The Royal Musical Association
Events
The Dent Medal is presented to Anselm Gerhard
Dent Medal Study Day & RMA AGM
Opera and Piano Music in Nineteenth-century Metropolitan Culture
28 Nov 09
On this page:
Programme
10.00 |
Registration and Coffee |
10.30-12.00 |
ClementiChair: John Irving |
10.30 David Rowland (Open University): 'Clementi as Reviser and Editor' 11.15 Michael Spitzer (Durham University): 'Clementi's English Thread: From Voiceleading to Cantabile' |
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12.00-1.45 |
RMA AGM followed by lunch |
1.45-4.00 |
Italian and French OperaChair: David Charlton |
| 1.45 Sarah Hibberd (University of Nottingham): '"Une vérité désespérante": Raft of the Medusa as Opera' |
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2.30 Michael Fend (King's College, London): 'Composers and the State in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris' |
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3.15 Francesco Izzo (University of Southampton): 'Of Texts and Other Demons: An Opéra Comique Goes to Italy' |
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4.00-4.30 |
Coffee/tea |
4.30-5.30 |
Dent Medal Lecture |
Anselm Gerhard (University of Bern): 'Kaiser Wilhelm and the Pharaohs: Exoticism and the Search for "Authenticity" in the Music Theatre of the Late Nineteenth Century' Chair: Philip Olleson |
Abstracts
Composers and the State in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris
Michael Fend, King's College, London
In his book The Urbanization of Opera. Music Theatre in Paris in the Nineteenth Century Anselm Gerhard detects the growth of nationalism as a mode of thought among musicians at the expense of the internationalism and cosmopolitanism often associated with Parisian culture. Using contemporary sources I shall explore composers' attitudes towards the French State as both a harbinguer of censorship and a medium of identification in the creation of shared values, when the service for God or an absolute ruler could no longer fulfil that function.
'Une vérité désespérante': Raft of the Medusa as Opera
Sarah Hibberd, University of Nottingham
In the spectacular tableaux of grand operas, tensions between characters are magnified musically and visually in extended 'moments' that direct the audience to contemplate the greater horror within and beyond the drama. The erupting Vesuvius at the end of Auber's La Muette de Portici (1828) and the exploding palace concluding Meyerbeer's Le Prophè te (1849) - with their evocations of the 1789 Revolution as well as the uprisings in the respective operas - are obvious examples. Typically, frenetic surface activity is contained within a monumental static framework; visual and aural elements appear to be working together to powerful effect. Some scholars have chosen to understand the music in such melodramatic tableaux as pushing towards a transcendent state in which the details of visual - physical - action are eventually subsumed - thus releasing opera from the shackles of bourgeois spectacle (an achievement associated most obviously with Wagner).
In this paper, however, I would like to emphasise grand opera's similarities with other hybrid spectacles d'optiques with musical accompaniment - such as the phantasmagoria, the tableau vivant and the diorama - in which art is the principal aesthetic focus - and suggest that Parisian audiences enjoyed works that exploited the dynamic tensions between music and art rather than their fusion. A number of grand operas featured tableaux that were modelled on specific dioramas or paintings, but Le Naufrage de la Méduse, a four-act opéra de genre with music by Flotow and Paliati which premiered at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on 31 May 1839 featured as its third act a mise en action of Géricault's celebrated painting. My analysis of the creation and reception of this tableau focuses on the relationships between the musical, visual and dramatic elements, and the responses of audiences and critics. These then inform a reconsideration of the final tableau of Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, in which the music can be understood as moving against the grain of the spectacle.
Of Texts and Other Demons: An Opéra Comique Goes to Italy
Francesco Izzo, University of Southampton
The use of French literary sources was widespread in mid-nineteenth-century Italian opera, and several French grand operas made their way into Italy in more or less altered form. The transfer of opéra comique seems to have been more problematic, however. Although numerous opéra comique librettos were translated or adapted for new musical settings by Italian composers, translations that sought to preserve the original music are rare. A remarkable exception is Ferdinand Hérold's Zampa (1831), which reached the Teatro del Fondo in Naples in 1833 in a translation by Giovanni Schmidt and with Hérold's original music adapted by Placido Mandanici. Following the production at the Fondo and revivals at various Italian opera houses during the 1830s and 1840s, the opera circulated in Italy well into the second half of the century, with different adaptations prepared in 1861 and 1889. Spanning a period of eight decades, the Italian reception ofZampa represents a unique opportunity to examine the transfer of an opéra comique to the Italian stage. Furthermore, this paper uses the Italian adaptations of Mélesville's libretto and Hérold's music to explore the widely debated, yet elusive notions of 'work', 'originality', and 'authorship'.
Clementi as reviser and editor
David Rowland (Open University)
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) lived through the period in which the piano replaced the harpsichord as the instrument of choice among performers. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that styles of performance changed significantly between the time of his earliest compositions in the 1770s and his latest works and revisions of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. At the same time, new editions of early eighteenth-century music began to be published in increasing numbers and composers were obliged to make editorial policy decisions; a critical issue was whether or not to update the music of previous generations in line with contemporary performance trends. This paper will explore the ways in which Clementi updated his own compositions as well as the music of earlier composers in order to meet the needs of the new century.
Clementi's English Thread: From Voiceleading to Cantabile
Michael Spitzer (Durham University)
One of the most suggestive aspects of Anselm Gerhard's study of Clementi is his notion of 'Cantabile' as a peculiarly 'English' element of the composer's style. On the other hand, the analytical dimension of Gerhard's argument is mostly confined to thematic unity, especially in relation to cyclical coherence in Clementi's piano sonatas. My paper proposes, by contrast, that 'Cantabile' affords a much more penetrating point of entry into an analysis of Clementi's style, particularly regarding, firstly, the synthesis he creates between Italian and Spanish voiceleading techniques (via Corelli and Scarlatti) and the 'English' feel for architectural wholeness (by Gerhard's lights); and, secondly, the transition this idiom effects between early Classical and Beethovenian melodic processes. The specific stepping-stone I shall focus on is the first movement of Clementi's Sonata in D Major, Op. 40 No. 3 (1802), a work which resonates powerfully with Beethoven's 'late-early' (or 'early-middle') piano sonatas. Clementi's peculiarly English 'thread', as a melodic/voiceleading amalgam, is fascinating in itself; but also as a 'thread' of continuity between historical epochs.