This Week in Classical Music: November 18, 2019. Merula and Ormandy. Tarquinio Merula (not to be confused with Claudio Merulo), the Italian composer of the early Baroque, was born on November 24th of 1595 in Brusseto, Emilia-Romagna. (Brusseto, a town of only 7,000, has a rich musical history: Giuseppe Verdi, who was born in the nearby village of Le Roncole, went to school in Busseto and further studied there with the composer Ferdinando Provesi; the famous tenor Carlo Bergonzi owned a hotel in Busseto, he called it I due Foscari, after an opera by Verdi in which he sung with great success. Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni also grew up in Brusseto). Merula studied music in Cremona and worked as an organist there and in Lodi. In 1621 he traveled to Warsaw where he was offered a position of ‘organista di chiesa e di camera’ to Sigismund III, King of Poland. He stayed in Warsaw for five years, returning to Cremona in 1626. From that point on he lived and worked in two cities, Cremona and Bergamo, often moving not on his own volition. First, he served in the cathedral of Cremona, responsible for certain celebrations of the Madonna; in 1631 he went to Bergamo to assume the position of maestro di capella at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Just one year later he was dismissed for “indecency manifested towards several of his pupils” and returned to Cremona to assume his old position. There he had disagreements about his salary and in 1638 returned to Bergamo, this time serving at the Cathedral (the Cathedral and Santa Maria Maggiore are located next to each other in the historic center of the so-called Citta Alta, the oldest and the prettiest part of Bergamo). The two churches often used the same musicians but Merula often quarreled with his former employer. Still, he managed to stay in Bergamo till 1646, when he returned to Cremona, again to assume his old position; he lived in Cremona for the rest of his life and died there on December 10th of 1665.
Merula’s music followed the Venetian tradition of Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli. Here’s an example of his church music, a beautiful setting of Lauda Jerusalem from the 1640 collection of psalms and masses called Arpa Davidica. Giovanni Acciai leads the ensemble Nova Ars Cantandi. And here is a very different example, a secular piece called Aria sopra la ciaccona, from a collection published three years earlier, in 1637. It’s performed by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra under the direction of Paul Dyer.
November 18th marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Eugene Ormandy. He was born Jenő Blau in Budapest into a Jewish family in 1899. Blau changed his name to Eugene Ormandy when he moved to the US in 1921. A violinist whose American career wasn’t going well, he turned to conducting almost by chance. He slowly built up his career and was hired by the Philadelphia Orchestra in1936. He led the orchestra for the next 44 years, co-creating (with Leopold Stokowski) the famously lush “Philadelphia sound,” retiring as “conductor-laureate” in 1980. Some of Ormandy’s interpretations may seem a bit dated but nobody can deny the beauty of his orchestra’s sound.
Merula and Ormandy, 2019
This Week in Classical Music: November 18, 2019. Merula and Ormandy. Tarquinio Merula (not to be confused with Claudio Merulo), the Italian composer of the early Baroque, was
born on November 24th of 1595 in Brusseto, Emilia-Romagna. (Brusseto, a town of only 7,000, has a rich musical history: Giuseppe Verdi, who was born in the nearby village of Le Roncole, went to school in Busseto and further studied there with the composer Ferdinando Provesi; the famous tenor Carlo Bergonzi owned a hotel in Busseto, he called it I due Foscari, after an opera by Verdi in which he sung with great success. Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni also grew up in Brusseto). Merula studied music in Cremona and worked as an organist there and in Lodi. In 1621 he traveled to Warsaw where he was offered a position of ‘organista di chiesa e di camera’ to Sigismund III, King of Poland. He stayed in Warsaw for five years, returning to Cremona in 1626. From that point on he lived and worked in two cities, Cremona and Bergamo, often moving not on his own volition. First, he served in the cathedral of Cremona, responsible for certain celebrations of the Madonna; in 1631 he went to Bergamo to assume the position of maestro di capella at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Just one year later he was dismissed for “indecency manifested towards several of his pupils” and returned to Cremona to assume his old position. There he had disagreements about his salary and in 1638 returned to Bergamo, this time serving at the Cathedral (the Cathedral and Santa Maria Maggiore are located next to each other in the historic center of the so-called Citta Alta, the oldest and the prettiest part of Bergamo). The two churches often used the same musicians but Merula often quarreled with his former employer. Still, he managed to stay in Bergamo till 1646, when he returned to Cremona, again to assume his old position; he lived in Cremona for the rest of his life and died there on December 10th of 1665.
Merula’s music followed the Venetian tradition of Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli. Here’s an example of his church music, a beautiful setting of Lauda Jerusalem from the 1640 collection of psalms and masses called Arpa Davidica. Giovanni Acciai leads the ensemble Nova Ars Cantandi. And here is a very different example, a secular piece called Aria sopra la ciaccona, from a collection published three years earlier, in 1637. It’s performed by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra under the direction of Paul Dyer.
November 18th marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Eugene Ormandy. He was born Jenő Blau in Budapest into a Jewish family in 1899. Blau changed his name to Eugene Ormandy when he moved to the US in 1921. A violinist whose American career wasn’t going well, he turned to conducting almost by chance. He slowly built up his career and was hired by the Philadelphia Orchestra in1936. He led the orchestra for the next 44 years, co-creating (with Leopold Stokowski) the famously lush “Philadelphia sound,” retiring as “conductor-laureate” in 1980. Some of Ormandy’s interpretations may seem a bit dated but nobody can deny the beauty of his orchestra’s sound.