Author Archives: David Guion

Beloved Christmas carols: The Christmas Song

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Nat King Cole at the piano

Nat King Cole at the piano / Wikimedia Commons 

In a web environment, someone can write an article or record a song and put it online immediately. Conventional publishers must work months in advance of publication. Whatever new magazine articles on Christmas, Christmas record albums, etc. appear this month were probably written some time last summer. Once upon a time, selling sheet music made at least as much money as recordings. Publishers often had song-writing teams under contract to provide new music.

On a hot July day in 1946, lyricist Bob Wells was not thinking of songs for Christmas or otherwise. He only cared about cooling off. Swimming didn’t help. Neither did taking a cold shower or anything else he could think of. So he decided to think about a wintry scene and conjure up something cold in his imagination to see if that would help.

After he had written a few lines, beginning “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose,” his partner Mel Tormé dropped by and asked about them. Hearing the explanation, he suggested they write a song. Over the forty-five minutes it took them to complete the words and the music, a winter song had become “The Christmas Song.”

The publishers turned it down. To their way of thinking, the way the song introduced Santa Claus meant that the song could only make sense on Christmas Eve. No one would buy a one-day-a-year song.

Rather than reworking the words, Wells and Tormé sang the song for Nat King Cole, who loved it and asked for exclusive rights to record and perform it. The publishers reluctantly decided that if Cole wanted to record the song, they might as well take a chance. The rest, as they say, is history.

Did Sax invent the saxhorn?

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(Saxhorns are the top row of instruments in this 1872 advertisement)

In1845, French military music reached the bottom of a long decline. The war ministry, desiring to reorganize it completely, arranged for a contest among bands with various instrumentation. The band led by Adolphe Sax won.

The Belgian-born Sax had only moved to Paris and set up shop three years earlier. His quick success (largely due to the superior craftsmanship of his instruments but also to notable supporters such as Hector Berlioz) annoyed established French makers.

That this upstart should win the right to reorganized French military music added insult to injury. That his instrumentation was built around a family of instruments he had named for himself and patented enraged several of them so much that they banded together and brought suit to nullify Sax’s patents. That suit eventually ruined both Sax and his rivals  financially.

The instruments in question, saxhorns, are valved bugles, that is, brass instruments with a conical bore. Sax was hardly the first instrument maker to add valves to bugles. He copied his valves from the German maker Johann Gottfried Moritz. Two things set saxhorns apart from anyone else’s valved bugles.

First, Sax found a superior proportion for designing the exact taper of the conical sections of his instruments. (They were necessarily cylindrical through the valves.) Second, he built a complete family of instruments from soprano to bass, alternating in pitch between B-flat and E-flat instruments.

A collection of valved bugles by other makers, which lacked similarity of proportion and compatibility of basic pitch cannot sound as good, when played together, as an ensemble of saxhorns. But did these two innovations constitute an entirely new instruments for the purpose of obtaining a patent?

Sax and his adversaries did not have enough money among them to produce a clear legal answer. Even today, differences of opinion exist.  If legal courts have no definitive opinion, the court of history does. Instruments of that kind are musically less important now than in the nineteenth century,  but where they are used at all, they are invariably saxhorns, not instruments of the same design of any of his professional and legal rivals.
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Franz Liszt at an artistic crossroads

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Franz Liszt / painting by Henri Lehmann, 1839

Franz Liszt / painting by Henri Lehmann, 1839

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, a social division arose between two kinds of music.

Some loved what they called classical music. They quarreled with people who preferred what William Weber has called high-status popular music.

Classical music specifically meant the masterpieces of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and a few others.

High-status popular music included popular operas by Rossini, Meyerbeer, and others. It also included traveling virtuosos who performed largely in salons.

That is, they performed before invited guests in the homes of aristocratic or upper-middle-class hosts.

Robert Schumann began his career as a critic specifically to protest against the emptiness of most of the piano virtuosos. They specialized in dazzling arrangements of operatic tunes or variations on popular melodies.

These pieces had little musical substance. They did not reward repeated hearing. But the audience for them preferred novelty. They had no interest in hearing the same pieces over and over.

Schumann recognized greater musical substance in some of them, including Franz Liszt. In his early career, then, Liszt represented high-status popular music. But without the musical emptiness and technical gimmicks that Schumann so despised.

Weber points out that the old aristocracy and upper middle class essentially merged around mid-century and that classical music and high-status popular music likewise grew together.

Previously popular operas, including most of Rossini’s, eventually disappeared from the repertoire, but their overtures became acceptable fare on symphonic concerts.

The virtuosos who did not make some move towards classical music likewise lost public favor.

The new  Liszt

buy classical music

Franz Liszt conducting / unknown artist, ca. 1918

In 1846 one of Liszt’s admirers, who also loved classical music, challenged him to play Beethoven’s music on his programs. So he did.

As a composer, he had always concentrated on solo piano music, occasionally with orchestral accompaniment. Like other virtuosos, he wrote a lot of variations on popular tunes. He did not compose sonatas or other classical forms.

Beginning about the time he started playing classical music in concert, he began to compose differently. He produced purely orchestral music, choral music (both sacred and secular), and songs. His piano music became more serious.

He still didn’t use classical forms. He based his music on literary programs. As a result, he devised his own formal procedures.

Liszt also experimented with new harmonic structures.At least one of his late piano pieces is almost atonal.

They had a profound influence on composers all over Europe who wanted to come out from under the domination of German musical culture.

Liszt made the transition from high-status popular music to the newly defined classical music world so easily and naturally that only in retrospect can scholars discern a transition at all.

Not all remained unified in classical music, however. Some composers (Brahms, for example) continued to write in classical forms, using harmonies, techniques of orchestration, and so on, that built on Beethoven’s legacy gradually and incrementally.

The group represented by Brahms and the group represented by Liszt argued as intensely as formerly groups that preferred “classical” music or “popular” music had argued.

By this time the idea of classical music becomes problematic. Once it meant music with standard forms high artistic ideals. It was mostly old music, or modeled on old music. It required repeated hearings to understand it.

Liszt and allies wrote new music not based on standard forms. It was less listener-friendly and demanded even more of the audience. They still aspired to high artistic ideals. But the world of classical music could no longer agree on what that meant.

Revised September 7, 2016

Source: Music and the middle class: the social structure of concert life in London, Paris, and Vienna / William Weber (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975)

Photo credits:
Public domain.

Guillaume de Machaut: the gaps in his biography

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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.

Vienna, 1800: the divergence of classical and popular music

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Revised February 27, 2017

Vienna Kohlmarkt. classical and popular music in Vienna

Vienna ca. 1800. The Kohlmarkt. Artaria, Beethoven’s publisher, is on the right.

What kind of music do you think of when you think of Vienna?

Classical music, of course.

Extra credit if you thought of Johann Strauss and realize that his waltzes aren’t classical music. But did you know classical music was hard to find in Vienna 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.

And most of the public idolized musicians you’ve probably never heard of.

In fact, the concept of classical vs popular music is only about 200 years old. It is foreshadowed by the 18th-century phrase “Kenner und Liebhaber,” or “connoisseurs and music lovers.”

Up until about 1790, many European cities enjoyed an active and varied concert life. Popular music and art music mingled on every concert, but no one yet thought in those terms. Music lovers without much knowledge or training could enjoy the art music, because its style was familiar. Connoisseurs found something to like in the less sophisticated music.

Between 1790 and the middle of the 1810s, concert life ceased entirely in London and Paris, two of the three major musical capitals. By the time it started again, the people with no special knowledge of music no longer knew how to listen to what by that time was recognized as “classical” music.

Consider the foremost musical magazine of the early 19th century, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, or “General Music Newspaper.” It first appeared in 1798 when it was still conceivable for one magazine to appeal to all musical tastes.

An article by its Vienna correspondent in 1800 shows the beginning of a divergence of taste there.

Vienna theaters

St. Michael's Square. classical and popular music in Vienna

St. Michael’s Square, Vienna, ca. 1800. Burg theater (the German theater) is far right

Vienna, the third major musical capital, did not suffer complete loss of its concert life, but the number and quality of concerts diminished. Opera suffered, too.

Vienna had an Italian opera theater and a German opera theater. As far as their orchestras were concerned, the Italians had some excellent players.

But its members frequently sent substitutes to whenever they had a chance to make more money somewhere else.

The director was “obviously unequal to his task.” As a result, the Italian orchestra did not play well.

The correspondent disapproved of the selection of operas: “The recognized older ones are neglected in favor of the newer ones which, taken as a whole, can please no connoisseur.”

The recognized older operas probably included the works of Mozart and Gluck. I haven’t identified the newer ones he complained about. They must have contained spectacular vocal effects without much sophistication of form, harmony, or melody.

In the next decade, Rossini’s operas took all of Europe by storm. Connoisseurs hated them. The arias all sounded alike, they said, and the orchestra drowned out the singers.

As the greatest of German musical centers, Vienna should have had an excellent German theater. The correspondent wrote that it fell short. It didn’t pay its musicians enough. As a consequence, it had fewer good musicians. It had a much more competent leader, though, so it often gave better performances. It still performed Haydn’s symphonies and Mozart’s operas.

Concerts in Vienna

Beethoven. classical and popular music in Vienna

Beethoven in 1804, the year he composed his Fifth Symphony / Detail of a portrait by W. J. Mähler

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 panned two concerts and singled out two with excellent music. The horn virtuoso Punto introduced Beethoven’s horn sonata.

Beethoven himself presented a piano concerto, his first symphony, and his Septet at the Italian theater. The utter incompetence of the orchestra kept the music from making its best effect.

Amateur musicians 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. Therefore, the city boasted many proficient amateur musicians, although fewer than earlier.

If there were so few 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. Unfortunately, Baron van Swieten, author of the words to Haydn’s oratorios, offered nothing that year.

Amateurs and private concerts

Daniel Steibelt. classical and popular music in Vienna

Daniel Seibelt by unidentified artist

Amateurs of all levels of proficiency took turns entertaining. They usually chose 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 Daniel 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.

With so much trivial and frivolous music dominating Vienna, where were the connoisseurs? The correspondent noted,

Yet, truly, the genuine connoisseurs and friends of music––music as art, that is––are more numerous here than strangers seem to think. The reason why they are so little bruited abroad may well be that they themselves make so little noise, preferring to worship and enjoy their idol unobtrusively.

It appears, in other words, that they gathered in each other’s homes to practice chamber music. Or symphonies if enough of them could scrape together an orchestra. They made no attempt to attract an audience.

Vienna and elsewhere

Henri Herz, classical and popular music, Vienna

Austrian pianist and composer Henri Herz (1803–1888), by Achille Devéria (1800–1857)

Vienna had some concert life and a great composer living and working there. London and Paris didn’t. So connoisseurs in those capitals likewise had to band together to entertain themselves. As in Vienna, they represented a small slice of the musical public.

Even with the return of permanent orchestras and public concerts, much of the public didn’t return to the concert halls.

By the time Robert Schumann decided to become a music critic, traveling virtuosos like Henri Herz captured the lion’s share of the audience for music.

They specialized in flashy dance pieces, sets of variations, and all manner of gimmicks.

William Weber 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. He died in 1827. The generation of Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Berlioz started to make their mark internationally in the 1830s. Until then, those who preferred music as an art to music as entertainment had little to listen to by living composers.

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

The argument continues along the same lines today.

Related posts

The birth of the popular music industry
Classical and pop music: 200 years of rivalry
Classical music that used to be popular music
Making sense of sonata form

Sources:
“A sketch of the principal features of contemporary musical life in Vienna” / Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 3 (1800): cols. 41-50, 65-68. Excerpt translated by Piero Weiss in Music in the Western World, selected and annotated by Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin (New York: Schirmer Books, 1984).

William Weber. Music and the middle class: the social structure of concert life in London, Paris and Vienna. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975.

The buccin: a dragon-headed trombone

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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!!”