Guillaume de Machaut: the gaps in his biography

Our knowledge of history is limited by the accident of what kind of documentation exists. Even for recent people and events, historians cannot always find information about what they most want to learn. Given roughly equivalent fame and importance, the earlier a person lived, the sparser the documentation. The great medieval composer Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) provides a good illustration.

No other fourteenth-century composer left behind as much music as Machaut, and possibly none other provided so much detail about his life and times. While many prolific composers over the course of history have produced vast quantities of music of mediocre quality or worse, Machaut's reputation, both in his lifetime and in the estimation of scholars, places him in the top rank not only of composers of his time, but also poets. He also had a very sophisticated understanding of mathematics.

Machaut the poet wrote about current events and about himself. From him we know that he was short, blind in one eye, had gout, and, as an old man, became involved in a platonic relationship with a teenaged poetry lover. He preserved her letters to him, too.

History records a great deal of information about his patrons. He came to the attention of King John of Luxembourg as a young priest in the 1320s and remained as his secretary until the King was killed in the Battle of Crécy in 1346. After that, he worked for the Duke of Normandy (later King John II of France), King Charles V of France, and the Dukes of Berry, Savoy, and Navarre. He devoted  his later years to preparing a catalog of his works and presentation manuscripts of them for his patrons.

Of his early life, almost nothing is known. We know he was born somewhere in the province of Champagne, possibly in Rheims. An older man with a similar name may have been his father, but no records survive. We know nothing of his family, his education, when he was ordained, how he came to the attention of his first patron, when he started to compose and write poetry, or how he developed his reputation. But we do know that he sold a horse in 1340.

Second thoughts on the ophicleide

I wrote earlier about the ophicleide mainly to introduce a humorous poem. I later received a stern reprimand from a friend of mine, who objected to my statement that "it does not have a lot of love or respect now." He wondered how I could possibly justify the statement and  hoped I would write another article after I learned more about it.

That friend, Douglas Yeo, deserves more attention to and respect for his comments to me than almost anyone else I know. He is the bass trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and also plays other instruments such as bass trumpet and, um, ophicleide as needed. According to Yeo, no European orchestra would ever perform, say, Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream with a tuba replacing the ophicleide part. (He has also played a major role in the revival of a still earlier instrument, the serpent and even commissioned a concerto for it.)

Yeo used to be very active in email discussion lists and online forums. That is how I first learned of his interest in and dedication to the serpent. In recent years, he has largely withdrawn from those media, but still maintains an excellent website, where I see he played ophicleide in a performance of Hector Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique by Boston's Handel and Haydn Society in 2001.

I do not claim to have done any extensive research on the ophicleide since receiving his challenge, but I have explored some other interesting web sites. Nick Byrne's Ophicleide.com includes, among much else, some sound clips. Since the ophicleide relies on tone holes rather than valves to change the pitch, I expected a fuzzier, much more serpent-like sound. It much more nearly resembles the sound of an English baritone horn--a much lighter sound than the euphonium.

Several sites listed dates of orchestral performances with ophicleide. Except Yeo's, none I saw have a date earlier than 2003.  I found an article by Roger Bobo, "Ophicleide and Cimbasso," in which he passionately supports the revival of the cimbasso, a valved contrabass trombone designed for Giuseppe Verdi, but finds the "fad" for the ophicleide merely amusing.

I personally welcome the revival of both instruments. I have long enjoyed "historically informed performances" of Baroque and Classical (and earlier) music and consider that it's about time to revive all manner of obsolete instruments for "historically informed performance" of Romantic music, too. Surely not all performances must use period instruments, but every listener ought to have the opportunity to hear some that do, whether live or recorded.

I still like the poem.

Francesca Caccini, the first woman operatic composer

Today we find nothing unusual about women becoming professional musicians. Women play every imaginable instrument. They conduct orchestras, choruses, and opera companies. They are well represented on anyone's list of leading living composers. It can be hard to remember that until recently women were discouraged from playing certain instruments, and certainly from ever thinking about becoming composers. Francesca Caccini's career is, then, something of an anomaly. She composed songs and operas for court entertainments in the early seventeenth century.

Her father, Giulio Caccini, was a highly regarded singer, composer, and music teacher in Florence. Francesca, his foremost pupil first sang in public at the age of 13 at the wedding of French King Henry IV and Maria de' Medici (a member of Florence's ruling family) in 1600.

Four years later, the king declared her the best singer in France and asked permission to hire her for his own household. The Tuscan court refused and the family returned to Florence. Francesca officially entered service there in 1607 at a reasonable salary. Seven years later, her salary had doubled, making her one of the highest paid musicians at the court.

So far, her career had followed a fairly ordinary path for a talented woman serving a ruling family, but soon she began to compose court entertainments. Performances in Rome, Milan, Lucca, Parma, Genoa, and Savona spread her reputation far beyond Florence.

In 1621, Grand Duke Cosimo II died, leaving a child, Ferdinando, as his heir. Until Ferdinando came of age, his mother and grandmother ruled as regents. They had a great interest  in asserting the right of women to rule and used, among other things, symbolism in major court entertainments, as Medici rulers had for more than a century. And who better to supply the music for them than the highly respected Francesca Caccini?

Her best known opera, La liberazione di Ruggiero, was commissioned in 1625 to celebrate the visit of future King Wladislaw IV of Poland. Most such occasional pieces were published in handsome commemorative copies for invited guests, and then quickly forgotten after after the ceremony was over. La liberazione di Ruggiero must have made a strong  impression. It was performed again in Warsaw in 1681, making it the first Italian opera presented outside of Italy.

Live vs recorded music

Discussion of the relative merits of live and recorded music probably started as soon as recordings became widely available. As the fidelity of recorded sound improved, the discussion evolved somewhat, but it still continues.

One of my professors in college disapproved of recorded music, but frequently attended concerts. He did not even own a record player. I have never met anyone else who prefers live music to the absolute exclusion of listening to recordings, but I know lots of people who agree that there is an immediacy in live performances that recordings cannot duplicate. What's more, recordings must be almost totally free of mistakes. Otherwise, listeners must hear the same mistakes over and over. That, in turn, has raised unrealistic expectations for live performances.

Today I offer another observation. You can hear more of the music in a live performance than on a recording. My high school orchestra performed the finale of Brahms' First Symphony, and I played bass trombone. One passage gave me fits, and when I got a recording of the piece, I could not hear the sound of the trombone there at all.

Years later, a friend invited me to a concert where he was playing a concerto with a community orchestra. One of the other pieces was Brahms' First Symphony. I have never heard a worse orchestra. Every oboe solo, in particular, met with disaster. And yet I found the performance fascinating. I thought I knew that symphony very well, having listened to it frequently on my own stereo and over the radio for years. And yet I heard not only that difficult trombone part, but many details of orchestration and counterpoint in the inner voices I had never known about.

At about the same time, the orchestra I was in played Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. Now, I have always thought the back row of an orchestra is the worst place to listen to music. The trombones sit much closer to the other wind instruments, which often have accompanimental parts, than to the violins, which usually have the melody. Community orchestras, it seems, never have quite enough strings anyway.

But I couldn't help noticing that on my recording, not only did I not hear the inner parts played by the upper woodwinds, but the violas, cellos, and basses barely came through. That recording, at least, focuses so much on the violins that the entire bass line almost disappears, and whenever one of the woodwinds has the main melody, it is covered by whatever filigree the violins play.

I recently participated in a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Having heard the waltz many times, I was surprised at the first rehearsal. When unison trombones play the main theme, it sounds on every recording that I have ever heard like there are persistent rests on the downbeat. Actually, there is a note there. In every measure.

It makes breathing tricky to play such a  long phrase at such a loud dynamic. Had Tchaikovsky written it the way it sounds on recordings, it would have been a lot easier to play. I don't believe that all the trombones and tubas in all those professional orchestras that issue recordings omit the low notes on all those downbeats, but having listened to several since I learned how Tchaikovsky wrote the part, I can testify that I still cannot hear them at all.

So if you have a chance to hear a familiar orchestral piece live, go. You'll hear things you can't hear on your own stereo or radio, not counting any mistakes.

Vienna, 1800: signs of the coming distinction between classical and popular music

The polarization of the musical public into classical music and popular music during the opening decades of the nineteenth century has been a recurring theme of this blog. As early as 1800, an article in the influential musical journal Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (col. 41-50, 65-68) shows many of the elements that would contribute to the division. The journal was published in Leipzig, but a correspondent from Vienna provided a detailed description of conditions there.

In 1800, Mozart had been dead for nine years. Haydn was an old man close to retirement from composing. The young Beethoven had made a strong start in establishing his reputation. Schubert was only three years old. Plenty of other composers, unknown today, enjoyed good local reputations.

Regarding the Italian opera theater, the correspondent noted that while the orchestra had several excellent musicians, they had poor leadership and did not play well together. They also did not hesitate to send substitutes to rehearsals or concerts if they had a chance to make more money elsewhere. He complained that well known older operas were neglected in favor of new ones from Italy that could not please a connoisseur.

Soon enough, that same complaint would be lodged frequently (and all over Europe) against new operas by Rossini, Meyerbeer and others. Berlioz vehemently protested considering Rossini the leader of the "school of melody" while he required a full brass section in almost every scene. What, he fumed, did ascribing melody to Rossini mean to his own music, or Beethoven's or Weber's? Were they the school of noise? Schumann likewise pointed to his disapproval of Rossini's ascendancy in theaters as a reason to take up music criticism.

The correspondent noted that the German opera theater orchestra likewise fell short of his expectations, largely because it was smaller and poorly paid. Having a better director, it occasionally performed Haydn symphonies and Mozart operas, and played them better than the Italian orchestra  played anything.

Except for four annual concerts sponsored by the Fund for Musicians' Widows, Vienna had no regular concert life in 1800. It also had no place devoted to orchestral concerts. Instead, composers and performers had to rent the theaters at a high cost. For that reason, traveling artists rarely presented concerts in Vienna. The correspondent singled out two concerts of excellent music,  including one in which Beethoven presented a piano concerto, a symphony, and his Septet. The utter incompetence of the orchestra kept the music from making its best effect.

Regardless of the personality conflicts and orchestral politics cited by the correspondent, the situation was hardly better elsewhere. The aftermath of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon would keep Europe in such an uproar to make it impossible to sustain excellence in artistic institutions for another decade and a half. When the conflict ended, orchestras had much more trouble playing Beethoven's music (and other classicists') than the accompaniments for  most Italian operas and the works of most traveling virtuosos, which were much less complicated.

Amateur musicians therefore played an outsized role in musical performances, not only in Vienna, but in other major capitals as well. The correspondent pointed out that in Vienna, everyone took music lessons and performed, and that therefore the city boasted many proficient amateur musicians, although fewer than earlier. Some indeed, were genuine connoisseurs of music, but apparently in the minority. The correspondent noted that they preferred to pursue their interests in good music unobtrusively rather than try to promote themselves.

If there were no public concerts, the number of private concerts made up for it. Nearly every aristocratic or upper-middle-class family opened their homes to invited musical guests all winter long. Amateurs of all levels of proficiency took turns entertaining, usually choosing uncomplicated, unsophisticated music such as favorite arias from the latest Italian operas or whatever piano pieces were making the rounds. The correspondent drew a careful distinction between the entertainment value of these concerts (high) and their artistic value (negligible).

Traveling virtuosos, shut out of the public theaters by their high costs, made the circuit of the private concerts. Of necessity, they appeared everywhere they could and praised the talent of all the amateurs they heard. Those who were good at flattery and public relations made a big hit in Vienna. Eventually the amateur community divided into parties of those who preferred this or that virtuoso above others. The correspondent noted that the ardor of their partisanship often made up for a lack of true artistic discernment. When Beethoven bested Steibelt in their infamous contest in 1800, the substance of a classical master trounced the gimmicks of a man who had been a popular favorite everywhere else. 

Again, the conditions described in Vienna in 1800 matched those in the other major capitals, and continued almost until mid-century. By the time Schumann decided to become a music critic, traveling virtuosos like Henri Herz specialized in flashy dance pieces, sets of variations, and all manner of gimmicks.

William Weber (in Music in the Middle Class, among other writings)  has identified Herz and other virtuosos on the salon circuit as representative of "high-status popular music." Like all other popular music, it was more business than art. It relied on a combination of easy familiarity and novelty to keep up a steady stream of new sales. These were the Philistines that Schumann devoted his critical career to attacking.

Meanwhile, Beethoven had no immediate followers among composers. From his death until the generation of Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Berlioz started to make their mark, those who preferred music as an art to music as entertainment had little to listen to by living composers.

A French critic in the 1830 proclaimed that there were only two kinds of musicians: classicists and Rossinists. The journalistic war of words between lovers of the artistic ideals of dead composers and the novelty offered by popular living composers began an argument that still continues today.

Tension and resolution, or, an odd musical alarm clock

In tonal music (that is, the majority of what we listen to), each chord has a function. One chord, the tonic (the chord build on the first note of the scale) is a place of rest. Once the key is firmly established, every other chord has some degree  of tension that demands eventual resolution to the tonic.

Probably every listener knows, at least instinctively, whether the occasional pause in a piece is on the tonic, a fit place to end, or something else, which requires the music to continue. Professional musicians, of course, are acutely aware of the tonic. If the car radio is in the middle of the piece when I get to my destination, I find myself waiting for some level of resolution before I turn it off.

A story told about Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein illustrates the point nicely. I'm not sure whether it's true or not, but maybe it really doesn't matter. At least it fits with what we know of his character.

The story goes that his wife had trouble getting  him out of bed in the morning, and when he overslept, he missed appointments. So she started playing piano in the morning--loudly. Now, anyone with a clock radio knows how easy it is to roll over and go back to sleep. Mrs. Rubinstein did not play all the way through a piece. She stopped on a chord with a high degree of harmonic tension and then left the room. That bothered her husband so much that he had to get up, go to the piano, and play the resolution. By that time, she had removed the blanket from the bed.

The birth of the popular music industry

In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, a rigid social stratification arose when the ruling classes began to patronize music for their own entertainment that none but their peers ever heard. The nobles usually maintained wind bands for ceremonial purposes and keeping common people entertained. These bands played tunes that everyone knew. I have described this social stratification in some detail in an earlier post.

As I tried to demonstrate there, "classical" music started in the eighteenth century when the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie started liking the same music. By that time, everyone had forgotten most of the music formerly that the aristocracy had formerly patronized. When it was rediscovered, it naturally became attached to "classical" music. Whatever music the aristocracy and commoners shared, such as the pieces played by the old wind bands,  likewise joined the stream of "classical" music. The commoners' music that did not suit the tastes of the nobility survive, if at all, as folk music.

Where, then, did what we can call popular music come from? That question is too complicated to deal with here, so this article is  mostly about the English roots of American popular music and the industrial mindset that is one of its defining characteristics.

Audiences in England, a country later disparaged as a "nation of shopkeepers" and "the land without music," lost interest in Italian opera by the 1740s. A distinctive English opera might have developed earlier if Henry Purcell had either not died so young or had had contemporaries or successors capable of building on his foundation. Instead, English opera developed from The Beggar's Opera (1728), in which the libretto by John Gay was set not to new music in any kind of operatic style, but to familiar, traditional tunes.

Other English authors soon provided a multitude of usually satirical libretti, likewise performed as so-called "ballad operas." Somewhat later, professional composers, such as Thomas Arne and Joseph  Hook, wrote numerous operas in English.  Unlike Italian opera, which appealed only to the aristocracy, English opera attracted all social classes.

By the late 1790s, however, English  theatrical life had deteriorated to the point where the principal composer at the Drury Lane Theatre, Michael Kelly, could not write musical notation. He simply hummed his tunes to someone else, who wrote them out and fitted them with simple harmonies. They were very nice tunes, though, and audiences continued to go to the theater to hear them.

London's pleasure gardens (the most important being Vauxhall, Marylebone, and Ranelagh) likewise welcomed audiences of all classes to listen to a wide variety of music. Programs included older music by Arcangelo Corelli and George Frideric Handel, newer orchestral music by Joseph Haydn and Johann Christian Bach, and songs by composers that included Arne and Hook.

What later became known as classical music (Haydn, J.C. Bach, et al.) was certainly loved by a wide spectrum of society all over Europe, but it appealed especially to sophisticated members of the audience who understood the conventions of various set forms, such as sonata form, and found pleasure in hearing what cleverness the most imaginative composers could bring to them. The music required multiple hearings of each piece to reveal all of its secrets.

Arne and Hook took a different approach. They wrote especially for an audience that expected music with immediate appeal, music that could be fully understood at first hearing. Arne published hundreds of songs, and Hook more than 2000.  Later critics have declared that mass production of songs according to a few facile formulas seriously hampered the composers' artistic development. Their contemporaries, including the often caustic Charles Burney, did not see it that way.

Both of these composers were quite capable of writing more challenging, complicated, and sophisticated music. The fact that the musically illiterate Kelly met success with his songs indicates that as far as a mass audience is concerned, an advanced degree  of musical knowledge is unnecessary as  long as the songs are appealing--a fact that continues to this day. Of course, the songs could not be too much alike. The formula also had to provide novelty, the sense that each season's songs were something somehow new and different, yet still familiar.

The mass audience likewise did not care if the singers' voices were among the best or if they possessed good technique. They rewarded the ability to get into a song and deliver it with a strong conception, quick sensibility, and correct taste.

These simple, mass produced songs became the mainstay of the English music publishing business. Publishers found that with this kind of music, they could market their wares to a much broader and larger spectrum of the population than had ever been interested in printed, notated music before.

And it was not only English composers who became prosperous selling popular songs. I am limiting this article to English developments largely for convenience and to keep it a reasonable length. Parisian publisher Ignace Pleyel, who built his early reputation on such projects as the complete string quartets of Haydn in miniature score, eventually abandoned "classical" music entirely in favor of more  lucrative romances by such composers as Pauline Duchambge and Hortense de Beauharnais (to mention another musically illiterate song writer).

The political, economic, and social convulsions caused by the French Revolution and Napoleonic period put an end to formal concert life in the three most important European capitals (London, Paris, and Vienna). Once it started up again, Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were dead. Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert still lived, but had no real followers among either contemporary composers or the immediate younger generation.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the same people could enjoy both the symphonies of Haydn and the songs of Arne, and new examples of both kinds of music appeared regularly. After the end of the Napoleonic era provided the economic and political stability necessary to sustain a high level of cultural life, there was still a steady stream of music with both immediate appeal and novelty, but there was no dependable concert life for performance of new symphonies and chamber music.

To put it another way, people who preferred to regard music as an art could only listen to performances of music by dead composers, at least until the generation of Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann became established. The audience that preferred a steady stream of new music that had to be both familiar and novel flocked after performers and publishers who regarded music less as an art than as a business. When music became a commodity, the popular music industry was born.

The buccin: a dragon-headed trombone

In the early nineteenth century, some  French and Belgian instrument makers manufacturered a fanciful adaptation of the trombone known as the buccin. In place of the standard bell section, it had a widely curving tube  ending with a gaudily painted serpent's or dragon's head.  The same makers also put monster's heads on serpents, serpent bassoons, and other precursors of the ophicleide.

Judging from the trombone parts in French music during or after the Revolution, the was played loudly, primarily in the lower register.  As the French used a very small-bore trombone, its sound must have been coarse and at times entirely unmusical.  Charles Burney once described a badly-played serpent as "exactly resembling in tone, that of a great hungry, or rather angry, Essex calf". 

Putting a dragon's head on either instrument could only emphasize the worst aspects of their sound.  Henri Castil-Blaze, writing in 1821, observed, "This form, picturesque for the eye, essentially harms the results of the instrument, of which it hinders and curtails the vibrations.  The sound of the buccin is duller, harsher, and drier than that of the trombone."

The gaudy head was not intended for sound, however. The primary customers for this model, military bands, cared more about visual display than sound. J. A. Kappey's history of military music includes this recollection:

"I distinctly remember having seen in childhood a large Austrian band, which made a lasting impression upon me; it had about 5 or 6 brass serpents in the front rank, the bell of each being shaped like an open mouth of a huge serpent, painted bloodred inside with huge white teeth, and wagging tongue which moved up and down at every step! For 'picturesque' effect—I never forgot that; as to what or how the band played, I remember nothing except those terrible open jaws!!"

Trombone vs bull

This article, copied from the September 23, 1841 issue of the [Pittsfield, Massachusetts] Sun speaks for itself:

Trombone vs. Bull.--The Lafayette (Louisiana) Chronicle, in enumerating the various definitions given to the word "gentleman," relates the following anecdote:

An intoxicated trombone player was returning from a country ball, and while crossing a field he was accosted by a bellowing bull. What with the darkness in the eyes of a man who could not have seen straght had it been daylight, the trombone player mistook the bull for a brother musician,and the bellow for a defiance to a trial of skill. Possessessed with this idea, he gave a blast on his instrument that made the "welkin ring." The bull taking this as a challenge from some other bull, advanced towards the trombone player, and bellowed with greater energy. "You'll hava to blow--hic--blow louder than that, my--hic--fine fellow," said the musician; whereupuon he propped himself against a stone wall and gave another blast. The enraged bull, without more ado, interrupted the strain by attacking the trombone player in the rear, and throwing  him over the wall. "There," he ejaculated as he slowly regained his legs, "you--hic--may be a musician, but by gosh you're no gentleman!"

An ear for music

Lest anyone doubts that Rossini's music was once deemed contemptible by lovers of classical music, English publisher Vincent Novello visited Europe in 1829 with the hope of hearing good music (specifically Mozart) in the land of its birth. He was disappointed.

In Mannheim, he noted in  his  journal, "Heard Rossini's Overture to "Barbiere de Siviglia" on the Piano Forte. . . I should have preferred hearing something by their celebrated townsman John Cramer, but sterling music appears to be at a very low ebb here, . . ."

In Vienna, he wanted to find Beethoven's last residence, and was upset to find that people walking within a few yards of it had never heard of him, a mere two years after his death. But everyone knew and liked Rossini's music. He visited the Volksgarten, where he had been told there would be a wind orchestra. He found only a small, seven-piece military band:

"As we entered, they were playing a poor commonplace waltz [Lanner or Strauss Sr. perhaps?]. On requesting they would be so good as to play something of Mozart or Haydn the man said, 'O yes, Mozart or Rossini'--but I said, 'No Rossini--some air of Mozart.' He accordingly went away for the purpose of telling his companions our wishes--but instead of what we had requested they played the Cavatina in A flat. . . and I really believe that they had not a single piece by Mozart in all their book and probably thought we should not detect the difference."

Perhaps it is no surprise that Novello, a founding member of the Philharmonic Society of London, would prefer the classics, but even musical amateurs could, too. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the following in 1830:

"An ear for music is a very different thing from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my live; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, a good fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said, it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself when a thing of Beethoven's followed."

Even today, when Rossini is regarded among the classical masters, I suppose that most concert goers like Rossini well enough, but recognize in Beethoven a far superior musical intellect.

Popular singing and the invention of the microphone

Technology has always had a profound impact on all aspects of life. New inventions make new things possible or traditional activities easier. The invention of the microphone has affected music in numerous ways. Today I'm writing about a new style of singing popularmusic that it enabled.

Before the microphone came along, people singing in public had to develop a technique of vocal production that could make their voices heard in the farthest corner of the largest venues. Opera singers were the first to require it, but they were not alone. Singers of American popular music did not need a voice suitable for opera, but they did need a big voice and forceful delivery. Listen to this 1928 video of Al Jolson singing "It All Depends on You," and especially watch his posture as he concludes the song. It appears to be not only a dramatic gesture, but a means of adding sheer power to the finish.

Of course, Jolson could not have recorded that clip or anything else without a microphone, but as long as microphones were used only for recording, no one could sing in a theater, dance hall, or otherwise large venue without developing a comparable vocal technique. Only when it became available for live performance could professional singers use a softer, more intimate style.

Rudy Vallee appears to have been the first major star to use a microphone to sing in a ballroom, in 1930. Although it is uncertain how rapidly the sort of sound system he used became commonplace, others in the business surely noticed. Listen to this 1934 recording of Bing Crosby singing "The Very Thought of You." The microphone  picks up the slightest sound of his voice. If he sang that way unaided in a large hall, no one would have been able to hear him. The microphone enabled a gentler, more intimate delivery in public that before would have been suitable only in the privacy of someone's house.

Taps

Armies have used trumpet calls as signals to the troops for centuries. Because early trumpets had no valves and early trumpeters played only the lowest notes in the overtone series, only four or five notes are available. When trumpets became fully chromatic in the early nineteenth century with the invention of valves, military calls did not take advantage of the easy availability of extra notes. In fact, the military soon gave up trumpets in favor of bugles for their basic calls.

As simple as these calls must be, someone had to compose them. In recent history, the task has usually fallen to military band masters: capable, thoroughly trained musicians. For example, David Buhl, the leader of Napoleon's cavalry band, composed not only the signals used to regulate soldiers' activities, but also a number off ceremonial fanfares for an ensemble of trumpets, horns, and trombones. These compositions, including  not only battle signals, but signals to extinguish lights for the night and to wake up in the morning, were issued in army drill manuals.

The best known American military tune, Taps, is an interesting exception, the work of the musically illiterate Gen. Daniel Butterworth in 1862 with the help of his musically literate bugler Oliver Norton.

As a colonel in the 12th Regiment of the New York State Militia, Butterfield had issued an order in 1859 that all officers and non-commissioned officers be thoroughly familiar with the first thirty pages of the first volume of Winfield Scott's manual on tactics. He apparently considered thorough familiarity to include the ability to sound all the bugles calls, as he mentioned in a letter to the magazine Century in 1898. He also mentioned that he had devised a short call to precede all other calls that were intended for his brigade alone.

Scott's manual included a lights-out call known as "Scott's Tattoo," but shortly before the war started, another signal replaced it. Butterfield disliked it. It seemed to formal to signal the end of day. Taps, as we know it, greatly resembles the last line of "Scott's Tattoo." Butterfield's and Norton's recollections differ somewhat, but it appears that Butterfield worked out some changes in rhythm to make the piece smoother and more melodic, found someone to write his version on paper, and then went to Norton to polish it further.

Norton (also writing in 1898) recalled that after he started sounding Taps, buglers of other brigades asked him for copies of the music, and thereafter, it rapidly spread throughout the union army.

How did a signal to return to camp and extinguish lights for the night become so famous as a call for military funerals? Later in 1862, a cannoneer of Battery A, 2nd (or 3rd) Artillery, was killed in action. Traditionally, his regiment would have honored his burial by firing three volleys, but Captain John S. Tidball realized that it would cause renewed fighting with the enemy so close. He ordered the sounding of Taps as a substitute. Again, the practice spread throughout the army until it eventually became mandatory.

I am indebted to a friend who alerted me to the research of Jari A.Villanueva: "24 notes that tap deep emotion" and "History of Taps."

Untouched by performers' hands: the theremin

The theremin, named for its inventor Louis Théremin, is the only instrument that is played without the performer touching any part of it. It uses two ultrasonic oscillators, one of fixed pitch and the other variable. The variable frequency oscillator is attached to an antenna. Audible pitch results from the heterodyne interaction of the two oscillators. That is, what we hear are the beats between two ultrasonic pitches, the difference tones. The frequency of the pitch results from how close or how far away the performers right hand is to the antenna. The performer's left hand similarly controls the volume by moving in relation to a metal loop on the instrument. With some difficulty and practice, performers can play melodies. They can make weird sound effects much more easily. Slonimsky notes that is very effective for killing cockroaches.

Rossini overtures

During the latter part of the nineteenth century until the latter part of the twentieth, most of Rossini's operas (the chief exception being The Barber of Seville) disappeared from the repertoire. Many of their overtures, at the same time, became mainstays of the orchestral repertoire. It is therefore ironic that Rossini hated writing them and put them off as long as possible. In an undated letter he advised a young colleague:

"Wait till the evening before the opening night. Nothing primes inspiration like necessity, whether it takes the form of  a copyist waiting for your work or the coercion of an exasperated impresario tearing his hair out in handfuls. In my day all the impresarios in Italy were bald at thirty.

I wrote the overture to Othello in a little room at the Barbaja Palace, in which the baldest and fiercest of those impresarios had locked my by force with nothing but a plate of macaroni and the threat that I should not leave the room aloof until I had written the last note. I wrote the overture to La Gazza ladra on the day of the first performance in the theater itself, where I was imprisoned by the director and watched over by four stage hands, who had instructions to throw my manuscript out of the window page by page to the copyists who were waiting to transcribe it below. In the absence of pages, they were to throw me.

With the Barber I did better still. I didn't compose an overture, but simply took one that had been meant for Elisabetta; the public was delighted. I wrote the overture to Comte Ory while fishing, with my feet in the water, in the company of Signor Aguardo, who was talking about Spanish finance. The one for William Tell was done under more or less similar circumstances. As for Moses, I just didn't write one at all."

A Friday the 13th post

For most of his life, Arnold Schoenberg experienced fear not only of the number 13, but multiples of it.  He was sure that he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13, such as 1939 ('39 = 13 x 3). An astrologer assured  him that the year would be dangerous, but not fatal. In 1950, when he turned 76, another astrologer pointed out that 7 + 6 = 13. July 13, 1951 was the first Friday the 13 of his 76th year, he spent the day in bed, afraid of death. The story goes that his wife was skeptical and late at night pointed out that it almost midnight and nothing bad had happened. He looked up at her and promptly died: at 11:47 (1+1+4+7 =13), 13 minutes before midnight.

On the subject of unlucky and untimely deaths (although not associated with Friday the 13th or fear of it), consider the following:

Jean Baptiste Lully conducted his orchestra by pounding a heavy stick on the floor. One night he missed the floor and crushed his toe instead. Because he refused to let the doctors amputate it, gangrene set in and  he died more than two months later.

Alessandro Stradella composed some beautiful music, but also made many enemies both by embezzling money from the church and having careless affairs with so many women who were either wives or mistresses of powerful men. He had to leave first Rome, then Venice in a hurry. In Venice, an outraged patron hired thugs to kill him. They reportedly heard him perform and were so overcome by the beauty of his music they couldn't follow through. He fled to Genoa and got involved with another woman. This time, a hired assassin found him outdoors and stabbed him.

Johann Schobert is no longer well known, but Mozart and many others esteemed his music. In addition to being a skilled harpsichordist and imaginative composer, he was an amateur mushroom hunter. One night on a walk with his wife and several friends, he gathered some mushrooms and took them to a tavern to have them prepared. The chef refused, saying they were poisonous. So the party took them to another tavern, with the same result. Schobert and a physician in the party were so sure that they were good that they went back to Schobert's home and had a feast. Unfortunately, the two chefs were correct. All those who ate the mushrooms became sick at once, so no one could go for help. They were not found till noon the next day, when it was too late for any medicine to work, but it took painful days for them to die.

Ernest Chausson and Wallingford Riegger both died more quickly. Chausson lost control of his bicycle going down a hill and crashed into a brick wall. It killed him instantly. Riegger was walking his dog when it got into a fight with another dog. He got tangled in the leashes, fell, and  hit  his head, and did not survive emergency surgery.

The Ophecleide

The serpent eventually morphed into the ophecleide, a metal instrument built more or less in the form of a bassoon. This shape made it possible for the tone holes to be correctly placed and the right size. Unlike the serpent, then, its intonation was dependable. It made a logical bass to the keyed bugle, which was invented at about the same time and for a while became a popular solo instrument. The ophecleide, too, in the hands of skilled players, made an excellent effect both in bands and orchestras and as a solo instrument.

But notice that I must use past tense. Though good reasons exist to revive the ophicleide (to provide a more appropriate sound than the tuba in much nineteenth-century music, for example),  it does not have a lot of love or respect right now.

I have no idea who wrote the following poem, but it has made the rounds of email lists and is certainly worth sharing again.

 

 

THE OPHICLEIDE

The Ophicleide, like mortal sin,
      Was fostered by the serpent.
Its pitch was vague; its tone was dim;
     Its timbre, rude and burpant.

Composers, in a secret vote,
      Declared its sound non grata;
And that's why Wagner never wrote
      An Ophicleide Sonata.

Thus spurned, it soon became defunct,
      To gross neglect succumbing;
A few were pawned, but most were junked
      Or used for indoor plumbing.

And so this ill wind, badly blown,
      Has now completely vanished:
I nominate the saxophone 
      To be the next one banished

Farewell, offensive Ophicleide,
      Your epitaph is chiseled:
"I died of ophicleidicide:
      I tried, alas, but fizzled!"

Military band intonation

According to orchestral conductor Walter Legge, a number of British military bands were summoned to Drury Lane Theatre during the winter of 1943-44 to audition for a long overseas tour. It was icy outside, and the theater was not heated, and yet all the bands played with impeccable intonation. At lunchtime, Legge commented to the band directors that he had conducted some of the world's best orchestras under much better conditions, and yet had not been able to achieve such good results. One of the band directors reminded him of something he could never obtain: "You would have no intonation troubles if you had our authority to put any man who played out of tune on seven days latrine duty."

Beethoven rises to a challenge!!

Everyone knows about Ludwig van Beethoven. He is a towering figure in Classical music, renowned for his contributions to the symphony, the string quartet, the piano sonata, and much more. No one but musicologists know much about Daniel Steibelt. They mostly remember him for using the tambourine in so many of  his piano sonatas (his wife played tambourine), for introducing the Chinese gong into his opera Romeo et Juliette (although later musicologists have determined it was some kind of tuned bell instead), and for coming out the loser in a brash challenge to Beethoven.

Steibelt was born in Berlin. He had already started his musical studies when his father forced him to join the Prussian army. He deserted and drifted around Europe supporting himself as a pianist. In 1790 he settled in Paris, where wrote many large-scale compositions. Late in the decade, he visited London, where his brilliant technique as a pianist attracted considerable attention. He became especially known for imitating the effect of a storm with rapid tremolos in the left hand.

He set out on a tour of German-speaking cities in 1799. In general, he met with a good reception everywhere he went--including a pardon for his desertion--until he arrived in Vienna in 1800. One favorite pastime of the Viennese nobility was to host improvisation contests between two pianists. Beethoven had already bested every other pianist in Vienna. Whether on  his own initiative or with the urging of a Viennese patron, Steibelt issued a challenge to Beethoven.

It might have been just another contest, quickly forgotten, had Steibelt not deliberately offended Beethoven. Shortly before the date of the contest, Steibelt attended a concert where Beethoven's Trio in B-flat for clarinet, cello, and piano, op. 11, was performed. The trio ends with a set of variations on a theme from the opera L'amor marinaro by Joseph Weigl. Steibelt greeted the piece with rather public condescension and then began the contest with a flashy set of variations on the same theme, including plenty of his storm effects.

Beethoven was in a foul mood when it was his turn to play. Steibelt had brought a new quintet with him, so Beethoven picked up the cello part, turned it upside down on the music rack, plunked out a few notes with one finger, and proceeded to improvise for a long time on this new theme. Beethoven's improvisation not only demonstrated his own brilliant technique and musical imagination, but ridiculed Steibelt's mannerisms. Deeply offended and humiliated, Steibelt walked out of the room before Beethoven had finished, refused any social invitations if Beethoven would be present, and returned to Paris vowing never to return to Vienna as long as Beethoven lived there.

Years later, Rossini made Vienna forget all about Beethoven just by showing up, and he was properly upset about it. Steibelt's main claim to our attention is that he tried deliberately to make Vienna forget all about Beethoven and failed miserably.

A Dog's Taste for Bruckner

Some of Anton Bruckner's students decided to play a trick on him. While he was out to  lunch, they played music on the piano for Bruckner's dog. As one of them played a motive from Richard Wagner's music, the others chased the dog around the room and slapped him. But when they played from Bruckner's own Te Deum, they gave the dog treats.

Once the dog started running away every time he heard Wagner's music and came bounding toward the piano with his tail wagging every time he heard Bruckner's, the students prepared the next part of their plan.

When Bruckner returned from lunch, the student's hailed him as the greatest living composer. Bruckner, of course, always insisted that Wagner was the greatest. He became incensed when someone elevated even his own music above Wagner's.

The students then informed him that even the dog knew that Bruckner was greater than Wagner. Intrigued, he asked for proof. Sure enough, at the sound of Wagner's music, the dog howled and ran out of the room, but at the sound of Bruckner's Te Deum, he returned with his tail wagging and pawed expectantly at the students' sleeves. Surely it didn't take Bruckner long to figure out the explanation, but he was  pleased at the demonstration nonetheless.

Would a university hire Mozart?

I have no idea where the following letter came from. Someone forwarded it to me on email years ago. Now that I've found it again, it's too good not to share.


March 15
Dear Dean X:

I write in response to your suggestion of an appointment to our faculty for a Mr. W.A. Mozart, currently of Vienna, Austria. While the Music Department appreciates your interest, faculty are sensitive about their prerogatives in the selection of new colleagues.

While the list of works and performances that the candidate submitted is undoubtedly a full one, though not always accurate in the view of our musicologists, it reflects activity outside education. Mr. Mozart does not have an earned doctorate; indeed, very little in the way of formal training or teaching experience. There is a good deal of instability too evidenced in the resume. Would he really settle down in a large state university? And while we have no church connections, as chairman I must voice a concern over the incidents with the Archbishop of Salzburg. They hardly confirm his abilities to be a good team man.

I know that the strong supporting letter from Mr. Haydn, himself a successful composer, suggests that some of the candidate's problems are not really to the heart of the matter. But Mr. Haydn is writing from a very special situation. Esterhaza is a well-funded private institution, rather a long way from our university, and better able than we are to accommodate a non-academic like Mr. Haydn. Our concern is not just with the most gifted -- but because state funds are involved, with all who come to us seeking an education in music. I have drawn to your attention many times the budget and space problems in the department.

The musicology faculty did say after the interview that Mr. Mozart seemed to have too little knowledge of music before Bach and Handel. If he were only to teach composition, that might not be a serious impediment, but we expect everyone to be able to assume some of the burden of large undergraduate survey classes in music history.

The applied faculty were impressed by his piano playing, rather old-fashioned though some thought it to be. That he also performed on the violin and viola seemed for us to be stretching versatility dangerously thin.

The composition faculty were in the same way skeptical about his extensive output. They rightly warn us from their own experience that to receive many performances is no guarantee of quality, and the senior professor points out that Mr. Mozart promotes many of these performances himself. He has never won the support of a major foundation. One of my colleagues was present a year or two ago at the premiere of, I believe, a violin sonata, and he discovered afterwards that Mr. Mozart had indeed not fully written out the piano part before he played it. This may be all very well in that world, but it sets a poor example to students in their assignments, and one can only think with trepidation of a concerto performance by our student orchestra with Mr. Mozart. Naturally he proved to be an entertaining man at dinner and spoke amusingly of his travels. It was perhaps significant that he and our colleagues seemed to have few acquaintances in common. One lady colleague was offended by an anecdote our guest told and left early. We are glad as a faculty to have had the chance to meet the visitor but do not see our way to recommending an appointment, and least of all with tenure. Our first need, as I have emphasized in your office, is for a specialist in music education primary methods.

Please give my regards to Mr. Mozart when you write him. I am sure he will continue to do well in that very different world he has chosen and which suits him better, I believe than higher education.

Yours sincerely,

Y....... Z.........
Chairman, Department of Music

P.S. Some good news. Our senior professor of composition tells me there is now a very good chance that a movement of his concerto will have its premiere next season. You will remember his work was commissioned by a foundation and won first prize nine years ago.

The Serpent (and I thought the trombone gets no respect)

The serpent was the bass of the old wooden cornett. As such, it predates the invention of keys and mechanics that make them work. It got its name from its  curvy shape. No one would have been able to hold it or finger it if it were straight. As it is, the tone holes are placed according to where the player's fingers can reach them and the right size for the player's fingers to cover them. They are neither large enough nor properly placed for either optimum tone or intonation according to the laws of acoustics.

As the quotations below amply demonstrate, it was a useful instrument for some purposes, but only because nothing was any better. Most musicians whose views have come down to us seem to have disliked it. And yet it is the grandfather of both the modern tuba and the modern saxophone. (If you play neither of those instruments, go ahead and smirk!)

Canon Edme Guillaume: "The instrument gave a fresh zest to Gregorian Plainsong."

Michael Praetorius (1571-1621): "Most unlovely and bullocky."

Georg F. Handel (1685-1759): (On hearing the Serpent for the first time) "Aye, but not the Serpent that seduced Eve."

Charles Burney (1726-1814): "In the French churches, there is an instrument on each side of the choir, called the Serpent, from its shape, I suppose, for it undulates like one. This gives the tone in chanting, and plays the bass when they sing in parts. It mixes with them better than the organ, (and) is less likely to overpower or destroy by bad temperament, that perfect tone of which only the voice is capable. The Serpent keeps the voices up to their pitch, and so is a kind of crutch for them to lean on."

Marin Mersenne (1588-1648): "To accompany as many as twenty of the most powerful singers and yet play the softest chamber music with the most delicate grace notes."

J. Viret: "A type of clumsy and unsightly cornett."

Charles Burney (again): "The Serpent is not only overblown and detestably out of tune, but exactly resembling in tone that of a great hungry, or rather angry Essex calf."

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): "The essentially barbaric timbre of this instrument would have been far more appropriate to the ceremonies of the bloody cult of the Druids than to those of the Catholic religion. There is only one exception to be made - the case where the Serpent is employed in the Masses for the Dead, to reinforce the terrible plainsong of the Dies Irae. Then, no doubt, its cold and abominable howling is in place."

Abbe Beaugeois: "The (Serpent) student needs a good ear, because many of the notes are only given by the lips."

Marin Mersenne (again): "But the true bass of the cornett is performed with the Serpent, so that one can say that one without the other is a body without a soul."

There's more where these came from: Serpent Anecdotes & Quotes.

What color is the Blue Danube?

Is the beautiful blue Danube blue? Slonimsky reports that someone in Vienna watched it for an hour every day for a year to note its color. It was green 255 days, gray 60 days, yellow 40 days, brown 10 days, and not once blue. According to a letter to the New York Times in 1945, it was, in fact, blue upstream from Vienna. Was it blue in Vienna when Strauss wrote the waltz? How far upstream do we  have to go to see it blue today?

Creole Band

The first jazz band to tour the vaudeville circuit, and therefore gain recognition outside of New Orleans, was the Creole Band (James Palao, violin; Fred Keppard, cornet; George Baquet, clarinet; Eddie Vincent, trombone; Ollie"Dink" Johnson, drums; Norwood Williams, guitar; and Bill Johnson, bass). They declined an offer to make commercial recordings, therefore giving the prestige and fame of making the first recorded jazz to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white band. The Creole Band virtually disappeared from jazz history until Lawrence Gushee published  his Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band in 2005.

An Earnest Request

Everybody knows not to leave cell phones on at a concert. Or at least everyone has heard reminders before concerts. What could have possibly created such a disturbance before the noisy things were invented? Here's a note printed on the front of the Glyndebourne program of 1935:

"Patrons are earnestly requested not to flash TORCHES during the Performances. It is aggravating to the rest of the audience but intolerable to the Artists. It is much worse than 'walking behind the bowler's arm' at cricket."

Now that we know that, what annoyed audiences before the invention of the flashlight?

Suite(s) from Swan Lake

The community orchestra I play in just played the suite from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake--at least that's what I thought it was when we first started rehearsing. I certainly didn't know anything unusual about the piece. I'd heard the waltz many times, and it was nice to have a chance to play it. Some of the other movements have fun trombone parts, too.

Trombone parts in orchestral music always have lots of long rests and seldom have good cues. If I don't already have a recording of the pieces we perform, I try to get one. So I went online and looked for the Swan Lake Suite. Since I already have multiple recordings of the Nutcracker Suite, I made my choice from recordings paired with something else.

The recording came, and it had six movements. Our version has eight. But where our "Dance of the Swans" is less than 40 measures long (with trombones playing only in the last measure), the recording had 12 minutes worth of "Dance of the Swans," including four of at least six parts. In short, the recording maybe half of the music we were preparing and a bunch of other stuff.

Back to the Internet. This time, I added a keyword to my search to find a recording that has the "Spanish Dance." That's the movement where the trombones have 34 measures rest, no cue, and a very important entrance, where for the first two notes the first trombone is the only instrument in the orchestra that plays anything.

I picked one of the recordings, and when it arrived, got out my part. This version likewise had lots of music that our edition didn't have, but it lacked the "Neapolitan Dance." Oh well, that one has a dull trombone part and no counting issues. Murphy's Law was still hard at work. This recording has a cut in the "Spanish Dance"--including the entire passage that I especially wanted to hear.

The guest conductor arrived last Thursday. She had been preparing from a different Swan Lake Suite score than what we were using. She seemed uncomfortable with the "Spanish Dance," skipped over the "Neapolitan Dance," and confessed she was sight-reading the "Mazurka."

So, then, it appears that there are at least three versions of Swan Lake Suite! How can that be? It turns out that Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky's very first ballet, was a dismal failure at its first performance, largely because neither the conductor nor the choreographer had any idea what to do with anything more than light background music. The Bolshoi Ballet company sort of kept it in it's repertoire for a few years, but replaced at least half of Tchaikovsky's music with then-familiar music by now-forgotten composers.

When Tchaikovsky died, a great interest in his lesser known pieces arose. In the hands of the team that had helped Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker achieve their success, the revival of Swan Lake created a sensation. It has remained popular as a full-length ballet ever since. All those different suites must have come later.

In rehearsal, we only played through the "Neapolitan Dance" once. I think it had a cornet solo in it. At least, the whole trumpet section looked heartbroken when they heard we weren't playing it. Maybe some time I'll get to hear it, but I'm not buying any more Swan Lake recordings.