Interview January 2018: 10 Questions with I. Page

 

Ian Page: Official Sites
Ian Page Site: Ian Page & Classical Opera / The Mozartists
Ian Page: Ian Page (Twitter)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (Twitter)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (Facebook)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (YouTube)
Ian Page: CO & The Mozartists (Season 2017/2018)

Ian Page: CD Albums
Ian Page: Mozart: Il Sogno di Scipione
Ian Page: Mozart: Haydn, Beethoven: Perfido!
Ian Page: Mozart: Zaide

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1. In 2017/2018 you are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Classical Opera, that, with its period-instrument orchestra under your direction as conductor, has gained the status of one of the major international leading exponents not only of the music of Mozart but also of his many contemporaries (i.e. Gluck, J.C.Bach, T.Arne, N.Jommelli and many others), thanks to a series of highly critically acclaimed live concerts and CD recordings. In 1997 you have founded Classical Opera, then in 2017 you have launched The Mozartists… Can you tell us about the story behind the birth and the many years of activity of Classical Opera? When did you encounter the music of Mozart for the first time and when did you decide to found Classical Opera and why? What have been the major challenges and the major accomplishments, you experienced during these 20 years? And what about The Mozartists?

It’s been a wonderful journey, although in many ways I’m always too close to it to be able to see the growth and evolution from a proper perspective.

In my late teens the music of Mozart occupied an increasingly important place in my heart – the piano concertos were my initial way in – and when I was at University at York (my degree was actually in English Literature), Roger Norrington came to conduct Beethoven’s Eroica symphony with the chamber orchestra there. It was completely revelatory for me, and I soon started supplementing by listening habits with period-instrument recordings of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

I was bowled over by how fresh, vibrant and surprising this core repertoire sounded with these instruments…

…The music suddenly seemed to make so much more sense; it was like scraping the veneer off an old painting by a great master and discovering that the original colours were so much brighter and more compelling.

By this stage I was in London studying as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music, and there I met David Syrus, who was for many years Head of Music at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (he only retired from the position last year). Like many other students before and since, I was fired by David’s musicianship, wisdom and supreme decency and generosity as a human being, and opera seemed to represent the ideal fusion of my twin loves of music and literature.

One thing led to another, and I naturally gravitated more and more towards Mozart’s operas…
…After the RAM I joined the music staff at Scottish Opera, where I worked with the Handel specialist Nick McGegan on a new production of La clemenza di Tito, and this again proved a revelatory experience. I was astonished by how wide the gulf generally was between a good and a bad performance of works like Tito or Idomeneo, and the following year Nick asked me to assist him at the uniquely beautiful and evocative rococo theatre in Drottningholm, Sweden. I was also now working at Glyndebourne, and specialising increasingly in Mozart. This was still limited to the big four or five operas, but I was becoming more and more interested in where Mozart’s operatic style and personality grew from. This was the seed for starting Classical Opera; I was struck by the dichotomy between Mozart being arguably the most highly regarded composer in the history of opera and yet only about a quarter of his operas holding a place in the repertoire of the world’s opera houses. There was no sudden light-bulb moment, but it gradually became important to me to try to set up a company that could do for Mozart what the Royal Shakespeare Company does for Shakespeare.

Over the years our brief, and my interests and ambitions for the company, have evolved, influenced partly by my growing fascination with placing Mozart’s music in context and partly by the feeling that there should be no limit to the repertoire we explore, having invested so much in assembling a wonderful team of musicians and establishing a shared philosophy and approach to performing the music of the 18th century. The name Classical Opera has increasingly felt limiting to this evolution, and earlier this year we launched The Mozartists as a vehicle for our expanding concert work.

Over our first 20 years our repertoire has already ranged from cantatas by Handel and Pergolesi to symphonies by Beethoven and Schubert, but Mozart – and his operas in particular – has always been our starting point. This new name allows us greater freedom and flexibility in our programming, while hopefully also causing less confusion among promoters and audiences. The important step for me was the recognition that we’re not exclusively an opera company, and so long as Mozart remains central to our repertoire and mission, there’s no reason why we can’t also explore Handel and Beethoven and even beyond.

20th Birthday Concert – 9 October 2017

2. In October 2017 you have released the CD recording Il Sogno di Scipione by Mozart, an opera composed in Salzburg in 1771, when Mozart was only 15 years old. You have studied and conducted Mozart’s early works, especially operas, for a long time: what’s your general impression on this incredible work by a young genius of 15 years old? Which parts of Il Sogno di Scipione impressed you most? In June 2018 you are going to conduct Mozart’s first full-length opera La finta semplice (1768), marking so another 250th anniversary. La finta semplice was written in 1768, in difficult conditions, and Il Sogno di Scipione in 1771, after Mozart’s formative experience in Italy: what’s the technical difference between the two works, in your opinion? Il Sogno di Scipione is part of your project The Complete Mozart Operas, which started in 2012: at which point of your Mozartian operatic parcours are you now and what for the future?

The parallel with Shakespeare is a significant one.

Both Mozart and Shakespeare wrote some works that are less good than others, but even in the least good ones they will suddenly do something – tap a depth of beauty, wisdom or truth – that no one else could have thought of.

Il sogno di Scipione is an interesting case in point. It’s not one of his most challenging or accomplished works – indeed it’s the first release in our ongoing complete Mozart Opera cycle that we recorded without having previously performed the work in the theatre or the concert hall – but it still has touches, details, sleights of hand, that none of his contemporaries could have thought of…

… There’s an accompanied recitative near the end in which Scipio awakens from his dream. As he stirs the sound-world suddenly changes and the strings play two bars that instantly transport the listener to a magical, elevated place.

Il sogno di Scipione

The more familiar I become with Mozart’s early operas the more aware I become that what he was extraordinary at is matching the scale and ambition of each work to the level and expectation of the commission. Works commissioned to celebrate royal weddings were virtuosic but emotionally shallow, and works written for young or amateur performers were charming but technically undemanding, while he was able to throw the kitchen sink at major commissions such as Mitridate and Lucio Silla, in the knowledge that he was writing for some of the top singers and players of the day.

Il sogno di Scipione was commissioned as a dutiful and obsequious act of homage to the Archbishop of Salzburg, so it had a specific function whose message would only be muddied by a complex plot. In truth, the piece has virtually no plot whatsoever, and this had been one of my reasons for not having performed it before. During rehearsals for the recording, though, the moment we accepted the lack of plot and started to explore the way the score underpins and enhances the philosophical nature of the libretto, we found that the music suddenly lifted off the page, and it was wonderful to see how much our singers and players started to appreciate and enjoy the piece.

La finta semplice was composed for Vienna’s leading opera buffa singers, although in the end it was never performed there, and Goldoni’s libretto is genuinely comic, so the twelve-year-old Mozart gave it his best shot. In keeping with the styles of the day, the arias are substantially shorter than opera seria ones, but the music is astonishingly skilful and successful, and the chain-finales already anticipate the celebrated Da Ponte operas…

La Finta Semplice Trailer – 6 & 8 June 2018

… At the conclusion there is even a poignant pre-echo of Le nozze di Figaro, as Giacinta begs forgiveness from her brothers for her impish trickery. With Rosina’s Senti l’eco and Amoretti, too, time suddenly seems to stand still and the comedy is briefly suspended in a vision of genuine sincerity, compassion and vulnerability.

The next release (the seventh) in our ongoing complete Mozart cycle will be of Bastien und Bastienne, which we are coupling with the early dramatic cantata Grabmusik. These two works, both completed before Mozart even reached his teens, will be released in autumn 2018, and again reflect Mozart’s skill at matching his music to the scale of the commission. Bastien und Bastienne was the only one of Mozart’s operas to be conceived for performance in a private house rather than a theatre or opera house, but its bucolic charm and simplicity are beguiling.

Grabmusik, meanwhile, was allegedly the result of a test set by the distrusting Archbishop of Salzburg, who had the young composer confined to solitary confinement while he set the text, to prove that he was not receiving help from his father or any other elders. The result is one of Mozart’s least known works, but it contains music of incredible emotional range, that must have quashed any doubters for good!

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Ian Page’s
THE COMPLETE MOZART’S OPERAS – CD Series (2011-2017)
& Other Albums
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• Mozart: Il sogno di Scipione
• Perfido! Vocal Works by Haydn, Mozart & Beethoven
• Mozart: Zaide

• Handel: Where’re You Walk
• Mozart: Il Re Pastore
• Mozart: Mitridate, re di Ponto

• Mozart: Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots
• Mozart: Apollo et Hyacinthus
• Gluck: Blessed Spirit

• Arne: Artaxerxes
• A-Z Mozart Opera

3. In 2015 with your Classical Opera you have launched another special type of concerts, synchronically featuring works by Mozart and by his major contemporaries during the same musical season: MOZART 250, which, through its concerts and its retrospective Series, chronologically follows an ideal 250th anniversary line in the annual footsteps of Mozart’s life from 1765/2015 (Mozart’s childhood visit to London) to 1791/2041. What led you to create such special annual series of musical events? Beside Mozart’s La finta semplice, in 2018 you’ll present Haydn’s Applausus, his Symphony No. 26 Lamentatione and other works by him and music by J.C.Bach, Jommelli, Hasse and Vanhal: what about your interest in the music by this group of composers and, in particular, in the music by Haydn?

Again, I can’t remember the exact moment I had the idea, but it seems to incorporate several of the things that are important to me. I’ve always been fascinated by what music Mozart heard and was influenced by, and which of his fellow composers he admired (he was famously dismissive of most of them!).

I also found myself being increasingly frustrated by reviewers and commentators judging Mozart’s early works in comparison with the masterpieces he was writing twenty years later rather than with the other music being written and performed at the same time.

Even when I first set up Classical Opera it seemed obvious that if we learnt to perform works like La finta semplice and Mitridate well then that would beneficially inform our performances of the great masterpieces of his maturity, and with MOZART 250 it’s proved really useful to be able to place Mozart’s works alongside works being written in the same year by other composers. Even those pieces which Mozart would almost certainly not have heard throw light on the gradual evolution of musical style during his lifetime, and of course the works that he did know are of even greater interest.

We’ve already featured over thirty composers in the first three years of MOZART 250, and our 2015 mini-festival exploring the music being performed in London during Mozart’s childhood stay there featured several composers that not even I had heard of before – people like Mattia Vento, Davide Perez, George Rush and William Bates.

We’ll be releasing a 2-CD set of highlights from these concerts in May 2018.

If everything goes according to plan MOZART 250 will generally form approximately half of our live projects each year between now and 2041.

Every January we present a retrospective concert offering an overview of the musical year 250 years previously. Our 1768 survey, which takes place at Wigmore Hall on 23 January, will include symphonies by Haydn and Vanhal, a flute concerto by Johann Christian Bach, played by our principal flautist Katy Bircher, and arias from Jommelli’s Fetonte, Hasse’s Piramo e Tisbe, Haydn’s Lo speziale and Mozart’s La finta semplice, all sung by the young Swiss-Belgian soprano Chiara Skerath, making her UK début. Devising these programmes is very labour-intensive but I really enjoy the process, and it always throws up some fascinating discoveries.

Of course there are some years when Mozart was extremely prolific and others when he wrote very little, but even the least productive years provide opportunities to dig a little deeper into other more obscure repertoire…

…  1766 (2016), for example, was a relatively thin year on paper, but it enabled us to present the UK première of Jommelli’s Il Vologeso, which proved to be a great success. As we enter the fourth year of MOZART 250 a consistent pattern is starting to take shape, with Haydn unsurprisingly emerging as the leading light alongside the young Mozart.

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And about Haydn,…

… just consider that, beside Applausus and his symphony No. 26 for this season, I’m on a mission to champion all the symphonies without a nickname, because they tend to be overlooked in favour of those with nicknames, and among those nos. 47, 80 and 99 are particular favourites.

Haydn 2009 Celebrations

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Ian Page’s MOZART 250 – The Journey of a Lifetime
Complete Concerts Series (2015-2018)
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• Mozart 250: Year 1768-2018
• Mozart 250: Year 1767-2017
• Mozart 250: Year 1766-2016
• Mozart 250: Year 1765-2015

4. You have worked at Glyndebourne and Drottningholm, experiencing, in this way, peculiar conditions of opera performance, a few of them, certainly typical of the 18th century (the Drottningholm Theatre, for example): how such experiences enriched your vision of the 18th century music? You have worked also with Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Alexander Gibson, Ivor Bolton, Nicholas McGegan, Mark Wigglesworth: how did they contribute to your growth as a musician, as a conductor and as an artist? You work with many marvellous, also young, artists and professionals year after year: do you want to remember someone in particular and some anecdotes? And as an entrepreneur, what have been your major challenges and what your advice and tips for those who’d like to launch their careers in the world of classical music as entrepreneurs?

When I assisted Nic McGegan at Drottningholm we were working on a production of Una cosa rara by Martin y Soler, and it was fascinating to work on such a typical 18th-century opera there.
After a few weeks in a rehearsal studio in Stockholm it seemed like a distinctly average piece with a fairly ordinary cast, but as soon as rehearsals moved into the Drottningholm theatre the piece, and the singers, suddenly sounded a million dollars!

That was a really formative experience for me; it made me realise that there are so many 18th-century works that need the right tender, loving care to flourish, and that they really start to make sense when you can recreate the conditions for which they were originally conceived.

Glyndebourne was also a wonderful place to work, and it was there that I first met and worked with Sir Charles Mackerras. I worked on all three of the Mozart/Da Ponte operas there, and as assistant conductor I had musical responsibility for luxuriously extensive understudy rehearsals, which provided me with the opportunity to work with some of the leading young singers in the country. I subsequently assisted Mackerras on his recording of Idomeneo, and he followed the development of Classical Opera with a keen interest, always generous with his advice and encouragement. Along with Stanley Sadie and Christopher Raeburn – two other great people, great minds and great Mozartians – he was the most influential mentor for me in the early years of the company.

I worked with the other three conductors you mention on rather different repertoire – Puccini, Britten and Stravinsky – but I learnt a huge amount from all of them. Sir Alex was particularly warm and inspirational, and I continue to hold Mark Wigglesworth up as a role model for his fierce musical intelligence and the depth of his thinking and preparation.

Then there are the conductors and other musicians from whom I’ve learnt so much from watching them perform or listening to their recordings. We should always retain an overriding sense of modesty and humility, but at the same time it’s really important in refining our own thoughts and interpretations to analyse what we particularly like or dislike about other performers and performances.

When I started Classical Opera we quickly gained a reputation for our work in identifying and nurturing top-quality young singers. This was partly due to the fact that we couldn’t afford more established artists, but it’s also true that this repertoire particularly suits young voices.

Young singers also tend to be more open to the style of detailed, explorative rehearsals that I prefer, and what I find particularly satisfying now is that when singers who worked with us at the start of their careers come back after a gap of several years, we already have a shared language which comes back in a matter of minutes, as with all good friendships.

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It took me rather longer to work out and identify the sort of players that I most enjoyed working with, but now that we have established such a strong and loyal sense of ensemble I’m continually inspired and fed by the players with whom I work.

It takes a certain type of open spirit, and intellectual rigour, to tame and master these wonderful old instruments, and building an ensemble isn’t just about finding the best players but also about instilling the right shared values, goals and reasons for doing what we do.

 

5. Your favourite work by Mozart and your favourite work by J. Haydn.

Oh dear, these answers will probably change on a daily basis!

For Mozart it would probably have to be one of the operas or one of the piano concertos.

The C minor Mass would also be a contender, probably more so than the Requiem, and a recent addition to the short-list would be the Sinfonia Concertante K.364, which I conducted for the first time three months ago. But how to whittle it down to one? The old cliché is probably right, that my favourite Mozart opera is the one I’m working on at the time, but this week, and off the top of my head because I know the question will get harder the more I think about it, my short-list would be Idomeneo, Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte and the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. And if I had to name one – today, and without questioning why on earth Figaro and Don Giovanni aren’t on my shortlist – I’ll say Così fan tutte. It’s such a profound, complex and modern score, and is still widely misunderstood and under-appreciated.

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Haydn is hardly any easier.

As I’ve already said previously, I’m on a mission to champion all the symphonies without a nickname, because they tend to be overlooked in favour of those with nicknames, and among those nos. 47, 80 and 99 are particular favourites. Today’s podium places, though, would be occupied by:
3. String Quartet in F major, Op. 77, no. 2.
2. Piano Sonata No. 52 in E flat major
1. Symphony No. 44 in E minor, Trauer

6. Do you have in mind the name of some neglected composer of the 18th century you’d like to see re-evaluated?

You mean apart from Mozart?…

… I’m only joking, but I do love the line of Peter Schickele, who, when asked which composer he considered to be the most underrated, replied: «Mozart – since the highest rave is a gross understatement».

Gluck CO’s Blessed Spirit at Gramophone Critics Choice December 2010

Apart from Mozart, there is still valuable work to be done in increasing appreciation of Gluck (especially his pre-Orfeo operas) and Johann Christian Bach, but of the more forgotten names there are five that stand out for me: Beck, Jommelli, Kraus, Traetta and Vanhal.

7. Name a neglected piece of music of the 18th century you’d like to see performed in concert with more frequency.

I have quite a lot of these, including several by the composers I’ve just mentioned.

They’re not confined to lesser known composers either; in March we’re performing Haydn’s Applausus cantata, which doesn’t seem to have been presented in London for many years. I’m in a very fortunate position, because when I do come across a neglected work that I really rate I can often incorporate it into our programming.

For this question, though, I’m actually going to choose a work by Mozart – his concert aria Ah, lo previdi, K.272…

Perfido!

… Mozart’s concert arias in general don’t get as much exposure as they deserve, and I’ve never understood why this should be…

… Maybe promoters just don’t think of singers to fill their concerto slot. Whatever the reasons for their relative neglect, Mozart’s concert arias contain some of his best music, and the more extended ones are like concentrated mini-operas in their own right.

Ah, lo previdi is certainly one of these, a scena lasting over twelve minutes and incorporating two fiercely dramatic recitatives – the second one in particular contains some astonishing harmonic shifts and moments of exquisite, tender vulnerability – and two arias, the second of which incorporates a beautiful oboe solo.

Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, subsequently urging his beloved Aloysia Weber to learn it and «to put yourself in all seriousness into Andromeda’s situation and position», and the celebrated Mozart biographer Alfred Einstein wrote that Mozart «almost never wrote anything more ambitious, or containing stronger dramatic feeling».

We are including this piece in Perfido!, our recent recording of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven concert arias with Sophie Bevan, and I was delighted how many of the reviews singled it out for praise.

8. Have you read a particular book on Mozart Era you consider important for the comprehension of the music of this period?

I’m very grateful for the opportunity that this question gives me to acknowledge some of the books I couldn’t do without!

With Mozart of course we are lucky in that we have a very substantial series of Mozart family letters that have survived, and Otto Deutsch’s collection of Mozart documents is similarly indispensable, so these are the two bibles.

Too many modern biographies intercede with their author’s own attempts to formulate a particular theory or new angle, but a glorious exception is Stanley Sadie’s Mozart: the early years. This was intended as the first of a two-part biography, but Stanley sadly died before he could write the second book. For a clear, authoritative and insightful overview of Mozart’s life and works up until 1781, though, this is the book to have.

Scarcely a month goes past without me referring to two other fabulous books: The Compleat Mozart (don’t be put off by the title), edited by Neal Zaslaw, is a wonderful compendium of Mozart’s complete works, and Peter Clive’s Mozart and his Circle contains invaluable biographical entries on all the important people in Mozart’s life.

Zaslaw’s benchmark book on Mozart’s Symphonies is also outstanding, and for Mozart’s operas I still don’t think that anyone has rivalled William Mann’s The Operas of Mozart, first published in 1977, which has the huge advantage of devoting a whole chapter to each of the pre-Idomeneo operas, rather than merging them into a token single-chapter appraisal.

My final top recommendation would be John A. Rice’s Mozart on the Stage, which has fascinating information and insights on how Mozart’s operas would have been composed, rehearsed and staged.

9. Name a movie or a documentary that can improve the comprehension of the music of this period.

Like the play, the film of Amadeus has plenty of critics, but despite its faults it does recreate the spirit of Mozart’s Vienna (despite being filmed in Prague!), and the flights of fancy about how some of Mozart’s compositions came into being are captivating and imaginative, if spurious. I also find Farinelli exciting for its evocation of 18th-century theatres and opera performances.

In terms of documentaries, Phil Grabsky’s excellent In Search of… series has incorporated full length films devoted to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but I have a hazy memory of a wonderful series of TV programmes on these composers (and Schubert) from the 1980s…

… It was presented by Bamber Gascoigne and had Stanley Sadie as musical consultant, and I think it was called Man and Music. I’ve no idea whether these programmes are available anywhere now, but I’d love to know if they are, if only to see if they’re as good as I remember…

10. Do you think there’s a special place to be visited that proved crucial to the evolution of the 18th century music?

I’m not sure I can think of anywhere about which I could make such an expansive claim, but the Drottningholm Slottsteater is my own personal First Choice.

I’m a big fan of Stockholm and its people, and the story behind the theatre’s preservation is such a fortuitous and romantic one. It’s an amazingly beautiful place and setting, too, but more than anything it’s the ambience inside the theatre itself which is truly magical. It feels as close to time travel as I’m ever likely to get!

Thank you very much for having taken the time to answer our questions!

Thank you!

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Iconography is in public domain or in fair use.

CD Spotlight January 2018: Rosetti Concertos for Horn & for Two Horns

 

Concertos for Horn & Two Horns The Series of Concertos for Horns by Rosetti acquired a certain notoriety for their beautiful quality and because Mozart noticed them and used a few of them as models for his own Horn Concertos. Klaus Wallendorf & Sarah Willis Johannes Moesus Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie CPO Records

Interview December 2017: 10 Questions with M. S. Zimmer & W. Holsbergen

  
Zimmer-Holsbergen: Official Sites
Zimmer-Holsbergen Site: The Unheard Beethoven

Zimmer-Holsbergen: CD Albums
Zimmer-Holsbergen : Beethoven: The Forgotten Works for String Quartet
Zimmer-Holsbergen : Beethoven: Fantasies for Piano

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This month a very curious and interesting journey through the extra-rarities, the many snippets and sketches and the various intriguing unfinished works left by L. van Beethoven, which all constitute an incredible really voluminous corpus (ca. some hundreds of neglected works by the great master!) and the many contemporary projects to prepare or reconstruct new performance editions for the modern Concert Halls…

1. Your project and your work on Beethoven certainly reached a particular status of recognition, when it left the Internet to reach the Concert Halls. First of all, with the great Leonard Slatkin, conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington in 2001 and then in 2011 with the Naxos Records Belgian conductor Patrick Baton. Can you tell us about your experience and some major anecdotes on the live premieres and such a special passage from the Internet to Concert Halls?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

I still remember well the phone call I received from our friend and supporter James F. Green, who is also on the board of the American Beethoven Society. He had, unbeknownst to us, leaned on some supporters of the National Symphony, and somehow received an audience with Maestro Slatkin, in order to show him the score of the Macbeth Overture as realized from Beethoven’s sketches by Willem. As Jim tells it, Slatkin was receptive, agreed to look at the score, and thumbed through it saying, «this is good… I like this… I think we have room in our opening concert of the fall». It’s far beyond what Jim had expected and certainly a massive surprise to us. It’s amazing what doors can be opened with just a little persistence. It’s really a tribute to Slatkin’s willingness to try new things and make an impression.

The premiere was shaping up to be a major event, with dignitaries and ambassadors from across the globe penciled in to attend. Unfortunately, the concert was scheduled for September 2011, and the premiere was just over a week away when the World Trade Center was hit in New York. All flights were shut down, and it looked as though the concert might even be cancelled. It was exceedingly doubtful that Willem would be able to make it, coming from Europe. Finally the concert was confirmed, and some rules were loosened to permit air travel, and both Willem and I were able to attend. On my flight to Washington DC there was only one other passenger, a fellow on crutches, so I figured I could take him if he caused any trouble. But the trip was uneventful for me.

Once in Washington, I met up with Green and Willem, and also met a number of other Unheard Beethoven supporters: the late musicologist Avishai Kallai from Israel, writer Gail Altman, Annie Moss Moore the creator of the sadly now-defunct Beethoven recording database, pianist and musicologist Susan Kagan, William Meredith then the director of the San Jose Ira F. Brilliant Beethoven Center, and others. It was an amazing time, and it was incredibly thrilling to attend the rehearsal of the orchestra as they worked their way through the Macbeth; it was clear that the basses in particular enjoyed the meaty parts that Willem had written for them. While I’d heard the synthesized version from our website many time, to finally hear it with a live orchestra was simply overwhelming. It was the second time I’d met Willem face to face, but we had spent so much time talking over the Internet it was like we were brothers immediately.

I attended all three performances of the Macbeth by the National Symphony, and it was a wonderful experience. The ABS had also arranged for some of us to venture to the National Archives and actually handle (with white gloves) some Beethoven manuscripts. It’s such a connection with history to physically touch the papers that Beethoven himself wrote upon. I happily translated in my best woeful singing voice what was written there and conducted in my white gloves, to the amusement of the other spectators.

Willem had more involvement with Patrick Baton than I did.

We also had another live presentation at the Kennedy Center about ten years after the Macbeth premiere, where Willem’s realization of the second movement of the lost oboe concerto Hess 12 was presented, with H. David Meyers as the soloist.

The Unheard Beethoven:
Beethoven, Choral Fantasy Op. 80 (New Version World Premiere)
After Beethoven’s own sketches (Hess 16)
Conductor Patrick Baton
Liege, March 2011 (first 3 min. 36)

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

As Mark said, I was on the first plane from Europe after the 09.11. There were many Americans on board, who had been stranded in Europe for 5 days, because all flights had been cancelled. When we flew over New York, the Americans went to the windows looking for the disappeared Towers. A solemn moment. An inaudible, silent gasp went through the plane…

… Later on, when I reached Washington, of course, I never believed the theory that a group of Avantgarde composers had carried out the attack, and that their actual aim had been… the very Kennedy Center, just to sabotage the premiere. That’s just too silly… these people would never have been able to carry it through…

Anyhow one… I must really call him a journalist!?… (but we must really call him this way…!?) had been making a lot of noise for several weeks, protesting against the performance. He said that the time allocated to the Macbeth ought to have gone to a contemporary piece… But he totally missed the point that the Macbeth, by its very nature, could equally be called a contemporary piece, indeed, that is precisely its raison d’être…

What he actually meant to say is that the emotional states expressed in that piece, and the use of 19th century skills, are strictly forbidden by the rules of the Avantgarde ideology, and… that these should be kept repressed…!?!?!?

As for Patrick Baton, he is a very intelligent musician, and passionate about the music he performs. I enjoyed our conversations very much. He has a rare insight, and the ability to get to the essence very quickly.

We did a special version of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Op. 80. The piece starts with a long introduction for piano solo. The interesting thing, however, is that Beethoven sketched a string accompaniment for that intro, probably after he had published the score. These string parts are numbered as Hess 16, and Baton did the world premiere of that version. The main takeaway from the event was that the introduction does indeed sound much better with the strings.

So, pianists planning to perform the Choral Fantasy should really take that into consideration… Not doing so is, frankly, a real musical shame.

Belgian TV announcing
Beethoven: New Choral Fantasy Hess 16 World Premiere
Liege, March 2011

The Unheard Beethoven:
Oboe Concerto (Hess 12) World Premiere
Patrick Baton (Conductor), Nathalie Rompen (Oboe)
Liege, March 2011 

2. What’s the origin of your project? How have you been developing it through the years? What have been the great challenges and the great accomplishments, you experienced during these years?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

The project began in a haphazard sort of way back in the 1990s. I was fresh to the Internet and had discovered DALNet, an Internet Relay Chat host, through an acquaintance who was using it to talk with friends about a mutual interest in carnival glass. I got onto it as well and wondered if there was a Beethoven discussion on the internet. In fact, there was a #beethoven channel, which was either run by Willem or he was one of the major participants, under the name of ‘xickx.’ We both were inveterate collectors of Beethoven recordings, and at some point the discussion turned to the complete works of Beethoven, and whether it was possible to amass a collection of recordings that would in some sense be complete. As a frustrated librarian and historian (I’m actually an attorney since neither of those things pays very well), I dove into the question with gusto.
The first issue was, what exactly constitutes the complete works?

Obviously, there are the 138 works with opus numbers, but there were at that time 205 more WoO (Werke ohne Opuszahl, or Works without Opus numbers) in the Kinsky-Halm catalogue. And then we found out about Willy Hess’s catalogues of Beethoven’s works, which in its 335 works overlapped somewhat with Kinsky-Halm’s catalogue. Thankfully, I live in Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin, and they have a splendid music library that has copies of both Kinsky-Halm (and its supplements) and the Hess catalogue. Then we found out that Giovanni Biamonti had in 1968 assembled an even more complete catalogue, with many more works, some of them fragmentary, some of them complete, that had been missed by both of the others, running up to… 849 numbers!
So complete was obviously a moving target that was elusive.

But it was shocking to us how many of these works had never been recorded!

At that time, the vast majority of the folksong arrangements had never been recorded, many of the piano bagatelles, some of the lieder and choral works, and many others. In addition, the recordings of some of the others were quite rare and hard to come across. I combed through the library’s old Schwann catalogues covering the entire LP era trying to track down recordings. I had standing orders with a number of record search services to find the more elusive items. For several years Willem and I swapped cassette tapes of recordings across the Atlantic in those pre-MP3 days, in an effort to fill in the holes in each others’ collections.

In the end, we were still left with a great many Beethoven compositions that we would never be able to hear. Willem then introduced me to midi sequencers, which allowed one to synthesize a crude version of a composition so you could hear something of what it would sound like; he shared a number of his efforts and it seemed like a great idea. In the meantime, I was also in touch with the San Jose Beethoven Center and its gloriously helpful librarian/archivist Patricia Elliott Stroh, about getting scores for a number of Beethoven pieces that hadn’t been recorded. We began synthesizing them and sharing them with each other and the participants on DALnet. I no longer remember what Willem’s first efforts were, but I remember that mine were the string quintet version of WoO 62, the last thing of substance Beethoven wrote, and his setting of Erlkönig, WoO 131, written decades before Schubert’s famous settings but nevertheless quite similar indeed.

As we proceeded, getting copies of scores from the UW-Madison Music Library, which had a set of Hess’s Supplement to the Gesamtausgabe, and more scores of rarities from San Jose, we soon had close to 100 midi files. While it was fun to swap them and share them on DALnet, it was clear that there was an opportunity being lost there, and it would be nice to share them more widely…
I think Willem suggested a permanent website to host them. I had a friend, Steve Lange, who did website design and hosting, and asked if he’d be willing to help us out. He was more than willing—I think his exact reaction was something like: «This is exactly what the Internet should be about». We puzzled about a name for a while and came up with The Unheard Beethoven, which is a little clunky, but certainly distinctive, since it both suggests what people are missing and plays off Beethoven’s own deafness.

It took a few months, but Steve got us up and running and we’ve been adding things in fits and starts ever since. The website still resides at http://unheardbeethoven.org after nearly 20 years.
At some point Steve Lange got another job and no longer was doing website design; he tried to help us over the years but eventually he had to turn it over to another fellow who did some nice work for us. Unfortunately he had some personal problems and we had difficulty reaching him.
That was unsatisfactory, and we asked Steve for help again. He suggested another of his friends, composer Kevin McLeod (who provides a massive library of his royalty-free music at https://incompetech.com/music/ ). Kevin was wanting to do more web design and he agreed to help us bring The Unheard Beethoven back to life in the 21st century. Kevin got us set up with a new website in February of 2013, running on a WordPress framework that allows us to (mostly) do all the updating we want ourselves.

We celebrated by converting many of the MIDI files to mp3s to take advantage of the greater bandwidth availability and the ubiquity of the format… not to mention improved sound quality, since we could use our sample libraries that were much superior to the run of the mill libraries that our users generally had, in order to generate the mp3s.

Among the new features of the new site, probably The Unheard Blog is one of the features we like best, since it allows us (and guest writers) to spout off about topics that we are interested in.
We’ve been adding things steadily and there’s still more in the works; I’m currently working on the recently-published volumes of Beethoven’s counterpoint studies with Haydn and Albrechtsberger; they’re not the most interesting things in the world (especially the studies with Haydn), but the knowledge of fugue and counterpoint that Beethoven developed in these works is vital to the understanding of the fascination that the fugue held for him throughout his life. And of course, precious few of these fugues and exercises have ever been recorded, so much of this will be new to listeners.

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

The great challenge in completing the sketches has been to feel one’s way into the emotional states of these sketches.

In some cases the emotions are pretty obvious, in other cases not at all. It is wrong to think that if you just rake together some notes you get melodies expressing wonderful things, and that is certainly not always the case in the Beethoven sketches.

You have to be able to recognize the synergetic effects between the notes, and then become aware of the emotional charge of these effects. This is essentially the same way I work on my own melodies in their early stages. However, in the case of Beethoven the additional challenge is to get emotional states that are at his level (while in my own work I have, in principle, the right to go for whatever trivialities I choose). Sometimes small changes in the notes are required to get any synergetic effects at all, which is then considered controversial by those who do not understand how these things work. By the way, recognizing the synergetic effects was in the old days loosely referred to as having an ear for melody.

Once you know the emotional charge, then things will come together, and what has to be done at the technical level becomes obvious. The technical issues are trivial compared to the first stage, but can still be quite challenging. Of course a lot can be said about these issues, but going into that would be somewhat beyond the scope of this interview. Anyone who is interested should write to us at the Unheard Beethoven, and we will discuss it there.

3. A fundamental part of your project is also dedicated to the Seldom-Heard Beethoven, an important reference tool for any musician interested in the music by Beethoven. In fact, while now the Complete Mozart Edition has two great monumental products as reference, which are both easily available to anyone, the old Complete Beethoven Edition 1997 (Deutsche Grammophon) and the following projects by other classical music record labels are neither easily available nor so complete, after all. Can you trace out a state-of-the-art about the recordings of Beethoven’s works and their availability?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

It’s correct that the Complete Beethoven Edition of 1997, while it was good, was woefully incomplete and now it’s long out of print and can be quite expensive to acquire (not to mention that it was never cheap in the first place; I paid close to a thousand dollars for it the first week it came out, but I was ecstatic to be able to do so since it offered the first more or less complete recording of the folksongs and many other items that were never before recorded, so for that we owe Deutsche Grammophon a great deal of thanks).

Much of the slack since that now twenty-years-old set has been picked up by Brilliant Classics, which has had at least three different versions of its Beethoven Edition box over the years, which not only covers much of the ground that DG had done for a tenth of the price, but has also added new recordings. Their set of the confusing Italian part-songs Beethoven wrote for Salieri is to date the best, and is more or less complete; they also have added the very first complete recording of the lied Der Bardengeist WoO 142, previously available only in badly truncated and incomplete recordings.
There was also an inexpensive complete set of CDs from Cascade Records that had a number of problems (missing the first bar of the First Symphony being but one of them), and we understand that a number of licensors never were paid. But it also includes as of this writing the only commercial release of Erlkönig WoO 131 (in Reinhold Becker’s completion, not our version that adheres more closely to Beethoven’s continuity draft).

Over the years we have also been pleased to be a resource to boutique labels such as Monument Records from Washington DC, and Inedita Records from Italy. Both catalogues are sadly now slowly going out of print, but between them they released a great many Beethoven works that had never been recorded. So they are an important resource for collectors as well.

There was also a recording of never-before recorded orchestral works, including some realizations by Willem, made by Stefan Sanderling and the Orchestre de Bretagne for the ASV label. Unfortunately, just before it was released ASV fell into financial trouble and it never came out…

… My understanding is that Universal Music (which now owns DG, Decca, Philips and other labels) now controls the ASV catalogue, so perhaps we will see that CD someday. I’ve heard it and it’s quite wonderful; it’s really a loss that Universal hasn’t seen fit to do anything with it.
Given that Beethoven’s 250th birthday is coming up in the year 2020, I feel confident that we can expect some major releases from various labels.

I’d like to hope we see a truly comprehensive megabox of Beethoven along the lines of the splendid Mozart 225 box from DG/Decca released last year.

In fact, we have been contacted by one label (I don’t know that we are at liberty to specify which) to try to help them make the most complete release possible of Beethoven’s works, and we’re excited at the opportunity. If we are able to do that and make The Unheard Beethoven unnecessary, then I for one will be overjoyed that we’ve succeeded in our mission.

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

I’m afraid that my only contribution to the Seldom-Heard-Beethoven page has been to encourage Mark to go ahead with an update, at a moment he was doubting whether it was worth the effort.

 
4. You have established a long collaboration with the Ira F. Brilliant Beethoven Center at San Jose State University. Since both Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers, many of their sketches of music were material for actual improvisation and so for what were, in reality, complete full-length performances. It is a fact that the work carried out by Constanze Mozart and her collaborators, the Abbé Stadler, in particular, after 1791, was also intended to make many works by Mozart, just left in fragments, available again for performance. Your project seems to have had the same target and to have carried on a sort of work, no-one actually did for Beethoven,… as, instead, Constanze and the others had done for Mozart. What have been the interest of modern composers and conductors in your work of collecting Beethoven’s fragments in this particular way? How many completion works have you published? How is it possible to receive a performing score for those completion works? And, in conclusion, what’s the actual situation of the 10th Symphony today, after so many attempts of reconstruction?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

This is really a better question for Willem since he does the heavy lifting for the reconstructions and realizations; I’ve dabbled with it a little but he has a unique ability to see the sketches through Beethoven’s eyes and at the same time use his own imagination within the constraints of the classical style and Beethoven’s compositional attitudes to come up with completions and realizations that are both convincing and true to the spirit of Beethoven.

One of the projects we have had ongoing for some years is related to an improvisation that Beethoven did as a teenager in Bonn against the chant of the Lamentations of Jeremiah during Holy Week. His sketches for that still survive and we’ve made several attempts at getting them into a performing state, but they really point out just how harmonically adventurous Beethoven could be. In that particular instance, as Wegeler relates the tale, the young Beethoven asked the tenor who was engaged to sing the Lamentations whether he minded if Ludwig attempted to throw him off with his harmonizations. The tenor, not realizing who he was dealing with, laughed and told the boy to try his best. That evening, as the tenor began singing, Ludwig went into the most wild and outrageous harmonizations and soon the tenor was red-faced and spluttering with rage. After he complained to the Elector, Beethoven received a gentle chiding not to do that again to their guests.

In any event, once we have that in a workable form it will really open some eyes as to what Beethoven’s imagination was capable of. I’d like to see that put into finished form within the next two years, before the 250th birthday.

We’ve also hosted completions by others, one of the most important being Nicholas Cook’s performing edition of the first movement of the incomplete Piano Concerto No. 6 in D, Hess 15 (not to be confused with the piano concerto arrangement by Beethoven of the Violin Concerto Op.61, which is sometimes referred to as Piano Concerto No. 6). That completion had a brief bit of notoriety, and then seemed to have vanished until we found Cook’s journal article. We contacted Dr. Cook for a copy of the score, which he generously provided, and put it on the website, where I’m pleased to say it has generated some interest and resulted in its being recorded on the Inedita Records label by Robert Diem Tigani with Maurizio Paciarello on piano.

Some notable names such as Slatkin, Sanderling, Tigani, Steven Beck, the Covington String Quartet and others as noted have been willing to give these realizations a chance, and for that we’re grateful.
They’re obviously not Beethoven, but they do give us an insight into what Beethoven was thinking.
The Tenth Symphony is something we haven’t tackled, although there are quite a few sketches extant, and as you say a number of versions, Barry Cooper’s being the best known. We also have on the website two different composers’ attempts at a realization of the symphony, which differ vastly from each other and from Cooper’s efforts. Given the quality of Cooper’s realization, we’re content to keep that on the back burner and concentrate on pieces that haven’t seen the light of day… But the differences of opinion as to where the composer was going to go with the piece are pretty startling to say the least.
                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

Of course, the completion of Mozart’s Requiem by Süssmayr was critized by a certain Gottfried Weber in the 1820s. He said: «Wouldn’t it be terrible if we mistook a stupidity by Süssmayr for a stroke of genius by Mozart? And wouldn’t we then look foolish?». His weakness was, obviously, that he, for one, couldn’t tell the difference, because otherwise there is no need to worry. Abbé Stadler wrote several articles defending Süssmayr’s completion, and Beethoven wrote a letter to Stadler, saying that he fully agreed with him.

From modern composers of the old Avantgarde school the reaction has ranged from total indifference, to hostility at best.

The younger generation is more interested.

But their problem is that their education is conforming them to the 20th century paradigm, so they are not sure whether they are allowed to take an interest.

Many sense that what they are looking for can be found by us, but often they are still a bit scared. I hope that I’ve been able to teach some of them things of value, and point them in the right direction.
You can get performing scores by asking us for it. If an edition for the requested piece doesn’t exist, we will produce one.

However, I’ll do it only under the strict condition that you understand that you perform a completion because of its own intrinsic merits, and place the performance or recording in the context of the 21st century. We cannot go back to an imaginary 18th or 19th century, nor should we want to, but these fundamental values ought to be revived in our era.

 
5. If it is possible to add a few words on this subject… After all, you well know that, beside the intricate Requiem affair and also thanks to the letters of Constanze, we are aware of the fact that she tried, in many occasions, to have Mozart’s scores back into a performance version… and sometimes trying to relying on the memories of those who heard the actual performance or who played the parts. That’s why modern scholarship has some suspicion also on a few masterpieces by Mozart: some Horn concertos, for example, and even the Clarinet Concerto K. 622 may be objects of some suspicion (see, in particular, Benjamin Perl, The Doubtful Authenticity of Mozart’s Horn Concerto K. 412, and Mozart Studies 2006, editor Simon P. Keefe, passim). So are they real completed compositions by Mozart or performance editions reconstructed by his friends and collaborators? And, beside Constanze’s problem with money and after so many years of much praising on such pieces, can we really really say that Constanze was really wrong in wishing such masterpieces to be in a completed performance form, instead of leaving such works as not usable and useless sketches on paper?…
It’s really an interesting subject, which requires much consideration…
Moreover we know that in classical music a culture of sketches completion and music reelaboration always existed and has been always part of the musical common practice. Apart from the variations technique and the improvisation fugues on themes or sketches, just consider Hummel’s famous own arrangements of Mozart’s works (sometimes trying to render an idea of an actual musical performance which was a bit different from the written score), the musical paraphrases and all those pieces of music which can be called transfiguration works (see MozartCircle Interviews July 2017)…
                                            ____________
Your favourite work by Beethoven, by Mozart, by J. Haydn.

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

My favourite work by Beethoven tends to change from time to time; it’s usually one of the Third Symphony, the Waldstein sonata op.53, Rage over a Lost Penny op.128, or the Appassionata op.57. Others frequently in the running are the string trio op.3, Piano Concerto No. 3, the Violin sonata No. 5 Spring, and the Coriolan Overture. Today it’s the Waldstein. You might get a different answer tomorrow.

I’m similarly undecided about Haydn. Any of the London symphonies could qualify at one time or another. I’m a big fan of his The Creation and The Seasons as well. I love his string quartets en masse and would have a difficult time picking one of them. But I think today’s answer is the trumpet concerto.

With Mozart, the answer is easy. As much as I love Beethoven, Mozart’s Ave verum corpus K.618 is the most sublimely beautiful and perfect piece of music ever written by anyone, anywhere, any time, ever. The music Mozart wrote just before he died is so amazing that one dearly wishes he had managed to hang on for at least another year to see what else he would do.

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

Of course, there is no answer to this question: these guys wrote so many works of the highest quality, that it would be something of an insult to pick just one out. So, I will not do that, and instead mention some works I’ve recently been going through, and point out the details that impressed me.

For Beethoven, I’d like to mention his Sonatas Op. 2. They are really good, and I consider them unsurpassed by anyone in the 19th century (let alone 20th century) in the handling of the structures. Listen to the finale of Op. 2 No. 2 in A. Do note how exaggerated the arpeggio is with which it opens, followed by a fall of more than an octave in the melody. Yes, it is elegant and charming, but the effect is that of making someone a compliment which is somewhat over the top, and may therefore be ironic, and border on the insulting. At each repeat the exaggerations become worse and worse, which then result in the explosion of the middle section. Did the recipient of our compliment notice the insults? So we have here a subtle balance between elegance and humor, which is delightful, and I don’t think there are many other pieces playing a similar game.

A Mozart piece I admire greatly, is his Fugue in C minor, KV. 426 (=KV.546). It is chockablock with all sorts of canons, which makes this piece an intellectual tour de force. But even more important is that, beyond the intellectualism, every bar is filled with deep emotion. Truly the greatest fugue since Bach. It seems that many Mozart fans do not particularly care for this piece, but to fully appreciate his genius, one has to be aware of this other side of his… dark emotions and frightfully intellectual.
Haydn plays a fine joke at the end of the slow movement of his Symphony  No. 97; he is clearly imitating a steam engine! It starts slowly, then picks up speed. You can hear the safety valves (flutes), and some sort of brakes which are very noisy when the engine comes to a slow stop. Haydn must have met a good many industrialists in London, who made their money with their industrial steam engines in their factories, so they will have been very pleased with this joke.

 

6. Do you have in mind the name of some neglected composer of the 18th century you’d like to see re-evaluated?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

Leopold Kozeluch would be a good candidate.

Over the years quite a few of his compositions have been misattributed to Beethoven. Anyone who can confuse the musicologists that badly as to being the composer of a Beethoven-quality work has to be worth reconsidering.

I’d also like to see Luigi Cherubini reevaluated. He was one of Beethoven’s few contemporaries that Ludwig actually respected and admired, and that has to count for something. There was a recording of Cherubini’s string quartets by Hausmusik London that’s just spectacularly good. His opera Medea/Medée has managed to stay alive thanks in large part to the classic performances of the title role by Maria Callas, and the overture sounds like it could be a Beethoven composition. I’d like to hear a lot more from him. Maybe it’s time for The Unheard Cherubini if The Unheard Beethoven becomes superfluous at some point.

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

Well, of course I could mention Méhul, who was a transition figure from the classical to the romantic era, like Beethoven, but totally independent from him.

His overtures and symphonies are really intriguing, like La Chasse du Jeune Henri. He is master of good melody, which gives his music great authenticity, although his melodies seem dryer than, say, Mozart’s: perhaps not quite capable to express the full range of human emotions.

Staging a complete Méhul opera may therefore be a good idea, but given the said limitation of his melody, it may not be an entirely enjoyable experience (but I love to be proven wrong here, I haven’t seen any of the scores).

Also, some of his libretti are really bad, with nothing happening at all, as one critic puts it. Mozart was very lucky with his Da Ponte. (Or perhaps Da Ponte became Da Ponte thanks to Mozart).

7. Name a neglected piece of music of the 18th century you’d like to see performed in concert with more frequency.

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

Beethoven’s String Trio Op.3 doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

It’s really a remarkable piece that even more than the Opus 1 Trios and Opus 2 Piano Sonatas announces to the world that music has changed forever, and you had better deal with it.
In it I hear the seeds of the Romantic era, quite clearly being planted.

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

Charles Avison (1707-1790) arranged a selection Scarlatti Sonatas into 12 Concerti Grossi. Roy Goodman, with the Brandenburg Consort, did a fantastic job recording these concerti, back in the 90s, I think. These works, in this arrangement, are to me just as enjoyable as Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and Handel’s 12 Concerti Grossi Op.6. I hope that some violinists will make them part of their repertoire, and start performing them regularly. It may also be a smart career move for them.

HOWEVER, I must say that this giving thumbs up for this or that composer, or this or that composition from the 18th century, might be a good occasion for further rethinking our relationship with our own contemporary classical music… I mean… that for our spiritual nutrition we are apparently depending on these composers of a previous era. This dependency might be a bit shameful (or helpful? See, infra, my considerations on Charles Rosen’s books), because… well, does it demonstrate that, probably, we are no longer able to create this vital quality ourselves?

You see, in the 18th (and 19th) century music emotion and intellect went hand in hand, indeed, strengthening each other. What I mean is that by the late 20th century, intellect and emotion have become separated quite rigorously; the so-called serious music has become almost exclusively intellectual, to the detriment of the emotional states, while in pop-music any form of intelligence has been removed, allowing for only the most childish emotions. This signifies a deep collective neurosis.
And it should be clear to anyone who is slightly aware of this complex, that part of the solution is to be found in the work of those composers and artists, who are trying to bring about a reconciliation of these psychological functions.

This restoration of the balance should help raise the emotional state of the planet, and possibly start curing the collective neurosis: the unwanted heritage of the last century.
The 21st century has begun. Luckily some have already made the transition, but still too many haven’t.

 
8. Have you read a particular book on Mozart Era you consider important for the comprehension of the music of this period?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

Jan Swafford’s 2014 biography, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph to me has some of the most original thinking on Beethoven that we’ve seen since Thayer.

His discussion of the intellectual background of Neefe, Beethoven’s first teacher, his enormous influence on Beethoven’s worldview lays a convincing and expansive foundation for understanding Beethoven’s work.

I know Willem is a huge fan of Charles Rosen’s writings in The Classical Style so I’ll leave that one to him.
                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

As Mark said, I find Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style and Sonata Forms essential for any deeper understanding of this period.

However, the issues in these books go well beyond merely understanding that period, since they are, to me, highly important for the regeneration of the classical style in the 21st century.

First, you must realize that structure in music, as in poetry, is part of the content: it matters not only WHAT you say, but also HOW you say it.

This is somewhat analogous to how in physics space and time are intertwined. There is a big difference in the handling of the form by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and the masters of late Romantic era.

In the first decades of the 20st century, the form had become, if you want, a vehicle to express mainly an obsession with death, as if announcing its own demise, which did of course occur at that time.
That, while in the hands of the classical masters the form had been full of vitality, buzzing with energy, expressing a wide range of different emotions in a single piece. Moving from one emotional state to another gave the composers the power to continuously refresh and renew the music.
Indeed, this magical property can be heard as a spiritual fountain of eternal youth. Mozart and Beethoven are the great masters of this magic.

So what had happened in those 120 years, going from eternal youth to death? The official music history tells us that this was a century of continuous progress: composers got better at everything all the time, better at harmony, better at orchestration, better at melody…. (oh, ooops!). Obviously there is something wrong with this narrative…

The books by Charles Rosen are a good first step in reaching a more objective and balanced understanding of this process. First we must know how the masters of the first Viennese school actually understood their own forms, as opposed to how these were perceived by later composers and critics. Only then we can see how in a series of little steps, which by themselves may have been pretty harmless, gradually the original understanding evaporated. Only then are we free to make our own decisions on these matters, a fact which is of vital importance for the new music.

 
9. Name a movie or a documentary that can improve the comprehension of the music of this period.

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

That’s pretty difficult since so many movies tend to romanticize or worse fantasize impossible and ridiculous things onto the screen (such as the wretched Immortal Beloved, which wastes Gary Oldman’s fine performance on a stupid and obviously wrong solution to the mysterious riddle, or the thoroughly execrable Copying Beethoven). I’m willing to cut some slack for Amadeus because it’s forthrightly a fictional treatment of the story (as told through the memories/delusions of the aged and demented Salieri) and it’s a gorgeous film; nevertheless I can’t in any way recommend it as improving the comprehension of the music of the classical period.

The one film that I think captures the music of the period is the BBC production entitled Eroica (2003), depicting the rehearsals for the first performance of the Third Symphony. I think it does as well as possible at giving a glimpse of what the situation must have been like, and to my knowledge it’s more or less accurate. That the music is provided by John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique is a wonderful bonus. The performances are first-rate, and it’s quite absorbing from start to finish, so it has my vote.
                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

I agree with Mark that the 2003 BBC movie Eroica is the best. The guy who wrote the script did actually investigate his subject! Wow, that really makes a difference.

I used to like Amadeus, but now I find the depiction of Mozart as some punk idiot quite intolerable. Something far better should be possible.

Another movie, which is not about this period, but nevertheless good, is Delius, Song of Summer, by Ken Russell, from 1966. It is about the collaboration between Eric Fenby and Frederick Delius. In his last years Delius was paralyzed and blind, and could no longer work. A young music student, Fenby, offers his services to help Delius finishing his last works. The film is important because of its authenticity: it is based on the book Fenby later wrote, and he was also involved in the production of the movie. One high point in the movie is when Fenby turns on the radio, which is playing Beethoven’s Fifth. Delius then starts a diatribe: Listen my boy, scales, arpeggios! Fillings, my boy, fillings, don’t bother your young head about symphonies! Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler and that lot with their long driveling note-spinnings! A complete waste of time. A few bars of sincerely felt original music is worth whole pages of that kind of drivel. Throw it away! Forget the immortals! I finished with them years ago!

It should be obvious what is going on here: a minor master ridicules his great predecessors, in order to make himself appear more important, at least in his own eyes.

If he had merely said that he, Delius, was unable to produce anything of value with Beethoven’s technical means, then that would have been a correct and objective statement.

He is also correct in that one has to distance oneself from the great masters in order to find the space for one’s own creativity. But his emotions show that we are dealing here with a neurosis… Also, it should be pointed out that this defence mechanism has been used throughout the 20th century, endlessly repeated by many in all sorts of forms, aimed at whatever demi-god that had gone under their skin… This way much of the deeper understanding has disappeared from our culture.

10. Do you think there’s a special place to be visited that proved crucial to the evolution of the 18th century music?

                                          Mark S. Zimmer

I’ve never been to Vienna myself, but I have to think that would be the one place. Between Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert etc. etc. etc. there’s something about that place that makes it a fertile ground like none other. I’d like to get there, as well as to Bonn, some day.

                                            ____________

                                         Willem Holsbergen

Yes, the scores of the great masters.

 

Thank you very much for having taken the time to answer our questions!

Thank you!

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