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January 5
Nikolai Medtner
Birth: January 5, 1880 in Moscow, Russia
Death: November 13, 1951 in London, England
Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was born to parents of German descent
who had lived in Russia for several generations. The family background
was musical; his mother's brother was Theodore Goedicke, a composer
and professional pianist. He received early piano lessons from his
mother and entered into the Moscow Conservatory's junior classes
at the age of twelve, winning a gold medal when he completed his
keyboard training in 1900. He studied privately with Sergei Taneyev,
but largely taught himself composition. He went on tour as a pianist
and received the Rubinstein Medal in Vienna. He gradually devoted
more time to composition, but still performed, and in 1909 he was
invited to join the conservatory faculty as a piano professor. A
quiet person, he did not enjoy teaching, and resigned after a year.
In 1910, the wealthy conductor Sergei Koussevitzky invited Medtner
to join the editorial board of his new music publishing firm, Editions
Russe. He also made the acquaintance of Sergei Rachmaninov the same
year. The two composer-pianists became close friends. Medtner moved
to Germany, but was repatriated when World War I broke out, with
Russia and Germany on opposite sides. In 1919 he married Anna Medtner,
who had been the wife of his brother. In 1921 they were granted
permission to tour abroad. After a tour of the United States in
1925, they settled in Paris, which had the most important Russian
emigré colony in Europe. Medtner's music was harmonically adventurous,
but had a Romantic aesthetic that was out of fashion in trendy Paris.
In 1935, Medtner moved to England. Failing health compelled him
to give up concertizing in 1944, but he was able to make some classic
recordings of his piano music. While there is a Russian flavor to
his music, it strongly resembles that of Schumann and Brahms. Medtner
was overlooked during the largely anti-Romantic twentieth century,
but his music has recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest.
January 12
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
Birth: January 12, 1876 in Venice, Italy
Death: January 21, 1948 in Venice, Italy
Wolf-Ferrari was born to a Bavarian father and an Italian mother.
He showed unusual talent on the piano as a child, but was drawn
toward painting, the art world of his father. He enrolled at the
Academia di Belle Arti when he was 15 and two years later moved
to Munich to pursue further art instruction. However, he soon began
composition studies with Rheinberger. In 1895, the young composer,
previously known Ermanno Wolf, became Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, attaching
his mother's maiden name to the family surname. He returned to Venice
that year in a vain attempt to launch his composing career. He failed
to interest the famous publisher Ricordi in his early operas, Irene
and the incomplete La Camargo. However, his first serious effort
at opera, Cenerentola, did reach the stage in Venice in 1900. Though
it failed, the composer's 1902 revision achieved great success in
Bremen. Wolf-Ferrari's next operas met with acceptance as well;
Le Donne curiose, I quattro rusteghi and Il segreto di Susanna,
all comedies, were staged in Munich. The latter two became quite
popular in the repertoire for a time. The First World War forced
Wolf-Ferrari to abandon Munich for Zurich, where he wrote little.
His output remained meager until the mid-1920s when he completed
Das Himmelsklied and Sly. Wolf-Ferrari was a gentle man with a childlike
manner, whose music reflected a conservative sensibility. After
three decades away from instrumental music, Wolf-Ferrari returned
to the genre with the 1933 Idillio-concertino, Op. 15. By the mid-1940s
his output had reached above 30, largely by his renewed efforts
in instrumental music. Yet, apart from the 1946 Violin Concerto,
most of these works were subsequently ignored.
February 9
Alban Berg
Birth: February 9, 1885 in Vienna, Austria
Death: December 24, 1935 in Vienna, Austria
Alban Maria Johannes Berg is one of the central figures of twentieth
century musical composition. As one of the triumvirate of the Second
Viennese School, Berg produced a rather small body of work that
is nonetheless distinguished by a strongly Romantic aesthetic and
a distinctive dramatic sense. Berg's father was an export salesman,
his mother the daughter of the Austrian Imperial jeweler. Alban's
musical training consisted mainly of piano lessons from his aunt.
By his teenage years, however, he had composed dozens of songs without
the benefit of formal compositional studies. Berg was a dreamy youth
and an indifferent student. In 1903, he endured the end of a passionate
love affair, failed his school final exams, and became despondent
over the death of his idol, composer Hugo Wolf, all of which led
to a suicide attempt. However, he survived to repeat his final year
of school and went to work as an apprentice accountant. In 1904
Berg's brother, Charley, took Alban's compositions to Arnold Schoenberg,
who accepted Berg as a student. In 1907 Berg met the singer Helene
Nahowski, overcame her parents' objections over his poor health
and lack of prospects, and married her in 1911. The composer was
drafted into the Austrian army in 1915, served for eleven months,
and was discharged for poor health. The army experience led him
to revisit Woyzeck, Georg Büchner's tragedy about a horribly brutalized
private. In 1917, Berg began an operatic adaptation of the play.
After a number of interruptions related to personal and familial
affairs, Berg completed Wozzeck in 1922. Though initially savaged
by critics, the opera eventually gained momentum, enjoying performances
throughout Europe and recognition as a masterpiece. Berg's next
major work, the Chamber Concerto was among his first to demonstrate
the influence of Schoenberg's 12-tone method. In 1925-6, Berg wrote
the Lyric Suite for string quartet, parts of which systematically
employ 12-tone principles. The last of Berg's works are among his
most important. The Violin Concerto is dedicated "to the Memory
of an Angel," a reference to the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter
Gropius, Manon who had died at the age of 19. At the time of his
death from blood poisoning in 1935, Berg was in the middle of work
on his opera Lulu, a sexual horror story. The opera's unfinished
third act was completed by Friedrich Cerha in 1976.
February 23
George Frideric Handel
Birth: February 23, 1685 in Halle, Germany
Death: April 14, 1759 in London, England
A contemporary of Bach and Vivaldi, Handel excelled in all genres
of his art - instrumental, chamber, orchestral, operatic and both
sacred and secular choral music. Handel's father recognized but
did not nurture George's musical talent, and he had to sneak a small
keyboard instrument into his attic to practice. As a child he studied
music with the organist Friedrich Zachow, and for a time he seemed
destined for a career as a church organist himself. After studying
law briefly at the University of Halle, Handel began serving as
organist, at the Domkirche there. Dissatisfied, he took a post as
violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra in 1703, and his frustration
with musically provincial northern Germany was perhaps shown when
he fought a duel the following year with the composer Matheson over
the accompaniment to one of latter's operas. In 1706 Handel left
for Italy, and mastered contemporary trends in Italian serious opera.
He returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover, whose
rulers were linked by family ties with the British throne. English
audiences embraced his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later
Handel jumped at the chance to move to England permanently. He impressed
King George early on with the Water Music of 1716, written as entertainment
for a royal boat outing. Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian
operatic masterpieces for the London stage: Ottone, Serse, Giulio
Cesare and other works often based on classical stories. His popularity
was blemished, though, by new English-language works of a less formal
character, and in the 1730s and 1740s Handel turned to the oratorio,
a grand form that attracted England's new middle-class audiences.
Messiah, Israel in Egypt, Samson, Saul, and many other works established
him as an esteemed master of English choral music. In 1737, Handel
suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his
right arm and some loss of his mental faculties, but he recovered
sufficiently to carry on most normal activity. Blind in old age,
he continued to compose until his death in 1759.
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WWUH: Program Guide 2006
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