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.