Beethoven's brother

One of the great, great portraits in music history.

If you were going to come up with the opposite of Ludwig van Beethoven surely it would be Johann van Beethoven, pictured above.

What, me worry?

There is a book waiting to be written about great artists and their brothers and sisters. Because lightning does not often strike the same family twice.

An uncompromising portrait of Ludwig, so we may compare and contrast.

Sixtus and Sixtus

Today is the Feast of St. Sixtus. That is he pictured above! And if you think the name Sixtus is cool you should see it in Latin. He was an early pope who was martyred and his name appears in the Roman Canon heard in the Tridentine Mass I attend and it appears as Xysti.

Xystus!

In the objective case, is my guess. It has been a while since my high school Latin classes.

With the "X" version I have no problem but when I see it "Sixtus" with an "S,"  I am sorry, all I can think of is Sixtus Beckmesser from Wagner's "Die Meistersinger."

May we present a very cool clip featuring Sir Thomas Allen? He follows in the footsteps of great comic Sixtus Beckmessers including, I am proud to say, Erich Kunz. And our Walther von Stolzing, Ben Heppner, follows in the footsteps of great big Walther von Stolzings.

I love when Sachs is singing his song about Eve in Paradise, and Walther whispers to Eva: "Why is your name in his song?"

And she says: "I've heard it before. It's not about me."

Hahahaa.

And later the idea of Eve in Paradise will work its way into Walther's Prize Song.

Anyway. I hope St. Sixtus had a sense of humor and does not mind this. The fact that his name appears on a fine Trappist ale...

.... suggests that he can take a joke.

Take it, Sir Thomas:

A view of the Schubertiade

A nice anonymous person leaving a comment hipped me to a story in the Guardian about the Schubertiade. Remember, the Schubertiade, who got in touch under byzantine circumstances.

The story is by Alan Rusbridger. My favorite part (I will cut and paste):

I get to meet the figure who has run the Schubertiade since its earliest days, Gerd Nachbauer. A neat, shy, reserved man of few words, he speaks in German, translated by his press officer – called Schubert, of course. (Editor's note: Hahahahahahaaaaaa!)

It's evident that he feels he has a settled, successful formula and has no plans to change very much at all. The audiences – mainly German-speaking, but with a significant British contingent – keep coming back. He can attract more or less any musical luminary in the world. He has no subsidy, the sums add up. Schubert sells.

Contemporary music? It's not really to the audience's taste, he explains patiently: that's not why they come. Is there anyone he hasn't been able to draw to Schwarzenberg, or its twin centre in Hohenems? He silently searches his mental Rolodex for any large musical fish he's failed to land. Eventually one word: "Pollini."

Who needs Pollini. Also, good on the Schubertiade for sticking with Schubert and with tradition. I did read elsewhere in the story that "anything goes" as far as the music, other than contemporary, I like to think. They have Britten and Ives. Nothing against them but I say stick with Schubert. It is the Schubertiade. Everyone is always trying to get you to change things, you know?

You are not going to do better than a song like this tiny exquisite gem.



Rusbridger should not have brought his wife to the Schubertiade. All she wants to do is make him go on hikes. It is interesting though what he writes, that the Schubertiade has a lot of British fans. It is mostly German and British.

I also like the observation:

"Schubert sells!"

Mozart's wedding anniversary

Side-effect No. 1,468 that comes from being a classical music nerd is that you wake up on August 4 and think: Something happened today.

Ah! Mozart got married.

It is Mozart's wedding anniversary! And it was in 1782. I do not have to look it up! You may do the math and figure out what anniversary it is and if we should be giving him presents of tin, copper, aluminum, whatever.

Mozart and Constanze Weber were married Aug. 4, 1782 in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

Mozart was so thankful that the wedding came about that he wrote his Mass in C Minor, known as "The Great."



 He did not entirely finish it but I can tell you, that is what happens when you are writing something for yourself and God and you do not have a deadline.

Constanze is often vilified because everyone is a little in love with Mozart but it is turning out that she was a good woman and a fine wife for Mozart, if you ask me. Heck, he seems to have loved her and there is no evidence that he ran around.

After he died she married the Danish ambassador, Georg Niklaus von Nissen.

We all know what Wolfgang and Constanze Mozart looked like. So above is a picture of them played by Stephen Haggard and Victoria Hopper in the 1935 movie "Whom the Gods Love." I read that book when I was a kid. It was in the library. I wish I had kept it. I do not think I will ever see it again.

Happy anniversary, Mozarts!

A good man singing Mahler

New singer I discovered: Christian Gerhaher.

You never hear of him here. I believe he is big in Europe. It is funny how much of a difference geography still makes. You would not think it would, but it does. There are giant singers in Europe I know very little about. Also giant competitions. They have these competitions like the Cardiff Singer of the World competition that just sound very alien to us over here.

Anyway there was this Mahler song I needed to hear today, and so when I was at the gym I got on Spotify, and Spotify capriciously tossed Christian Gerhaher at me.

Spotify must have known what I would like. He is really good!

Although, you know, that picture. All his pictures on the Internet are so scruffy. What happened to black tie? What happened to concert finery? Was his luggage stolen?

Ah! They found it.

Los Angeles and "The Magic Flute"

I was listening to the Los Angeles Opera's "The Magic Flute" just now on WNED. The staging seemed kind of boneheaded, from what I could make out. Just for one thing, they had the Queen of the Night as a spider. The Queen of the Night isn't supposed to be a spider.

The magic touches are real fun as you can see in this video.



You can get creative with "The Magic Flute." I am not being a grinch and saying you can't. You can do a million things with it. Artists including Maurice Sendak, whose work appears up above, have had a great time with it. If this production could have let go of that silly '20s look they were trying to get, it would have been magic.

But you have to keep the basics. It is a fairy tale opera and when you start making Tamino not look like a prince and Papageno not look like a bird catcher, you are losing something. And about the Queen of the Night, she is supposed to be beautiful and cool and fun to look at and eventually you figure out who and what she is. Her appearances are supposed to be show stoppers, and they usually are.

Another thing about the Los Angeles Opera production, I give the thumbs down to the snips they gave you here and there of Mozart's piano fantasies. You cut and paste this music like that, it shows your superficial "shuffle" relationship with it.

However.

That opera's ending always gets me!

Maybe it's the triumph of good over evil. In the Catholic Church we are taught that good wins out in the end, that God will triumph over the forces of darkness, that the battle is already won. "The Magic Flute" is set in ancient Egypt so they are singing about Isis and Osiris. Anyway, good over evil, the sun coming out, everyone happy, the battle is won.

So it was with the Los Angeles Opera. At the end you just hear that chorus and you forgive everything. Maybe that was the point, who knows.

In this Metropolitan Opera clip the chorus in question starts at 3:39. That is Kathleen Battle as Pamina and she does a kind of neat feisty skip when she joins Tamino for their walk up to where Sarastro is waiting. Sarastro is Kurt Moll -- kind of handsome, I never knew what he looked like. This is several years ago and they don't have the L.A. Opera's special effects but it is simple and good. And the Queen of the Night is the Queen of the Night.



One of these days we will compare closing choruses of "The Magic Flute" in how it looks in various productions. Meanwhile, because this is a tough Monday and we need the oomph, here is an audio clip that gives you some translations.  This just has the music but I like what the poster wrote: "Turn up the volume more and more while listening."

Do it!

 

The secrets of Spotify

At the gym on my new phone I have been listening to Spotify. What an adventure!

Spotify shuffles everything. You can choose an album but you cannot choose the order in which you will listen to the tracks. That is one thing that makes it exciting. Go ahead, listen to Schubert's "Winterreise" or whatever, just accept that you will hear the songs in whatever order the robot decides to give it to you in.

Not only that, but the thing reserves the right to swap in other things!

Normally what I find they do is, they give you a few of the tracks off the album you wanted, and then it starts branching out. I was listening to my new favorite singer, Peter Schreier, singing, I don't know, Schumann. I found a Schumann album of his. They gave me a couple of songs.

Then I got Barbara Hendricks singing Bach cantatas.

Then Schreier and Edith Mathis singing the Bach "Coffee" Cantata.

Then one of Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzes.

Periodically it would return to Schumann and give me some song out of the blue. It was out of order and jarring. But that is the game! That is what you have to expect and not let it bug you.

Sometimes giving you the Bach it would give you only the recitative.

At one point it picked me up and put me down in the middle of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger."

Another time I found myself listening to the first scene of "The Magic Flute." Schreier was Tamino and he was being chased by the huge snake.

It was not always vocals. Once I was given the last movement of the Bassoon Concerto by Hummel. That was fun, like Haydn, which is high praise in my book. Plus it is nice to know it. If your bassoonist friend announces that he or she is playing Hummel's Bassoon Concerto you may nod and say  truthfully: "Ah! A charming piece. I know it well."

Everything I heard was nice. Continuing on the second day I got more Bach, and Vivaldi, which helped to erase the cares of the day. The secret to Spotify seems to be to choose something initially that is high class and kind of arcane. Peter Schreier singing Schumann is not going to lead you into anything too weird. Whereas the other day, when I started with Jessye Norman singing Brahms, the robot insisted on giving me this jazzy version she did of the "Habanera" from "Carmen" and a few other pop things I could not stand.

Choose carefully, is my advice.

And your 40 minutes on the elliptical will fly past!