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March 20, 2019Read More
By Martin Harlow
Modern clarinet players owe a debt of gratitude to Iwan Müller (1786–1854), whose developments to the clarinet in the early nineteenth century served to shape many of the features found in the instrument that is used today. In 1809, at the Saale zum römischen Kaiser in Vienna, he premiered Philipp Jakob Riotte’s (1776–1856) Clarinet Concerto in C Minor, op. 36, the first known work composed specifically the thirteen-keyed, “omnitonic” instrument he had recently developed. Recently published in A-R’s Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era series, this important work offers a new perspective on the clarinet’s development at a seminal point in its history.
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August 16, 2018Read More
By Jennifer Oates
When I stumbled upon a CD of Hamish MacCunn’s music as a young graduate student, I was entranced by the excerpts from his opera Jeanie Deans, whose combination of folk-like music evoking the Scottish countryside, juxtaposed with the surprisingly modern sounding arias, suggested a composer with great range and depth. Most of what has been written about MacCunn and his music has focused on his Scottish artistic persona from 1887 through 1894 and on the Scottish-styled compositions that had cemented this persona and established his career. But while I enjoyed MacCunn’s overtly Scottish compositions, they did not have the range and emotional depth of the music from Jeanie Deans that I had heard on that recording long ago. Where, I wondered, was the dynamic musical style that had so vividly captured my attention? I found the MacCunn of Jeanie Deans in his works for solo instruments (particularly those piano, cello, and violin), partsongs—and especially in his songs. -
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By Harvey H. Miller
The Recueil de morceaux d’orgue à l’usage spécial des élèves de l’Institution impériale des jeunes aveugles de Paris (1863) is one of the earliest known publications of music in braille notation. Its fifty-four pieces were composed by four blind composers who attended and later taught at the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles, Paris’s school for the blind. With this edition (N071), which includes historical background on the composers, the institution, and braille notation, this music is available to sighted musicians for the first time. The following is the editor’s account of the genesis of this project, which took him upward of ten years to complete.
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February 22, 2018Read More
By Jane Schatkin Hettrick
Six oboes, four clarinets, ten bassoons, one contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, and two timpani—such are the extra instrumental forces that Salieri added to the Vienna Hofkapelle orchestra for an extraordinary occasion in 1804: the inauguration of an empire, when Holy Roman Emperor Franz II became Emperor Franz I of Austria. For this event, Hofkapellmeister Antonio Salieri created his most monumental work of liturgical music, the twelve-movement, double-choir Plenary Mass with Te Deum, published here for the first time. The complete work took shape in stages over several years, being based on a mass Salieri originally composed in 1799, as well a single-choir Te Deum dating back to a setting from 1790. For the 1804 version, Salieri used his original scores but devised letter codes to indicate the new instruments and only sketched out some sections. This historic composition stands apart from all Salieri’s other liturgical music, showing the composer at his grandest. -
April 19, 2017Read More
By Nancy November
The name of Emanuel Aloys Förster (1748–1823) comes up with some frequency when one researches Beethoven’s string quartets, yet Förster’s own quartets are no longer part of the standard chamber music repertoire, nor are they much discussed by musicologists. This neglect stems partly from the fact that only three of Förster’s string quartets were available in score until recently. But it also reflects the fact that his works have invariably been considered solely in comparison with Beethoven’s string quartets. These three editions, comprising the eighteen quartets published during Förster’s lifetime (opp. 7, 16, and 21, featuring six quartets each), aim to bring this important composer back to the notice of performers and scholars.
