Fascinating Stories Behind Classical Music Compositions

Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony

Dubbed the Eroica symphony, which means “heroic” in Italian (not “erotic”), Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony was initially his tribute to Napoleon, whom he admired. But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven angrily declared that Napoleon had become a tyrant and tore out the score’s title page dedicating the symphony to the general-turned-emperor. The Eroica was the first work of Beethoven’s in which he finally arrived at the peak of his composing abilities.



Mozart’s Requiem

If you believe the fantastic 1984 movie “Amadeus,” then Mozart’s rival, Salieri, plotted to kill Mozart while helping the younger artist compose the Requiem, as Mozart lay dying. The truth is somewhat different, and the Salieri plot is a creative fiction. The youthful genius apparently completed only the first movement sometime before his death, while the remaining outlines were completed by others. How much Mozart actually did before he died is still subject to much debate.



Beethoven’s 9th symphony

As you may know, Beethoven eventually lost his hearing. The maestro composed some of his later pieces while literally pounding the piano with his ear close to the keys. When he premiered his magnificent 9th Symphony, he conducted it without hearing a single note. Because of his deafness—and perhaps the fact that he had not conducted in public for 12 years—Beethoven’s conducting was sporadic and unsynchronized with the orchestra. A member of the orchestra even had to turn him around so that he could see the enthusiastic approval of the audience.




Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

People with a passing knowledge of classical music would know this one: Igor Stravinsky’s ballet of pagan springtime rituals sounded, and looked, so bizarre to early 1900s audiences that during its first public performance the audience rioted. It didn’t help matters that the composer and his choreographer came to despise one another. The dance steps, costumes and intricate music didn’t sit well with some in the audience. Soon, supporters and detractors started fistfights, which degenerated into a riot—even though many could no longer hear the music. Musicians were even assaulted. Think about that the next time you hear of an audience going crazy at a rock or rap concert.




Liszt’s Les Preludes

The Nazis used parts of Les Preludes to be the official theme song for the propagandistic German Weekly Newsreel service, circa 1940-1945. (Can you imagine watching news footage of Luftwaffe Stukas dive-bombing Soviet troops and towns with The Prelude blaring, just like Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries was used during the helicopter attack in the movie Apocalypse Now?)


Reposted from Listverse.com

The True Story Behind Mozart’s Requiem

Mozart working on the Requiem on his deathbed

It’s one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but the story behind Mozart’s Requiem is one of the strangest chapters in history

In 1791 Mozart was at his desk working on the music for what would become The Magic Flute.

He’s interrupted by a knock at the door.

When he opens the door, he’s met by a man dressed all in black. The man’s face is covered by a mask.

He tells the composer he’s here to commission a piece for his master. But there’s a condition: Mozart can never ask who his master is, and never try to find out.

Mozart accepts the commission – when he hears what the fee is he is unconcerned by the cloak-and-dagger small print.

But little did Mozart know that this Requiem would be the last thing he ever wrote.

Before the year was out, Mozart would be dead at the age of just 35. And the Requiem – the work that arguably brought about that death – would be left unfinished.

For many years it was believed that Mozart was poisoned.  These rumors started as early as New Year’s Eve, 1791.  An obituary in the Berlin’s Musikalische Wochenblatt reported Mozart is—dead.  He was sickly when he returned home from Prague and remained ailing since then . . . Because his body swelled up after his death, it is even believed that he was poisoned.

At times Mozart even believed this.  When he was working on the Requiem he told his wife,  “I feel it very acutely.  It won’t be long now: I’ve surely been given poison!  I can’t let go of that thought.” Constanze never believed it.

The story strengthened when Salieri “confessed” that he poisoned Mozart. Salieri was delusional in the last years of his life.  But few of the people who heard his “confession” believed him.  Shortly before his death, Salieri put the record straight.  He said, although this is my last illness, I can assure you on my word of honor that there is no truth to that absurd rumor; you know that I am supposed to have poisoned Mozart.

The Russian dramatist Aleksander Pushkin must have believed the rumors.  In 1830, he wrote a short play in which Salieri does poison Mozart. It is aptly titled “Mozart and Salieri.”

If Mozart was not poisoned, then how did he die?  The cause of death was first thought to be  “feverish prickly heat.” Later it was thought to be a “liver condition with terminal uremia.”  Currently two theories exist.  A 1972 report suggests rheumatic fever.  A more recent study proposes that Mozart had the following sequence of illnesses in his final three weeks: streptococcal infection, Schönlein-Henoch Syndrome, renal failure, venesection(s), cerebral hemorrhage, terminal broncho-pneumonia.

Finally, let’s look at the Requiem.  Was the commission conceived by Salieri as a way to drive Mozart mad?  No.  Was it some malicious plot to make Mozart believe he was writing a requiem for himself?  No.  Was it commissioned by an anonymous messenger?  Yes, and that is where we need to begin.

Did Salieri plot Mozart's demise to the point of actually poisoning him? Or is it just as fanciful as all those serpents and magic bells in the younger composer's opera The Magic Flute?

Antonio Salieri was a hugely influential composer of opera and a much in-demand teacher who taught Schubert, Beethoven and Liszt. The chances are, however, that you've only ever heard of Salieri because he happened to be the arch-rival of the irrepressible Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Or was he?

The rise of the poisoning tale

Vasiliy Shkafer as Mozart and Fyodor Shalyapin as Salieri
(Russian Private Opera, 1898)

The rumor was immortalized in art when, six years after Salieri’s 1825 death, revered Russian poet Alexander Pushkin wrote a verse drama Mozart and Salieri that posited Salieri as the bitterly jealous poisoner of the greater man. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov set the play to music in the opera Mozart and Salieri, and playwright Peter Shaffer based his 1979 play Amadeus on Pushkin’s drama. That in turn was adapted for film in the Oscar-winning movie of the same name directed by Miloš Forman. So now when people think of Mozart and Salieri they think of a rivalry unto the death, when in fact the two men were on quite good terms.

Mozart had been suffering from rheumatism since childhood and his health was deteriorating. He suffered from loneliness and depression. This may have been the reason why he interpreted the mysterious commission for a requiem as a sign of impending doom. His deteriorating health convinced him that he was slowly being poisoned. “I know I have to die… I write (the requiem) for myself.”

To distract his mind from his delusions and fear of death for even a short period of time, Mozart composed the “Kleine Freimaurerkantate” – the “Freemasons Cantata”. The cantata premiered at the inauguration of a new masonic temple, with Mozart himself conducting. It was his last complete work.

Deception

Count Franz Walsegg-Stuppach was a music lover and wealthy landowner from Lower Austria.  Every Tuesday and Thursday Walsegg hosted concerts at Schloss Stuppach in which he and his musicians performed for his many friends . And this is where the strange, almost pathetic side of Walsegg emerges. For whatever reason, Walsegg would commission fresh compositions and pass them off as his own.

This harmless deception continued for years. At the conclusion of his soirees, he would challenge his guests to identify the composer of the piece they had just heard. Unknown to Walsegg, his friends were well aware of his artifice and calmly played along eventually naming the Count as the composer. As Herzog put it, "We were all young folk and considered that we were giving our master an innocent pleasure."

On February 14, 1791, his young wife died.  He came up an idea. Deeply affected by his loss, the Count resolved to honor her memory in two ways. He would build a magnificent memorial for her remains and he would commission a requiem mass to be performed every year on the anniversary of her passing. To this end, he charged his attorney, Dr. Johann Sortschan, with making the necessary arrangements stipulating that Mozart should provide the requiem. As usual, Walsegg intended to claim the requiem as his own.

Spooked by the commission, Mozart threw himself obsessively into the work. But it was all too much. He was only able to complete the Requiem and Kyrie movements, and managed to sketch the voice parts and bass lines for the Dies irae through  to the Hostias.

The composer had given detailed instructions about finishing it to his pupil Süssmayer. Süssmayer copied the entire completed score in his own hand - making it virtually impossible to determine who wrote what - and gave it to the stranger.

Even after Mozart’s death, the Walsegg-Stuppach persisted with his deception. He copied the music (which had been completed by Mozart’s students) into his own handwriting.  On December 11, 1793, he conducted it. It was entitled, “Requiem, composto del Conte Walsegg”!

Sources:

[1] http://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/guides/mozart-requiem-full-works-concert-highlight-week/

[2] http://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/case-notes-requiem/

[3] http://www.classical-music.com/article/story-behind-mozarts-reqiuem

[4] http://inmozartsfootsteps.com/380/the-real-story-of-mozart-salieri-and-amadeus-2/

[5]  http://www.mozart.com/en/timeline/life/la-clemenza-di-tito-magic-flute/

Verdi Requiem “Behind-the-Scenes”

Since the 1930’s, the Requiem has been a staple of the choral repertory on both sides of the Atlantic. Common wisdom would have us believe that the work requires the world from its performers, but also gives it back in return. When Verdi sat down to write it, he had specific soloists in mind and the score is reflective of their special gifts as technicians as well as interpreters. Because we can compare the earlier source, we know that Verdi re-wrote the music with the talents of a particular singer in mind.

Stolz as Aida, Parma, 1872

Her name was Teresa Stolz. She was born in Bohemia but she spent most of her career in Italy. Stolz was a powerful singer, both passionate and with exceptional technical control, and Verdi was enamored with her in more ways than one. She sang in several of his operas, including Don Carlo and Aida. Verdi wrote for her without concern for technical limitation. He enhanced the soprano part in a variety of ways. He added measures. He made her part higher and more virtuosic.

He also gave her music that was originally given to the choir. These changes tend to happen in prominent places, like the end.

It must have been impossible for Verdi not to have remembered Stolz’s extraordinary voice as he composed. This meant he also prepared for her presence in the score by saving the force of her dramatic impact for later.

In one instance, he examined an older passage featuring soprano and choir alone. He took the melody from the soloist, gave it to the orchestra, shortened it, and then placed this passage at the beginning of his new work. In the Libera me, you will hear something that sounds like the very opening of the Requiem but this time it is led by the soprano in its full poignancy.

The Requiem text also allowed Verdi to explore the voice in ways that he couldn’t in his operas. This may sound kind of surprising because we’re used to thinking of his operatic writing as a complete exploration of the voice. But here I don’t mean expressive range -- I mean “voice” in the poetic sense– in the sense of who is speaking. In opera, characters are delineated. Their relationships with others and with themselves are the tensions that push the drama forward. In this work, these roles aren’t so clear cut. In fact, they are often exchanged. The singers must ask themselves “am I telling a story about someone else?” or “Is this my voice, must I embody these words?” In this way, Verdi complicates the medieval poem and its spiritual meanings.

Sometimes the move from characters to story-telling is blatant, like the return of the Dies Irae music. You don’t need me to tell you when this gripping music returns. You can’t miss it. But why this music at those particular points? Why would Verdi go out of his way to break the flow of the story? The answer, at least in part, is that the Dies Irae music forcibly tears the soloists away from one role to another. At one point the soloists move from their role as narrators to fearful sinners who plead for their own salvation. “What can a wretch like me say?” But these are the obvious shifts in poetic voice. Verdi sometimes clouds the issue for everyone involved. This happens in the Rex tremendae, where the bass temporarily stops being a character and aligns himself with the narrative voice of the choir.

So we come full circle, back to the genesis of the Libera me. We can appreciate again the opening for its drama, but perhaps now we can also see its shifts in character. The soprano begins freely in a kind of monotone chanting. Suddenly, she releases herself and embodies her fearful predicament; her line becomes more articulated, more angular, more urgent. In a few short bars, Verdi has read musically against the grain of the text. He does this throughout the work – asking the singers to morph between worlds and sometimes to live between them.

This blurring of story-telling and embodiment makes this work richer and its paradoxes more immediate. We are about to experience an upbeat fugue for double chorus, and a gentle set of theme and variations in the Agnus Dei, but soon enough we come upon those questions again. The last movement ends with the soprano grounded in the dark regions of her voice, in steady prayer. We could say that all is resolved but the epic questioning that preceded this, makes it    an uneasy promise.

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Amadeus - Salieri helps Mozart write his Requiem