Friday Miscellanea

 The Guardian may no longer have the big series of articles on things like contemporary music and the symphony that it did a few years ago, but you can still find the occasional informative article like this one on Chopin: Chopin: where to start with his music.

And though Chopin did not invent the nocturne – the form was inherited from the Irish composer John Field – his 21 examples took it to unprecedented expressive heights, with weightless, floating melodic lines modelled on the vocal style of bel canto opera composers such as Bellini. But his works never relied upon extra-musical associations to intensify their effect; even the Ballades, a form that Chopin invented as a purely instrumental genre, generate their dramatic power through their musical architecture.

Piano music was never the same again after Chopin, and in the 50 years after his death, few composers who wrote for the instrument were immune to his influence, while it was carried into the next century by composers such as Scriabin and Rachmaninov in Russia, and Debussy and Fauré in France.

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Perhaps the two greatest music stores I visited way back in the day were Foyles bookshop in London, which was a general bookstore of formidable size, and Patelson's in New York, smaller, but specialized in music. These were places where you could browse through scores for hours on end: individual works, pocket or study scores and books on music and composers. For someone who did not grow up in a major metropolis, these places were like magical lands that contained everything one ever wanted to read. Here is a memoir about Patelson's, which is no longer with us:

In addition to helping me gain my position at Patelson's, while I was working there Leonard Altman asked Steve Reich to become a mentor for my compositional aspirations. This proved to be extremely helpful, Steve advising me on centrally important practical matters involved with composition. Reich preferred to communicate through the mail, and we never actually met or even spoke on the phone. But that may have been for the best because it was the images of NYC on the postcards that Steve sent that somehow persuaded me to move into the city, that by itself becoming a transformative event. One day Steve was in the store purchasing a large stack of expensive books about orchestration. He noticed me, too, and am rather certain he knew who I was, but I rightly or wrongly chose to play it cool, and didn't take the opportunity to introduce myself, influenced by how he didn't appear very friendly or approachable.

Foyles is still around, though.

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 Music school is looking problematic this fall: An Impossible Choice: Music Majors, COVID-19, and an Uncertain Future.

With fewer or no opportunities to perform live at school, can music degrees live up to their mandate to prepare students for a career? In other words, what is the value of a socially distanced degree in music performance? And if the value is significantly reduced, and given the extraordinary financial stress on young music students and their families, what is the best course of action? 

...despite increased financial hardship among students, colleges have mostly held the line on tuition. Some are charging students for services they won’t receive, “including face-to-face interaction with professors, access to campus facilities, and hands-on learning.”  

Before COVID, job opportunities for music graduates were scarce, with a focus on local and regional opportunities. Among singers, the lucky, talented, and privileged landed performance-based apprenticeships with opera companies and summer festivals, which paid, on average about $12 an hour. One elite program, Opera Saratoga, for example, received over 1,000 applicants in 2018 for 32 spots, a more stringent acceptance rate than Harvard undergrad, and offered their singers a fee of only $125 a week.

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A bit of history: How Western music came to Mexico.

The story of Western music in Mexico begins with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521. On 13 August the great city of Tenochtitlan fell to the army of Hernán Cortés, and five days later the Kingdom of New Spain was established. Along with the colonists came a large number of priests and clerics aiming to teach the word of God to the Amerindian people, and one of the integral methods used for this ‘spiritual conquest’ was music. The indigenous people proved to have great sensitivity and ability in playing the musical instruments of the Europeans, who took it upon themselves to instruct them in arts and crafts to be used in the service of church and state.

The first school teaching European subjects in Mexico – and indeed the American continent – came into being just two years after the conquest. It was founded by the Franciscan missionary Pedro de Gante, a cousin of Charles V of Spain, who learnt the Nahuatl language and used it to teach singing for religious services. He discovered that this was a very effective way to evangelise.

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Wenatchee the Hatchet has a post about a piece for viola and guitar that I didn't know about: Joël and Gilbert Impérial perform Ferdinand Rebay's Sonata for viola and guitar in D minor, Satz I.

Charming piece! My viola player and I ran out of good repertoire so fast that I started writing pieces for the combination myself.

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I think we need some Chopin today. Here is Arthur Rubinstein with the first ballade:

I have a weakness for elegance and charm, I admit it, so let's listen to some. These are some late symphonies by Sammartini. Giovanni Battista Sammartini was of the generation just before Haydn and Mozart and is rather overshadowed by them. But he is actually quite a good composer.