Birthdays of the Great

[Sydney Grew]

In "Who's Who in Music" we find the following information and orthography: "Wassili Sapellnikoff, born 21 October, 1872, at Odessa."

Whereas jolly old Percy Scholes has "Vassily Sapelnikof, born Odessa 1868" (he does not give the day).

A web-site entitled "Tchaikovsky Research" uses the spelling "Vasilii Sapel'nikov" - I do not know what the inverted comma is intended to signify - and gives his date of birth as "21 October/2 November 1868."

And the Wiki-pedia thing uses "Wassily Sapellnikoff" and states that he was born on 2 November [Old Style 21 October] 1867!!!

Mr. Holden, in his interesting biography "Tchaikovsky" spells the name "Vasily Sapelnikov."

And as usual Grove's Dictionary, edited by professors with some kind of biassed modernistic agenda, omits his name entirely!!!!!!

So: three different birth-years, five different transliterations. One wonders whether people who adopt a new scheme of transliteration ever truly understand what damage they do. Here is his name in the Russian alphabet, which is perhaps less subject to variation: Василий Львович Сапельников.

What we can say is that Sapellnikoff was a homo-sexualist - always a plus in a pianistic performer is it not.

In this regard the Wiki-pedia is quite interesting: "He was one of Tchaikovsky's lovers, having gone with the composer on a tour to Germany, France and England. At his debut in Hamburg in 1888, he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor with the composer conducting. This concert was a great success and a catalyst for his budding career as a concert pianist in Western Europe.

"Sapellnikoff first appeared in England in 1889 playing the Tchaikovsky concerto at a Royal Philharmonic concert, under the composer's baton [its first performance in England]. He became a favourite at Philharmonic concerts, and created a furore in 1892 by his performance of Liszt's E flat concerto, accepting a second engagement for the same season. In 1902 he delivered the first performance in England of Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto."

He was educated at the Imperial Academy of Music, by Brassin (piano), Liadoff and Tizck (composition); studied both the violin and piano-forte as a boy, but on the advice of Rubinstein concentrated his talents on the latter instrument. He first appeared under Tchaikovsky, with whom he travelled around Europe and performed at leading concerts in every European capital.

Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother: "After three weeks we have become inseparable; I have grown so fond of him, and he has become so close to me, that he now seems like part of the family. Not since Kotek have I loved any one as much. You cannot imagine a more attractive, gentle, sweet, delicate and noble individual. I absolutely adore him!"

Throughout the subsequent decade the pair continued to travel together, share their days of relaxation, and "concertize."

M. Sapellnikoff played for the Philharmonic Society some thirteen times, and became an honorary member, a rare distinction.

He composed a quantity of piano-forte music, including "Valse Caprice," "Gavotte," "Étude," "Elfentanz," etc., etc.

He soon acquired residences in Berlin, Munich, and Florence; and expired in 1941 at San Remo.

The Wiki-pedia lists a number of recordings he made.

[vinteuil]

A web-site entitled "Tchaikovsky Research" uses the spelling "Vasilii Sapel'nikov" - I do not know what the inverted comma is intended to signify .

Василий Львович Сапельников

.. the 'inverted comma' represents the ь - or 'soft sign' * between the л [L] and the н [N]...


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_sign

[gurnemanz]

Василий Львович Сапельников

.. the 'inverted comma' represents the ь - or 'soft sign' * between the л [L] and the н [N]...


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_sign

...what my Russian teacher used to call the "dark l" (produced at the back of the mouth)

[ahinton]

[CENTER][IMG]Sapellnikoff was a homo-sexualist - always a plus in a pianistic performer is it not.

Allowing for the assumption that your bizarre and bizarrely spelt term is intended to connote "homosexual" - and, since you ask - no, it is not, any more than it is a minus; how, indeed could it possibly be either? Just think of all those great pianists of recent and not so recent times who fell/fall outside this category: Pollini, Askenazy, Argerich, Ogdon, Rubinstein, Michelangeli, Rakhmaninov, Medtner, Skryabin, Cziffra, Smith (Ronald)...

[Sydney Grew]

Let us leap over Liszt, and turn to-day to another composer and pianistic performer, Carlo Albanesi, born at Naples a hundred and fifty-three years ago to-day. He too made a tremendous contribution to British musical life; he too is inappropriately omitted from Grove's Dictionary by editors lacking the necessary discernment of value.

We find him though in the 1913 musical Who's Who, and Percy Scholes (1954) offers an entry, although rather a short one. Incidentally Scholes in a Preface requests the collaboration of readers in drawing his attention to any defects in either accuracy or comprehensiveness that may come to their notice, and he provides his postal address at Oxford (41 Davenant Road) for that purpose. But he adds that he already possesses "a lifetime's collection of books on music in various languages, and also of musical scores, as also long runs of musical journals in various languages, as well as thousands of files in which are recorded the appearance on the scene of new composers or of new works by old composers - the whole occupying six rooms, and threatening, by further expansion, to drive the compiler and his family to residence, in some near future, in a tent on the lawn." He sounds very much like the Norman Lebrecht of his day does he not. What happened to Scholes's vast library upon his expiry does any one know?

Carlo Albanesi studied harmony and composition with Sabino Falconi and piano with Luigi Albanesi (one of the family perhaps). After several recitals in Italy he went to Paris in 1878 and gave recitals there; he came to London - permanently - in 1882 and gave recitals till 1893. He was appointed professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music in that year to fill the place left vacant by the death of Thomas Wingham. He was made Hon. R.A.M. on the twentieth of June, 1895, and member of the Philharmonic Society in 1896. Subsequently he was honoured by appointment as Chevalier Officer of the Crown of Italy.

His compositions comprised (by 1913) a great number of short piano-forte pieces, a string quartette, a trio for piano-forte and strings, six piano-forte sonatas, songs and orchestral works.

The list of his pupils includes many distinguished artists, as well as T.R.H. the Crown Princess of Sweden and her sister, Princess Patricia of Connaught, the Duchess Marie of Saxe-Coburg and the Duchess Paul of Mecklenburgh.

He resided at 3 Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park, W., and expired in London in 1926. No photo-graph appears to be immediately available.

[Sydney Grew]

To-day we must leap over Lortzing - born to-day in 1801 and what a miserable life was his lot! - and land upon a lean and scraggy Frenchman, Jean-Philippe Rameau, born - at least according to the Encyclopædia Britannica and his monument at Dijon - to-day in 1683; other references cite the twenty-fifth of September.

He in the course of a happy and prosperous life wrote dozens and dozens and dozens of operas. That was one GREAT MISTAKE.

He also put out a Traité de l'Harmonie containing many "bold and novel" theories. But we modernists know all about the perils of the bold and novel do we not. These theories were in fact a second GREAT MISTAKE.

The leading ideas of his system of harmony are (1) chord-building by thirds; (2) the classification of a chord and all its inversions as one and the same, thus reducing the multiplicity of consonant and dissonant combinations to a fixed and limited number of root-chords; (3) his invention of a fundamental bass ("basse fondamentale"), which does not correspond to our thorough-bass, but is an imaginary series of the root-tones forming the real basis of the varied chord-progessions employed in a composition.

These ideas have always provoked criticism, from all kinds of quarters. Here for example is Tovey:

"His discovery of the law of inversion in chords was a stroke of genius, and led to very important results, although in founding his system of harmony on the sounds of the common chord, with the addition of thirds above or thirds below, he put both himself and others on a wrong track. In the application of his principle to all the chords he found himself compelled to give up all idea of tonality, since, on the principles of tonality he could not make the thirds for the discords fall on the notes that his system required. Fétis justly accuses him of having abandoned the tonal successions and resolutions prescribed in the old treatises on harmony, accompaniment, and composition, and the rules for connecting the chords based on the ear, for a fixed order of generation, attractive from its apparent regularity, but with the serious inconvenience of leaving each chord disconnected from the
rest.

"Having rejected the received rules for the succession and resolution of chords which were contrary to his system, Rameau perceived the necessity of formulating new ones, and drew up a method for composing a fundamental bass for every species of music. The principles he laid down for forming a bass different from the real bass of the music, and for verifying the right use of the chords, are arbitrary, insufficient in a large number of cases, and, as regards many of the successions, contrary to the judgement of the ear. Finally, he did not perceive that by using the chord of the 6-5-3 both as a fundamental chord and an inversion he destroyed his whole system, as in the former case it is impossible to derive it from the third above or below." Thus that incontrovertible authority Sir Donald!

And Rousseau in his Dictionnaire de Musique (in the article headed "Basse-fondamentale") gives, over eight pages, a long description thereof, but concludes thus:

"Après avoir expoſé ſommairement la maniere de compoſer une Baʃʃe-ƒondamentale, il reſteroit à donner les moyens de la transformer en Baſſe-continue; & cela ſeroit facile, s'il ne falloit regarder qu'à la marche diatonique & au beau Chant de cette Baſſe: mais ne croyons pas que la Baſſe qui eſt le guide le ſoutien de l'Harmonie, l'ame &, pour ainſi dire, l'interprete du Chant, ſe borne à des regles ſi ſimples; il y en a d'autres qui naiſſent d'un principe plus ſùr & plus radical, principe fécond mais caché, qui a été ſenti par tous les Artiſtes de génie, ſans avoir été développé par perſonne."

Rameau's system may be TRUE but it is undirected truth; it MEANS nothing - in other words, importance is even more important than truth.

He does though make one good point: utilizing the two fundamental chord types of the seventh chord and triad, he conceived of the primary dynamic of music as a quasi-Cartesian mechanistic model of dissonance (displacement) and consonance (repose).

[Sydney Grew]

Joseph Speaight, the composer, piano-ist, violinist, and organist, was born at London this day in 1868 (in fact one of the most auspicious years in which to be so). His father was a violinist by "profession" - which means that under the capitalistic system he being needy was practically forced to use his instrument of Art as an instrument of dealings; how ashamed that must have made him!

The son received a musical education at the Guildhall School of Music under Pauer and Li Calsi (piano-forte) and R. Orlando Morgan (composition). He was at one time assistant music-master at Wellington College (no doubt a calling that rather than a "profession"), and was in 1894 appointed professor at the aforesaid Guildhall School. In the same year he toured as solo piano-ist and accompanyist to Madam Patey on her farewell tour, playing her last song for her at Sheffield. Her "last song" we say because it was in that year and in that city that Janet Patey, née Whytock, the Scottish contralto, sometimes referred to as "the English [sic] Alboni," expired. (She had, after the retirement of Sainton-Dolby in 1870, come to be regarded as the leading British contralto, and toured with her husband widely abroad, even as far as the Antipodean isles.)

Joseph Speaight's principal compositions:

- Symphony No. 1 (1893-4),
- Symphony No. 2 (1897),
- Tone-poem (1904),
- Concerto for piano-forte and orchestra (1891),
- Tone Pictures (piano-forte)
- Nymph Dance (piano-forte, 1919)
- Legends (piano-forte, 1911)
- Revellers (piano-forte, 1938)
- and sundry quintettes and quartettes.

Mr. Speaight married Miss Laura Chambers in 1899; he was a member of the Royal Society of Musicians and the Society of British Composers.

Once again we have to report that the editors of Grove's Dictionary, following their horridly twisted modernistic agenda, have attempted through the simple omission of his name to expunge Speaight's very memory. Nor is he mentioned by the unreliable Percy Scholes, despite those six rooms full of documentation!

But despite that, if Members will do a "google" of the name "Joseph Speaight," they will find something, and even a photo-graph. He expired in 1947. There is a Third Symphony - somewhere. The B.B.C. Proms Archive tells us that on the thirtieth of August 1917 he conducted the New Queen's Hall Orchestra in a version of two movements from his own work "Some Shakespeare Fairy Characters," the movements in question being number four ("Queen Mab Sleeps") and number three ("Puck"). And on October the sixteenth of the following year, Sir Henry Wood conducted the same orchestra in Speaight's "Joy and Sorrow."

"Some Shakespeare Fairy Characters" is we find a work in five movements, composed originally for string quartette, the titles of the individual movements being:

Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard Seed,
The Lonely Shepherd,
Puck,
Queen Mab Sleeps,
Titania.

I have not yet been granted the opportunity of hearing this work, but it may well be more exciting in its way than Webern's too utterly over-sensitive opus 5 may it not!

And finally here is a vaguely worthwhile link from Northern America.

[Sydney Grew]

Edward Iles, the well-known and highly regarded teacher of singing, was on the twenty-fifth of October 1861 born at Chipping Sodbury.

The youth received under Cedric Bucknall at All Saints' Clifton an education as an organist, and under William Shakespeare one in singing.

And thus it came about that in September 1907 he was appointed professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music, and in 1910 the same at the Guildhall School.

His chosen residence was Lavenham, Radlett, Herts., and he was elected member of the German Athenæum.

[Chris Newman]

We are somewhat concerned that in his advanced years Master Sid has developed an enthusiasm for leaping over musicians, per exempla Liszt and Lortzing. Surely such exertion is inadvisable. In the light of his enthusiasm for recognition of homosexualists we are intrigued to learn more withal upon his ruminations on the nomenclature of Chipping Sodbury the Parish of which he has recently brought to our attention in his latest missive.

[amateur51]

We are somewhat concerned that in his advanced years Master Sid has developed an enthusiasm for leaping over musicians, per exempla Liszt and Lortzing. Surely such exertion is inadvisable. In the light of his enthusiasm for recognition of homosexualists we are intrigued to learn more withal upon his ruminations on the nomenclature of Chipping Sodbury the Parish of which he has recently brought to our attention in his latest missive.

Wonderful, Chris!

[ahinton]

We are somewhat concerned that in his advanced years Master Sid has developed an enthusiasm for leaping over musicians, per exempla Liszt and Lortzing. Surely such exertion is inadvisable. In the light of his enthusiasm for recognition of homosexualists we are intrigued to learn more withal upon his ruminations on the nomenclature of Chipping Sodbury the Parish of which he has recently brought to our attention in his latest missive.

Neatly expressed - not to say appropriately in the specific context in which you've done so - but do we really want to know more about that particular district of Bristol in preference to having some reliable information about Liszt, at leaszt, eszpecially as we are but a few days past hisz biszentenary?

[Sydney Grew]

To-day one hundred and ninety-eight years ago there was born in London Henry Thomas Smart.

The Smarts, as a family, have always enjoyed great prominence in the sphere of English music, so young Henry Thomas was in effect born with a silver organ pipe in his mouth if we may thus put it.

There is no need to relate the course of his life, nor to list his many works, since there exists a good biography, "Henry Smart, his Life and Works" written by his friend William Spark, and published in 1881. It includes hundreds upon hundreds of extracts from Smart's compositions of all kinds, and may be inspected on and down-unloaded from the Inter-net Archive.

"This work will be the first of its kind ever published of an English musician," writes Mr. Spark. "Foreigners," he continues, "— especially Germans — are continually producing biographies — many of them elaborate — of their composers and performers, even during their life-time; but in England this sensible way of making the merits of our musicians known has been too much neglected. . . . Besides, why should the biography of our composers be so scanty, and the facts of their personal histories so rarely alluded to, as compared with those of the great masters of other arts? We would rather have supposed that the very mystery of that spiritual meaning which the composer elicits from sound and rhythm, that his function as the priest of an oracle which speaks in language native to the soul yet hidden from the intellect, would have created the keenest interest in all that related to his person, culture, habits, and external relations. . . . The secret of that hero-worship, which makes us track with such delight those 'footprints on the sands of time' left by great men of the past, is the piquant conjunction, in one view, of that power of large ideal conception which separates genius from ordinary humanity, with those personal facts which again identify it with the mass of common life. Curiosity usually hovers about the point at which the sphere of a strong creative force touches that of a mere mortal existence, chequered with common joys and sorrows."

When he was ten years of age Smart lost his father to something picked up in Dublin, and it was about this period that he became acquainted with the Robsons, the celebrated organ-builders of St. Martin's Lane, and spent much of his leisure in rambling through their workshops, and in trying his skill on their organs. Here it was that he laid the foundations for his profound knowledge of organ mechanics and construction. And it was probably at their house that he made the acquaintance of Mr. Neil, then organist of All Souls Church, Langham Place. Like others with whom he came in contact, this kind old gentleman took a fancy to the fatherless boy, who crept up to his organ-loft on most Sunday mornings, and was frequently allowed to take some small part in the service, no doubt gaining many practical hints thereby. Still music by no means engrossed the whole of his attention. A clever uncle (on his mother's side), Captain Bagnold, R.M., took much notice of Henry, and by intercourse with this gentleman, the friend of Sir Humphrey Davy, Faraday, Wilberforce, and other equally distinguished men, his latent mental powers were becoming rapidly developed, and he not unfrequently put startling and difficult questions to the scientific professors he saw when sometimes admitted to the Royal Institution. By and by Henry Smart got into the habit of absenting himself from home on half-holidays, frequently appearing only towards night, and when rather anxiously questioned as to where he had been since noon, replied simply, "At Maudsley's," and in proof of his assertion, produced a great roll of mechanical drawings. Who introduced him to the great engineers, and by what means he obtained leave to roam about the premises and make his drawings, no one ever heard. But it now became pretty clear that for a clever little fatherless boy, who thus chose his own acquaintances, and disposed of his own time, London was not the safest place, and it was decided to send him to a boarding-school.

For the present then all that we wish to add is a note of regret that among Smart's many productions there were no symphonies and no string quartettes! Can a man truly be a composer of genius without having spent his highest life-energies upon these?

[mercia]

When he was ten years of age Smart lost his father to something picked up in Dublin

what sort of something?

[Sydney Grew]

what sort of something?

"In 1823 Henry Smart the elder went to Dublin on professional business, and there fell a victim to typhus fever, at the early age of forty-three."

[mercia]

typhus fever

ah, that's alright then, I wondered if he'd picked up some-one who'd given him some-thing. One can never be too careful.