The rhythmic pattern of animal and human movement formed the inspiration for Gait, a 2012 orchestral tone poem by American composer Nico Muhly (b. 1981). Muhly studied the five speeds, or gaits, of horses, documented by the 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, and then moved on to the locomotion of insects and humans. People move in distinct ways which include “a running trot” and “a lateral sequence walk.” The first steps of …
Giuseppe Verdi’s 1849 opera, Luisa Miller, broke new ground. With a tragic, convoluted story centering around love, betrayal, class struggle, jealous rivalry, and violence, it displayed an increased psychological depth. The orchestra played a greater dramatic role. The last of Verdi’s “middle period” operas, Luisa Miller set the stage for the composer’s celebrated later works, such as La traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida. The Lyric Opera of Chicago provides the following brief summery: Verdi’s sumptuously …
Composed in 1797, the Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11 is spirited, fun-loving music of the 26 year old Beethoven. It is scored for clarinet, cello, and piano. At the time, the still-emerging clarinet was a novelty. Beethoven was impressed with the sound of Viennese clarinetist Franz Josef Bähr (1770-1819). The Trio was written for Bähr, and dedicated to Countess Wilhelmine von Thun, a prominent patron of both Beethoven and Mozart. With …
Eddie Palmieri, the pianist, composer, band leader, and innovator of Latin music, passed away last Wednesday, August 6 at his home in New Jersey. He was 88. Born in East Harlem to a Puerto Rican immigrant family and raised in the South Bronx, Palmieri was exposed to jazz in the New York City public school system. As a child, he frequently accompanied his brother, Charlie Palmieri, who became a prominent jazz musician …
In 2001, a long lost work by Handel was miraculously discovered. The manuscript for Handel’s Gloria in excelsis Deo had been hiding in plain sight in the library of London’s Royal Academy of Music. Bound in a collection of Handel arias that had been owned by singer William Savage (1720-1789), the manuscript was not in the composer’s hand. It was authenticated by Hamburg University professor Hans Joachim Marx. The Academy’s principal, Curtis Price, …
Last February, we explored Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major, a work unified by a single motivic thread which runs through its four movements. Emerging as a mystical trumpet call in the Symphony’s opening, this motto (an ascending fifth) rings out as a triumphant statement in the Symphony’s concluding moments. For Schumann, a composer who faced inner demons, this majestic, life-affirming work can be heard as the musical equivalent of …
Nachtmusik (“night music”), a light serenade intended for evening entertainment, was the party music of the 18th century. Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik is the most famous example. With his Serenade in A for solo piano, composed in Vienna in September of 1925, Igor Stravinsky brought the form into the 20th century. Stravinsky commented that the work was conceived “in imitation of the Nachtmusik of the 18th century, which was usually commissioned by …