Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 5 - the apology of a Soviet artist

On January 25, 1938, two months after the premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, the Moscow newspaper Vetchernia Moskva published an article by the author entitled "My Response as an Artist". This article contained the famous passage where Shostakovich pointed out that his Fifth Symphony was "the concrete and creative response of a Soviet artist to fair criticism". In the Soviet Union, the matter went almost unnoticed. Instead, in the West, it was regarded as the official subtitle that the composer himself had added to his Symphony.
The story is a complex one.

Exactly two years before, Josif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, called Stalin, had qualified as "pornophonic music" an opera by Shostakovich, forcing his retirement from the stage. Around the same time the composer was working on his Symphony No. 4, but due to the stormy debates held at the Composers' Union (with a troubled Shostakovich present during them), the composer chose to withdraw it from the stage when the work was in its last rehearsals.

The great purge

The thirty-year-old author's position became critical. It was not for nothing. The years 1936-38 are remembered today as the cruelest years of the great purge or campaign of repression and political persecution carried out by Stalin in the late USSR. Let us say, by the way, that the Fourth Symphony had to wait for its premiere until 1962.

D. Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)

A political wink
The Fifth, on the other hand, did not have to wait so long. Master Shostakovich, after all, ended up specializing in accommodating political circumstances, using his inventiveness. He understood that writing his music was possible, as long as the authorities were satisfied at the same time with a sort of political wink. The "fair criticism" is a simple example of mutual benefit that, as the maestro must have expected, the "nomenklatura" would minimize and the West would distinguish.

Symphony No. 5, in D minor, op 47
Composed between April and July 1937, the work premiered in Leningrad on November 21 of that year with a thunderous success, literally. The public ovation lasted forty minutes, as recalled by the famous Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich in exile. Commenting on the episode, and as a dissident, he lashed out at the Russian authorities of the time, asserting that the government would have executed Shostakovich for writing such a work if the audience ovation had not lasted forty minutes on the day of its premiere.

A conservative work?
According to those in the know, compared to his earlier symphonies, the musical language of the Fifth is perceived as somewhat more conservative. Even so, and given the circumstances, the work is a bold composition. Primarily, because of its open renunciation of the slightest hint of patriotism, and prodigal, instead, in emotions and tragic feelings, expressions of the soul not seen with good eyes in revolutionary conjunctures.

Movements
Lasting approximately 50 minutes, it is structured in the usual four movements. The second of them, a Largo that is said to have provoked tears in the audience on the day of the premiere; the last one, an allegro of triumphant atmosphere with the apotheotic ending that has made it famous (47:45). It is still debated whether, in this last movement, Shostakovich made concessions to the authorities or just decided to be ironic.

00:22  Moderato
08:12  Allegretto (scherzo)
23:44  Largo
40:09  Allegro non troppo

Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Tokyo, in 1979.

Ferdinand Beyer, "Der Flohwalzer", a polka for little people

Contrary to the widespread idea, the very popular piano piece known in Latin America as "polca de los perros" (although in Colombia it is called "polca de los gatos"... and in Hungary "monkey march", and in Bulgaria "cat march", and so on) did not arise from folklore nor is it a product of popular tradition without a recognized author. On the contrary, the little piece bears No. 8 in the series of 106 basic exercises published in 1860 under the title Vorschule im Klavierspiel (Preparatory School for the Piano) by the German pianist and composer Ferdinand Beyer.

Born in 1803 in southern Germany, Ferdinand Beyer was recognized in his time as a salon pianist, author of a variety of light music, and a willing arranger of national anthems and popular orchestral pieces. None of this is remembered today. But he left a great legacy: the aforementioned piano method which, at least in part, is still used today, with some of his exercises even included in anthologies on piano pedagogy.

Ferdinand Beyer (1803 - 1863)

The author, and his method, fit perfectly with the middle-class aspiration of his time to enjoy leisure, embodied in the music that could be made at home with a piano in the living room. He shared an era in which home piano teachers proliferated, as did the methods of study, and the publishing houses that released them. In his more affluent years, Ferdinand Beyer was professionally connected to a respected publishing house in Mainz, on the banks of the Rhine. He died there in 1863.

Vorschule im Klavierspiel, opus 101, No 8
The accompanying score is a transcription of the original piece. It is written in the key of D major (that is what its "key signature" shows: two sharps, F and C). But the truth is that to the ear, the piece is in the unusual key of G flat major (an accompanying guitar, for example, should sustain the harmony in that key).

We boldly assume that this is how it was originally written, in D major, and that the obligatory alterations were simply incorporated into each measure. To do otherwise would have meant confronting a child with a score whose key signature had a few flats: six, no more, and no less. The little pianists would have come out in a huff.

The piece is very simple, needless to say. And it can be approached by anyone who is taught it "by ear". This is due to a particular property that characterizes it. The performer's hands never play simultaneously. Using this "gadget", the annoying issue of both hands' independence is solved.

As for the pianist, we only know that her name is Namtan. An excellent interpreter. Tasteful and musically intelligent, she ends the piece with a very appropriate ritardando that Beyer did not write down in the score.

Mozart, "Ave Verum Corpus" motet

Mozart wrote his first motet when he was twelve years old. He would compose his last one in Vienna in the spring of 1791, six months before his death. Written simultaneously with the famous unfinished Requiem, the sacred piece Ave verum corpus can be considered Mozart's last entirely finished religious work. A good part of his most celebrated works would come from his pen that year. To this handful of magnificent works, Mozart will add a sublime exercise in the brief sacred form originating in the Middle Ages, the motet, to thank a friend for the care lavished on his beloved Constanze.

In Baden
Constanze, whose health was somewhat fragile, used to spend several seasons "taking the waters" in Baden, a spa twenty-odd kilometers from Vienna. In June 1791 she was there, enjoying the waters with her seven-year-old son Carl, and seven months pregnant with Franz Xavier, her sixth and last child (of the six, only two survived infancy). Mozart visited them on a regular basis, making sure that his family was perfectly accommodated there. For this, he relied on the goodwill of his friend Anton Stoll, a resident of Baden, teacher and music director of the local parish.

A donation to the parish
In the last year of his life, Mozart was extremely busy. In addition to the Requiem, during those months he was simultaneously working on the Clarinet Concerto, the opera La Clemenza di Tito, and the greatest success of his life, The Magic Flute. The visit to his family in Baden served to slow him down somewhat. The 46 simple measures of the motet Ave verum corpus were then added to the repertoire of the diligent Professor Stoll's chapel choir. Completed in Baden on June 18, the little masterpiece had its premiere for the celebration of Corpus Christi on the 23rd of that month in the parish church of Baden.

Motet Ave verum corpus in D major, K. 618
It is composed on a Eucharistic hymn of the Catholic faith that begins with those words, ave verum corpus, something like "Hail, true body". The hymn dates from the 14th century and is generally attributed to Pope Innocent VI. Written for choirs, string orchestra and organ, the work contains a single dynamic indication but a masterful one: the maestro only noted that it should be performed sottovoce.

Its sublime 46 bars are barely more than four minutes long.

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, with Matthew Martin at the organ, under the baton of Daniel Hyde.

Beethoven, Sonata No 5, the "little Pathetique"

After leaving Bonn and settling in Vienna in November 1792, Beethoven there published his first three piano sonatas in 1796. It was only three years since the heads of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had fallen in revolutionary France, but in monarchical Vienna, the music was still fresh and light. The Eroica Symphony and the perishable dedication to Napoleon were still a few years away. Meanwhile, Beethoven tries to take Vienna by storm, trying to earn a name for himself as a piano virtuoso and unbeatable improviser.

Opus 10
For the master, these were good years. In 1798 he would publish another three sonatas, as Opus 10, following the tradition of grouping chamber works in multiples of three, a practice he had abandoned with Sonata No. 4, the only piece of Opus 7. He will also resume the healthy habit of dedicating the works to his godparents or tutors, or to his wives.

Opus 10 is dedicated to Anna Margarette von Browne, wife of a Russian diplomat in Vienna and, for the time, one of his most conspicuous benefactors. For the time being, Beethoven is a free-lance musician receiving monetary stimuli for creating music for a Viennese society that, in his own words noted on a raging day, "thinks only of laughing, drinking and dancing."

Sonata Opus 10 No. 1 in C minor - the little Pathétique?
Some scholars have sought to see in the piece a sort of "rehearsal" for the later sonatas. Precisely for the only sonata of the following opus, the rather more notable and popular Pathétique Sonata. And they have called it, very loosely, "the little Pathétique". Granted, both are written in C minor and begin by attacking, forte, the same chord. Now, as this seems a bit weak, they add in expert language their coincidence in "dramatic power" and the presence of "similar dynamic contrasts"... A lot of theories to extol a work from Beethoven's early period, simply kinder and less stormy than the later work in the genre, which does not detract one iota from its genius.

Movements:
Just under twenty minutes long, it is in the usual three movements.

00:00  Allegro molto e con brio
06:03  Adagio molto (one of the maestro's most beautiful slow movements)
14:32  Finale: Prestissimo

The rendition is by Daniel Barenboim, on the occasion of the complete Beethoven sonatas, in Berlin, in 2005.

Chopin, 11 years old: Polonaise in A-flat

In 1817, a Chopin family friend, a priest, had the first polonaise written by Frédérick published. The composer, in short pants, was seven years old. Dedicated to a young countess, the piece earned a glowing review in the Warsaw Review:

"The composer of this Polonaise dance is barely eight years old... He not only performs on the piano the most difficult fragments but has already composed several dances and variations that fill connoisseurs and critics with amazement...".

Soon after, Warsaw will talk about him, dubbing him "a second Mozart", as expected. 

Grand Duke Constantine, in charge of dominating indomitable Poland, invited Frédérick to the Belvedere palace on more than one occasion. Attracted by the fashion, countesses, princes, viceroys, and high dignitaries, would take turns to hear the little musician. Similar privileges were enjoyed by foreign artists touring Poland. In 1820, a famous Italian primadonna, Angelica Catalani, gave little Chopin a gold watch after listening, amazed, to the "best pianist of Warsaw", then ten years old.

Zywny, the child's teacher
As odd as it may seem, Chopin was about to "graduate" around this time. In 1822, his teacher, the elderly violinist and harpsichordist Wojciech Zywny reckoned, somewhat jokingly and somewhat seriously, that "he had nothing more to teach him." Frédérick, believe me, agreed. The lessons, lavish with music by Bach and Mozart, ended that year. Chopin would never again have another piano teacher. As if he had known it, the previous year Frédéric had paid homage to his only teacher by offering him a polonaise written that year, when he was eleven.

Polonaise in A flat major
Six simple but charming minutes. If it had been written by an adult, perhaps it would astonish by revealing a certain inexperience. For an eleven-year-old boy, it is notable for the opposite: the simplicity of his writing is offset by a keen sense of proportion that Chopin will maintain throughout his life. According to scholars, the experienced eye should see in this gentle Polonaise the germ of a superior gift.

The rendition is by the eleven-year-old French boy Elian Ramamonjisoa, a pupil at the Marseilles Conservatory.

Haydn, Symphony No 94, "The Surprise"

Prince Nikolas Esterházy died in 1790. By that date, Franz Joseph Haydn had served him as the court composer for twenty-eight years. Nikolas was succeeded by his son Anton, who had little inclination for the arts, and who would reduce the small court orchestra to its minimum. Haydn, at almost sixty years of age, felt free for the first time. In Vienna, he would not lack offers. He did have several.

The most interesting came from the German violinist and concert organizer Johann Peter Salomon, who offered the maestro a substantial sum for presenting a series of concerts with new works in England.
Haydn disembarked in Dover on January 1, 1791. It was his first trip out of Austria.

A long stay
The reception was spectacular, and the stay was long and profitable. Haydn stayed in England for a year and a half, thus participating in two of the seasons programmed by Salomon. The maestro received innumerable courtesies and invitations almost daily, experiencing a life he had not imagined, at the antipodes of the reclusion, or almost, of Esterháza.

But there was also room for nostalgia and, perhaps, for anxiety. He writes: "...there are times when I wish I could fly to Vienna to be able to work in peace because the noise of the merchants in the streets is unbearable".

The premiere, the return, a new pupil
Symphony No. 94 was premiered in the second season, in the sixth concert of the twelve scheduled, on March 23, 1792, with Haydn conducting and Salomon as first violin. It was a success, as were all the concerts of that season and the preceding one. The season over, Haydn left London and England in early July. He promised to return in 1794. On his return, while passing through Bonn, he was introduced to a young 21-year-old musician, Ludwig van Beethoven. Haydn would be his tutor in Vienna.

Symphony No. 94 in G major
The work is the second of the so-called "London symphonies", the last ones composed by the composer between 1791 and 1795, those ranging from No. 93 to 104. As can be seen, upon Haydn's arrival in England, the master had composed no more nor less than 92 symphonies. Together with the rest of his work, they were requested for publication by the publishing houses of the great European capitals. Hence the reception and enthusiasm that the English public gave him.

Written in 1791 precisely in London, and structured in the usual four movements, the symphony owes its popular nickname to its justly famous second movement Andante, in the form of a theme and variations.

The "surprise"
The theme could not be more simple. As the sweet and naive melody unfolds, it becomes softer and softer and quieter, until it almost dissolves into silence. Just as the attentive listener's ears prick up as the melody escapes him, the full orchestra strikes a fortissimo chord. Then the music resumes its original candor as if nothing had happened.

The abrupt dynamic change is not marked in the original manuscript, and theories abound as to the master's reasons for including it later. Some propose that Haydn would have wanted to make the ladies jump out of their seats, just for the fun of it. Others, that he openly wished to awaken the "seniors" who, after an opulent dinner and a few too many drinks, abounded in the audience, falling asleep as soon as the music began.

Movements:
00:00  Adagio cantabile - Vivace assai
09:38  Andante (the longest movement; there are variations to suit all tastes; the "surprise" comes at minute 7:05, right after the introduction of the theme)
16:10  Menuetto: Allegro molto
21:45  Finale: Allegro di molto

Russian maestro Yuri Temirkanov conducts the St Petersburg Philharmonic.

Mozart, "The Magic Flute" Overture

Had he not died two months after the premiere of The Magic Flute, perhaps Mozart's life would have changed entirely as a result of its enormous success. Premiered on September 30, 1791, and Mozart died on December 5, the opera was therefore established as his last great finished work and one of the greatest works of operatic literature. The opera, sung in German, tells in two acts the story of Tamino, who, together with Papageno and with the help of his charming flute, tries to rescue Pamina from the clutches of her evil mother, the Queen of the Night.

The idea came from librettist, actor, and producer Emanuel Schikaneder, a well-known member of the Masonic lodges. Mozart, for his part, had "enlisted" no more than six years earlier. Hence Die Zauberflöte has often been described as a Masonic oratorio, a reflection of the libertarian ideas of its time, which, of course, it contemplates. But the opposite perspective points to it as a sublime fairy tale suitable for all audiences. What is not in dispute is that both "producers", Mozart and Schikaneder, were going through a lean period. Cash had to be made. And this is easier to do by appealing to a broad audience than to one with exquisite ideas.

The overture
Completed only a few days before the premiere, it is one of the few overtures of its time that does not make use of the thematic material of the rest of the work. In this precise case, nothing else could be expected. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart carried a musical idea in his head for ten years, which he had "borrowed" from a sonata by Muzio Clementi.

After clearly establishing the tonic (E flat) with a couple of chords, the allegro based on Clementi's theme begins, to which Mozart applies a fugato treatment that makes it more complex, making it not very recognizable. Even so, each time he published the sonata, Clementi took care to clarify that it had been composed ten years before the Magic Flute.

Sir Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. 
It lasts nearly seven minutes.

Beethoven, String Quartet No 14, in C♯ m

During his lifetime, Beethoven composed sixteen quartets for strings: the first six, before the age of thirty, grouped under Opus 18; the five culminating the series, finished during the last four years of his life when deafness had preyed on the master. Of course, the quartets are not the genre that keeps Beethoven in the high regard of the general public today, but, in the opinion of scholars, they represent the most valuable and profound part of Beethoven's thought. After the Ninth was finished in 1824, the master closed the grandiose cycle of his Symphonies and Sonatas, and turned to himself. His music would become more profound and conceptual.

Most notably, the penultimate in the series of sixteen, Quartet No. 14, from 1826, astonished his contemporaries, at least his musician contemporaries. "What remains for us to write after this?" noted Schubert. A few years later, Wagner would not lag behind and write about the quartet a thoughtful article, pondering its greatness. And Beethoven himself, of course, held it in high esteem, even though it was created at the request of a Russian prince, along with two other quartets that today bear Nos. 12 and 13.

The genesis
In November 1822, Prince Nikolas Galitzin asked Beethoven to compose "one, two, or three quartets" for his personal enjoyment. True, the master had not written a quartet in fourteen years at that point, so some academics credit the prince with inspiring Beethoven to pick up the form once more. However, it so happens that the master had contacted Leipzig publisher Peters months prior to Galitzin's request, informing him that he had a half-finished quartet.

50 ducats for each quartet
Beethoven thus received the prince's commission as if it were the perfect fit. In a letter from January 1823 in response to the prince, the maestro demonstrated genuine desire for the assignment and committed himself, optimistically, for "the end of February or, at the latest, the middle of March." He also stated his fee, fifty ducats for each quartet. In fact, it took him a little bit longer. And, from that point on until his passing, Beethoven won't produce another work of that stature. It has been noted that No. 14 in particular is the most ambitious piece he has ever tried.

String Quartet No 14 Op 131 in C♯ minor
The work was completed in May 1826, just under a year before the composer's death. It was published in 1827 but was not performed in public until 1835 although it is possible that the master heard it, privately, before his death.
Large dimensions work, it is unusually structured in seven sections, which are played without interruption. However, scholars consider it to be the usual four movements to which two brief interludes plus a fugal introduction have been added.

Movements:
00:00  Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo
06:40  Allegro molto vivace
09:39  Allegro moderato (first interlude)
10:27  Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile (the longest movement, in the form of a theme and variations)
23:13  Presto
28:37  Adagio quasi un poco andante (second interlude)
30:00  Allegro

The performance is by the American String Quartet.

Joaquín Rodrigo, "Concierto Andaluz", for 4 guitars

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a joke spreading in Paris, a prank that Spanish people did not like at all. It was said that the best Spanish composers were French. The gossip, however, had some substance. In fact, in those years it was difficult to find anything more Spanish than the Andalusian dances of Bizet's Carmen, or Chabrier's rhapsody España, or even Ravel's Bolero. So when Joaquín Rodrigo arrived in Paris in 1927 to study composition with Paul Dukas, he had to redouble his commitment to music to put an end to such talk.

After finishing his studies, Rodrigo returned to Spain to devote himself entirely to composition. But fame was slow in coming. In 1940 he premiered in Barcelona the work that would give him universal recognition, the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, a work that definitively affirmed his musical personality. His contribution to the incorporation of the guitar as a concert instrument is invaluable: the Fantasía para un Gentilhombre, of 1954, composed on themes by the baroque composer Gaspar Sanz, crowned what the Concierto de Aranjuez had begun.

Los Romeros
In 1967, the already internationally acclaimed musician received a request from a famous quartet of Spanish guitarists, Los Romeros (Celedonio, the father, and three sons). On August 1 of the following year, a poetic evocation of Andalusia saw the light of day.
The Concierto Andaluz for four guitars and orchestra premiered at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the collaboration of the famous quartet as soloists, accompanied by the city's Philharmonic. The sones, the color, and the Hispanic rhythms were back on stage, with honors.

Concierto Andaluz
The piece is in three movements, blending impressionistic Spanish music with baroque touches. A familiar, lively opening movement, bolero time, evokes popular dances, with strings and guitars imitating castanet percussion. It is followed by a high-flying, lyrical adagio, comparable to a similar movement in the Concierto de Aranjuez. The work closes with a vibrant and vigorous allegretto.

00:19  Tempo de Bolero 
09:09  Adagio-Allegro-Adagio
19:10  Allegretto-Allegro-Allegretto

The performance is by instrumentalists Nick and David Kvaratskhelia, Peter Ernst and Christopher Brandt, accompanied by the Merck Philharmonic Orchestra, which owes its name to ancestral pharmaceutical entrepreneurs, the Merck family, since the seventeenth century. Wolfgang Heinzel conducts.

Fanny Mendelssohn, piano suite Das Jahr (The Year)

Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix's older sister, was as talented and precocious a pianist and composer as her brother, if not more so. She enjoyed the same musical education and toured like him half of Europe under the generous patronage of Abraham Mendelssohn, the father, a banker. Saving some obstacles, she could have made a career as a concert pianist, choosing the destiny that Clara Schumann would later take, but she opted for composition. And composition, in those years, was almost exclusively a male domain.

Fanny Mendelssohn - Hensel
(1805 - 1847)

The younger brother's view
Her brother Felix was also not very enthusiastic in his support of Fanny's undisputed talents. Comfortably true to the times, in 1837 he wrote: "From what I know of Fanny, I would say that she has no vocation for composition, nor does she feel a natural inclination for it." Happily married for eight years, Fanny was a housewife, in the eyes of her brother: "...to publish her works would only add to her difficulties, and I cannot say that I would approve of that," he added.

Fanny, a real pianist
All in all, Felix agreed to publish several of Fanny's songs under his name. And he was never reluctant to listen to her advice and criticism. Not for nothing, comments of the time point out that Fanny was a better pianist than Felix. At the age of thirteen, she had greeted her father's birthday by playing the 24 Preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier by heart.

A single opus
In 1846, with the strong support of her husband, the painter Wilhelm Hensel, Fanny decided to publish a collection of songs, her Opus 1. The critics were favorable, but, very unfortunately, Fanny died the following year as a result of complications from a heart attack suffered while rehearsing works by her brother. Felix would follow her within six months, and for the same reasons.

Piano Suite "Das Jahr" - The Year
About 460 works survive from Fanny, mostly songs and works for solo piano. Among the latter, a novel piano suite, Das Jahr, a sort of musical diary of the year she spent with her family in Rome in 1841, stands out.
Begun that same year, it consists of twelve sections describing or representing each month of the year. In a letter to Felix from Rome, Fanny hastens to clarify that the titles are provisional, intimate, familiar nicknames, and that she will think of something else when she has to "interpret them in society". The latter will never happen.

The rendition is by the Canadian pianist Laurence Manning.

Paganini, Sonata for guitar and violin

Not everyone seems to be aware that Niccolo Paganini, the most brilliant violin virtuoso of the 19th century, was also a talented guitarist. It is not by chance that within the context of his chamber works – somewhat forgotten, it is true – the pieces composed for guitar amount to a considerable sum. Of the five opuses published during his lifetime, let us note that No. 1, containing the 24 Caprichos by the way, is the only one that does not include the guitar. 

According to contemporary artists who met him, the Italian maestro believed that it was not worthwhile to perform on stage also as a guitarist. He had enough with the violin. Besides, his physiognomy, his height, thinness, bony hands and long legs favored the supernatural aura that surrounded him much more effectively if he remained standing with the violin than sitting with a guitar between his legs.

The works for guitar
Paganini's works for solo guitar include no more and no less than 37 sonatas and five sonatinas. But there are also works for violin accompaniment. Of the latter, the best known and performed today are the Grand Sonata in A major, opus 35, and the Sonata Concertata in the same key, opus 61, both composed around 1805, although the latter was published only in the twentieth century, in 1955.

"Sonata Concertata" per chitarra e violino, op.61
Note that the original title states that the sonata is written for guitar and violin, in that order. However, in the third movement, the liveliest, the violin takes on a certain prominence.
The piece lasts less than fourteen minutes but includes the three standard movements of the time:

01:00  Allegro spiritoso
08:35  Adagio, assai espressivo
11:58  Rondo: Allegretto con brio - Scherzando

The rendition is by American guitarist Eliot Fisk accompanied by Italian violinist Chiara Morandi.

Allegri's Miserere, taken in loan by Mozart

The Pontifical Musical Chapel, that is, the schola cantorum of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, has had a permanent choir for five hundred years. Some original pieces have been composed for it. The most famous is the one that begins with the words Miserere mei, Deus (God, have mercy on me), popularly known as Miserere, composed around 1630 by the Italian priest and composer Gregorio Allegri to be performed during Holy Week. Regarded by the Vatican as the exclusive property of the papal choir, its copying and distribution were punishable by excommunication. What no one expected was that an attentive auditor would be able to learn the piece by heart and transcribe it to paper. 

The attentive auditor
As part of their first trip to Italy, after visiting Milan and Verona and being entertained and celebrated there, Leopold Mozart and his son Wolfgang Amadeus arrived in Rome in high spirits for Holy Week in 1770.

Gregorio Allegri (c.1582 - 1652)

Drawn by the mystery of the prohibition, they attended the Sistine Chapel on Holy Wednesday and listened attentively to the interpretation of the Miserere.
On his return to his lodgings, the little fourteen-year-old Mozart transcribed onto ruled paper those inaccessible twelve minutes of polyphonic music sung a capella by... two choirs of four and five voices!
On Good Friday, when the piece was to be repeated, father and son returned to the chapel to check the accuracy of the transcription, which needed only a few minor corrections.

A legend?
Undoubtedly, the story has all the characteristics to resemble one of many legends about the superhuman musical abilities of the young Mozart. But unless Leopold was in the habit of falsely impressing his own wife and daughter, the following words sent by Leopold to Salzburg cannot but make the veracity of the anecdote undeniable:

"You have often heard of the famous Miserere in Rome, which is so greatly prized that the performers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of ex communication to take away a single part of it, to copy it or to give it to anyone. But we have it already. Wolfgang has written it down and we would have sent it to Salzburg in this letter, if it were not necessary for us to be there to perform it. But the manner of performance contributes more to its effect than the composition itself. So we shall bring it home with us." 

The Knight Mozart
One might think that the Mozart family was not pious and obedient enough but, truth be told, the papal prohibition was never so strict. Allegri's work could be requested by high officials of the church or political power and, although rare, such requests were welcomed and authorized. And in Mozart's case, when Pope Clement XIV learned of the piece's copying, not only did he not excommunicate the child prodigy, but he called him to the Holy See to salute his art by naming him Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur. 

In the rendition by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, the masterwork of Allegri, being asked in loan by little Mozart, in 1770.

Lieberman "Gargoyles", for piano / Yuja Wang

A lover of European art and architecture, the American author Lowell Lieberman is one of many spectators who have fallen spellbound by the fantastic beauty of gargoyles, those fabulous representations of monstrous, grotesque appearance that ornament the churches and cathedrals of the Western world. Originally placed there to ward off evil spirits, today they cast a spell on us and perhaps leave us a little perplexed... For Lieberman, they were the inspiration for a short suite for piano.

"Gargoyles" was the name of the colorful set of four piano pieces with which the promising composer responded in 1989 to a request from the Tcherepnin Society of New York.
Lieberman, born in 1961, and with studies at the Juilliard School of Music, belongs to a brood of contemporary American composers who have felt very comfortable leaving dodecaphonism behind to rediscover the perennial vitality of the familiar and ever-recurring tonality.

Lowell Liberman (b. in 1961)

A vast oeuvre
His most popular piano work is Gargoyles, but Lieberman is the author of an interesting number of concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. He has written for clarinet, flute, piano, trumpet and violin. He is also the author of two symphonies, two operas, and of course, in the purest 19th century style, a Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini. In addition, he has written acclaimed sonatas for flute, piano, cello and guitar.
The composer lives in New York, and is a professor of composition and director and founder of the Mannes American Composers Ensemble, which specializes in the dissemination of contemporary American musicians.

Gargoyles for piano, opus 29
Premiered in October 1989 in New York, the four-movement suite is not intended to illustrate a specific gargoyle that particularly impressed the composer. Still, the spirit of the work is at times distinctly fantastic or mysterious, even frightening, at times. 

Movements:
0:00 Presto
2:00 Adagio semplice, ma con molto rubato (the romantic piece... still in force)
4:24 Allegro moderato
6:45 Presto feroce

The rendition is by the brilliant Chinese pianist Yuja Wang.