Heinrich Heine

 Now, what is music? This question occupied me for hours before I fell asleep last night. Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter, a sort of nebulous mediator, like and unlike each of the things it mediates, spirit that requires manifestation in time and matter that can do without space.

 We do not know what music is.

Heinrich Heine, "Letters on the French Stage" --- taken from the book by John Dizikes, "Opera in America: A Cultural History"

John Dizikes

 Venice was a commercial republic whose prosperity was based upon trade, with a vigorous middle class not overawed by the aristocracy. Yet its patrician elite, as ancient and as self-conscious of its privileges as any in Europe, set the tone of the city's life and was resourceful in maintaining its position and power. Since there was no court and no court-sponsored entertainment, the city combined private and public efforts. The public opera house evolved from this tradition. The palaces of the Venetian patricians (San Cassiano has been the home of the Tron family) often had theaters in them, used for numerous private theatrical performances. Now, Venetian noblemen formed companies to build and manage opera houses, drawing audiences from the entire community and not just one class. And eyewitness noted that the Venetians competed to give these "as they say, works in music, ample and exquisite form." Opera became a popular entertainment, "the industry of the people, the wealth of the country itself," entertainment specially suited to a city which, with its open, sunny piazzas, was like "one vast dwelling-place where the inhabitants could conduct their lives in the open, just as if they were at home, rich and poor united as it were in the bond of a common existence." The Venetian opera house was truly revolutionary. Money, more than class, determined who could attend.

 No wonder musicians like Claudio Monteverdi, Piero Cavalli, and Pietro Cesti flocked to the city. Venice created its own style of opera, combining high drama and bawdy farce and emphasizing spectacular stage effects. Its theaters had the most sophisticated stage machinery in Europe. The English traveler John Evelyn was impressed by the "variety of scenes painted and contrived with no less art of perspective, and machines for flying in the air, and other wonderful notions." The aria became a more integral part of the musical drama and the role of the orchestra was also expanded, using carefully selected instruments to give dramatic color to the music. The place of the orchestra in the theater was fixed, in front of the stage, and its members became regularly employed professional musicians. Another significant innovation followed from the increased emphasis given to songs: singers began to play a more independent role. Written contracts for performers, simple agreements to appear at a certain theater for a given fee, date from this period. Along with stars singers, Venice also produced the first touring companies.    

Tracts of open land were not readily available. It was therefore important to pack as many people as possible into the available space, so Venetian opera houses expanded vertically and eventually became much larger than court theaters. The San Moise Theater, opened in 1640, seated eight hundred and came to be thought small by Venetian standards. In the interior the Venetians introduced another of their fusions of the public and the private----the opera box. San Cassiano was built in the form of a U. Around the perimeter of the auditorium were installed rings of walled-off, self-contained compartmens, or boxes, tiers of these rising one above the other to as many as seven levels. At the back of each box was a "withdrawing" room sometimes equipped with a fireplace, in which food and drinks were served. Everyone paid a fee for entering the opera house for each performance. In addition, boxholders paid annual rent for their boxes, which provided a substantial part of the operating income of the companies which built the theaters.

 Financially, in terms of use of space, the opera box was inefficient. Open galleries would have held more people. But that was beside the point. The Venetian opera theater was a second house for citizens, the box another room in that house. If Saint Mark's Square was "the drawing room of Europe," a box at the opera was the boudoir adjoining it, where politics and fashion (and sometimes music) were discussed. Possession of a box was thought of in familial, not individual, terms. The box became part of hereditary rights, belonging to it so long as the rent was paid; at the death of a tenant, it passed, like all entailed property, to the heirs. The city took responsibility fore maintaining public order in the boxes, and the Doge himself allocated them to the heads of foreign diplomatic missions. A resident English diplomat frankly explained that, "he did not care for music, esteem poetry or understand the stage, but merely desired [a box] for the honor of his office."

 The invention of the opera house as a public social institution had far reaching consequences that are still being worked out in our day. It altered the relationship of members of the audience to the music drama on the stage and to each other. The stage performance was now separated from the audience both by the proscenium arch, which framed the action, and by the orchestra. The occupants of the boxes faced one another across the auditorium as well as the stage. To see and be seen was as much identified with the function of the opera house as to see and hear what took place on stage. ...

 Venice contributed enormously to the expansion and enrichment of opera as a musical form. It's achievement in the social sphere was equally impressive: the creation of an informed and critical musical public, the basis of musical culture as we have come to know it. Venetians didn't feel that they have to choose between esthetic and social values. For them, opera consisted inseparably of both. In Venice, Walter Pater wrote, "life itself was conceived as a kind of listening." 

John Dizikes "Opera in America: A Cultural History", 1993  [Excerpt]

Pater Clementissime

 

Listen

 

Donde Mueren Las Palabras

 

Pelicula - Film

Hugo Fregonese, Director

Homero Manzi & Ulyses Petit de Murat, Guion

Estreno 25 de Abril de 1946

Mirie it is while sumer ilast

Anonymous, 13th century

WIKIPEDIA: Mirie_it_is_while_sumer_ilast

QUORA: Miri-it-is-while-Sumer-ilast

Gipsy Kings

 

Esteban Murillo

 

Jeff Lynne

 

Yamma Ensemble: Nigun Tamir

Yamma Ensemble

Peter Pringle

 

a Montevideo, donde "la Tierra se confunde con el Cielo"

 

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 - Klaus Mäkelä - Oslo Philharmonic

Paul Grabbe on Beethoven's Symphony No. 9

 SYMPHONY  9

In D Minor, with Final Chorus on Schiller's "Ode To Joy" Op. 125 (Popularly Known as the Choral Symphony)  FIRST PERFORMANCE: VIENNA, MAY 7, 1824

Beethoven had a habit of noting down musical ideas in sketchbooks which he carried around with him; of re-working these ideas, again and again, sometimes over a period of years, until, finally satisfied with their content, he would give them their final expression. Most of Beethoven's works passed through this exacting process, and the Ninth Symphony was no exception-- a fact rather upsetting to the "stroke of genius" view of the creative endeavor.

Notations and melodies intended for the Ninth Symphony date as far back as 1817. They make clear that Beethoven had the work in mind at least six years, thinking about it and tightening its ideas even while attending to the execution of other, lesser works. 

When the symphony was finally ready, its initial performance drew an enthusiastic  response. To this, Beethoven at first did not respond. Stone deaf, completely unaware of the ovation he was receiving, he stood there on the conductor's stand, his back to the audience, until one of the soloists took him by the sleeve and pushed him gently around. This incident, touching and rather pitiful, seems to have electrified the audience, for in it were many of Beethoven's friends and admirers; but it may be doubted if many of those present really perceived the greatness of this unprecedented symphony with voices in it. 

Not until the latter part of the nineteenth century did the work-- perhaps the most monumental work in all music-- make any appreciable headway, and then largely through  the ministrations of Richard Wagner who took it upon  himself, through repeated performances, to make the Symphony better known to the public at large.

GUIDE TO LISTENING

First Movement: The work opens with a mysterious rustling in the strings through which we hear the voices of different instruments, as if propounding questions. These are scarcely over when we begin to sense, dimly at first but with increasing certainty, that we are in the presence of something that has depth and width and titanic power. In accents subdued but more and more agitated the movement unfolds, its first theme appropriately likened by some to the pounding of a giant anvil. Suspense hangs over this music, and stress, and its occasional oases of relative tranquility are quickly swallowed by stormy outbursts from the entire orchestra .

Second Movement: Three spirited ejaculations by the orchestra-- the third preceded by a loud imitation on the kettledrums-- and the music rushes irresistible forward. Its exhilarating rhythm, wild yet somehow jolly, conjures visions of a giant skipping merrily along. A breathing spell that is gently lyrical is provided by a contrasting middle section.

Third Movement: This is the slow movement of the Symphony-- lovely, pleading, restrained in its principal melodies of which Hector Berlioz has said: "As for the beauty of these melodies, the infinite grace of the ornaments that envelop them . . . the tenderness, dreamy religious feeling they express-- if my prose could but give an approximate idea of them, music would have found a rival in written speech . . ."

Fourth Movement: The last movement starts clamorously, as though in a mood of militant defiance. This furious opening is followed immediately by brief snatches from the preceding three movements. Sir Donald F. Toby, one of the most scholarly students of Beethoven, has this to say on this subject:

. . ."Beethoven's plan is to remind us of the first three movements . . . and to reject them one by one as failing to attain the joy in which he believes. After all three have been rejected, a new theme is to appear . . . hailed and sung as the hymn of joy." 

This new theme is presently introduced, at first tentatively by the cellos and violas. These are joined by the violins, finally by the entire orchestra. Up to this point the singers have been silent, but now the baritone enters with the words: "O, friends, not these tones! Let us take up a more joyous strain." Whereupon the entire chorus joins in; and now, the triumphant accents of the Ode to Joy burst forth upon us-- music of transcendental and triumphant gladness

From THE STORY OF ONE HUNDRED SYMPHONIC FAVORITES

PAUL GRABBE (1902-1999)

PUBLISHERS GROSSET & DUNLAP, NEW YORK, 1940

Peter Pringle & The Oldest Song in The World

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) : If You Could Read My Mind

If you could read my mind, love

What a tale my thoughts could tell

Just like an old time movie

'Bout a ghost from a wishing well

In a castle dark or a fortress strong

With chains upon my feet

You know that ghost is me

And I will never be set free

As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see.



If I could read your mind, love

What a tale your thoughts could tell

Just like a paperback novel

The kind the drugstores sell

Then you reach the part where the heartaches come

The hero would be me

But heroes often fail

And you won't read that book again 

Because the ending's just too hard to take!




I'd walk away like a movie star

Who gets burned in a three way script

Enter number two:

A movie queen to play the scene

Of bringing all the good things out in me



. . .





"If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot   
written 1969 - recorded 1970

Tallis: Spem In Alium

Ludovico Einaudi : "Divenire"

Bach: Jesu bleibet meine Freude, BWV 147 - Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Händel: Music for the royal fireworks & Water music | Hervé Niquet