September 23, 2019.Rameau and more. We have a large group of celebrants this week, and we’ll try to address all of them, even if only cursorily.Jean-Philippe Rameau is the oldest of them, he was born on September 25th of 1683 in Dijon.If Jean-Baptiste Lully created the grand French opera, it was Rameau, half a century later, who perfected it.One of many great examples of his art is Castor and Pollux, his tragédie en musique, musical tragedy as it was called at the time, similar to the Italian opera seria.Castor and Pollux was Rameau’s third opera (he started writing them only at age of 50 – before that he wrote mostly music for the harpsichord, much of it of the highest quality, and some choral music).Castor was premiered on October 24th of 1737 by the Académie Royale de Musique (the Royal Opera, founded in 1669 on the orders of Louis XIV and lead by Lully) at its theatre in the Palais-Royal (in our time the Opera performs at the Opéra Bastille and the Palais Garnier).Here’s Agnès Mellon in the aria Tristes Apprêts, with the ensemble Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie.
Two composers, who worked under the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, were born this week: Dmitry Shostakovich in St.-Petersburg, Russia, on September 25th of 1906, and Andrzej Panufnik, on September 24th of 1914, in Warsaw.The very talented Shostakovich became the national Soviet composer, even though during his long composing career he was threatened many times, and his music was occasionally banned; Panufnik, on the other hand, defected from Poland to the UK (you can read more about him here).
We’ve never written about the Armenian composer Komitas, the founder of the modern national school of music, who was born on September 26th of 1869 in Kütahya in Anatolia, Turkey, where many Armenians lived.Orphaned at 14, he was sent to a seminary in Etchmiadzin, the religious center of Armenia.It was during his years in Etchmiadzin that his love for music, especially Armenian folk music, became apparent.He started collecting local songs, as Bartók would do in Hungary some years later.In 1895 Komitas moved to Tbilisi (then Tiflis), the Georgian capital with a large Armenian community, and a year later – to Berlin where he studied at the prestigious Frederick William (now Humboldt) University.In 1899 he returned to Etchmiadzin and continued collected and publishing folk songs, eventually gathering 3000 pieces of music.In 1910 he moved to Constantinople, where he organized a choir; he toured widely with it, visiting France where his music was admired by Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré.In 1915, during the early days of the Armenian Genocide, he was deported to northern Anatolia.The hardships of exile deeply affected Komitas, and he returned to Constantinople a broken man.He was hospitalized and later moved to a psychiatric clinic in France, where lived for almost 20 years, never recovering.He died on October 22nd of 1935; a year later his remains were moved to Yerevan’s Pantheon of Armenian cultural figures.Here’s Komitas’s song “Krunk” (The Crane), transcribed by Georgy Saradjian and performed by Evgeny Kissin in 2015 during the series “With you Armenia,” dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
George Gershwin was also born this week, on September 26th of 1898.And then there is a whole group of absolutely brilliant performers, which we’ll list now but will get back to at a later date: pianists Glenn Gould and Alfred Cortot, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, the conductor Charles Munch and the tenor Fritz Wunderlich.
Rameau and more, 2019
September 23, 2019. Rameau and more. We have a large group of celebrants this week, and we’ll try to address all of them, even if only cursorily. Jean-Philippe Rameau is the oldest of
them, he was born on September 25th of 1683 in Dijon. If Jean-Baptiste Lully created the grand French opera, it was Rameau, half a century later, who perfected it. One of many great examples of his art is Castor and Pollux, his tragédie en musique, musical tragedy as it was called at the time, similar to the Italian opera seria. Castor and Pollux was Rameau’s third opera (he started writing them only at age of 50 – before that he wrote mostly music for the harpsichord, much of it of the highest quality, and some choral music). Castor was premiered on October 24th of 1737 by the Académie Royale de Musique (the Royal Opera, founded in 1669 on the orders of Louis XIV and lead by Lully) at its theatre in the Palais-Royal (in our time the Opera performs at the Opéra Bastille and the Palais Garnier). Here’s Agnès Mellon in the aria Tristes Apprêts, with the ensemble Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie.
Two composers, who worked under the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, were born this week: Dmitry Shostakovich in St.-Petersburg, Russia, on September 25th of 1906, and Andrzej Panufnik, on September 24th of 1914, in Warsaw. The very talented Shostakovich became the national Soviet composer, even though during his long composing career he was threatened many times, and his music was occasionally banned; Panufnik, on the other hand, defected from Poland to the UK (you can read more about him here).
We’ve never written about the Armenian composer Komitas, the founder of the modern national school of music, who was born on September 26th of 1869 in Kütahya in Anatolia, Turkey, where many Armenians lived. Orphaned at 14, he was sent to a seminary in Etchmiadzin, the religious center of Armenia. It was during his years in Etchmiadzin that his love for music, especially Armenian folk music, became apparent. He started collecting local songs, as Bartók would do in Hungary some years later. In 1895 Komitas moved to Tbilisi (then Tiflis), the Georgian capital with a large Armenian community, and a year later – to Berlin where he studied at the prestigious Frederick William (now Humboldt) University. In 1899 he returned to Etchmiadzin and continued collected and publishing folk songs, eventually gathering 3000 pieces of music. In 1910 he moved to Constantinople, where he organized a choir; he toured widely with it, visiting France where his music was admired by Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré. In 1915, during the early days of the Armenian Genocide, he was deported to northern Anatolia. The hardships of exile deeply affected Komitas, and he returned to Constantinople a broken man. He was hospitalized and later moved to a psychiatric clinic in France, where lived for almost 20 years, never recovering. He died on October 22nd of 1935; a year later his remains were moved to Yerevan’s Pantheon of Armenian cultural figures. Here’s Komitas’s song “Krunk” (The Crane), transcribed by Georgy Saradjian and performed by Evgeny Kissin in 2015 during the series “With you Armenia,” dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
George Gershwin was also born this week, on September 26th of 1898. And then there is a whole group of absolutely brilliant performers, which we’ll list now but will get back to at a later date: pianists Glenn Gould and Alfred Cortot, the violinist Jacques Thibaud, the conductor Charles Munch and the tenor Fritz Wunderlich.