Bloggo Allegretto ma non troppo

Dottore Gianni has timidly decided to enter into a new subject area -- reporting on music! While he has been paid to sing (by foolish souls who wasted good money!) on occasion, the good doctor is hardly an expert on music. He IS however an aficionado, and an event he attended over the weekend pleased him so that he decided to take the plunge and offer a few words about his experience.

First, a brief confession: I (the good doctor, Dottore Gianni, il pazzo professore, whatever you choose to call me/he/it) has grown a-weary of the theatre. It pains me to say it, but it is true, I can tell by the slippage in enthusiasm levels in recent years, and more immediately by the lack of desire I have to see theatre in Greenville. Why? Oh-ho-ho-ho! Too long a tale to relate here! Perhaps one day I'll attempt to explain, perhaps I SHOULD do so, as writing about a subject can illuminate reasons in a manner more clear than gnashing one's teeth over it, or tossing and turning in bed over it.  So! mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximum culpa, but there you have it!

What has become increasingly clear, and what hit me right between the eyes on Saturday afternoon is that in spite of a slipping away from theatre I still crave live entertainment. It's just that the entertainment, perhaps temporarily, perhaps for some time to come, maybe even forever, has taken the form of musical entertainment.

The Greenville Symphony Orchestra (from here on GSO - please remember this as the full term takes far too much typing time) has for the last 6 years offered a program called The Spotlight Series, three chamber music concerts during the course of a season in a very intimate setting, the small,

The building that houses, among other
things, Centre Stage

charming thrust-space theatre known as Centre Stage, just off Main at the intersection of Court and River Streets. Some of the finest members of the GSO are involved. The concert I attended on Saturday 13 October 2012, called European Sojourn, was my first encounter with members of the GSO and it was a delightful introduction.

Some of you may also be thinking, "Oh, God he went only because it was titled EUROPEAN Sojourn, and he's so enamored of Europe!" But, no my readers, I beg to differ!  I mean not that I'm NOT enamored of Europe as of course I am, smitten in fact, but I just wanted to investigate the quality of the classical music scene here, and I'm pleased to report that the quality is high.

So! To the concert! Three pieces were played, the first for two musicians, the second for four, and the third for five. Already one senses a pleasant progression, from fewer to more players, doesn't one?

The first piece was the Duo concertant, No. 3 op. 5 in C Minor for Flute and Viola by François Devienne. But who in the world IS François Devienne? Glad you asked. 

François Devienne

Actually the question was answered just before the piece was played, by the flautist and she did an excellent job in a very brief period of time, but such is the state of Dottore Gianni's memory that he forgot everything she said save one, and so had to resort to Wiki and other -pedias to jog his memory. What by the way was the one thing I remembered? That from his birth and death dates (1759-1803) it instantly dawned on me that he lived through the French Revolution. Operative words, when you're dealing with that tumultuous, some might even say calamitous event are "lived through," as many did not, thanks to la plus belle Mlle Guillotine.

So I was eager to learn more about Monsieur Devienne, even before I heard one note of his music. Why? Well, as every schoolboy knows, or should know, Dottore Gianni designed and taught a course on performing arts and the French Revolution, thrice in London, twice on the home college of Ithaca College, and is always interested in sans culottes and their ilk.

François Devienne was born in the French city of Joinville, the youngest of 14 children. His father was a saddle-maker and I can imagine young Francois stealing one, saddling a horse, and high-tailing it to Paris just to get away from that gigantic family! However he arrived, he spent most of the rest of his life in Paris, as a musician in many ensembles, playing not only the flute but the bassoon. In fact it was the latter instrument he played at the Paris Opera. He was professor of flute at the Paris Conservatory as well, and of course he composed music, approximately 300 works, including operas, twelve flute concerti, five bassoon concerti, and six sonatas for the oboe.

During the revolution he wrote in 1792 a very popular opera (to be produced in those days meant that he was at very least not banned by the Revolutionaries), and also played in the Military Band for the French Guard, in which organization he held the rank of sergeant, even a clearer indication of his pro-Revolutionary sentiments. His portrait above was thought to be painted by Jacques-Louis David (it certainly looks like a David) who of course was very pro-Revolution, a colleague of Robespierre. While Devienne’s portrait was not nearly as well known as another David portrait, The Death of Marat, the musician would never have been painted by David had he not been a fairly ardent supporter of the Revolution. Interestingly David as well as Devienne made it through the Revolution. That was not of course the case with Robespierre, may he rest in peace (DEFINITELY NOT!). 

Written in two movements, the first Allegro molto con expression, the second Rondo, the Duo Concertant is delightful, and was extremely well played by two women. The flautist was fine, but I was more enamored of the other, who played the viola, particularly as she wore a long light-cotton skirt and her stance, legs spread wide, caused it to whip around as she practically danced the piece as well as played it.

So much for Dottore Gianni's abilities as a music critic, but bravo for his observational skills of attractive women! I don't know what it is exactly, but I become enamored very easily of female musicians, particularly classical musicians, more particularly of female musicians who play strings, most particularly of female cellists, and this player of the viola (does one call such a musician a "violist"?) certainly, you might say, struck a chord with me. Heh, heh.

But onward to the second piece, Bohuslav Martinu's Quartet for Clarinet, Horn, Cello and Snare Drum. 

ATTENTION! If you just skipped lightly over those instruments look again -- a fairly odd mix, yes? Well, certainly! As you might have guessed the concert at this point jumped in time from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth. 

A confession: I am much more comfortable in the world of eighteenth century music than I am with twentieth century music. The frequent dissonance, the complexity of the music, and other factors make it for the most part less appealing to me than much earlier music. I don’t mean to imply that the music of Bach is not complex, but as with much twentieth century art, its music often seems to this uneducated ear to be working so hard at overturning earlier forms that it is tiring and tedious for me at least to listen to and like.

But it is a different thing to hear music of the last crazy century in a “live” setting, particularly one as intimate as Centre Stage. I found myself watching the players intently, as well as listening closely to what they were playing. What becomes apparent to me when in the presence of musicians (versus listening to a CD or mp3 download or Pandora or what have you) IS their “presence” which includes their expertise and artistry, and that makes a major difference. So I very much enjoyed this piece. I suppose I should be able to enjoy it on a recording to break the silence in my lonely room, but I can assure you I won’t. I probably knew somewhere deep inside what I’ve just written about, but I had a bit of an epiphany during the piece about the “liveness” of the event. Let’s hope I continue to enjoy such music in upcoming concerts as well.

The music, for all its “modern” sensibilities, retains a traditional format. The first movement is marked Allegro moderato, the second Poco andante and the last Allegretto ma non troppo, from which I lifted the title of my blog, or bloggo, in the peculiar language of Dottore Gianni. Once again, while the clarinetist briefly discussed Martinu’s life, work, and the intricacies of this piece, I’ve forgotten nearly all of what he said – heigh ho, if memory were all, I would be lonely…so here’s some info:

Martinu (1890-1959) was a prolific composer, with 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores along with much other instrumental and choral music, including the odd little quartet that we heard on Saturday. He was born in the small town of Policka, but showed such promise that in 1906 citizens of his town pooled their resources and sent him to the Prague Conservatory.

Short side-bar: In the very same year the citizens of another small town in the part of the Austro-Hungarian empire that would become Czechoslovakia collected money to send another young man, even farther, all the way to the U.S., as he seemed to be deserving of it. This was my mother’s father, Grandpop Pastir as we called him. While he was somewhat musical (he used to sing, to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, “Glory glory hallelujah…mashed potatoes and sabulya” – the last word means “onions”), and while he raised a family of ten children and worked at the Bethlehem Steel he never rose above that position, nor in my opinion did he need to. Rest in peace.

Martinu, alas, did not last at the conservatory and was dismissed for “incorrigible negligence.” For the time being it would seem, he did not justify the townspeople’s investment, But he opened a studio in Policka and continued composing.

Bohuslav Martinu

 In 1923 he moved, as so many artists did, to Paris and remained there until 1940. While in France Martinu blended elements of jazz, neoclassicism (Stravinsky was a leader in this style) and surrealism in his music, married a French seamstress but tsk tsk had a longstanding affair with a Czech musician, and developed ties to the French Resistance. The latter meant that when the Nazis began marching on Paris in 1940 the composer was blacklisted and he and his wife escaped to the U.S. While he struggled here at first he remained until 1953, teaching at the Mannes School of Music and composing all six of his symphonies. He spent his last years in Nice and Rome, and as noted above died in 1959, in a Swiss clinic.

As I pause briefly I wonder if this interests anyone other than me. I don’t really care, because whose blog IS it anyway, damn it!? But I hope the lives of these composers are worth writing about. They are men of their times after all, and as such mirror their times. As a historian I can’t help enjoying learning about such people and understanding them in their context.

Well, like it or not we’re moving on to the last piece and to the man who composed it, probably the best known of the three composers, but never alas and alack as well known as his older brother. Our third composer is Haydn. Yes, but not the great Franz Josef. Instead it’s his younger brother Johann Michael, usually known by the middle and last name only. The piece is called Divertimento MH199 for Oboe, Bassoon, Violin, Viola and Double Bass. Again, have a look at the instruments – a quintet, but instead of a string quintet or a wind quintet as was more usual, Michael H decided to mix things up a tad. While not nearly as wonky as Martinu’s choice of instruments, you’ve got a bit of dueling going on between two winds and two strings (the exception is the fellow on the double bass, playing on neutral ground).

It’s a lovely piece, and as the oboist, in her introduction, noted, just because Michael is not his older brother, one of the greatest composers in the eighteenth century, an era of great composers, “it doesn’t mean he can’t write!” In fact I remember a bit more of what the oboist said than I did of the other two introductions, perhaps because she was more witty and sarcastic than the first two. She remarked for instance that it noted about Michael Haydn that he could do just about everything better than his older brother: he played instruments better, he was a better conductor…he just didn’t compose quite as well. She had nicknames for two of the four movements, which I’m embarrassed to say I HAVE forgotten, but they were funny and clever I promise. She closed by warning the audience that Michael H had a penchant for placing odd passages, and what might even seem wrong notes in strange places, including the end. And indeed he did, but no more of that as you might want to listen to it, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise!

A wee, wee bit on Michael, partly because, come on, everyone knows his brother’s movement and poor Michael IS in his shadow, also because cocktail hour is coming on apace and I want to finish this post!

He was born in 1737 in the Austrian village of Rohrau and died in 1806 in Salzburg. If ya gotta go, and we all do, Salzburg is not a bad place to “go,” I promise you. 

Michael Haydn

At any rate, like his older brother Michael was a fine boy soprano, and he followed Franz Josef to St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, where Wikipedia swears (as did the oboist) that while singing in that choir Michael was the better student and had the better voice. He became the Kappelmeister at Salzburg’s cathedral, a post he held for forty-three years. He was close to his brother, who claimed that Michael wrote better music than he did (again the “better” – no wonder he drank! See just below), he knew Mozart well, though Leopold, Mozart’s father, criticized Michael for his heavy drinking, and he married a singer, Maria Magdalena Lipp, who died only a few years after the marriage. He was offered other lucrative posts but chose to remain at Salzburg where as I noted, he passed away.

As I noted earlier, this is a really lovely piece of music, it was played beautifully, and perhaps nicest of all I got to see my new girlfriend-from-a-distance, the violist, though she was seated this time and could only swing and sway slightly.

While more of the space in this post has been about the composers than the music or musicians (except maybe for the violist) I had a really fine afternoon. In fact it was all too short! I am very much looking forward to the next in this series, as it features a string quintet by Dvorak, a composer I adore, but though it does not occur until mid-January I will see a few more concerts, including one next week called Oktoberfest, which features at performance’s end, free beer and cheese. But I think I’ll like the music as well…and who knows? I may just write about it!