Birthdays of the Great

[gurnemanz]

Thanks for the information about Methfessel who from further Googling turns out to be quite an interesting and pleasant figure who knew Goethe and taught singing to Schiller's daughter. Before he was appointed as a singer at the Court Theatre at Rudolstadt (not Kudolstadt, as stated above, which doesn't exist) he received financial support from Princess Caroline of Hessen-Homburg who seems to have been a generous and rather appealing minor aristocrat:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/thumb/8/8a/1771_Karoline.jpg/490px-1771_Karoline.jpg

If you travel to Braunschweig you can see the house where he lived:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Braunschweig_Brunswick_Methfessel_%282006%29.jpg

It is now a restaurant:

http://www.das-anders.de/

I cannot see much evidence for a greater German preference for mixed choirs than in Britain. The male choir founded by Methfessel in Hamburg in 1823 appears to be still active.

http://www.hamburgerliedertafel.de/index.php?id=24

[Tony Halstead]

why poor?

perhaps he died in poverty...?
Er, I meant, pov-erty.

[vinteuil]

mijnheer Grew seems to be stuck in a peculiarly limited and limiting Germanic late nineteenth century world, costive and stultified.

Now, if he could open his ears to the delights of Jean-Baptiste Senallié - Jean-Baptiste de Bousset - Jean-François Lalouette - Jean-Baptiste Moreau - Nicolas Bernier - Michel Monteclair - Jean-Claude Gillier - Jean-Joseph Mouret - Charles-Hubert Gervais - Jean Matho - he might learn that there are whole worlds of greater interest than his airless heimlich salons...

[mercia]

other 6 October birthdays

Jenny Lind
Karol Szymanowski
Edwin Fischer

[LeMartinPecheur]

shouldn't that be
pont-ifi-cationne ?

As a longtime ex-chemist I like the look of 'ifi-cationne'. Would that be something like Ca+++ or K++?

[Sydney Grew]

why poor?

Well I feel he became intricated among the toils of larger and inexorable forces when all he really wanted to do was write beautiful music.

[Sydney Grew]

. . . turns out to be quite an interesting and pleasant figure who knew Goethe and taught singing to Schiller's daughter.

Thanks to Member Gurnemanz for all the interesting information and pointers!

Although the name "Methfessel" has in the usual way been expunged from the latest edition of Grove's Dictionary by editors with agenda, he does have an entry of three closely printed pages in the Algemeine Deutsche Biographie. Curiously enough his operas and oratorios are not mentioned there, but "symphonies, and organ and piano pieces" are, although in the same sentence we are informed that these "lack any positive musical content" and do not reach the standard of his songs and ballads. We learn there also that Methfessel's favourite instrument was the guitar.

The ADB goes on to retail this from Ludwig Spohr's autobiography, again describing M's happy-go-lucky life-style: a group of friends - Methfessel with his guitar, Spohr (his bosom companion), and three others "each of these carrying his Waldhorn on his back" - set out on foot from Rudolstadt, on their way to the music festival at Mannheim. At each village they played and sang, and the grateful villagers would bring suitable refreshment. (What the ungrateful ones did is not related.) Spohr, at that time at the height of his fame, was offered a bed in a private house, but demo-cratically preferred to sleep with his four friends "auf der Streu" (I do not know whether that means "in the open air under a haystack" or in some common bed of litter). Methfessel we are told would regularly undertake these musical pedestrianizations through the hills, with his guitar and a few chosen performers.

[Sydney Grew]

Among the most celebrated London composers and performers of the nineteenth century was a man actually born at Nuremberg. This happy event took place two hundred and nine years ago to-day: Bernhard Molique was the name given him.

He first appeared in London at the Philharmonic on the fourteenth of May 1840, playing his own Fifth Violin Concerto, in A minor, a performance particularly well received. Further successful visits to England in 1842 and 1848 led to his decision in 1849 to settle there.

His sterling qualities as a player, and his sound musicianship, soon procured him an honourable position in the musical world of the metropolis, where he was highly acclaimed as a performer, particularly in chamber music, and as teacher and composer. The serious character and fine workmanship of his compositions raised him high in the estimation of connoisseurs and musicians. His main subjects are noble and pathetic, the form is masterly, and the working-out and the scoring are always full of interest. On the other hand, they sometimes suffer in effect by being overladen with extremely difficult passages. He is said to have disliked the modernism of the New German School - but do not we all!

Molique's principal published works comprise: six Violin Concertos; eight String Quartettes; two Piano-forte Trios; a Piano-forte Quartette; a Quintette for the unusual and interesting combination Flute, Violin, two Violas, and Violoncello; a Symphony; two Masses; a Violoncello Concerto; a Flute Concerto; a Clarionette Concerto; and an Oratorio, "Abraham." To these must be added Duos for two violins, and for flute and violin, a Sonata for Concertina and Piano-forte, with a number of smaller vocal and instrumental pieces.

The Oratorio "Abraham" was given at the Norwich Festival of 1860. And - summa summarum - in 1861 he was appointed professor of composition at the Royal College of Music.

He retired after a splendid farewell concert at St James's Hall on the third of May 1866. All in all a great man truly deserving of his place in this thread.

[Tapiola]

Spohr, at that time at the height of his fame, was offered a bed in a private house, but demo-cratically preferred to sleep with his four friends

Mr Grew,

Are we to infer from the above that Herr Spohr was a homo-sexualist?

[Sydney Grew]

Emil Sauer the transcendental performer was born in Hambourgh to-day one hundred and forty-nine years ago. He began his musical training under his mother, a neat and clean little Scotchwoman, and later studied under Nicolas Rubinstein at Moscow and the aged Franz Liszt at Weimar.

As a near-perfect interpreter, matching an exceptionally developed technique with both temperament and poetic inspiration, he toured all over the Continent and elsewhere. He became head of the Master School for Piano-forte in Vienna, and Court Pianist to the Kings of Saxony, Roumania, and Bulgaria. And in London his flying fingers were especially well received.

His principal compositions are a Suite Moderne (in five parts); two piano-forte concertos; two piano-forte sonatas; and twenty-four concert studies; besides numerous other piano-forte pieces and songs.

Prior to 1942 he made a number of recordings, including both Liszt concertos. He was the author of an autobiography, "Meine Welt." When at home he resided at 51, Comenius-Strasse, Dresden, and later at Vienna. It is unsurprising given all that that in 1917 he was ennobled and thenceforward able to style himself "Emil von Sauer."

[mercia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LryBuwMKV-s&feature=related

[Nick Armstrong]

For all we know, today could be the anniversary day of the Reverend Thomas Bastard (1565/1566 – April 19, 1618), an English clergyman famed for his published English language epigrams, who was born in Blandford Forum, Dorset, England. His seven books of 285 epigrams entitled "Chrestoleros" were published in 1598.

He initially attended Winchester College. Subsequently he began studying at New College, Oxford on (August 27, 1586). By 1588, he was assigned as a perpetual Fellow of New College. Though later expelled from his Fellowship, Bastard still received a BA in 1590, and an MA 16 years later in 1606.

Bastard became notorious for libelling the sexual doings of various Oxford clergy and academics via a published tract entitled An Admonition to the city of Oxford, &c. Despite disavowing authorship, he was nonetheless expelled from his Oxford fellowship in 1591.

He still maintained a few supporters and admirers, primarily, Sir Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy who appointed him as a chaplain, and Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk who appointed him vicar of Bere Regis and later, in 1606, Rector of Almer in Dorset.

Admirer Sir John Harrington said in a poem:

"To Master Bastard, a minister, that made a pleasant Book of English Epigrams:
You must in pulpit treat of matters serious;
As it beseems the person and the place;
There preach of faith, repentance, hope, and grace;
Of sacraments, and such high things mysterious:
But they are too severe, and too imperious,
That unto honest sports will grant no space.
For these our minds refresh, those weary us,
And spur out doubled spirit to swifter pace."


Bastard was married three times. However, he sadly died impoverished in the debtor's prison at Allhallows parish, Dorchester, and was buried in the parish churchyard.

[mercia]

birthdays today for Saint-Saens, Carl Flesch and Einojuhani Rautavaara

[Sydney Grew]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LryBu...eature=related

A remarkable performance! I wonder whether he recorded Liszt's Sonata?

To-day one hundred and seventy-six years ago the soon to be fatherless Saint-Saëns came (as member Mercia has already indicated) into the world at Paris. But if I write anything much here about him and Joe Orton I might get into trouble, so let us quickly turn our attention to Maria Jane Williams instead.

She, a soprano singer of great merit, was born in Glamorganshire to-day two hundred and eighteen years ago, and resided mostly in that county. Her chief title to remembrance is her collection of traditional Welsh airs, which was offered in competition at an Eisteddfod held in Abergavenny in 1838. She published forty-three of the melodies, with Welsh words, in 1844 (D'Almaine's, London), but only a few copies seem to have been printed. The title runs "Ancient National Airs of Gwent, and Morganwg; being a collection of original Welsh Melodies, hitherto unpublished." Miss Williams expired on the tenth of November, 1873.

[vinteuil]

if I write anything much here about him [Saint-Saëns] and Joe Orton I might get into trouble...

... and yet - Saint-Saëns resolutely spurned the appellation 'homo-sexualist' - "No!" he declared, "I am a pæderast!"