Nixon in China

I have written a few times regarding the need for new music, though perhaps not in this blog. I did write concerning the fact that we have no new violin concertos, as of 1948, which have gained a permanent place in the repertory.  Oscar Wilde once said: "If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." If you think about it, this applies to ALL art. That's why dissonant, incoherent contemporary music has failed so dramatically and resoundingly. Nobody is interested in listening to it a second time. Mascagni's opera, Cavalleria Rusticana, has been performed over 44,000 times since it was composed in the late 1800s - about 350 times per year. By comparison, the modern opera, Nixon in China (by John Adams), has perhaps been produced 10 times and performed 50 times since it premiered in 1987 in Houston, an average of 2 times per year. I believe it may as well be dead. This opera, in fact, is one of the better known works of the Twentieth Century. After Elgar premiered his First Symphony in 1908, it was performed no fewer than one hundred times in its first year. There are over twenty recordings of it and it is still being regularly programmed by conductors around the world. Nowadays, composers write a piece, it is performed a half dozen times and then put away for good. Audiences really do know what they want and what they like. Composers should have been taught to trust and respect the audience's judgment long ago. Instead, modern composers have wanted to teach classical music audiences what is good for them to listen to; the audiences have not been fooled. Music is to the point where it sounds like it was written by engineers and mathematicians. We are back to square one. Perhaps what I hear about the modern concert hall being nothing more than a museum is true. We need new music more than ever - but not the kind we have been getting for the last sixty years.

Marie Hall

Marie Hall (Marie Pauline Hall) was an English violinist born on April 8, 1884 (Brahms was 51 years old.)  Her claim to fame rests on the fact that Vaughan Williams wrote and dedicated his best known work, The Lark Ascending, for her.  She also (briefly) took lessons from Edward Elgar (1894.)  Her playing was once described as being emotionless.  Her first teacher was her father, a harpist in the Carl Rosa Opera Company (which is still active today.)  It may be (or perhaps not) that a certain Hildegarde Werner also taught her as a very young child.  Other teachers she had included August Wilhelmj (1896) Max Mossel (1898), Johan Kruse (1900), and Otakar Sevcik (1901.)  Early on, being barely nine years old, she had missed an opportunity to study with Emile Sauret because her family did not have enough money to pay her tuition at the Royal Academy (London.)  It has been reported that as a child, she played her violin in the street, in Malvern, England, accompanied by her mother, to help out with family expenses - Lucien Capet did the same thing, playing in theaters, cafes, and cabarets as well.  Her subsequent music education was financed through scholarships.  Her first concert took place in Prague (where Sevcik taught) in 1902.  She was 18 years old and later said that she had been extremely nervous before her performance.  In January, 1903, she made her Vienna debut and a month later, her London debut.  Physically, she was very petite but possessed great stamina.  She appeared in New York (Carnegie Hall) for the first time on November 8, 1905.  On that occasion, she played the Tchaikovsky concerto and an arrangement of the first Paganini concerto, among other things.  After 1909, she toured far and wide fairly regularly and even recorded, though not nearly as much as most of her contemporaries.  With Elgar conducting, she recorded an abridged version of his concerto in 1916 for the HMV record company.  (Fritz Kreisler, to whom the concerto is dedicated, never recorded it.)  A few of her recordings can be found on YouTube.  She is inextricably linked to The Lark Ascending, which she first performed in 1921, the same way that Franz Clement is linked to the Beethoven concerto, Ferdinand David to the Mendelssohn concerto, Joseph Joachim to the Brahms concerto, Leopold Auer to the Tchaikovsky concerto, and Rodolphe Kreutzer to the Kreutzer Sonata.  In each case, the composition eclipsed the violinist by far.  From 1905 onwards, Hall played what is now known as the ex-Viotti Marie Hall Stradivarius (constructed in 1709 - not to be confused with the ex-Bruce Viotti Stradivarius from 1709 as well, now housed at London’s Royal Academy of Music.)  I do not know how she acquired it.  About thirty years after her death, it was sold at auction for a large sum (more than $800,000.)   She died in Cheltenham on November 11, 1956, at age 72, in hazy obscurity. 

William Reed

William Reed (William Henry Reed) was an English violinist, teacher, composer, and conductor born on July 29, 1876 (Brahms was 43 years old.) Though he was concertmaster of the London Symphony for 23 years (1912-1935) and had a very busy career as a violinist, he is now best remembered as Edward Elgar’s biographer (1936.) Reed studied under Emile Sauret at the Royal Academy of Music (London.) In 1904, Reed was one of the founding members of the London Symphony. By 1910, he was assisting Elgar with technical problems in his violin concerto. Reed even played the concerto in a public performance of the work (off Broadway, so to speak) on September 4, 1910. The concerto was later dedicated to Fritz Kreisler, who premiered it on November 10, 1910 (presumably with the Royal Philharmonic in London.) Reed taught violin at the Royal College of Music for many years, where one of his pupils was the mother (Jean Hermione Johnstone) of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the popular music composer. Reed composed works large and small, most notably a violin concerto and a viola concerto which are now never performed. Reed died in Scotland on July 2, 1942, at age 66.

Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar (Sir Edward William Elgar) was an English violinist and composer born on June 2, 1857 (Brahms was 24 years old.) During his early career, he struggled to establish himself as a composer and played in various orchestras and gave lessons in order to support himself. He began his study of the violin and piano at the age of 8 but was mostly self-taught as a composer. He learned much by arranging the music of classical composers for ensembles he played in as a young man. He did not achieve national recognition as a prominent composer until 1899, at age 42; however, by 1902, he was enjoying international fame. Today, he is remembered for his Enigma Variations (1899), violin concerto (1910), cello concerto (1919), and Pomp and Circumstance Marches. His Symphony No. 1 (1908) received over one hundred performances in its very first year, a feat probably unmatched by any other composer since then. One of his violin pupils was Marie Hall, though only for a very brief while. Elgar died in February 1934, at 76 years of age.