This Week in Classical Music: June 9, 2025.  Mantua.  Last week, we wrote about Cremona, one of the most musical cities in the northern part of Italy.  We should mention Mantua, which was also on our itinerary.  For two centuries, from mid-15^th to mid-17^th, Mantua was even more prominent; musically, the city was second only to Ferrara, and, as the ruling families of the cities, the Gonzagas and the d’Este, were very close, intermarried and friendly, the cultural life of these two cities was similar.  For example, Francesco II Gonzaga (1466 – 1519), Marquess of Mantua (the lords of Mantua were made Dukes in 1530 by the Emperor Charles V), was married to Isabella d’Este, the daughter of Ercole d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara.  While her husband was fighting wars on behalf of the Republic of Venice and having numerous affairs, Isabella ruled Mantua on his behalf, promoting arts and music. Isabella was born in Ferrara in 1474 and died in Mantua in 1539, so her life covered the richest period of the Renaissance.  She extended her patronage to some of the best painters of the time, among them Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna, Giorgione, Leonardo, Perugino, Rafael, and Titian.  Isabella’s favorite composer was Bartolomeo Tromboncino (1470 – 1535).  Here’s Vergine bella, one of his frottolas, secular songs of the time (a predecessor to the madrigal).  The great British soprano Emma Kirkby is accompanied by the Consort of Musicke under the direction of Anthony Rooley. 

Isabella’s son Federico II Gonzaga, the first Duke of Mantua, commissioned Palazzo Te to Giulio Romano, Rafael’s favorite student.  The result is one of the most unusually decorated palaces of Renaissance Europe.  Federico also established the first permanent cappella.  Giaches de Wert became the maestro di cappella under the Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, who himself was a composer.  Among the composers who worked at the court were Palestrina (briefly) and Benedetto Pallavicino (1551 – 1601), an associate of de Wert and, for a while, Monteverdi’s rival.  Pallavicino was a maestro di cappella for about five years.  Here is his madrigal Cor mio, deh, non languire.  The performers, again, are the Consort of Musicke under the direction of Anthony Rooley.  Beautifully done.

The 22-year-old Claudio Monteverdi arrived in Mantua in 1589, two years after the coronation of Vincenzo I Gonzaga as the Duke of Mantua.  Vincenzo was a great patron of the arts, supporting poets (Tasso), architects, and composers, Monteverdi first and foremost.  Monteverdi assumed the directorship of the cappella in 1601 and stayed in Mantua till 1613. Some of the first operas were staged in Mantua: Monteverdi’s Orfeo was staged there in 1607.  His Arianna and Il ballo delle ingrate, an opera-ballet, was staged a year later. Other prominent composers were active during the same time, one of them Salamone Rossi, a Jewish composer and virtuoso violinist born in the city.  He served at the court from 1587 to 1626; Mantua at the time had a large Jewish community, protected by the duke. 

Vincenzo died in 1612, and the great period of music development in Mantua came to an end.  Some notable composers continued visiting Mantua, as Frescobaldi did in 1615, or, later, Antonio Caldara, who was the maestro di cappella to the last duke of Mantua, Ferdinando Carlo.  Caldara composed and staged several operas in Mantua in the early 1700s.

Here’s a madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi, De la bellezza le dovute lodi, from his Mantuan period.  It is one of the songs from his 1606 publication, Scherzi Musicali (Musical jokes).  The performers are the Concerto delle Dame di Ferrara, Sergio Vartolo conducting.

This Week in Classical Music: June 2, 2025.  Cremona.   In our latest Italian travels, we encountered several musically important cities, and Cremona is one of them.  Cremona is somewhat unusual in this respect.  As a rule, music flourished at the courts of the powerful dukes, as it did in the neighboring Mantua under the Gonzagas.  Cremona never had a prince: during its long and turbulent history, it fought many enemies, belonged to different parties (the Guelfs, the supporters of the Pope, and sometimes to the Ghibellines, the allies of the Holy Roman Emperor) and at different times was occupied by the Duchy of Milan, the Genovese Republic, the French and the Spanish.  And for a while, it was an independent commune, led by Capitano del Popolo.  One thing it never had was a substantial court.  Therefore, music-making was concentrated at the Cathedral, the Duomo.  We must say that the Duomo is magnificent, one of the best examples of Romanesque architecture in Northern Italy.  Next to the Duomo stands the Torrazzo, the tallest pre-modern campanile (bell tower) in Italy and Cremona’s symbol.  On the other side is the Baptistry.  The cathedral was originally built in the 12^th century in the then-current Romanesque style but was enlarged in the subsequent centuries, acquiring many Renaissance elements.  It’s decorated with many wonderful sculptures, some dating back to the 12^th century.  The Torrazzo has 500 steps, and if you brave them, you’ll be rewarded with a wonderful view from the top.

Marc'Antonio Ingegneri was the most important composer to serve as the Maestro di Cappella at the Duomo, though we should also mention the Bishop, Nicolò Sfondrato, later Pope Gregory XIV, who was instrumental in promoting music and arts in the city.  Ingegneri was born in Verona sometime around 1535 and moved to Cremona in the late 1560s.  This was the time of the Counter-Reformation, and one of the conditions imposed by the Council of Trent, which produced the Counter-Reformation program, was that the words in Latin masses had to be legible.  This, as we know, almost killed the polyphonic mass, which survived thanks to Palestrina’s mastery.  Ingegneri worked in the style of Palestrina (some of his work was even attributed, incorrectly, to the great Roman).  Here’s Ingegneri’s Salve Regina, performed by the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, Gareth Wilson conducting.

But of course, the real fame was brought to Cremona by its luthiers: Cremona is rightfully considered the birthplace of the modern violin.  The instruments made by the Amati family, Antonio Stradivari, and Giuseppe "del Gesù" Guarneri in the late 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries are still considered nonpareil.  All of the Cremonese violin makers learned from each other: both Stradivari and Guarneri were pupils of Nicolò Amati, who in turn apprenticed with his father, Girolamo Amati.  Girolamo’s father, Andrea Amati, born in 1505, is considered the first master to make a modern violin.

Cremona has a wonderful Museo del Violino (Violin Museum).  It has a section dedicated to the history of string instruments and one on violin-making.  All of it is done in good taste.  But the most important part is the beautiful hall displaying rare instruments by the Amati family, Stradivari and Guarneri (there are other rooms with hundreds of instruments, some very important, for example, from the luthiers like Francesco Rugeri and Carlo Bergonzi).  The museum has a small but beautiful auditorium, where several times a month the magnificent instruments from the museum’s collection are showcased by young musicians.  For a small fee, anybody can come and listen.  And clearly, the violin-making is still flourishing in Cremona: as you walk the streets of the city, you encounter many luthiers’ shops, some of them well-known around the world.

This Week in Classical Music: May 26, 2025.   Still in Italy, traveling.  Just two names that we’d like to mention: Isaac Albeniz, probably one of the most important Spanish composers since the Renaissance era, born May 29^th of 1860, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a Jewish Austrian child prodigy, born on the same day in 1897, who had great talent and a difficult life, some of it of his own making. 

This Week in Classical Music: May 19, 2025.   On the (Italian) road.  The only significant anniversary this week is that of Richard Wagner, who was born on May 22^nd of 1813, in Leipzig.  Nothing can be further from our minds than the Teutonic music of this great composer.  We’ll have a chance to get back to him in the future, as we’ve done many times in the past.  Also, Alicia de Larrocha’s birthday is on May 23^rd.  She was born in 1923, and is one of our favorite pianists of the 20^th century. 

This Week in Classical Music: May 12, 2025.  Monteverdi, Two Frenchmen, and Travels.  Claudio Monteverdi, one of the greatest composers in classical music history, was born in Cremona and baptized there on May 15^th of 1567.  He lived during a period of transition, at the end of what we call Renaissance music and the beginning of the Baroque, which he helped to forge.  He was also the most important composer of the nascent art of opera.  We’ve written about him many times: here, for example, is the entry celebrating his 450^th anniversary.  Here is Magnificat II, from the volume Vespro della Beata Vergine, published in 1610.  The Magnificat was composed in Mantua, where Monteverdi served at the court of the Gonzagas.  The recording (La Capella Reial, Coro Del Centro Musica Antica Di Padova, under the direction of Jordi Savall) was also made in Mantua, at the church of Santa Barbara.  And speaking of Cremona and Mantua, see below. 

Two Frenchmen, Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré, were born on the same day, May 12^th, three years apart: Massenet in 1842, Fauré in 1845.  Massenet is famous for two operas, Manon and Werther, though there are 28 more that he wrote.  He was considered musically conservative even during his life, but, quite clearly, had a melodic talent.  Fauré, on the other hand, was very much forward-looking and influenced many French composers.  

Two more somewhat “round” anniversaries: the Russian composer Anatoly Lyadov was born 170 years ago, on May 12^th of 1855.  He was known for his indolence as much as for his talent.  Expelled from Rimsky-Korsakov’s class for absenteeism, he managed to complete his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory two years later.  His best-known compositions are tone poems Baba Yaga, Kikimora, The Enchanted Lake and some short piano pieces.  The great German conductor Otto Klemperer was born 140 years ago, on May 14^th of 1885. 

We mentioned two cities in connection with Monteverdi, Cremona and Mantua.  Classical Connect will be traveling the next two weeks or so and hopes to visit both cities.  We’ll write about them upon return. 

This Week in Classical Music: May 5, 2025.  Double birthday, Sofronitsky.  May 7^th is in two days, a date that creates a yearly conundrum: the birthday of two great composers, Johannes Brahms and Peter Tchaikovsky.  Only seven years separate them (Brahms was born in 1833, Tchaikovsky in 1840), both had worked with the “large form”: symphonies, concertos, but musically, they are very different.  Brahms worked under the influence and in the tradition of Beethoven, while Tchaikovsky attempted to create a new national musical style.   In some of our posts we had tried to address their similarities (both wrote some of the best violin and piano concertos in the classical repertory, their symphonies are momentous, etc.), other times we tried to accentuate the numerous differences; we wrote about one composer and then another.  None of it worked too well.  We even noted that both wrote some music quite popular with the public, that we dislike strongly (more of it, in fact, than other composers of their stature): Tchaikovsky in his ballets, Brahms in his Hungarian-themed pieces.  So today we’ll abandon our efforts and turn to other musicians who have their anniversaries this week. 

An important Russian pianist, Vladimir Sofronitsky, was born on May 8^th of 1901, in St. Petersburg.  Sofronitsky, one of the greatest interpreters of the music of Scriabin, was married to the composer’s eldest daughter (they married in 1920, five years after Scriabin’s death).  The Sofronitskys temporarily moved to Warsaw in 1903, where Vladimir started his piano lessons.  In 1913, the family returned to St. Petersburg, and in 1916, Vladimir entered the conservatory, where his classmates were Dmitry Shostakovich and the pianist Maria Yudina.  In 1928, Sofronitsky went to Paris, where he met and befriended two recent émigré composers, Sergei Prokofiev and Nikolai Medtner.  In 1930, he was invited to teach at the Leningrad (former St. Petersburg) conservatory.  He was living in the city during the catastrophic WWII blockade, when more than 600,000 Leningraders died of starvation.  Sofronitsky was evacuated in April of 1942 and brought to Moscow, where he lived for the rest of his life.  For many years, he taught at the Moscow Conservatory.  In addition to Scriabin, Sofronitsky was known for his interpretation of the music of Chopin, Schubert and Schumann.  His technique was far from perfect (in that he reminds us of Alfred Cortot), but his musicianship was impeccable.  Sofronitsky died in Moscow in 1961.  Here’s his recording of Scriabin’s breakthrough Sonata no. 3.  There is some confusion as to when this recording was made; we believe it’s a later one, a studio recording from 1961, the year of Sofronitsky’s death. 

Two prominent conductors were also born this week: Jascha Horenstein, on May 6^th of 1898 in Kiev, the Russian Empire, and Carlo Maria Giulini, on May 9^th of 1914.  Horenstein studied in Vienna and worked as an assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler.  He moved to the US in 1940.  Horenstein was an early champion of the music of Gustav Mahler; he also conducted many composers of the 20^th century.  Giulini was born in a small coastal town of Barletta, Apulia, famous for the 5^th century bronze statue, Colossus of Barletta.  Giulini studied at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome and later played the violin in the Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, where he worked with some of the best conductors.  He started conducting late, partly because during the war he was drafted into Mussolini’s army (a pacifist, he claimed not to have shot a single person).  From 1944, his conducting career flourished.  He started at the radio orchestras of RAI, the Italian radio corporation, then worked at the Bergamo opera, where he led performances of La Traviata with Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi alternating the role of Violetta (what a treat that was!).  He was noticed by Toscanini and Victor de Sabata, whom he replaced in 1953 as the music director of La Scala.  The following five years, with Giulini at the helm, were some of the greatest in the history of the theater.  He went on to conduct major orchestras in Europe and the US, including the Chicago Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic.  Giulini lived to the age of 91 and died in 2005.