On this the 250th aniversary of the birth of the much revered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, I have compiled a (hyperlink annotated) list of The Mozart Facts

• Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria
• Died December 5, 1791 at the age of 35
• He was born to Father Leopold and Mother Maria Anna Pertl
• He was baptized at St. Rupert’s Cathedral
• On August 4, 1782 he married Constanze Weber
• He was buried in a peasant’s grave in Vienna at St. Marx Cemetery
• His full legal name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
• Wrote of 626 unique works.
• He composed his first symphony at the age of 8
• Haydn once said Mozart is ‘the greatest composer known to me in person or by name; he has taste and, what is more, the greatest knowledge of composition’
• Mozart had a special relationship with Prague - He premiered the opera Don Giovanni there on October 29, 1787, and supported himself for many years through commissions originating from the city.
• He was a Freemason, and belonged to the same Masonic Lodge as Haydn

More to come

Looks like things are getting ridiculous now in Salzburg as local merchants attempt to capitalize on the $8.8 billion Mozart Marketing Machine. With no descendants to protect the family name, the market follows the path of least resistance - so from Mozart schnapps to Mozart jogging pants there is something for all on streets of Mozart’s city.

Fortunately there is more on offer than Mozart branded bras and golf balls. For example the Cambridge University Press has published a new Mozart Encyclopedia, director Phil Grabsky has released a new documentary, “In Search of Mozart”, and critic Anthony Holden published “THE MAN WHO WROTE MOZART: The Extraordinary Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte”. For more information Hugh Canning from The Sunday Times has a more detailed look at some of this Mozart literature.

[From: Newsweek]

Classical sales statistics are begining to roll in for 2005 and the numbers are very encouraging. Reuters is reporting a number of artists with digital sales making up 10 - 20 percent of overall sales (73 percent in the case of Janine Jansen), and even though traditional sales are down 15 percent in the US, digital sales are up almost 94 percent. This represents an unexpected and exciting growth for the classical genre in the digital marketplace. Let’s hope this trend will continue in the coming years.

[From: Reuters]

Over the past number of years I have been in the market for a new piano. During this time I have likely tried over 500 pianos at various outlets in a 400km radius, each unique and in some way unacceptable. Buying a piano is a strange business, in fact it may be one of the most difficult items to purchase period.

The most important thing is to play the instrument, listen to it, spend some quality time with it… Sounds easy right? Unfortunately this may not be possible. I can guarantee with 100% certainty there will be some kid pounding the keys of another piano on display, or some sales person making a massacre of Fur Elise or worse, rocking out to his/her version of Memory from Cats. Next, once it has been established that you can play the instrument, (impossible to avoid since you can’t get to know a piano by playing chopsticks) two divergent paths emerge that will either increase your ability to evaluate the piano or will affect your prompt exit from the store. Path 1 - The sales person realizes that since you can play you are a serious buyer, a person requiring a certain environment in which to test the available pianos before making a decision - he/she quickly proceeds to enforce the one piano at-a-time rule, and answers questions while offering tidbits of sporadically useful information. Path 2 - The sales person realizes that since you can play you are a serious buyer, and proceeds to bombard you with useless information to make any piano in the place out to be the best piano in the place often contradicting previous statements depending on your perceived enjoyment of the current instrument. Of course no salesperson good or bad can make a piano sound better, and no salesperson can tell you one piano sounds better than another.

Regardless of the process I finally found a suitable piano and had the guts to spend the money both at the same time. I now have a Yamaha U1, and am very happy with every aspect of its sound and action. Perhaps I will add a piano buying guide for mid-range pianos to the site.

2006 is here, and after a year of anticipation, the celebration of the 250th aniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756-1791) birth is upon us. As stated this is “Post 1″ of what is likely to be many leading up to January 27th (Mozart’s birthday), and likely an entire year of Mozart Mania, all Mozart all the time.

I am not a Mozart fanboy by any stretch, in fact at one time I may have been somewhat dismissive of his music before I gave it fair play. Now that there is so much hype, perhaps more than there has been for any classical composer ever(?), this may be the chance for other dismissive types to get on board. So I can deal with a year of WAM overkill (and because I would be complaining if there was no hype).

Fair warning

Every year at this time certain seasonal favorites may be indicated for your listening pleasure. Recordings of these favorites are a-dime-a-dozen and often don’t do justice to the composer’s work. So here’s a little guidance to make the most of your holiday listening.

Messiah (HWV 56) - George Frideric Handel

Messiah was written in 1741 and first performed in Dublin in 1742 when Handel was 57. At the time Handel was considering a move back to his German homeland until friend and literary scholar Charles Jennens convinced him otherwise. Jennens had recently arranged a compliation of biblical scriptures that he proposed Handel use in an oratorio - Handel accepted and remained in London to work on the project. He is said to have completed the work in record time - twenty four days, while in his home at 25 Brook Street.

The scriptures arranged by Jennens encompass profound spiritual themes central to Christianity. Divided into three parts, the standard format for an oratorio, Messiah follows the life of Christ from the prophesy of his birth to the crucifiction and resurection. The words and music take us through the divine and spiritual battle of good vs. evil culminating in the triumph of virtue over sin and the redemption of humankind. With the resurection of Christ at its climax, Messiah had been a traditional Easter performance, but has since become associated more closely with Christmas.

Messiah was not written and cast in stone, in fact the work has evolved significantly over time, such that there is no truely definitive version that accurately reflects the original. Revisions and specific arragements began appearing even before Handel passed in 1759. The most famous arrangement came about in 1788 when Mozart was commissioned by Baron van Swieten to provide more modern versions of Handel’s oratorios including Messiah. Mozart made significant changes to the orchestration, phrasing, and instrumentation that are still performed to this day.

The Messiah recordings are numerous to say the least, and because of its evolution over the centuries there are many different versions. Recordings range from traditional authentic performances to more modern re-orchestrations that add more colour and possibly entertainment value (or some might say over exaggerated). Also the recordings of choral selections should not be forgotten, as many enjoy hearing the more popular exerpts, without sitting through the entire oratorio. Here are some recommended recordings of performances in these areas:

Authentic / Traditional

Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood Conductor
This is a truely traditional recording perhaps even scholarly, and is based on period instruments. If you are looking for an academic version and period sound this is your best bet. Thanks Marc.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Sir Georg Solti, Conductor and Kiri Te Kawana, Soprano
This is a complete, and traditional recording performed in 1985. The work is would be most suitable for those interested in an authentic recording. Kiri Te Kawana provides a mostly supurb performance.

Transitional

London Symphony Orchestra, with Sir Colin Davis, Conductor
This performance was recorded in 1966, and could be considered a compromise between the traditional and modern performances with a bias to the traditional. It is a complete recording save for a single section of “He was despised”, and is recorded on modern instruments.

Modern

The Academy of St.Martin-in-the-Fields with Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor
This is a complete but modern recording performed with modern instruments. It is a very exciting perfomance with a noticeably upbeat tempo and a pleasing rhythmic flow all done very tastefully and not taken over the top.

[more...]

An article over at the Moscow Times discusses the fascinating topic of the creative foundations of some of Russia’s most notable composers and cultural icons. Caryl Emerson reports on a book entitled Five Operas and a Symphony by Boris Gasparov that explores Russian musical culture through “culturology - a speculative human science anchored firmly in empirical data and unburdened by strident politics”. Using this discipline as its base the book attempts to correlate common themes of Russian culture to unmask a hidden code of creativity.

The book includes analysis of Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla (1842), Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1871) and Khovanshchina (1881), Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1878) and The Queen of Spades (1890), and Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony (1934).

Read more about the Discipline of Culturology

[From: The Moscow Times]

I can’t say that I follow the Grammy Awards very closely but it is worth mentioning that The Emerson String Quartet has been nominated (again) for Best Classical Album and Best Chamber Music Performance. This time they are on the list for their epic recording “Mendelssohn: The Complete String Quartets” (Sämtliche Streichquartette) on Deutsche Grammophon.

This is a brilliant recording that shouldn’t be missed, and would be an exciting buy for the listener not yet familiar with Mendelssohn’s lesser known string quartets. Incidentally ESQ also includes a recording of the Octet in E flat, Op.20 recorded in two seperate sessions

If they win, it will be the seventh Grammy for the group.

It all started in a small, pear-shaped metal box labeled “Beethoven” containing thirteen skull fragments. Two of these fragments underwent forensic testing at the University of Munster, the results of which were compared to the DNA from a lock (the “Guevara” lock) of Beethoven’s Hair to confirm Beethoven as the owner.

The owner of the box - Paul Kaufman - who inherited the remains through a relative, has the fragments on long term loan to the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies. Apparently the Seligmann-Kaufman’s family obtained the skull fragments in 1863 when Beethoven’s remains were exhumed to preserve them in a new casket.

Today researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory, using the fragments described above definitively confirmed the presence of significant levels of lead - more than 100 times higher than nominal levels for Beethoven’s time (Graphs of Results).

“The testing indicated large amounts of lead in the Beethoven bone sample, compared to the control,â€? said Bill Walsh, chief scientist at the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Warrenville, Ill., and director of the Beethoven Research Project. “There’s no doubt in my mind . . . he was a victim of lead poisoning”

The testing was performed with the Advanced Photon Source X-Ray Scanner at the Argonne Lab using a process known as “X-Ray Fluorescence Intensity”.

Beethoven is well known to have suffered through terrible health problems throughout his life, problems he often wrote about saying in a letter dated 1801:

… but that jealous demon, my bad health, has thrown a wicked hindrance my way: for three years my hearing has been getting ever weaker, and this is supposed to be on account of my abdomen [Unterleib], which, as you know, was already miserable then [der schon damals wie Du weist elend war], but here it has become worse because I was constantly burdened with diarrhea [Durchfall]…¹

While the source of the lead is not known, this discovery now definitively confirms the source of the health problems that plagued Beethoven throughout his life to be lead, and further puts to rest any speculation that he did not contract or suffer from syphilis (due to undetectable mercury levels). It is unlikely that lead was the cause of Beethoven’s deafness.

Note that this theory is not new as similar results were obtained from tests done on two of Beethoven’s hairs in 2000 (CBC News Story) but were not conclusive. During the tests the hairs were destroyed, and the owner was not willing to perform further testing until recently when less invasive tests became available.

[From: The Washington Post]

Interview and video available at PBS

¹www2.sjsu.edu/depts/beethoven/skull/abdominal.html

Straight from St. Thomas Square Leipzig, a great calendar full of J.S. Bach multimedia for each day of December leading up to the 25th.

Thanks to the Beeb for helping us to get into the Christmas spirit.

See it here: Bach Advent Calendar