Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(January 27, 1756—December 5, 1791)
According to his contemporaries, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a short, slender man with wispy blond hair and scars on his face from a childhood bout of smallpox. At the same time, he was a giant of a man whose musical talent was widely proclaimed as a gift from God. As a child he was dragged from one European capital to the next to perform as a child prodigy/novelty act. As an adult he shuttled from Salzburg to Paris to Vienna, looking for steady work and an opportunity to realize the full scope of his musical genius.
He began picking out chords on a harpsichord at age three, began playing short works by the time he was four, and composed his first original work at age five. By the end of his career he had composed more than 600 works, and proven himself to be a master of all the contemporary musical forms—sacred music, dance, art song, concerto, symphony, and opera.
Mozart died at age 35, yet Mozart is considered one of the immortals of classical music.
Although Mozart was hailed as the greatest composer of his time, he also gained a reputation for being difficult to work with. He performed often for members of the nobility, and aspired to join their ranks, yet he was often short of money and sometimes snubbed the other court musicians who might have eased his way. He demanded the highest levels of musicianship from his players as he moved away from the clockwork precision of Bach into a more expressive sound for the orchestra. His operas, including The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute are among the most beloved of all time, and provided inspiration for the next young opera prodigy, Gioachino Rossini. For a little guy, he continues to tower over other composers of his own time and subsequent generations.
Wind ensembles were popular throughout Europe in the 18 th century, both as civilian community bands and military ensembles. The oboe, flute, and horn were all well-known instruments, and the trumpet was rapidly evolving toward the instrument we know today. In 1749 George Frideric Handel wrote his Music for the Royal Fireworks, originally scored entirely for wind instruments, and many members of the nobility maintained small wind ensembles, called “harmonies,” as court musicians.
So it is not surprising that Mozart would write at least one work for a wind ensemble. He was, after all, looking for a permanent appointment as a court composer. He had already built a reputation for himself as a pianist although, as the pianoforte temporarily waned in popularity, Mozart too began to fall out of favor. Mozart wrote Serenade No. 10 for Winds in B-flat major, “Gran Partita,” K.361/370a in 1781 or 1782, and in April 1782, Emperor Joseph II created his own harmonie ensemble. Perhaps Mozart wrote the Serenade No. 10 as a sort of audition work—to show the Emperor and other noble patrons of harmoniemusik what he could do. The work is scored for twelve wind instruments and a string bass.
Edgard (Edgar) Varèse
(December 22, 1883—November 6, 1965)
Born in France, educated in Italy and Germany, and a naturalized citizen of the United States, Edgar Varèse was a direct contemporary of George Gershwin, John Philip Sousa, and Igor Stravinsky, although his music bears little resemblance to any of them. He cited Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, and Erik Satie as his early influences, but his focus was always on exploring and expanding the landscape of sound in time. It’s perhaps not surprising that he was good friends with Leon Theremin, and an early advocate for the electronic instrument that bears Theremin’s name. Varèse himself is considered the “Father of Electronic Music.”
In 1914 Varèse was living in Paris, and enlisted in the French army at the outbreak of World War I. He was invalided out of the army in 1915, however, and moved to the United States to escape the warfare that was devastating his native country. He remained there, primarily in New York City, throughout the rest of the war, and in 1927 became an American citizen. In 1928 he returned to Paris, where he stayed until 1934. Most of the works on tonight’s program were written between 1922 and 1931.
As a way of understanding how far outside the musical mainstream Varèse was, these same years marked the bulk of George Gershwin’s career. Varèse wrote Octandre in 1924—the same year Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue. This was a time when jazz was taking the musical world by storm, but Varèse told his European conterparts that jazz was not representative of America, and dismissed it in bluntly racist and anti-Semitic terms.
Varèse thought of music as “organized sound,” and scorned his critics, saying, “To stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise.” His father had been an engineer, and had insisted that Varèse study engineering as well. Although the young composer rejected the stability of his father’s career, he brought his scientific training and precision to bear on his compositions.
Varèse did have allies among his musical peers. Carlos Salzedo was a close friend, and the two worked together to found the International Composers’ Guild in 1921, with the goal of promoting new works by composers in Europe and America. The group was responsible for the world premiere of Hyperprism in New York in 1923. When the audience laughed and hissed at the performance, someone—possibly Salzedo—came onstage to beg them to give the work a second hearing. The ensemble played it again, but the audience was no more kindly inclined the second time around.
Ionisation, which premiered at Carnegie Chapter Hall in New York City on March 6, 1933, is perhaps the best known of Varèse’s works. It was one of the earliest orchestral works written entirely for a percussion ensemble, and employs everything from a piano to a “lion’s roar.” Only the last few measures of the work come anywhere close to something audiences would recognize as tonal music. Rock musician and classical composer Frank Zappa counted it as one of the seminal influences on his own music.
By 1936, when he wrote Density 21.5, a solo work for flute, Varèse had returned to the United States for good, and opted to leave New York for Santa Fe, San Francisco, and later Los Angeles. He wrote Density 21.5 at the request of flautist Georges Barrere, who had just acquired a platinum flute. Ever the scientist, Varèse named his work after the approximate density of platinum.
Outside the musical mainstream in every way, Varèse nevertheless was discovered by a new generation of composers and avant garde thinkers following World War II. Pierre Boulez was one young disciple, and jazz musician Charlie Parker once asked Verèse to teach him how to write for an orchestra. The architect Le Corbusier worked with Varèse in creating a soundscape for the pavilion Le Corbusier designed for the 1958 World Fair in Brussels, Belgium. In 1962, Varèse was invited to join the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 1963 he was given the Koussevitzky International Recording Award.
Varèse returned to New York City in the last years of his life, where a fifteen-year-old Frank Zappa tracked him down. Already a fan of Varèse’s music, Zappa got permission from his mother to place a long-distance phone call to the composer as part of his fifteenth birthday present. “I figured Mr. Varèse lived in New York because the record [Zappa got for his birthday] was made in New York and, because he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village,” Zappa once said. “I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.” The phone friendship continued through the end of Varèse’s life, although the two never met in person.