The rough guide to classical music

ROUGHGUIDES “The perfect classical music primer” BBC Music Magazine THE ROUGH GUIDE to Classical Music AN A-Z OF COMPOSERS, KEY WORKS AND TOP RECORDINGS 5th EDITION: REVISED & EXPANDED THE ROUGH GUIDE to Classical Music Edited by Joe Staines Written by Jonathan Buckley, Philip Clark, Andrew Dickson, Kate Hopkins, Stephen Johnson, Nick Kimberley, Joe Staines, Gavin Thomas www.roughguides.com Credits The Rough Guide to Classical Music Rough Guides Reference Editor: Joe Staines Layout: Nikhil Agarwal Picture research: Joe Staines Proofreading: Jason Freeman Production: Rebecca Short Reference Director: Andrew Lockett Editors: Kate Berens, Peter Buckley, Tom Cabot, Tracy Hopkins, Matthew Milton, Joe Staines and Ruth Tidball Acknowledgements Thanks to all those who have helped in the creation of this guide, in particular all the record and distribution companies without which it would not have been possible Thanks are also due to Elbie Lebrecht and everyone at Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library, John Moelwyn-Hughes at Corbis, the helpful staff at the Barbican Music Library, and Hester Rowland at Harold Moores Records Finally, a big thank you to all those who contributed to the four previous editions of this book: Ruth Blackmore, Matthew Boyden, Simon Broughton, Kim Burton, Richard Chew, Duncan Clark, David Doughty, Sophie Fuller, Andy Hamilton, Sarah Harding, Stephen Jackson, Michael Jameson, Francis Morris, David Nice, Francesca Panetta, Mark Prendergast, Matthew Rye, Jonathan Webster, Barry Witherden and Michael Wrigley Publishing Information This fifth edition published May 2010 by Rough Guides Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL 375 Hudson St, 4th Floor, New York 10014, USA Email: mail@roughguides.com Distributed by the Penguin Group: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL Penguin Putnam, Inc., 375 Hudson Street, NY 10014, USA Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2YE Penguin Group (New Zealand), Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Printed by Toppan Security Printing, Singapore Typeset in Minion, Myriad and DIN to an original design by Duncan Clark The publishers and authors have done their best to ensure the accuracy and currency of all information in The Rough Guide to Classical Music; however, they can accept no responsibility for any loss or inconvenience sustained by any reader as a result of its information or advice No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews © Rough Guides Ltd 688 pages; includes index A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84836-476-9 CONTENTS Introduction Chronology of composers 100 Essential Works 10 12 14 16 18 33 34 36 41 45 63 65 67 71 74 78 79 81 84 85 87 89 90 93 103 108 110 118 Ferruccio Busoni Dietrich Buxtehude William Byrd John Cage Marie-Joseph Canteloube Giacomo Carissimi Elliott Carter Francesco Cavalli Emmanuel Chabrier Marc-Antoine Charpentier Frédéric Chopin Muzio Clementi Aaron Copland Arcangelo Corelli Franỗois Couperin Luigi Dallapiccola Claude Debussy Léo Delibes Frederick Delius Gaetano Donizetti John Dowland Guillaume Dufay Paul Dukas John Dunstable Henri Duparc Maurice Duruflé Henri Dutilleux Antonín Dvořák Hanns Eisler Edward Elgar Manuel de Falla Gabriel Fauré Morton Feldman César Franck Giovanni Gabrieli Roberto Gerhard George Gershwin 119 121 122 125 127 128 129 132 133 135 136 142 143 147 148 151 152 158 159 161 163 165 166 168 169 170 172 173 180 181 188 190 194 196 199 200 202 CONTENTS John Adams Thomas Adès Isaac Albéniz Tomaso Albinoni Gregorio Allegri Louis Andriessen Malcolm Arnold Grażyna Bacewicz C.P.E Bach J.S Bach Samuel Barber Agustín Pio Barrios Béla Bartók Arnold Bax Ludwig van Beethoven Vincenzo Bellini George Benjamin Alban Berg Luciano Berio Hector Berlioz Leonard Bernstein Heinrich Biber Harrison Birtwistle Georges Bizet Luigi Boccherini Alexander Borodin Lili Boulanger Pierre Boulez Johannes Brahms Benjamin Britten Max Bruch Anton Bruckner Antoine Brumel vii ix xii iii CONTENTS iv Carlo Gesualdo Orlando Gibbons Umberto Giordano Philip Glass Alexander Glazunov Mikhail Glinka Christoph Willibald Gluck Henryk Gúrecki Charles Franỗois Gounod Percy Grainger Enrique Granados Edvard Grieg Sofia Gubaidulina George Frideric Handel Karl Amadeus Hartmann Jonathan Harvey Joseph Haydn Hans Werner Henze Hildegard of Bingen Paul Hindemith Gustav Holst Arthur Honegger Johann Nepomuck Hummel Engelbert Humperdinck Charles Ives Leoš Janáček Josquin Desprez Mauricio Kagel Aram Khachaturian Oliver Knussen Zoltán Kodály Erich Wolfgang Korngold György Kurtág Helmut Lachenmann Francesco Landini Roland de Lassus William Lawes Franz Lehár Ruggero Leoncavallo György Ligeti Magnus Lindberg Franz Liszt 204 207 208 209 212 213 215 216 219 220 222 223 227 230 240 242 244 253 255 258 262 264 265 267 268 271 275 277 279 280 282 285 288 291 293 294 295 298 299 300 304 305 Jean-Baptiste Lully Witold Lutosławski Elisabeth Lutyens Guillaume de Machaut James MacMillan Elizabeth Maconchy Gustav Mahler Frank Martin Bohuslav Martinů Pietro Mascagni Jules Massenet Nicholas Maw Peter Maxwell Davies Felix Mendelssohn Olivier Messiaen Darius Milhaud Claudio Monteverdi Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Tristan Murail Modest Mussorgsky Conlon Nancarrow Carl Nielsen Luigi Nono Michael Nyman Johannes Ockeghem Jacques Offenbach Carl Orff Johann Pachelbel Nicolò Paganini Giovanni da Palestrina Hubert Parry Arvo Pärt Krzysztof Penderecki Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Perotin Francis Poulenc Michael Praetorius Sergey Prokofiev Giacomo Puccini Henry Purcell Sergey Rachmaninov Jean-Philippe Rameau 310 311 314 316 318 320 322 330 332 334 335 337 339 341 346 350 351 356 371 373 376 378 382 384 387 388 390 392 393 396 398 399 401 403 405 407 411 414 423 426 432 437 Einojuhani Rautavaara Maurice Ravel Max Reger Steve Reich Ottorino Respighi Wolfgang Rihm Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Joaquín Rodrigo Gioacchino Rossini Poul Ruders Kaija Saariaho Camille Saint-Saëns Erik Satie Alessandro Scarlatti Domenico Scarlatti Giacinto Scelsi Alfred Schnittke Arnold Schoenberg Franz Schreker Franz Schubert Robert Schumann Heinrich Schütz Alexander Scriabin Dmitri Shostakovich Jean Sibelius Bedřich Smetana Ethel Smyth Karlheinz Stockhausen Alessandro Stradella The Strauss family Richard Strauss Igor Stravinsky Barbara Strozzi Josef Suk 440 441 446 448 452 453 455 457 458 461 463 465 468 470 471 474 476 478 485 486 499 508 510 513 520 527 529 531 535 536 537 544 552 555 Arthur Sullivan 556 Karol Szymanowski 558 Toru Takemitsu 562 Thomas Tallis 564 Giuseppe Tartini 567 John Tavener 570 John Taverner 571 Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky 572 Georg Philipp Telemann 581 Michael Tippett 583 Michael Torke 586 Mark-Anthony Turnage 588 Viktor Ullmann 590 Edgard Varèse 593 Ralph Vaughan Williams 594 Giuseppe Verdi 600 Tomás Luis de Victoria 605 Heitor Villa-Lobos 606 Antonio Vivaldi 608 Richard Wagner 613 William Walton 620 Carl Maria von Weber 622 Anton Webern 625 Kurt Weill 628 Judith Weir 630 Silvius Leopold Weiss 631 Charles-Marie Widor 633 Hugo Wolf 635 Iannis Xenakis 638 Alexander Zemlinsky 641 Glossary 643 Index 667 CONTENTS v Feature Boxes Tuning & Temperament 26 Luther and Music 413 What is a Fugue? 30 St Cecilia – Patron Saint of Music 431 Sonatas and Sonata Form 58 Less is More? – The Origins of Famous First Words 112 The “Bruckner Versions” Problem 114 Development of the Keyboard 472 Rivals at the Piano 141 The Crisis of Tonality 480 The Madrigal History Tour 205 The Lieder Poets 494 Castrati 233 Clara Schumann 500 Baroque: A Period or a Style? 236 Romanticism and the Gregorian Chant 256 Expressionism and After 259 Electronic Music – The First 70 Years 533 Composers at the Movies 287 Music in the Third Reich 539 Consort Musick 296 Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet 547 Troubadours and Trouvères 317 Concerto di Donne 553 The Cult of the Conductor 323 Music and Reformation in England 565 The Ondes Martenot 348 There is Nothing Like a Strad 569 The Birth of Opera 354 Postmodernism and After 587 CONTENTS Total Serialism and the vi Minimalism Austro-German Tradition 451 503 The Concerto 610 Darmstadt School 384 The Leitmotif 615 The Rise of the Virtuoso 395 The Strange Case of August Bungert 617 Stabat Mater Dolorosa 404 The Clarinet Comes of Age Notation 406 Cavaillé-Coll and the French Jean Cocteau and Les Six 409 Organ Tradition 624 634 INTRODUCTION T here are many books on composers and their works, and there are numerous guides to the countless recordings of classical music available on CD The Rough Guide to Classical Music aims to be both of these things – and to so with a degree of selectivity that will help readers get straight to the most important and enjoyable works and recordings In short, it’s an A to Z survey of over 200 of the most significant composers in the history of western music – ranging from Hildegard of Bingen, one of the great figures of eleventh-century Europe, to Thomas Adès, born in London in 1971 Each composer gets a fact-filled biography, followed by discussion of each of their most important works, along with reviews of recommended recordings Producing a book such as this inevitably means leaving out many composers and even more compositions and recordings But that’s partly the point Joseph Haydn, for example, wrote 104 symphonies and while all are worth hearing, some are definitely more exciting than others – especially for someone new to his music We’ve gone for what we think are the best works by the most interesting composers, mixing some underrated figures with the big names We’ve also included 42 feature boxes covering such diverse topics as troubadours, the birth of opera, the rise of the virtuoso and electronic music (see opposite) CD recommendations How the book works Immediately after this introduction you’ll find a list of all the composers covered in the guide, arranged chronologically, so you can see at a glance who fits where If you find you like the music of Vivaldi, you could check the list and decide to listen to Telemann, his contemporary Things are more complicated with the stylistically varied twentieth century: Xenakis and Arnold were born just a year apart but their music seems to come from different worlds When a musical connection does exist (as in the case of Mozart and Haydn or Schoenberg and Berg), a cross-reference in the main text will point you in the right direction This is followed by a list of 100 essential works that would serve as a good place to start for anyone new to classical music At the end of the book there’s a detailed glossary that defines all the technical terms we’ve used Between lies the bulk of the guide, an A to Z of composers from John Adams to Alexander Zemlinsky Each entry starts with an introduction to the composer’s life and music, followed by a runthrough of the main compositions, moving from the largest-scale works to the smallest With the most important figures – such as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven – we’ve generally grouped the music INTRODUCTION Choosing which CDs to recommend requires even greater ruthlessness than selecting which composers and works to include Beethoven only wrote nine symphonies, but there have been hundreds of recordings made of the fifth symphony alone While it’s arguable that several of these should never have been issued, a piece of music as complex as a Beethoven symphony can bear many different interpretations and a sizeable proportion of them are worth listening to Although some cases recordings stand head and shoulders above the competition, no performance can be described as definitive That’s one reason why we often recommend more than one version of a piece Whereas all our first- choice CDs make persuasive cases for the music, some of the additional recommendations make valid, and sometimes provocative, alternatives In several instances, we’ve recommended a “historical”, pre-stereo recording as well as a modern digital recording While there are undoubtedly many extraordinary performers around today, and modern recordings usually benefit from technically immaculate sound quality, new is not always best Few recent releases can match the excitement of Vladimir Horowitz’s 1943 account of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No or Reginald Kell’s moving performance of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet from the 1930s Furthermore, it doesn’t follow that a recording made more than sixty years ago will have terrible sound quality – many sound surprisingly good, and there are several companies who specialize in reissuing and remastering old recordings vii under generic headings (eg “Chamber Music”), giving an introduction to the composer’s work in that genre before going on to individual pieces Each discussion of a work or works is followed by reviews of recommended recordings, with the performer details conforming to a regular format: soloist first, then orchestra/choir/ensemble, then conductor – with the name of the record company and the number of CDs in parenthesis, along with a summary of the other works featured on the disc Take this recording of Glazunov’s Violin Concerto: r Znaider; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Jansons (RCA; with Prokofiev Violin Concerto No 2) Here, Nikolaj Znaider is the soloist, he’s playing with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons (we’ve left off first names to save space) INTRODUCTION Purchasing CDs viii If you purchase your CDs through a record store, many of those we’ve recommended will need to be ordered, since most stores stock just the bestsellers and new releases Should you find that a listed CD is not in your store’s catalogue, it may have been deleted or be about to be repackaged: the major companies are pretty quick to delete slow-moving items, but often reissue them, either at a lower price or combined with different music Newly deleted and second-hand CDs can usually be located via the Internet, which is also a good place to purchase new CDs – from retailers and record companies, and, in several instances, directly from the performers or the composer There’s been a continuous downturn in the production of classical CDs from the major companies over the last ten years In several cases this has led to projects being curtailed and major performers and orchestras losing lucrative contracts Not everyone has taken this lying down and a wealth of small independent companies has emerged to plug gaps in the market Many orchestras (including the Hallé, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) now have their own labels, and even venues, such as London’s Wigmore Hall, produce their own recordings In the case of individual composers and performers, several have bought the rights to formerly deleted recordings, repackaged them and made them available via their own websites Full-price recent releases can still be expensive, but the last two decades have seen an explosion of budget labels – pioneered by Naxos – and this has spurred both the big multinationals and the larger independent companies to put more effort into their own mid- and budget-price series These reissues often feature some of the finest performances of a work ever made, so don’t think for a minute that quality of a CD is always reflected in its price Classical downloads Another development in the recording industry is the growth of music download services, which allow you to purchase music online and download it to your computer to then either play using a dedicated jukebox application (such as iTunes), “burn” to a CD (to use just as you would a regular CD) or transfer to an MP3 player Apple’s iTunes Store has blazed the trail for such services since 2003, its success due in part to the popularity of the same company’s iPod At first classical music was pretty poorly served by downloads but by the end of 2009 a huge amount of quality material was available Many record labels offer their own sites where you can download new recordings, back catalogue and, in some cases, deletions There are also several download providers with a strong classical catalogue, such as eMusic, classicsonline com and passionato.com The advantages of downloading are the cost (between half and a third of the price of a CD), the fact that you can choose to purchase either an entire album or individual tracks and, of course, the fact that it delivers to your home more or less instantaneously The drawbacks are the marginally inferior sound (not a problem for most people and, anyway, likely to improve), the lack of sleeve notes and, in the case of song and opera, the absence of the words – although such information is easily found on the Internet and is often provided on record company download sites ... works, and there are numerous guides to the countless recordings of classical music available on CD The Rough Guide to Classical Music aims to be both of these things – and to so with a degree of selectivity... from the consoling tone of the chorales to the sheer viciousness of some of the crowd choruses, are shockingly direct in the way they involve and implicate the listener in the story According to. .. parents to listen to a huge variety of music, ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington (A cherished childhood memory is of being taken to an Ellington concert and sitting on the piano stool next to the