 1817 onwards he was
director of the prestigious Opera in Dresden, working hard to establish a German Opera, in
reaction to the Italian Opera which had dominated the European music scene since the 18th
century. On 4 November 1817, he married Caroline Brandt, a singer who created the title role of
Silvana.[3] In 1819, he wrote perhaps his most famous piano piece, Invitation to the Dance.
The successful premiere of Der Freischütz on 18 June 1821 in Berlin led to performances all
over Europe. On the very morning of the premiere, Weber finished his Konzertstück in F minor
for Piano and Orchestra, and he premiered it a week later.
In 1823, Weber composed the opera Euryanthe to a mediocre libretto, but containing much rich
music, the overture of which in particular anticipates Richard Wagner. In 1824, Weber received
an invitation from The Royal Opera, London, to compose and produce Oberon, based on
Christoph Martin Wieland's poem of the same name. Weber accepted the invitation, and in 1826
he travelled to England, to finish the work and conduct the premiere on 12 April.
Weber's grave in Dresden
Weber was already suffering from tuberculosis when he visited London; he died at the house of
Sir George Smart during the night of 4/5 June 1826.[3] Weber was 39 years old. He was buried
in London, but 18 years later his remains were transferred to the family vault in Dresden. The
eulogy at the reburial was performed by Wagner.
His unfinished opera Die drei Pintos (The Three Pintos) was originally given by Weber's widow
to Giacomo Meyerbeer for completion; it was eventually completed by Gustav Mahler, who
conducted the first performance in this form in Leipzig on 20 January 1888.
Legacy
Weber's piano music all but disappeared from the repertoire. One possible reason for this is that
Weber had very large hands and delighted in writing music that suited them.[4] There are several
recordings of the major works for the solo piano (including complete recordings of the piano
sonatas and the shorter piano pieces, by Garrick Ohlsson, Alexander Paley and others), and there
are recordings of the individual sonatas by Claudio Arrau (1st Sonata), Alfred Brendel (2nd
Sonata), Sviatoslav Richter (3rd Sonata) and Leon Fleisher (4th Sonata). The Invitation to the
Dance, although better known in Berlioz's orchestration (as part of the ballet music for a Paris
production of Der Freischütz), has long been played and recorded by pianists (e.g., Benno
Moiseiwitsch [in Carl Tausig's arrangement]). Invitation to the Dance also served as the thematic
basis for Benny Goodman's swing theme song for the radio program Let's Dance.
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (French: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ̃ fɔʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924)[n 1] was a
French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of
his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-
27
known works are his Pavane, Requiem, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and
"Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his
earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his greatest works in his later years, in a harmonically and
melodically much more complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when
he was a small boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was
trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns,
who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest
living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became
successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la
Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he
retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last
years, Fauré was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An
unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the
president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely
accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the
second quarter of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the
time of Fauré's death, jazz and the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being
heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced
composer of his generation in France, notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations
influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last twenty years of his life,
he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his works
from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent
and impassioned.
Early years
Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, Midi-Pyrénées, in the south of France, the fifth son and
youngest of six children of Toussaint-Honoré Fauré (1810–85) and Marie-Antoinette-Hélène
Lalène-Laprade (1809–87).[3] According to the biographer Jean-Michel Nectoux, the Fauré
family (pronounced "Faoure" in the local dialect) dates to the 13th century in that part of France.
[4] The family had at one time been substantial landowners, but by the 19th century its means
were reduced. The composer's paternal grandfather, Gabriel, was a butcher whose son became a
schoolmaster.[5] In 1829 Fauré's parents married. His mother was the daughter of a minor
member of the nobility. He was the only one of the six children to display musical talent; his four
brothers pursued careers in journalism, politics, the army and the civil service, and his sister had
a traditional life as the wife of a public servant.
The young Fauré was sent to live with a foster mother until he was four years old.[6] When his
father was appointed director of the École Normale d'Instituteurs, a teacher training college, at
28
Montgauzy, near Foix, in 1849, Fauré returned to live with his family.[7] There was a chapel
attached to the school, which Fauré recalled in the last year of his life:
I grew up, a rather quiet well-behaved child, in an area of great beauty. ... But the only thing I
remember really clearly is the harmonium in that little chapel. Every time I could get away I ran
there – and I regaled myself. ... I played atrociously ... no method at all, quite without technique,
but I do remember that I was happy; and if that is what it means to have a vocation, then it is a
very pleasant thing.[
Fauré as a student, 1864
An old blind woman, who came to listen and give the boy advice, told his father of Fauré's gift
for music.[6] In 1853 Simon-Lucien Dufaur de Saubiac, of the National Assembly,[n 2] heard
Fauré play and advised Toussaint-Honoré to send him to the École de Musique Classique et
Religieuse (School of Classical and Religious Music), which Louis Niedermeyer was setting up
in Paris.[13] After reflecting for a year, Fauré's father agreed and took the nine-year-old boy to
Paris in October 1854.
Helped by a scholarship from the bishop of his home diocese, Fauré boarded at the school for 11
years.[15] The régime was austere, the rooms gloomy, the food mediocre, and the required
uniform elaborate.[9][n 3] The musical tuition, however, was excellent.[9] Niedermeyer, whose
goal was to produce qualified organists and choirmasters, focused on church music. Fauré's
tutors were Clément Loret for organ, Louis Dietsch for harmony, Xavier Wackenthaler for
counterpoint and fugue, and Niedermeyer for piano, plainsong and composition.[14]
When Niedermeyer died in March 1861, Camille Saint-Saëns took charge of piano studies and
introduced contemporary music, including that of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner.[17] Fauré
recalled in old age: "After allowing the lessons to run over, he would go to the piano and reveal
to us those works of the masters from which the rigorous classical nature of our programme of
study kept us at a distance and who, moreover, in those far-off years, were scarcely known. ... At
the time I was 15 or 16, and from this time dates the almost filial attachment ... the immense
admiration, the unceasing gratitude I [have] had for him, throughout my life."[18]
Saint-Saëns took great pleasure in his pupil's progress, which he helped whenever he could;
Nectoux comments that at each step in Fauré's career "Saint-Saëns's shadow can effectively be
taken for granted."[19] The close friendship between them lasted until Saint-Saëns died sixty
years later.[1] Fauré won many prizes while at the school, including a premier prix in
composition for the Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11, the earliest of his choral works to enter the
regular repertory.[14] He left the school in July 1865, as a Laureat in organ, piano, harmony and
composition, with a Maître de Chapelle diploma.
Organist and composer
On leaving the École Niedermeyer, Fauré was appointed organist at the Church of Saint-Sauveur,
at Rennes in Brittany. He took up the post in January 1866.[21] During his four years at Rennes
he supplemented his income by taking private pupils, giving "countless piano lessons".[22] At
Saint-Saëns's regular prompting he continued to compose, but none of his works from this period
29
survive.[23] He was bored at Rennes and had an uneasy relationship with the parish priest, who
correctly doubted Fauré's religious conviction.[24] Fauré was regularly seen stealing out during
the sermon for a cigarette, and in early 1870, when he turned up to play at Mass one Sunday still
in his evening clothes, having been out all night at a ball, he was asked to resign.[24] Almost
immediately, with the discreet aid of Saint-Saëns, he secured the post of assistant organist at the
church of Notre-Dame de Clignancourt, in the north of Paris.[25] He remained there for only a
few months. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 he volunteered for military
service. He took part in the action to raise the Siege of Paris, and saw action at Le Bourget,
Champigny and Créteil.[26] He was awarded a Croix de Guerre.
After France's defeat by Prussia, there was a brief, bloody conflict within Paris from March to
May 1871 during the Commune.[27] Fauré escaped to Rambouillet where one of his brothers
lived, and then travelled to Switzerland, where he took up a teaching post at the École
Niedermeyer, which had temporarily relocated there to avoid the violence in Paris.[27] His first
pupil at the school was André Messager, who became a lifelong friend and occasional
collaborator.[28] Fauré's compositions from this period did not overtly reflect the turmoil and
bloodshed. Some of his colleagues, including Saint-Saëns, Gounod and Franck produced elegies
and patriotic odes. Fauré did not, but according to his biographer Jessica Duchen, his music
acquired "a new sombreness, a dark-hued sense of tragedy ... evident mainly in his songs of this
period including L'Absent, Seule! and La Chanson du pêcheur."
When Fauré returned to Paris in October 1871, he was appointed choirmaster at the Église SaintSulpice under the composer and organist Charles-Marie Widor.[28] In the course of his duties, he
wrote several canticles and motets, few of which have survived.[30] During some services,
Widor and Fauré improvised simultaneously at the church's two organs, trying to catch each
other out with sudden changes of key.[29] Fauré regularly attended Saint-Saëns's musical salons
and those of Pauline Viardot, to whom Saint-Saëns introduced him.
Fauré was a founding member of the Société Nationale de Musique, formed in February 1871
under the joint chairmanship of Romain Bussine and Saint-Saëns, to promote new French music.
[31] Other members included Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc,
César Franck, Édouard Lalo and Jules Massenet.[32] Fauré became secretary of the society in
1874.[33] Many of his works were first presented at the society's concerts.
In 1874 Fauré moved from Saint-Sulpice to the Église de la Madeleine, acting as deputy for the
principal organist, Saint-Saëns, during the latter's many absences on tour.[34] Some admirers of
Fauré's music have expressed regret that although he played the organ professionally for four
decades, he left no solo compositions for the instrument.[35] He was renowned for his
improvisations,[36] and Saint-Saëns said of him that he was "a first class organist when he
wanted to be".[37] Fauré preferred the piano to the organ, which he played only because it gave
him a regular income.[37] Duchen speculates that he positively disliked the organ, possibly
because "for a composer of such delicacy of nuance, and such sensuality, the organ was simply
not subtle enough."
30
The year 1877 was significant for Fauré, both professionally and personally.[39] In January his
first violin sonata was performed at a Société Nationale concert with great success, marking a
turning-point in his composing career at the age of 31.[39] Nectoux counts the work as the
composer's first great masterpiece.[40] In March, Saint-Saëns retired from the Madeleine,
succeeded as organist by Théodore Dubois, his choirmaster; Fauré was appointed to take over
from Dubois.[39] In July Fauré became engaged to Pauline Viardot's daughter Marianne, with
whom he was deeply in love.[39] To his great sorrow, she broke off the engagement in
November 1877, for reasons that are not clear.[41] To distract Fauré, Saint-Saëns took him to
Weimar and introduced him to Franz Liszt. This visit gave Fauré a liking for foreign travel,
which he indulged for the rest of his life.[41] From 1878, he and Messager made trips abroad to
see Wagner operas. They saw Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at the Cologne Opera; the
complete Ring cycle at the Hofoper in Munich and at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; and Die
Meistersinger in Munich and at Bayreuth, where they also saw Parsifal.[42] They frequently
performed as a party piece their joint composition, the irreverent Souvenirs de Bayreuth. This
short, up-tempo piano work for four hands sends up themes from The Ring.[43] Fauré admired
Wagner and had a detailed knowledge of his music,[44] but he was one of the few composers of
his generation not to come under Wagner's musical influence.
Middle years
In 1883 Fauré married Marie Fremiet, the daughter of a leading sculptor, Emmanuel Fremiet.[46]
[n 5] The marriage was affectionate, but Marie became resentful of Fauré's frequent absences, his
dislike of domestic life – "horreur du domicile" – and his love affairs, while she remained at
home.[46] Though Fauré valued Marie as a friend and confidante, writing to her often –
sometimes daily – when away from home, she did not share his passionate nature, which found
fulfilment elsewhere.[47] Fauré and his wife had two sons. The first, born in 1883, Emmanuel
Fauré-Fremiet (Marie insisted on combining her family name with Fauré's), became a biologist
of international reputation.[48] The second son, Philippe, born in 1889, became a writer; his
works included histories, plays, and biographies of his father and grandfather.[49]
Contemporary accounts agree that Fauré was extremely attractive to women;[n 6] in Duchen's
phrase, "his conquests were legion in the Paris salons."[51] After a romantic attachment to the
singer Emma Bardac from around 1892,[52] followed by another to the composer Adela
Maddison,[53] in 1900, Fauré met the pianist Marguerite Hasselmans, the daughter of Alphonse
Hasselmans. This led to a relationship which lasted for the rest of Fauré's life. He maintained her
in a Paris apartment, and she acted openly as his companion.[54]
Fauré and Marie in 1889
To support his family, Fauré spent most of his time in running the daily services at the Madeleine
and giving piano and harmony lessons.[55] His compositions earned him a negligible amount,
because his publisher bought them outright, paying him an average of 60 francs for a song, and
Fauré received no royalties.[56] During this period, he wrote several large-scale works, in
addition to many piano pieces and songs, but he destroyed most of them after a few
performances, only retaining a few movements in order to re-use motifs.[14] Among the works
surviving from this period is the Requiem, begun in 1887 and revised and expanded, over the
31
years, until its final version dating from 1901.[57] After its first performance, in 1888, the priest
in charge told the composer, "We don't need these novelties: the Madeleine's repertoire is quite
rich enough."
As a young man Fauré had been very cheerful; a friend wrote of his "youthful, even somewhat
child-like, mirth."[59] From his thirties he suffered bouts of depression, which he described as
"spleen", possibly first caused by his broken engagement and his lack of success as a composer.
[14] In 1890 a prestigious and remunerative commission to write an opera with lyrics by Paul
Verlaine was aborted by the poet's drunken inability to deliver a libretto. Fauré was plunged into
so deep a depression that his friends were seriously concerned about his health.[60] Winnaretta
de Scey-Montbéliard,[n 7] always a good friend to Fauré, invited him to Venice, where she had a
palazzo on the Grand Canal.[61] He recovered his spirits and began to compose again, writing
the first of his five Mélodies de Venise, to words by Verlaine, whose poetry he continued to
admire despite the operatic debacle.
Emma Bardac
About this time, or shortly afterwards, Fauré's liaison with Emma Bardac began; in Duchen's
words, "for the first time, in his late forties, he experienced a fulfilling, passionate relationship
which extended over several years".[63] His principal biographers all agree that this affair
inspired a burst of creativity and a new originality in his music, exemplified in the song cycle La
bonne chanson.[64] Fauré wrote the Dolly Suite for piano duet between 1894 and 1897 and
dedicated it to Bardac's daughter Hélène, known as "Dolly".[14][n 8] Some people suspected that
Fauré was Dolly's father, but biographers including Nectoux and Duchen think it unlikely.
Fauré's affair with Emma Bardac is thought to have begun after Dolly was born, though there is
no conclusive evidence either way.
During the 1890s Fauré's fortunes improved. When Ernest Guiraud, professor of composition at
the Paris Conservatoire, died in 1892, Saint-Saëns encouraged Fauré to apply for the vacant post.
The faculty of the Conservatoire regarded Fauré as dangerously modern, and its head, Ambroise
Thomas, blocked the appointment, declaring, "Fauré? Never! If he's appointed, I resign."[66]
However, Fauré was appointed to another of Guiraud's posts, inspector of the music
conservatories in the French provinces.[67] He disliked the prolonged travelling around the
country that the work entailed, but the post gave him a steady income and enabled him to give up
teaching amateur pupils.
In 1896 Ambroise Thomas died, and Théodore Dubois took over as head of the Conservatoire.
Fauré succeeded Dubois as chief organist of the Madeleine. Dubois' move had further
repercussions: Jules Massenet, professor of composition at the Conservatoire, had expected to
succeed Thomas, but had overplayed his hand by insisting on being appointed for life.[69] He
was turned down, and when Dubois was appointed instead, Massenet resigned his professorship
in fury.[70] Fauré was appointed in his place.[71] He taught many young composers, including
Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin, Louis Aubert, Jean Roger-Ducasse, George
Enescu, Paul Ladmirault, Alfredo Casella and Nadia Boulanger.[14] In Fauré's view, his students
32
needed a firm grounding in the basic skills, which he was happy to delegate to his capable
assistant André Gedalge.[72] His own part came in helping them make use of these skills in the
way that suited each student's talents. Roger-Ducasse later wrote: "Taking up whatever the pupils
were working on, he would evoke the rules of the form at hand ... and refer to examples, always
drawn from the masters."[73] Ravel always remembered Fauré's open-mindedness as a teacher.
Having received Ravel's string quartet with less than his usual enthusiasm, Fauré asked to see the
manuscript again a few days later, saying, "I could have been wrong".[74] The musicologist
Henry Prunières wrote, "What Fauré developed among his pupils was taste, harmonic sensibility,
the love of pure lines, of unexpected and colorful modulations; but he never gave them [recipes]
for composing according to his style and that is why they all sought and found their own paths in
many different, and often opposed, directions."
Fauré's works of the last years of the century include incidental music for the English premiere
of Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande (1898) and Prométhée, a lyric tragedy composed
for the amphitheatre at Béziers. Written for outdoor performance, the work is scored for huge
instrumental and vocal forces. Its premiere in August 1900 was a great success, and it was
revived at Béziers the following year and in Paris in 1907. A version with orchestration for
normal opera house-sized forces was given at the Paris Opéra in May 1917 and received more
than forty performances in Paris thereafter.[n 9] From 1903 to 1921, Fauré regularly wrote music
criticism for Le Figaro, a role in which he was not at ease. Nectoux writes that Fauré's natural
kindness and broad-mindedness predisposed him to emphasise the positive aspects of a work.
In 1905 a scandal erupted in French musical circles over the country's top musical prize, the Prix
de Rome. Fauré's pupil, Maurice Ravel, had been eliminated prematurely in his sixth attempt for
this award, and many believed that reactionary elements within the Conservatoire had played a
part in it.[77] Dubois, who became the subject of much censure, announced his retirement and
stepped down at once.[78] Appointed in his place, and with the support of the French
government, Fauré radically changed the administration and curriculum. He appointed
independent external judges to decide on admissions, examinations and competitions, a move
which enraged faculty members who had given preferential treatment to their private pupils;
feeling themselves deprived of a considerable extra income, many of them resigned.[79] Fauré
was dubbed "Robespierre" by disaffected members of the old guard as he modernised and
broadened the range of music taught at the Conservatoire. As Nectoux puts it, "where Auber,
Halévy and especially Meyerbeer had reigned supreme ... it was now possible to sing an aria by
Rameau or even some Wagner – up to now a forbidden name within the Conservatoire's walls".
[80] The curriculum was broadened to range from Renaissance polyphony to the works of
Debussy.
Fauré's new position left him better off financially. However, while he also became much more
widely known as a composer, running the Conservatoire left him with no more time for
composition than when he was struggling to earn a living as an organist and piano teacher.[81]
As soon as the working year was over, in the last days of July, he would leave Paris and spend
33
the two months until early October in a hotel, usually by one of the Swiss lakes, to concentrate
on composition.[82] His works from this period include his lyric opera, Pénélope (1913), and
some of his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle La chanson d'Ève, Op. 95, completed
in 1910) and piano pieces (Nocturnes Nos. 9–11; Barcarolles Nos. 7–11, written between 1906
and 1914).
Fauré was elected to the Institut de France in 1909, after his father-in-law and Saint-Saëns, both
long-established members, had canvassed strongly on his behalf. He won the ballot by a narrow
margin, with 18 votes against 16 for the other candidate, Widor.[83][n 10] In the same year a
group of young composers led by Ravel and Koechlin broke with the Société Nationale de
Musique, which under the presidency of Vincent d'Indy had become a reactionary organisation,
and formed a new group, the Société Musicale Indépendante. While Fauré accepted the
presidency of this society, he also remained a member of the older one and continued on the best
of terms with d'Indy; his sole concern was the fostering of new music.[83] In 1911 he oversaw
the Conservatoire's move to new premises in the rue de Madrid.[82] During this time, Fauré
developed serious problems with his hearing. Not only did he start to go deaf, but sounds became
distorted, so that high and low notes sounded painfully out of tune to him.[85]
The turn of the 20th century saw a rise in the popularity of Fauré's music in Britain, and to a
lesser extent in Germany, Spain and Russia.[86] He visited England frequently, and an invitation
to play at Buckingham Palace in 1908 opened many other doors in London and beyond.[87] He
attended the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony, in 1908, and dined with the composer
afterwards.[88] Elgar later wrote to their mutual friend Frank Schuster that Fauré "was such a
real gentleman – the highest kind of Frenchman and I admired him greatly."[89] Elgar tried to
get Fauré's Requiem put on at the Three Choirs Festival, but it did not finally have its English
premiere until 1937, nearly fifty years after its first performance in France.[89] Composers from
other countries also loved and admired Fauré. In the 1880s Tchaikovsky had thought him
"adorable";[90] Albéniz and Fauré were friends and correspondents until the former's early death
in 1909;[91] Richard Strauss sought his advice;[92] and in Fauré's last years, the young
American, Aaron Copland was a devoted admirer.
The outbreak of the First World War almost stranded Fauré in Germany, where he had gone for
his annual composing retreat. He managed to get from Germany into Switzerland, and thence to
Paris.[93] He remained in France for the duration of the war. When a group of French musicians
led by Saint-Saëns tried to organise a boycott of German music, Fauré and Messager dissociated
themselves from the idea, though the disagreement did not affect their friendship with SaintSaëns.[n 11] Fauré did not recognise nationalism in music, seeing in his art "a language
belonging to a country so far above all others that it is dragged down when it has to express
feelings or individual traits that belong to any particular nation."[96] Nonetheless, he was aware
that his own music was respected rather than loved in Germany. In January 1905, visiting
Frankfurt and Cologne for concerts of his music, he had written: "The criticisms of my music
have been that it's a bit cold and too well brought up! There's no question about it, French and
German are two different things."[97]
[edit]Last years and legacy
34
In 1920, at the age of 75, Fauré retired from the Conservatoire because of his increasing deafness
and frailty.[14] In that year he received the Grand-Croix of the Légion d'honneur, an honour rare
for a musician. In 1922 the president of the republic, Alexandre Millerand, led a public tribute to
Fauré, a national hommage, described in The Musical Times as "a splendid celebration at the
Sorbonne, in which the most illustrious French artists participated, [which] brought him great
joy. It was a poignant spectacle, indeed: that of a man present at a concert of his own works and
able to hear not a single note. He sat gazing before him pensively, and, in spite of everything,
grateful and content."
Fauré suffered from poor health in his later years, brought on in part by heavy smoking. Despite
this, he remained available to young composers, including members of Les Six, most of whom
were devoted to him.[85][n 12] Nectoux writes, "In old age he attained a kind of serenity,
without losing any of his remarkable spiritual vitality, but rather removed from the sensualism
and the passion of the works he wrote between 1875 and 1895."[14]
In his last months, Fauré struggled to complete a string quartet. Twenty years earlier he had been
the dedicatee of Ravel's String Quartet. Ravel and others urged Fauré to compose one of his own.
He refused for many years, on the grounds that it was too difficult. When he finally decided to
write it, he did so in trepidation, telling his wife, "I've started a Quartet for strings, without piano.
This is a genre which Beethoven in particular made famous, and causes all those who are not
Beethoven to be terrified of it."[99] He worked on the piece for a year, finishing it on 11
September 1924, less than two months before he died, working long hours towards the end to
complete it.[100] The quartet was premiered after his death;[101] he declined an offer to have it
performed privately for him in his last days, as his hearing had deteriorated to the point where
musical sounds were horribly distorted in his ear.
Fauré died in Paris from pneumonia on 4 November 1924 at the age of 79. He was given a state
funeral at the Église de la Madeleine and is buried in the Passy Cemetery in Paris.[103]
After Fauré's death, the Conservatoire abandoned his radicalism and became resistant to new
trends in music, with Fauré's own harmonic practice being held up as the farthest limit of
modernity, beyond which students should not go.[104] His successor, Henri Rabaud, director of
the Conservatoire from 1922 to 1941, declared "modernism is the enemy".[105] The generation
of students born between the wars rejected this outdated premise, turning for inspiration to
Bartók, the Second Viennese School, and the latest works of Stravinsky.[104]
In a centenary tribute in 1945, the musicologist Leslie Orrey wrote in The Musical Times: "'More
profound than Saint-Saëns, more varied than Lalo, more spontaneous than d'Indy, more classic
than Debussy, Gabriel Fauré is the master par excellence of French music, the perfect mirror of
our musical genius.' Perhaps, when English musicians get to know his work better, these words
of Roger-Ducasse will seem, not over-praise, but no more than his due."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (German: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ amaˈdeus ˈmoːtsaʁt], English see fn.),[1]
baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart[2] (27 January 1756 – 5
December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.
35
Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard
and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he
was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better
position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from
his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial
security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies,
concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of
his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived
by his wife Constanze and two sons.
Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that
encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. He composed over 600
works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and
choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence
on subsequent Western art music is profound; Beethoven composed his own early works in the
shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100
years.
Family and childhood
Anonymous portrait of the child Mozart, possibly by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni; painted in 1763
on commission from Leopold Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) and
Anna Maria, née Pertl (1720–1778), at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg. This was the capital of the
Archbishopric of Salzburg, a former ecclesiastical principality in what is now Austria, then part
of the Holy Roman Empire.[4] He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in
infancy.[5] His elder sister was Maria Anna (1751–1829), nicknamed "Nannerl". Mozart was
baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in
Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called
himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart"[6] as an adult, but Mozart's name had many variants.
Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg,[7] was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In
1743, he was appointed as fourth violinist in the musical establishment of Count Leopold Anton
von Firmian, the ruling Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.[8] Four years later, he married Anna
Maria in Salzburg. Leopold became the orchestra's deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the
year of his son's birth, Leopold published a violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen
Violinschule, which achieved success.
When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father while her three-year-old
brother looked on. Years later, after her brother's death, she reminisced:
He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his
pleasure showed that it sounded good. [...] In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it
were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. [...] He could play it faultlessly
36
and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. [...] At the age of five, he was already
composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.
These early pieces, K. 1–5, were recorded in the Nannerl Notenbuch.
Biographer Maynard Solomon[10] notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his
children, there is evidence that Mozart was keen to progress beyond what he was taught. His first
ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were of his own initiative
and came as a surprise to his father.[11] Leopold eventually gave up composing when his son's
musical talents became evident.[12] In his early years, Mozart's father was his only teacher.
Along with music, he taught his children languages and academic subjects.[10]
1762–73: Travel
Main articles: Mozart family grand tour and Mozart in Italy
During Mozart's youth, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl
performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition, in 1762, at the court of the Princeelector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A
long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking the family to the courts of
Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zurich,
Donaueschingen, and Munich.[citation needed]
During this trip, Mozart met a number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of
other composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom Mozart
visited in London in 1764 and 1765. The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained
there until December 1768. In 1767, during this period, Mozart composed the Latin drama
Apollo et Hyacinthus first performed in Salzburg University.
These trips were often difficult and travel conditions were primitive.[14] The family had to wait
for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility and they endured long, near-fatal illnesses
far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764)[15] then both children (The Hague,
autumn 1765).
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Mozart set off for Italy, leaving Mozart's mother and
sister at home. This travel lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys,
Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer.
Mozart met Josef Mysliveček and Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna and was accepted as a
member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. In Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere
twice in performance in the Sistine Chapel and wrote it out from memory, thus producing the
first unauthorized copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican.
In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), which was performed with
success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father later twice to Milan
(August–December 1771; October 1772 – March 1773) for the composition and premieres of
37
Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a
professional appointment for his son in Italy, but these hopes were never realized.[19]
Toward the end of the final Italian journey, Mozart wrote the first of his works to be still widely
performed today, the solo motet Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165.
Early employment
1773–77: Salzburg court
After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a
court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The
composer had a great number of friends and admirers in Salzburg[20] and had the opportunity to
work in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, masses, serenades, and a
few minor operas. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for
violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily
increased in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are now
staples of the repertoire. In 1776 he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the Eflat concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.[21]
Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontented with Salzburg and
redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a
year;[22] Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these.
The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theater was closed, especially since the other
theater in Salzburg was largely reserved for visiting troupes.[23]
Two long expeditions in search of work interrupted this long Salzburg stay: Mozart and his father
visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich from 6 December 1774 to March
1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with
the premiere of Mozart's opera La finta giardiniera.[24]
1777–78: Paris journey
In August 1777, Mozart resigned his Salzburg position[26] and, on 23 September, ventured out
once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.[27]
Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in
Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters in a musical
family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing,[28] and
Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778[29] to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris
hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an
appointment.[30] He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables.[31] The nadir of the visit
occurred when Mozart's mother was taken ill and died on 3 July 1778.[32] There had been delays
in calling a doctor—probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds.
While Mozart was in Paris, his father was pursuing opportunities for his son back in Salzburg.
[34] With the support of local nobility, Mozart was offered a post as court organist and
concertmaster. The yearly salary was 450 florins,[35] but he was reluctant to accept.[36] After
leaving Paris on in September 1778, he tarried in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain
an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very
38
successful singer, but she was no longer interested in him.[37] Mozart finally reached home on
15 January 1779 and took up the new position, but his discontent with Salzburg was
undiminished.
Among the better known works that Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano
sonata K. 310/300d and the "Paris" Symphony (no. 31); these were performed in Paris on 12 and
18 June 1778.
Vienna
1781: Departure
The Mozart family c. 1780. The portrait on the wall is of Mozart's mother.
In January 1781, Mozart's opera Idomeneo premiered with "considerable success" in Munich.
[39] The following March, Mozart was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop
Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne.
Fresh from the adulation he had earned in Munich, Mozart was offended when Colloredo treated
him as a mere servant and particularly when the archbishop forbade him to perform before the
Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary. The resulting
quarrel came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following
month, permission was granted but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed
literally "with a kick in the arse", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart
decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.
The quarrel with the archbishop went harder for Mozart because his father sided against him.
Hoping fervently that he would obediently follow Colloredo back to Salzburg, Mozart's father
exchanged intense letters with his son, urging him to be reconciled with their employer. Mozart
passionately defended his intention to pursue an independent career in Vienna. The debate ended
when Mozart was dismissed by the archbishop, freeing himself both of his employer and his
father's demands to return. Solomon characterizes Mozart's resignation as a "revolutionary step",
and it greatly altered the course of his life.
Early years
See also: Haydn and Mozart and Mozart and Freemasonry
Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He performed often as a pianist, notably in a
competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781,[40] and he soon
"had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna".[40] He also prospered as a
composer, and in 1782 completed the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction
from the Seraglio"), which premiered on 16 July 1782 and achieved a huge success. The work
was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe",[40] and fully established
Mozart's reputation as a composer.
Near the height of his quarrels with Colloredo, Mozart moved in with the Weber family, who had
moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now
taking in lodgers to make ends meet.[42] Aloysia, who had earlier rejected Mozart's suit, was
39
now married to the actor and artist Joseph Lange. Mozart's interest shifted to the third Weber
daughter, Constanze. The courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence
indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly separated in April 1782.[43] Mozart faced a very
difficult task in getting his father's permission for the marriage.[44] The couple were finally
married on 4 August 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before his father's consent arrived
in the mail.
The couple had six children, of whom only two survived infancy:
Raimund Leopold (17 June – 19 August 1783)
Karl Thomas Mozart (21 September 1784 – 31 October 1858)
Johann Thomas Leopold (18 October – 15 November 1786)
Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friedericke Maria Anna (27 December 1787 – 29 June 1788)
Anna Maria (died soon after birth, 25 December 1789)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (26 July 1791 – 29 July 1844)
In the course of 1782 and 1783, Mozart became intimately acquainted with the work of Johann
Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as a result of the influence of Gottfried van Swieten,
who owned many manuscripts of the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these scores inspired
compositions in Baroque style, and later influenced his personal musical language, for example
in fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute") and the finale of Symphony No. 41.[8]
In 1783, Mozart and his wife visited his family in Salzburg. His father and sister were cordially
polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical
pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with
Constanze singing a solo part.
Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna around 1784, and the two composers became friends. When
Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's
six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from
the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781.[46]
Haydn in 1785 told Mozart's father: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the
greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest
skill in composition."
From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as soloist, presenting three or four
new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theaters was scarce, he booked
unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof (an apartment building), and the ballroom
of the Mehlgrube (a restaurant).[48] The concerts were very popular, and the concertos he
premiered at them are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period
Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted
audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a
major musical genre".
With substantial returns from his concerts and elsewhere, Mozart and his wife adopted a rather
plush lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a yearly rent of 460 florins. Mozart
40
bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about
300.[49] The Mozarts sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school,[50][51] and
kept servants. Saving was therefore impossible, and the short period of financial success did
nothing to soften the hardship the Mozarts were later to experience.
On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit
("Beneficence").[54] Freemasonry played an important role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he
attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions he composed
Masonic music, e. g. the Maurerische Trauermusik.
1786–87: Return to opera
Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart did little operatic writing for
the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der
Schauspieldirektor. He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos.
Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing[55][page needed] and
began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. 1786 saw the
successful premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year
was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera Don Giovanni,
which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, and also met with success in Vienna in
1788. The two are among Mozart's most important works and are mainstays of the operatic
repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty for both
listeners and performers. These developments were not witnessed by Mozart's father, who had
died on 28 May 1787.
In December 1787, Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor
Joseph II appointed him as his "chamber composer", a post that had fallen vacant the previous
month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year,
and required Mozart only to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal. This
modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that
Joseph's aim was to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better
prospects.
In 1787 the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with
Mozart.[57] No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met.
Later years and death
Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786 he had ceased to
appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank.[58] This was a difficult time for
musicians in Vienna because of the Austro-Turkish War, and both the general level of prosperity
and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined.[55]
By mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of
Alsergrund.[58] Although it has been thought that Mozart reduced his rental expenses, research
shows that by moving to the suburb, Mozart had not reduced his expenses (as claimed in his
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letter to Puchberg), but merely increased the housing space at his disposal.[59] Mozart began to
borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg; "a pitiful
sequence of letters pleading for loans" survives.[60] Maynard Solomon and others have
suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems that his output slowed.[61]
Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41, all from 1788),
and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte, premiered in 1790.
Around this time, Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: to Leipzig,
Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789, and to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities
in 1790. The trips produced only isolated success and did not relieve the family's financial
distress.
1791
Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of great productivity—and by some
accounts, one of personal recovery.[62] He composed a great deal, including some of his most
admired works: the opera The Magic Flute; the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B-flat); the
Clarinet Concerto K. 622; the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat); the
motet Ave verum corpus K. 618; and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
Mozart's financial situation, a source of extreme anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve.
Although the evidence is inconclusive,[63] it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and
Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He
probably[vague] benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber
composer.[63] Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg, and made a start on
paying off his debts.
He experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably The Magic
Flute (which was performed several times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart's
death)[64] and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered on 15 November 1791.[65]
Final illness and death
Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the 6 September 1791 premiere of his opera La clemenza di
Tito, written in that same year on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities.[66] He
continued his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic
Flute on 30 September. His health deteriorated on 20 November, at which point he became
bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.[67]
Mozart was nursed in his final illness by his wife and her youngest sister, and was attended by
the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. He was mentally occupied with the task of finishing
his Requiem, but the evidence that he actually dictated passages to his student Franz Xaver
Süssmayr is minimal.[68][69]
Mozart died in his home on 5 December 1791 (aged 35) at 1:00 am. The New Grove describes
his funeral:
Mozart was interred in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at
the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners
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attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Jahn (1856) wrote
that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm
and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.[70]
The expression "common grave" refers to neither a communal grave nor a pauper's grave, but to
an individual grave for a member of the common people (i.e. not the aristocracy). Common
graves were subject to excavation after ten years; the graves of aristocrats were not.
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