Risca Male Choir Blog #14
Great news! 100% of the choir and music team have received their first vaccination! We’re edging ever closer to our goal of returning to rehearsals. We are thrilled to tell you that with hard work from our committee, a venue has been found for some outdoor rehearsals. So our first session for some sixteen months will take place at 6pm on Sunday June 6 in the stand at Crosskeys RFC ground in Pandy Park, Crosskeys. Who knows what we'll sound like, but at least we can start to get the vocal cords working again. Please see the news update RISCA RETURNS on this website for further information.
Composers of the Month
Tomaso Albinoni (8th June 1671 – 17th January 1751)
The son of a wealthy paper merchant, Albinoni enjoyed independent means. Although he was a fully trained musician, he considered himself an amateur. Little is known of his life, except for the production of at least 48 of his operas, chiefly at Venice between 1694 and 1741. He also composed many solo cantatas (Vocal works, mostly with religious texts). Albinoni published 10 sets of instrumental works which achieved wide popularity in his own day and are still appreciated today. (Johann Sebastian Bach based four of his own keyboard fugues on themes composed by Albinoni.) His instrumental works consist mostly of sonatas, concertos, and sinfonias (orchestral pieces) for various instruments. Especially notable are the Sinfonie e Concerti a 5 (Opus 2, 1700), the concerti for strings (Opus 5, 1707), and the concerti for one and two oboes in Opus 7 and Opus 9. These works are distinguished above all by their melodic charm.
You may have heard one of his pieces, Oboe Concerto in D minor, performed by Catherine-Tanner and Christopher Williams at our last annual concert (almost 2 years ago!!). Here is the second movement of the concerto performed by Amy Roberts.
Robert Schumann (8th June 1810 – 29 July 1856)
Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream (one story claims that he invented a machine to strengthen the weaker fingers on his hand and the contraption damaged the muscles! More likely the problem was caused by mercury which was thought to be a cure for syphilis!). Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann’s published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Kinderszenen piano pieces Scenes rom Childhood) Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young, piano pieces for young players) Blumenstück (Flower piece) Sonatas and Albumblätter (Album Leaves) are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.
In 1840, against the wishes of her father, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck’s daughter Clara, following a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favour of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career as a pianist, the earnings from which formed a substantial part of her father’s fortune.
Schumann suffered from a lifelong mental disorder, first manifesting itself in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode, which recurred several times alternating with phases of ‘exaltation’ and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request, in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with “psychotic melancholia”, Schumann died two years later in 1856 without having recovered from his mental illness.
Here is his piano piece, Träumerei (Dreaming) from his work Scenes from Childhood performed by the great Russian/American pianist Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989)
Sir Edward Elgar (2nd June 1857 – 23 February 1934)
Sir Edward William Elgar was an English composer, among whose best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies.
Elgar's father owned a music shop in Worcester and was a church organist who taught his son piano, organ, and violin; apart from this instruction, Elgar was basically self-taught as a musician. At the age of 16, the composer became a freelance musician and for the remainder of his life never took a permanent job. He conducted locally, performed, taught, and composed, scraping by until his marriage to Caroline Alice Roberts, a published novelist of some wealth, in 1889.
In 1899, Elgar composed one of his best-known works, the Enigma Variations, Op. 36, which catapulted him to fame. The work is a cryptic tribute to Alice and to the many friends who stood behind the composer in the shaky early days of his career.
Elgar's most fruitful period was the first decade of the twentieth century, during which he wrote some of his noblest, most expressive music, including the first four of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches; the first of these, subtitled "Land of Hope and Glory", became an unofficial second national anthem for the British Empire.
Elgar suffered a blow when Jaeger (the Nimrod of the Enigma Variations) died in 1909. The composer's productivity dropped, and the horrors of World War I deepened his melancholic outlook.
In 1919 Elgar wrote the masterly Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, whose deep feeling of sadness and impending loss surely relates to the final illness of his faithful Alice, who died in 1920. In the early 1930s, Elgar set to work on a third symphony, left unfinished at his death in 1934.
One of his greatest choral works is The Dream of Gerontius, and here you can listen to a rendition of ‘Go in the Name of Angels’ performed by American Symphony Orchestra and Bard Festival Chorale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OS9EVo9hKg&list=PLGPnjKot18ct5wNwTCW-aoB_uO19y4ksM&index=4
It’s a great joy of mine listening to the variety of pieces as research for these blogs, so I hope you enjoy them too. Here’s to returning to rehearsals as soon as possible!
Tomos
