̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - classical music

Beethoven’s genome sequenced from locks of his hair

ta385 — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 15:01:00 +0000

A Cambridge scientist has played a leading role in sequencing Ludwig van Beethoven’s genome, revealing clues to the composer’s health and family history.

Music to the ears: Liszt’s lost opera

ehs33 — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 13:48:34 +0000

Liszt's lost opera heard for the first time in 170 years

Abandoned Liszt opera finally brought to life - 170 years later

sjr81 — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:01:43 +0000

David Trippett, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, first encountered the opera languishing in an archive in Weimar more than ten years ago. A trailer with extracts of the opera being performed can be seen by clicking on the link above.

Known only to a handful of Liszt scholars, the manuscript – with much of its music written in shorthand and only one act completed – was assumed to be fragmentary, often illegible and consequently indecipherable.

However, after Trippett spent the last two years working critically on the manuscript, a ten-minute preview will now be performed for the first time in public as part of the world-famous BBC Cardiff Singer of the World contest in June.

“In 1849 Liszt began composing an Italian opera, but he abandoned it halfway through and the music he completed has lain silently in an archive for nearly 170 years,” said Trippett. “This project is about bringing it to life for the very first time.”

“ ̽��ֱ��music that survives is breath-taking – a unique blend of Italianate lyricism and harmonic innovation. There is nothing else quite like it in the operatic world. It is suffused with Liszt’s characteristically mellifluous musical language, but was written at a time that he was first discovering Wagner’s operas.

“ ̽��ֱ��only source for this opera is a single manuscript containing 111 pages of music for piano and voices. It was always assumed to be impossible to piece together, but after examining the notation in detail, it became clear Liszt had notated all the cardinal elements for act 1. You have to think through the artistic decisions traceable in the manuscript and try to reconstruct the creative process, to see how Liszt’s mind went this way and that.”

A critical edition of the music for act 1 will be published by Editio Musica Budapest (Universal Music Publishing) in 2018. Although Trippett has worked alone on rescuing the music Liszt notated, Cambridge’s Francesca Vella has worked on deciphering the Italian text alongside musicologist David Rosen, whose principal role has been to translate the libretto into English.

̽��ֱ��libretto, based on Lord Byron’s tragedy Sardanapalus, tells the story of Sardanapalo, King of Assyria, a peace-loving monarch, more interested in revelry and women than politics and war. He deplores violence and brutality, and, perhaps naively, he believes in the innate goodness of humankind, but is overthrown by rebels and burns himself alive with his lover, Mirra, amid scents and spices in a great inferno.

A ten-minute scene from the opera will be performed at the final of the BBC Singer of the World event by Armenian soprano and rising talent Anush Hovhannisyan.

“In effect, the manuscript has been hiding in plain sight for well over 100 years,” added Trippett. “It was written for Liszt’s eyes only, and has various types of musical shorthand, with spatial gaps in the manuscript. A lot of it is very hard to read, but the scruffiness is deceptive. It seems Liszt worked out all the music in his head before he put pen to paper, and to retrieve this music, I’ve had to try and put myself into the mind of a 19th-century composer, a rare challenge and a remarkable opportunity.

“Fortunately, Liszt left just enough information to retrieve what was evidently the continuous musical conception he had at the time. We will never know exactly why he abandoned his work on the opera and I suspect he would have been surprised to learn that it is resurfacing in the 21st century. But I like to think he would have smiled on it.”

Ahead of the BBC event in June, Trippett and his colleagues are putting the finishing touches to a documentary film for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge chronicling the resurrection of Liszt’s forgotten masterpiece, with singers Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Samuel Sakker (tenor) and Arshak Kuzikyan (bass-baritone). This will be released on 15 May.

“Who else gets to premiere a new opera by a superstar composer from two centuries ago?” said soprano Hovhannisyan. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the entire process of making it work – from thinking about the character and what Liszt would want – has been a privilege. We have had a wonderful, deeply creative and imaginative time piecing this together and I feel very blessed to have been a part of it.”

An Italian opera by Franz Liszt – which lay incomplete and largely forgotten in a German archive for nearly two centuries – will be given its world premiere this summer after being resurrected by a Cambridge academic.

̽��ֱ��music that survives is breath-taking. There is nothing else quite like it in the operatic world

David Trippett

Abandoned Liszt opera brought to life

Tom Andrews/ ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Samuel Sakker (tenor), and Arshak Kuzikyan (bass-baritone) record the trio finale with pianist and musicologist David Trippett, in Jesus College Chapel, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��“Unpublished Prodigy” who caught Mendelssohn’s eye

tdk25 — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 05:00:35 +0000

A signed letter, believed to be one of the last ever written by the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, is going on public display for the first time as part of an exhibition about an unrealised musical prodigy of the Victorian age.

̽��ֱ��document, which was written by the composer just months before his death in 1847, was a reply to the father of John Robert Lunn – a gifted musician and composer who is the subject of a new exhibition at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, where he studied.

Although he is now regarded as a highly talented composer, Lunn never pursued a musical career and his compositions remain almost entirely unknown. ̽��ֱ��letter suggests, however, that not only was Mendelssohn impressed by the young Lunn’s musical ability, but that Lunn’s father had requested a meeting with the great composer, who regretfully had to decline as he was due to leave the country and return to Germany.

Lunn’s father wrote to Mendelssohn in 1847, following a performance of the composer’s oratorio Elijah, during which the 16-year-old Lunn transcribed the music he was listening to by ear. Judging by the response, his original correspondence, now lost, appears to have sought guidance regarding how best to develop his son’s musical talents. Mendelssohn replied, saying that Lunn “must possess a very good ear for music and must be able to form at once a correct idea of what he is listening to”.

̽��ֱ��letter expresses Mendelssohn’s regret at not being able to meet with Lunn and his father before leaving England, and states that he would have liked to have the time to form “a personal acquaintance” with Lunn in order to best advise him in his future career.

It offers a tantalising insight into what might have been had the meeting taken place. Professor John Rink, a Fellow of St John’s and Director of Studies in Music at Cambridge, said:

“Mendelssohn’s letter is fascinating. Presumably the questions put to him by Lunn’s father had to do with his son’s musical prospects and how his talents might best be developed. Lunn might well have followed a different musical path had he met and been advised by the composer. His ability to “form at once a correct idea” of the music he was listening to indicates that he had an excellent ear. No doubt he would have excelled in music had he not chosen to study mathematics instead.”

As it was, Lunn never took on a career in music, choosing instead the quiet life of a country vicar in Yorkshire. Music remained his passion, however, and he wrote a great number of settings and compositions, most of which were never published. During his lifetime, Lunn performed only small concerts and recitals in local church halls. His music is today regarded as being an outstanding paradigm of Victorian composition.

Mendelssohn’s letter was given to St John’s after Lunn’s death in 1899, but was presumed lost several decades ago after the College Chapel’s Song Room where it was held was flooded. It was only recently rediscovered in a vault in the College by Library Graduate Trainee Richard Sellens, who curated the exhibition. Richard said:

“It was surprising to find such an important document among a stack of frames and papers. ̽��ֱ��letter was probably the last Mendelssohn wrote in England, and one of the last in his lifetime. It acts as a bridge between a brilliant composer coming to the end of his career and one who could have been just starting out on his, had things taken a different turn”.

̽��ֱ��exhibition, which can be seen in St John’s College Library, explores Lunn’s life and influences from being a childhood prodigy, through his time at St John’s, when he refused to allow himself a piano in his room so as not to distract him from his mathematical studies, to his many unpublished and unheard compositions.

“Lunn may not be very well-known”, Richard said, “but he is a great example of a typically Victorian composer”.

Featuring previously unseen material from Lunn’s own personal collection, the exhibition brings to light the creative process of this gifted, but obscure, musical figure.

Unpublished Prodigy will run until 25 September. It can be seen free of charge Monday-Friday from 9:00-5:00 in the Library of St John’s College, Cambridge.

A previously unseen letter by Felix Mendelssohn is to go on public display in an exhibition about an unrealised British musical prodigy, revealing that he narrowly missed an opportunity to meet the great composer and perhaps transform his career.

Mendelssohn’s letter is fascinating. Presumably the questions put to him by Lunn’s father had to do with his son’s musical prospects and how his talents might best be developed. Lunn might well have followed a different musical path had he met and been advised by the composer.

John Rink

St John's College, Cambridge

Left: Mendelssohn’s 1847 letter to the father of John Robert Lunn, then aged 16. Mendelssohn was excited by the young man’s musical talent, but unable to meet him. Lunn (right) never entered a career in music, but his compositions are highly regarded.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��virtual Chopin

tdk25 — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:12:09 +0000

March 1, 2013 is the 203rd anniversary of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin. Not only is Chopin still a household name: he is probably the most enduring composer of his age.

For some, this comes down to the ineffable beauty, subtlety and technical refinement of his work. Others point to the fact that unlike many Romantic composers, Chopin rarely tried to convey a specific message or story through his music. Publishing under neutral titles which gave little away, he preferred to leave interpretation to the listener. ̽��ֱ��result is that even today, audiences tend to find something uniquely personal in each and every piece.

Yet while listeners can simply sit back and enjoy the music, the obscurity of Chopin’s intentions makes understanding his work a challenge for anyone seeking to get closer to the composer himself. Chopin is both fascinating and frustrating in this respect, because he rarely left behind just one version of his compositions. More often, there are three, four, five or more - any number of which might be an “authoritative” representation of how he wanted the piece to sound. Listeners, performers and researchers alike may find this liberating, but also bewildering because there are so many options from which to choose.

John Rink, Professor of Musical Performance Studies at Cambridge, is director of a project which is transforming the way in which we understand Chopin’s work by bringing this compositional cornucopia together in one place. Launched in 2005 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the “Online Chopin Variorum Edition” (http://www.ocve.org.uk) is still under development, but eventually it will provide digital images of all the available primary sources of Chopin’s music - whether sketches, complete manuscripts (both Chopin’s and those of copyists), first editions, or later impressions. Thousands of pages from these documents are already available, and the entire site is free of charge. Users anywhere in the world can explore, compare and combine elements from the great composer’s music, comment on it as they go, and ultimately construct their own version of the Chopin work to an extent that has never before been possible.

Purists might call that sacrilege, but Rink believes that it is very much in the spirit of what Chopin wanted. In fact, he describes as “indefensible” the notion that a given version of Chopin was necessarily what the composer would have intended for all time.

“For Chopin there was no single, definitive version: he continually changed his mind,” Rink says. “We might identify a particular source as representing his conception of the music at a given moment, but the next day he might well have heard, played or notated it differently. We therefore need to understand his music as existing in a state of flux, a process involving not only the composer but all those who later come into contact with it – including performers, listeners, editors, critics and so on.”

Contemporary evidence confirms that Chopin’s genius was restless and boundless, in that he continually modified his work on paper while correcting errors, refining the notation, or indulging in other creative possibilities. To minimise the risk of piracy, he also published separate editions in France, England and the German states, usually leading to the release of three distinct versions of his music which might be altered yet again - either by Chopin or his publishers - when a given print run sold out and a new impression was required. Even his rare, sensational public performances were a creative act: according to one of his piano tuners, Chopin never played his own music the same way twice, instead varying his approach to suit the occasion. ̽��ֱ��numerous variants that he pencilled into the scores of his students hint at the improvisatory character of his playing.

Rink can point to numerous examples already available through the Variorum that prove just how flexible the Chopin work is. ̽��ֱ��C minor Prelude Op. 28 No. 20, for example, is a notoriously controversial piece precisely because nobody is sure what Chopin really wanted. Remarkably, the debate hinges on the ending of a single bar. Trivial though that may seem, the music sounds completely different depending on which version is played – one is brighter, the other sombre, introverted. Either could be correct, but then again both versions might simply represent what Chopin wanted at different times. Even more striking, perhaps, is the fact that the piece exists in two original versions: one nine bars long, the other thirteen. Only the latter is performed nowadays, but the former – which was not meant for publication – may reflect Chopin’s earliest conception.

In some cases users can see several layers of corrections on the page itself. ̽��ֱ��Second Ballade Op. 38 is a case in point. Here, Chopin wrote two different endings and then vacillated between them; his manuscript shows the original ending scribbled out and replaced with a second version, which made its way into one of the first editions whereas another conforms to the original. Again, the effect is quite different depending on which ending the pianist chooses to play, as the second version is more imposing than its understated counterpart.

Rink believes that despite this seemingly limitless variety, Chopin’s music should not be altered capriciously. “To make a musically sensible decision about what you put forward as a performer, you need to have sound criteria along with the knowledge and judgement that can accrue only over time,” he says. This last point is critical: “merely having access to the original sources does not in itself allow one to make informed, convincing decisions about how this music ‘should’ be played and understood.”

For this reason, the Variorum provides more than just an archive of digitised manuscripts and printed editions culled from dozens of international libraries and private collectors. Visitors to the OCVE site can browse a full index of the materials that have been uploaded, select a work, then view the different versions on offer. But the main feature of the Variorum is the ability to select and compare particular bars or passages across all the different sources for a given piece, thereby revealing the music’s creative history. Background information is provided at an overview level and on an in-depth, bar-by-bar basis. ̽��ֱ��site also works as a “virtual notepad”, enabling users to jot down ideas about the music as they work their way through it. They can keep these annotations to themselves, or share them with others.

Despite the growing significance of digital media in the arts and humanities as a whole, no musical resource quite like this has ever before been attempted: the Variorum offers unprecedented opportunities to compare and reconstruct Chopin’s creative process in a way that would not be possible on the printed page - where even the comparison of a few bars in different sources requires a large desk as well as juggling skills. In time, Rink hopes that the Chopin Variorum might serve as a model for “dynamic editions” of other composers’ works.

For now, it means that rather than having Chopin’s musical legacy mediated for us, we can, if we wish, make up our own minds about how to hear or perform his works. Ironically, this seems to have been Chopin’s very intention. “Music does not exist in a single, correct version,” Rink notes. “It constantly changes over time. Chopin reminds us of that because he himself kept changing his music. Whenever we perform or listen to it, our experience is different from the last. By putting his compositions into a digital space, we can model and capture that evolutionary process. In doing so, we breathe new life into Chopin’s music and witness for ourselves his compositional genius at work.”

One of the greatest composers of the 19th century, Fryderyk Chopin, had an irrepressible creative imagination, and his music experienced continual evolution as a result. Now, a new online resource is bringing the many versions of his compositions together in one place, opening up new possibilities for performers, listeners and researchers alike.

For Chopin there was no single, definitive version: he continually changed his mind

John Rink

̽��ֱ��Virtual Chopin

̽��ֱ��Morgan Library, accession number Heineman MS 42.

Detail from Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49), Polonaise in A-flat major for piano, Op. 53: autograph manuscript, 1842–43.

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Encounter Mozart with latest Humanitas Professor

tdk25 — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:15:16 +0000

̽��ֱ��renowned pianist, conductor and musicologist, Robert Levin, arrives in Cambridge this week, where he will give a series of lectures and recitals that take us behind the scenes of performing Mozart.

Levin is the latest holder of a Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Chamber Music at the ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). During his tenure, he will give a series of public lecture-recitals on the theme of “Encountering Mozart” at the Faculty of Music, as well as an open rehearsal and concert with performers from the Academy of Ancient Music this Wednesday, 31 October.

̽��ֱ��latter rekindles a working relationship with the Academy which began in the 1990s, when Levin collaborated with Academy performers to deliver an acclaimed cycle of Mozart piano concertos. Their performance this week will feature chamber and solo works, including both Mozart’s and Beethoven’s quintets for piano and winds.

Levin’s first public lecture, “Improvising Mozart”, will consider how idiomatic embellishments and cadenzas (virtuoso solo passages) can be introduced into Mozart's music, using facsimiles of manuscripts as well as free fantasies. ̽��ֱ��lecture will conclude with Levin performing a free fantasy improvised on Classical period themes suggested by the audience.

In his second lecture-recital, “Composing Mozart”, Levin will discuss the various completions that he has provided to a wide range of Mozart fragments, from small piano pieces to concerto movements and the Requiem and C minor Mass.

̽��ֱ��Humanitas Chair in Chamber Music aims to bring world-renowned performers to Cambridge to share insights into both the character and challenges of musical performance, explaining how they approach various musical masterpieces and how their interpretative choices impact on listeners. ̽��ֱ��first post-holder, in 2011, was Alfred Brendel, who during an illustrious 60-year career became the first pianist to record Beethoven’s complete piano works.

As a pianist and conductor, Robert Levin has been heard throughout the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia with such conductors as Semyon Bychkov, James Conlon and Sir Simon Rattle. Well-known for his improvised embellishments and cadenzas in Classical period repertoire, he has made numerous recordings, and his completions of Mozart fragments have been widely published, recorded and performed throughout the world.

Chairman of the Faculty Board of Music, Professor Iain Fenlon, said: “Robert Levin, one of the foremost performers of keyboard music on period instruments, is renowned for a style of playing that represents the perfect intelligent fusion of musicology and musical execution.”

̽��ֱ��Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Chamber Music 2012 has been made possible by the generous support of Mr Lawrence Saper. ̽��ֱ��Humanitas Chair in Chamber Music is hosted by Peterhouse and the Faculty of Music.

For full details of the lecture-recital series please visit www.crassh.cam.ac.uk. Concert tickets, priced £15, £13 or £3, can be purchased via www.aam.co.uk/#/concerts/2012/12-10-31.aspx or by calling 01223 357851.

Robert Levin is renowned for a style of playing that represents the perfect intelligent fusion of musicology and musical execution.

Iain Fenlon

Ascher

Robert Levin.

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