Albinoni / Giazotto: Adagio in G minor

Apart from the fact that at some point in his life he got married, little is known about the baroque composer born in Venice, Tomaso Albinoni, quite well-known today because of a work not belonging to him. The author of chamber music and about fifty operas successfully performed during his long life, he was the son of a wealthy paper merchant in Venice. As a result of his birth in a golden cradle, unlike other musicians of his time, he had no need to go to a church or noble court to offer his services as a choirmaster or court musician.

So much so, that before the publication of his sonatas for violin Op.6 (c.1712) Albinoni used to sign his works with the title of diletantte, that is, one who performs an activity for the simple pleasure (diletto) of doing it. But from this date onwards, Albinoni began to sign as "musico di violino", a title responding to a sort of "professionalization" of his career. In addition, the collection of these sonatas were published under the collective title of Trattenimenti armonici per camera, which we suppose would not bear a "dilettante" as an author, even at that time or in the sense meant above.

The bombing of Dresden

Tomaso Albinoni (1671 - 1751)

It is argued that the scarce current knowledge of his work and life is a consequence of the bombing of Dresden during World War II. A large part of Albinoni’s production, as well as biographical data, were documented in archives of the State Library of that city. Not even a trace was left of the Library after the bombings, not to mention the entire city.

Giazotto enters the scene
From this ominous circumstance, nonetheless, the Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto along with the publisher Ricordi took advantage in 1958. Giazotto claimed to have received some fragments rescued from the ruins of the Library, allegedly belonging to the slow movement of a trio sonata by Tomaso Albinoni. On the basis of a few measures, Giazotto composed the work we know today, being launched on the market by Ricordi as "Adagio di Albinoni, arranged by Remo Giazotto", the last words in fine prints. To this day nobody has seen the fragments rescued from among the ruins. What's more, the Dresden Library claims not to have them in its catalog.

But the piece is beautiful (from here we greet you, Remo) and has earned its fame from its first inception. Widely used in popular culture as a musical background in films, advertising and television programs, there are also sang versions from Camilo Sesto and Sarah Brightman, among others.
The rendition is by the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, recorded in a basilica in a Hungarian town.

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Chopin: "The Farewell Waltz"

Maria Wodzinska, the Polish girl who for a couple of years was his fiancée, saw Chopin in Dresden for the last time, in September 1835. The girl was the only daughter of Count Wodzinski, a long-time friend of the Chopin family. On their return from vacations, both Chopin and the Wodzinski met there on their way to their permanent residences –the Polish family to their villa in Poland and Chopin on his way to Paris. By that time, Maria was 16 years old; Chopin 25. For a whole week, they walked around, talked for hours at a time and enjoyed each other’s company, with a certain degree of intimacy.

On his way to Paris, Chopin went to Leipzig to see Mendelssohn and Schumann. Then he headed to Heidelberg, where he visited the father of a student. So, he arrived in Paris in mid-October. In the No 5 of Chaussée d'Antin, a nice surprise awaited him. A letter from Maria had preceded his arrival:

On Saturday, after you left us, we all walked sadly about the drawing-room where you had been with us a few minutes earlier... Our eyes were filled with tears... My mother kept on reminding us mournfully of some little characteristics of "her fourth son, Frederic", as she calls you... Felix repeatedly asks me to play the Waltz... I took [it] to be bound [...] You left your pencil ... on the piano, we are keeping it here, with great respect as if it were a relic... Adieu!

Maria Wodzinska
(1819 - 1896)

Waltz in A-flat major, op 69 No 1
The waltz that Maria refers to is the waltz in A flat major, composed that year. Chopin presented the waltz to the Wodzinski in that season, sending them later a copy, which he offered to Maria, adding a note: "To the young lady Maria".
But although it was never published during the author’s lifetime, the waltz is dedicated to Charlotte de Rothschild, a high-born student of Chopin. As was the custom at that time, the same work, officially dedicated to a certain person, could at the same time be offered, as a gift, to a few others.

Its popular name as "The Farewell Waltz" is perhaps due to the fact that it became the last offering Chopin made to Maria –the breakup will occur the following year.
It is an expressive waltz, in slow tempo, with a middle section resembling a mazurka. It is not a particularly remarkable piece, nor very demanding, that’s why Chopin has never decided on its publication.

The rendition is by the Israeli pianist Tzvi Erez.

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Carl Orff: Carmina Burana - "O Fortuna"

In 1934, a second-hand books’ dealer presented the German composer Carl Orff with a volume of medieval poems that came from an ancient manuscript. The manuscript –known now as the Burana codex– was discovered in the Benedictine monastery of Beuern in 1803 but its date is very much earlier. The collection contained more than two hundred poems from the XII and XIII centuries written in medieval Latin, and another fifty in German with a mixture of Latin or French vernacular.

The composer was deeply impressed with the vitality of the poems, and took 25 out of them to build a different music, rhythmically powerful to the point of appearing almost primitive. The final work was premiered on June 8, 1937, with the extensive title: “Carmina Burana: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images”.

Carl  Orff (1895 - 1982)

Certainly, it was not the first work composed by Orff, but as a result of the success and international recognition that Carmina achieved, the composer decided to withdraw the entire oeuvre he had composed before 1934.
From then on, he understood, his prestige should be based on the authorship of scenic dramas. A meticulous and careful sample of this will be given by a fertile production successfully completed in 1971 with the drama Play on the End of Times.
In the meantime, three popular works would stand out: the aforementioned Carmina Burana, Trionfo di Afrodite, and Catulli Carmina (poems of Catullus).

The "goliard" texts
For the most part anonymous, the poems included in the original collection of the "Songs of Beurn" (Carmina Burana), sing indifferently to love, wine or nature. Satirical and "didactic" ones are also involved.
Their texts are generically called "Goliards", a word used in the Middle Ages to refer to vagabond clerics, monks living a loose life and poor students who proliferated in Europe with the rise of urban life and the emergence of universities in the 13th century. The result is, indeed, a carefree poetic work, even rude, that was sung in the streets, taverns, or university “comparsas”. Never, of course, inside the church.

“O Fortuna”
In Carmina, the tunes are repeated in each stanza almost without variants, making its rhythmic richness constitutes its most important feature. Its best-known section is the O Fortuna fragment, which is sung at the beginning and end of the work.

The rendering is by the Johann Strauss Orchestra, conducted by André Rieu, in Maastricht, the year 2012, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the orchestra’s founding, in 1987, by Rieu himself.

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Mozart vs. Colloredo / Sonata A major

No longer a child prodigy, in 1778 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was in Paris trying to build a future as a mature musician and composer. On that year he wrote three new sonatas for piano, which a perceptive musicologist and historian called "Paris sonatas". Of these, the Sonata in A major is the most frequently heard, no doubt thanks to its third movement or "Turkish March" which over the years became one of Mozart's best-known piano pieces.

Mozart´s stay in Paris was the natural consequence of the composer’s unhappiness with his situation in Salzburg as a court musician, a post he had resigned the previous year by means of a sarcastic letter to his employer Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. Unfortunately, after eighteen months of unsuccessful attempts to secure a position in the court of any city with bursting musical life (such as Munich, Paris or Vienna) Amadeus had no other option but to return to Salzburg his tail between his legs. But he carried three published piano sonatas tucked under his arm.

The opera –Idomeneo– was successfully premiered in January 1871. Leopold and Nannerl went to the premiere and on their return, accompanied by Amadeus, they took a well-deserved vacation in Augsburg. Unfortunately, the fun was stopped short by Prince-Archbishop who commanded Mozart to immediately report in Vienna since Colloredo had been invited to the coronation of Joseph II and he would assist along with his small personal court, his keyboardist Mozart included.

The trip to Vienna imposed by the Prince-Archbishop was perhaps the last straw. Mozart realized that the time had come to ditch Colloredo and his prosaic court once and for all. For this reason, he began to act more and more discourteously towards the Archbishop. He started by staying away from the visits that every servant was supposed to pay to Colloredo each morning. Then, he added some other signs of independence and rebellion.

Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Count Hieronymus von Colloredo,
as characterized in Milos Forman's film Amadeus

Wolfgang mischief did not go unnoticed. Colloredo forced him to arrive at the table after the house servants but before the cooks. For Mozart, this was just too much and he requested an interview with Colloredo, grudgingly granted by the Archbishop. In there, the dispute got out of hand.
This was such an unpleasant situation, that still angers me, more than two hundred years later.

The quarrel
It must have been very tough. In a letter to his father, Wolfgang reports that Colloredo called him "a scoundrel, a rascal, a vagabond". After stoically enduring these insults, Wolfgang asked:
"-So, Your Grace, is not satisfied with me?
To which the Archbishop replied:
"-What, you dare to threaten me, you scoundrel? There is the door! Look out, for I will have nothing more to do with such a miserable wretch."
"At last, I said:
"-Nor I with you"
"-Well, be off."

This is the point where some scholars mention the kick-up-the-backside issue. The strict truth is that the following day Mozart handed in his resignation, which was accepted a month later.

Thus, Wolfgang became the first musician in history who decided to do business single-handedly. To dramatize a little, he would have cut the tickets, helped the audience to their seats and only then he would have sat to play the piano.
This new lifestyle would demand Mozart be aware of fashion. During those years, the European society had a keen ear to the fashionable marches performed by the Turkish Imperial Guard. No doubt, Mozart's Rondo alla Turca would have responded to such trend.

Sonata No 11 in A major - K 331
The sonata is in three movements: Andante grazioso, Menuetto and Rondo alla Turca.
The first movement, unlike the traditional A-B-A structure, consists of a theme and six variations.
At the piano, the Latvian artist Olga Jegunova.

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Bach / Gounod: Ave Maria

Many people have walked in pomp and circumstance along the aisle, arm in arm with their future life partner. Their slow happy steps were perhaps marked by that most beautiful melody  known as Schubert's Ave Maria, one of the many Ave Marias composed by numerous authors over the years. It is the most popular for such occasions; no doubt, it was the one that many of us heard in our own wedding, whilst we bowed here and there to friends and relatives, with a radiant smile of happiness.

Half of an Ave Maria
However, an author unintentionally composed half of an Ave Maria; to be fair, more than one-half. It was 1772 and Johann Sebastian Bach was beginning his greatest pedagogical and systematic work for the keyboard, The Well-Tempered Clavier. The book includes 24 preludes and fugues for the twelve major keys and twelve minor ones. Of enormous significance, the work helped to impose the division of the octave in exactly twelve chromatic halftones, which allowed for the mechanism of modulations (the smooth transition from one key to another within the same piece), to develop to its limits.

The first prelude, in C major. A modest version performed on a digital keyboard:



Gounod's apparition
Many years later, during the 1850s, the author of the opera Faust, Charles Gounod, was enjoying his own interpretation of this prelude when suddenly his Muse delicately touched his shoulder suggesting to him a tune he immediately called, "Meditation on Bach’s Prelude No 1". Soon afterwards, the French composer realised that the words of the very old prayer called in Latin Ave Maria, fitted his beautiful melody perfectly.

This is what we know today as the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria. Although less popular, it is in my opinion as beautiful as the one written by Schubert, if not more.

The version presented here is for piano and cello (Yo-Yo-Ma, at the cello; Kathrin Stott, piano), which allows for a clear recognition of the prelude, and at the same time the appreciation of the obviously talented work of Gounod.

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