Author: matija

Categories
a quiet improvisation

G. Fauré: Fantaisie, Op. 79

mistresses M

Marianne Viardot, Marie Frémiet, Marguerite Hasselmans and Maddison Adela are just some of Gabriel Faure’s (1845-1924) mistresses. However, with Emma Bardac, later wife of Claude Debussy (photo), “for the first time he experienced a fulfilling, passionate relationship which extended over several years”.

like Beethoven, Fauré started losing his hearing as he approached his later years

composer

The harmonic sense, modulations, choice of chords and modal tonalities are the links between the two great French composers. The key difference is that Fauré (photo) rarely wrote programmatic music. He looked for his inspiration in music itself which is why the concept of “impressionism” may in no way be applied to his art. He composed all kinds of compositions, but left the most in the field of lied, piano and chamber music compositions. They are characterised by neatness, balance, elegance and restraint, and are more like classical calmness and order, rather than late romantic wanderings.

despite being a professional organist for over 40 years, he left no solo compositions for the organ

student and professor

Under the tutelage of Louis Niedermeyer and Camille Saint-Saëns, he completed his composition studies at the age of 20 with the first prize in that field. Thanks to Niedermeyer, he got to know Gregorian Chants and Johann Sebastian Bach’s work, and Saint-Saëns introduced him to the works of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann. As head professor at the composition department of the Conservatory in Paris, he taught numerous composers such as Maurice Ravel, Jules Massenet, Nadia Boulanger, Georges Enesco, Charles Koechlin, Jean Roger-Ducasse, Florent Schmitt… The reason for such a large number of successful composers who studied with him is probably Fauré’s (photo) commitment to free education, i.e. he encouraged the development of the student’s natural abilities. In addition, he was the church organist at the church of La Madeleine in Paris (photo), as the successor of his professor Saint-Saëns.

he proved that a great role in the development of French music can be achieved by small steps based on great musical models

The great Croatian conductor Vladimir Kranjčević once said: “Only Fauré’s Requiem gives comfort to a person who has lost a loved one.”

“French Schumann”

Like Mozart, Cherubini, Berlioz, Schumann, Verdi, Brahms, and Dvořák, he wrote a requiem, but in the form of a poem about a calm and mild death. The connection with the great German composer is extremely interesting. French critics called Fauré the French Schumann, which is a great recognition. The characteristics they have in common are subtlety, restraint, suggestiveness and polyphony of the inner sections. At the time of WWI the Parisian publisher Jacques Durand asked prominent French composers and pianists to undertake the arrangement of the Collected Works of one European master; Ravel chose Mendelssohn, Dukas chose Beethoven, Debussy chose Chopin, and Fauré chose Schumann. The last homage to Schumann is Thème et variations, op. 73, (video) – linked to Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, op. 13 in terms of musical intertextuality, same tonality, related theme and number of variations.

fantaisie

Also known as fantasy, fancy, fantasia, from the Greek word for appearance, idea, imagination. In music it is representing an instrumental composition in which the features of free fantasy or improvisation are present. Throughout the history of music, it has approached stylistically characteristic forms, but we cannot equate it with one clearly defined form. Freedom in form and expression have been common features of fantasy since the 16th century, when was first mentioned. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was mainly written for string and wind instruments and can be found all over Europe. Henry Purcell is an English composer known for his fantasias for keyboard, lute or viola in the 17th century. In Germany, it was mostly composed for the organ, and Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the 18th century should be singled out. Father’s fantasies are mostly paired with a formally clearly defined fugue and thus form a complementary whole. The improvisational character is manifested both in the written sheet music and in the frequent omission of bar lines in son’s fantasies (photo).

Classical balance can be found in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s Fantasias, while Ludwig van Beethoven used improvisational elements in Fantasia for piano, choir and orchestra, Op. 80. Also, he calls two piano sonatas op. 27 “quasi una fantasia”. Franz Schubert‘s “Wanderer” Fantasia is considered one of his most difficult piano works, it foreshadows the development of fantasia in romanticism. In the 19th century, we also include Robert Schumann‘s Fantasia in C major, Op. 19, Frédéric Chopin‘s Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49, Felix Mendelssohn‘s Fantasia in F-sharp minor, Op. 28, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s “Romeo and Juliet” Overture-Fantasy and “Francesca da Rimini” Symphonic Fantasy. The 20th century was marked by Max Reger‘s Fantasie und Fuge über B-A-C-H, Ferruccio Busoni‘s Fantasia contrappuntistica and Arnold Schoenberg‘s Phantasy for violin and piano. Fans of animated films are probably familiar with the Fantasia film from 1940 produced and released by Walt Disney Productions (photo), which used many of the most famous pieces of classical music, thus promoting it (photo).

Categories
sonata through twentieth-century ears

S. Prokofiev: Flute Sonata in D, Op. 94

7 📖 (+6 🎧) minutes

The beginning of his work was marked by the exploration of ballets and continued with operas full of dissonant tensions and unusual combinations of instruments. His compositions are harmonically and melodically clear, often with a constant flow of rhythm. By avoiding the solo cadence, he implements the idea of an artist as primarily a part of the concert ensemble. Diaghilev’s great friend and “the best Russian composer of that time, after Stravinsky”, of course.

Sergey Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) received his first piano lessons from his mother. At the age of 13, he went to St. Petersburg to study composition, piano, and conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1912, Prokofiev wrote the First Piano Concerto, for which he received the Anton Rubinstein Prize.

most of his student colleagues considered him as an eccentric and arrogant person

After graduating from the Conservatory, Prokofiev went to London where he got to know the ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and Daphnis et Chloé, and began a long-term collaboration with Diaghilev, director of Russian Ballet. Influenced by the ballets of Stravinsky and Ravel, he composed pieces spiked with vicious humour and sharp grotesque.

Prokofiev, a passionate chess player, defeated Ravel in a chess game

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1579921

In the year before the Revolution in Russia, one of his most famous works, influenced by the works of Haydn, was written, the Classical Symphony. Prokofiev said that Mozart would have probably composed it similarly if he had lived in his time and had kept his way of musical thinking.

Mozart and Prokofiev composed their first pieces at the age of five

In 1918 he went to New York, where he met a young singer, Lina Llubera, who became his first wife. For many years they stayed in Paris, where he was in close contact with Francis Poulenc and Arthur Honegger. Later, he left his wife and sons for the poet Mira Mendelssohn.

Robert Schumann, Alexander Scriabin, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso – Prokofiev’s great role models

In 1932, “the prodigal son” returned to his homeland and earlier works. We consider the ballet Romeo and Juliet a masterpiece because of its extraordinary simplicity. On his last trip abroad, Prokofiev visited Hollywood, where he worked with Sergey Eisenstein on the music for Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky.

Prokofiev’s music has been used in 164 films and TV shows

At the time of World War II, he composed the ballet Cinderella. The ballet wasn’t seen as politically incorrect because it was related to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. Overwork was fatal to the composer’s health, as well as censorship by the Communist Party because of “formalism”. The lyrical Symphony No. 7 was the composer’s swan song. He died unnoticed on the day Stalin’s death was announced.

classical, inventive, toccata, lyrical and humorous – Prokofiev on the characteristics of his own works

sonata

During the summer of 1943, Sergey Prokofiev escaped the war-torn Eastern Front and went to the Central Asian city of Almaty, where he worked on the film score for Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. In the middle of this massive project, Prokofiev found himself drawn to something he described as a “sonata in a gentle, flowing classical style.” Sonata for flute and piano in D major, op. 94 was composed and first performed in 1943. After the world premiere in Moscow, the violin version was created in collaboration with the violinist David Oistrach. It is called the Second Sonata for violin, with the unchanged piano part from his Sonata for flute and piano in D major. There are four movements: Moderato, Allegro scherzando, Andante, and Allegro con brio. 

moderato

Prokofiev uses a strictly melodic sonata form with two themes. The expansive first theme gives us a sense of shimmering classicism. It is as if we are hearing a Handel or Mozart sonata through twentieth-century ears. The tendency to build thematic periods on two very distant tonalities, with sudden modulation or without any modulation, is evident in the second theme. You can perceive that as sudden harmonic turns or, as some would say change of colours. As the movement unfolds, what might have been an open and bright D major, is constantly re-examined and changed, leading to beautiful bridges, with a return to the original tonality. Sudden changes are also manifested in the contrasts of the characters, e.g. when the flute brings a distinctly rhythmic and toccata motif suddenly after a lyric theme. Throughout the movement, there is an exchange of motifs between the flute and the piano, which culminates in common virtuoso passages before returning to the beginning, i.e. recapitulation. Prokofiev creates special sonic atmospheres in a few moments; transition to the recapitulation, a parallel melody in three different registers, and at the very end, the first theme in the highest register and the quietest dynamics.

our tips

To make the experience of playing and working on this piece easier for the future performers, we thought it would be a good idea to share with you some things that need special attention. It is important to return to the already mentioned constant flow and perpetuum mobile, which Prokofiev often uses, and because of which there is very little room for rest in this movement. Sudden changes in character and dynamics are present in both parts, which requires quick adjustment. When playing the flute, one should give special attention to melodies of delicate tone and quiet dynamics in the high registers. When playing the piano, extreme rhythmicity should be taken into account, also in quiet dynamics. In the low register, the flutist should pay special attention to the staccato way of performing, and the pianist must be careful not to overlap the motifs from the flute section. Special technical readiness is expected in the coda, and the piano section may seem light in places because the same material appears in both hands, but soon the most varied jumps and technical requirements are introduced.
We consider the most important thing to be the cooperation of two performers in presenting common motifs, the so-called conversations, imitations, joint music making and feeling the pulse in metronomically unstable places like transitions, i.e. bridges.

coda

Thank you for reading this post to the end. We hope that you have enjoyed listening to Prokofofiev’s Sonata and getting to know this work from a different perspective!
We would like to get feedback from you and learn more about your exploring and understanding of Prokofiev’s music.

sources

Categories
a flower of a lost bouquet

M. Bonis: Scherzo

4 📖 (+5 🎧) minutes

Mel Bonis by Charles Corbineau 1877.

It is a remarkable thing that one woman named Mélanie, in the company of some of the greatest music artists ever, such as Claude Debussy, César Franck, and Auguste Bazille, dedicated her entire life to composing and music, despite strong opposition from her family and the “male environment”. She played with the cards that were assigned to her in the best possible way and her talent surprised and shocked other musicians, such as the great composer Camille Saint-Saëns, who in 1901 said: “I’ve never imagined a woman could write such music!”

Mélanie Bonis (1858 – 1937) attended the Conservatoire de Paris where she met the mentioned male musicians and entered their world. It is for this reason that Mélanie is better known as Mel – a simpler, androgynous name, and a name without connotations. She was aware of her great talent and potential, and was encouraged by Professor César Franck, but her family banned her music and arranged a wedding with an energetic and materialistic businessman. To make the story even more bizarre, the man didn’t like music.

All of these things impacted her compositions. She was a prolific composer, especially at the turn of two centuries. Her compositions can be described as dramatic, humorous, powerful, sensual, sometimes oriental, and of high sensitivity. She composed throughout her life, and in 1907 became a member of the committee of the Société des compositeurs de musique.
A large number of her compositions have been lost, but the official number of published works is about three hundred. These include works for piano, two pianos, voice, choir a cappella or accompanied by harp or organ, for organ or harmonium, chamber ensembles, orchestra, etc. Mel Bonis and Claude Debussy are credited for the return of French flutist literature in the early 20th century. As Duo von Meck is based on many artistic relationships, it is our obligation to point out that Mel had one with the singer Amédée Hettich, towards whom she has nurtured feelings since her student days. An illegitimate child and strong feelings indicate that this relationship was much more than artistic.

40-year-old Mel Bonis
old Mel Bonis

Scherzo has been known since the time of Claudio Monteverdi in the 16th century and it represents cheerful secular, and rarely spiritual movement. It appears in some of Joseph Haydn’s early sonatas and string quartets, but actually L. van Beethoven is the one who gives the final form and determines the position of the scherzo in a cyclic sonata form. While in the 18th century it served to separate the slow movement from the final, in the 19th century it became a separate solo or orchestral work. The famous ones are composed by Frédéric Chopin and Johannes Brahms, which can be described as grotesque, fictional, and dramatic wholes.

Leaving the Conservatory (1899.), by Jean Béraud and Conservatoire de Paris in 1906.

Manuscript of Mélanie’s Scherzo, op. posth. 187 begins on the 25th page and it is surely the Final movement of the, unfortunately, lost work for the flute and piano. In the historical context, it shares the characteristics of a cheerful, dramatic, lavish, playful, and imaginative movement. In our Search of Lost Time, we often go back to the first work we performed in front of an audience. We admire, again and again, the greatness of the disguised female composer in a violently isolated, and thus perfect work. Therefore, we invite you to share the same emotions with us …

Sources