Meeting in Music: Mascagni

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Following the guide below you will be able to create the ultimate HQ rip and upload for sharing here at the Meeting in Music Internet Community or on your own blog if you have one.

RIPPING A CD USING EXACT AUDIO COPY (EAC)

1. Start Exact Audio Copy and load the clean and scratchless CD into you drive.
2. Pressing ALT+G will pull track and album info from the FreeDB database if this feature is set up properly.
3. If no info is found the CD is not registered in the database and you will have to type in the info manually.
4. Adjust the Drive Settings according to the model of your drive and enable the ”Create Log-file” option.
5. Adjust the Compression Settings to rip in Flac format at 768 kBit/s. Alternatively rip in the Ape fomat.
6. Rip the CD by pressing Action -> Test & Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet -> Compressed...
7. Check the log-file to see if any ripping errors or AccurateRip inaccuracies were registered.

SCANNING THE COVERS OF THE ALBUM

1. Scans of the front and back covers should be included if available as should the booklet. 300dpi is standard.

COMPRESSING THE FOLDER USING WINRAR

1. Wrap the audio files and images in a folder marked the composer and album name etc.
2. Set Compression method to ”Store” and the volume size to 200000000. Add a 3% recovery record.
3. Compress the folder using a not-too-obvious filename.

UPLOADING TO A FILEHOST AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD

Now all you need to do is to upload the rar-files to a filehost of your choice. Mega.nz is the standard and most stable option but there are many others and some services even feature upload to multiple filehosts. Finally the download links are ready to be presented on your blog.

THE MEDIEVAL ERA (600 - 1450)

At around 500 AD, western civilization began to emerge from the period known as “The Dark Ages”, the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths overran Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating “Holy” Crusades against the East, establishing universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art and literature

During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.

Secular music was sung all over Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France, and it was during the Middle Ages that western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guilliame de Machaut.

THE RENAISSANCE ERA (1450 - 1600)

Generally considered to be from c.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means “rebirth”) was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe.

With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.

The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

THE BAROQUE ERA (1600 - 1750)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (c.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.

THE CLASSICAL ERA (1750 - 1820)

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.

At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical centre of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next several decades. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.

THE ROMANTIC ERA (1820 - 1910)

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

Composers like Antonin Dvorak began looking for ways in which they could express the musical soul of their homelands. Legends were therefore used as plots for operas, and folk melodies and dance rhythms were frequently used as inspiration for symphonies and instrumental music.

With the continued enhancement of instruments, plus the invention of new ones, the late Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ERA (1910 - 1960)

In the early part of the twentieth century music became either outwardly expressive (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, the huge symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or more introverted (as in the so-called “impressionist” music of Claude Debussy). The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Béla Bartók.

In a time of deepening psychological awareness, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time.

Twentieth-century music has seen a great coming and going of various movements, among them post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism in the earlier years of the century, all of which were practiced at one time or another by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Many of the greatest and best-known composers of the century, including Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich along with British composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten were those who wrote music directly descended from the approved models of the past, while investing these forms with a style and modernistic tone of their own.

THE LATE 20TH CENTURY ERA (1940 - 2000)

Composers of this era sought to free music from its rigidity, placing the performance above the composition. Similarly, many composers sought to break from traditional performance rituals by incorporating theatre and multimedia into their compositions, going beyond sound itself to achieve their artistic goals. In some cases the line is difficult to draw between genres. Composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. As early as the 1940s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as well.

The musique concrète of the late 1940s and ’50s was produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds. Steve Reich created music by manipulating tape recordings of people speaking, and later went on to compose process music for traditional instruments based on such recordings. Other notable pioneers of electronic music include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

As more electronic technology matured, so did the music. In the 1950s aleatoric music was first championed by American composer John Cage. Early minimalist compositions of the 1960s such as those by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass stemmed from aleatoric and electronic music.

THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (from 1975)

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, with composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the more popular “mystic minimalism” variant.

Recently there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools of composition to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

12/27/2015

Opera Favourites #2 - La giovane scuola

Some of the finest hours of the Italian melodramma are to be found in this post dedicated to the generation of the 1860s. This consistent group of composers managed to create a wholly new style by evolving from Verdi's cumbersome yet inspiring heritage and in the meantime by fetching musical inputs from the sublime musical efforts of Wagner and from those of their own contemporaries, mainly Strauss, the French School and eventually Debussy and Ravel.

The results were often outstanding, with the towering figure of Puccini surrounded by somewhat less charismatic and prolific personalities, yet very distinguished musicians like the many here presented.

The Maestro from Lucca takes center stage, of course, and his many masterpieces like La Bohème, Tosca, Turandot or Il Trittico are popular milestones, combining a very distinctive melodic flair with outstanding musical and orchestrating skills. In all fairness, I've always believed that the true Puccini mostly lies in his early capolavori (Manon Lescaut, La Bohème and Tosca), after which, the Tuscan genius began to give in to his restless musical curiosity by borrowing more heavily from Strauss (Turandot's sublime 2nd Act outburst "Mai nessun m'avrà" or the quite similar sounding "E anche tu lo vorrai, Joe" in Fanciulla's finale are but a few examples) or Ravel (Suor Angelica, the beginning of Fanciulla's 2nd Act and the Ministers' gently rocking themes in Turandot's 2nd Act).

The rest is a series of extraordinary masterpieces the likes of Mascagni's Cavalleria (its famous Intermezzo sounds in every Italian's heart - mine included - like a most touching instrumental unofficial National anthem), and of course Leoncavallo's moving masterpiece: Pagliacci.
And more - Montemezzi's outright Wagnerian effort, the wonderful L'Amore dei tre re (something like a Tristan in "salsa veronese"), Zandonai's sultry debussyanism (the magnificent Paolo/Francesca duet from Francesca da Rimini's 3rd Act), Wolf-Ferrari's unique and elegant comedy, Giordano's noble and powerful portrait of the French Revolution, and Cilea's sophisticated Adriana Lecouvreur, a gem of an opera in which the Calabrian composer showcases his most sublime melodies, along with one of the greatest scenes of the whole Verista repertoire, the Adriana/Principessa de Bouillon duet in the 2nd Act, in many ways a perfect synthesis between a late Verdi style and Puccini's hair-raising Angelica/Zia Principessa duet...

Pietro Mascagni
Cavalleria rusticana
Agnes Baltsa, Plácido Domingo, Juan Pons, Vera Baniewicz, Susanne Mentzer
Chorus of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden
Philharmonia Orchestra
Giuseppe Sinopoli
DGG 429 568-2 (1989)
READ MORE...

4/26/2009

Keeping it real: rescuing forgotten verismo

Finding a replacement for Brünnhilde on short notice, or for any number of daunting roles that only a handful of people in the world can sing properly, is a nightmarish prospect for an opera company. But imagine having to find a replacement tenor to sing the punishing title role of Pietro Mascagni’s “Piccolo Marat.” Never heard of it? Not many operagoers have.

“Il Piccolo Marat” had a sensational 1921 premiere in Rome. A rescue drama and ill-fated-love story set in the river city of Nantes at the height of the French Revolution, it is among the many forgotten works of Italian opera’s verismo era. From the 1890s to the 1920s opera composers in Italy could hardly keep pace with the public demand for melodically plush, hot-blooded and gritty musical dramas. Verismo means realism, and these operas offered true-to-life (sometimes true-to-lowlife) depictions of everyday people.

This period, dominated by Puccini, produced a sizable number of enduring works, starting with Mascagni’s one-act wonder, “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Its runaway success at its 1890 premiere in Rome essentially inaugurated the verismo movement.

Yet dozens of verismo operas that followed, often acclaimed at their openings, have languished for decades. They have a tireless champion in Duane D. Printz, a former soprano and the founding director of Teatro Grattacielo, a scrappy organization devoted to uncovering worthy operas from this once-thriving era.

Among its diverse activities Teatro Grattacielo presents a yearly concert performance of a neglected verismo opera in New York. On Monday night at Avery Fisher Hall, to celebrate its 15th anniversary, the group will present the North American premiere of “Il Piccolo Marat,” with soloists, chorus and orchestra, conducted by David Wroe.

But for a couple of weeks the project was threatened. Arnold Rawls, a rising tenor scheduled to sing the title role, withdrew in mid-March because of an illness in his family. It was a pretty safe assumption that there were no tenors around who knew the role, so Ms. Printz had to search for someone willing to learn it.

Two weeks ago she lined up Richard Crawley, another young tenor, and the show was on. Ms. Printz sounded relieved during a recent phone interview. For such an ardent defender of verismo, she offered what Puccini lovers might consider a heretical view about why she has focused on neglected works. “Audiences are tired of ‘Bohème’ and ‘Tosca,’ ” she said. “Companies should be more adventurous. Nobody does these other verismo operas, and they are so good.”

Over the years Ms. Printz has given New Yorkers rare opportunities to hear neglected operas like “L’Arlesiana” by Francesco Cilea, “La Wally” by Alfredo Catalani and “Zazà” by Ruggero Leoncavallo, who is best known for “Pagliacci,” written in the aftermath of “Cavalleria.” The two works have long been a favorite double bill around the world, including at the Metropolitan Opera, where a revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s production just ended.

Several of the works Teatro Grattacielo has uncovered have proved to be surprisingly effective and impassioned entertainments. I was particularly impressed by a 1925 Riccardo Zandonai opera, a swashbuckling tale of love and salvation in rural Sweden called “I Cavalieri di Ekebù.” At the very least, the piece shot to the top of my list of favorite opera titles.

Though these neglected operas and the beloved works of Puccini have long been grouped under the banner of verismo, that term is used too broadly. In the decades after Italy was united in 1860 the aristocratic class gradually gave way to an emerging population of merchants and bourgeoisie. By the 1880s verismo had taken root as a literary movement extolling naturalism. Leading writers like Giovanni Verga encouraged their colleagues to give voice to peasants and workers, to adopt a objective, nonmoralizing narrative stance and to depict life as it really was, with winners and losers.

Naturalism fired the imaginations of composers as well. But as the pianist and author Alan Mallach explains in his informative book “The Autumn of Italian Opera: From Verismo to Modernism, 1890-1915,” published by Northeastern University Press in 2007, Italian opera during the 1870s and ’80s was in a creative crisis.

The field had long been long dominated by Verdi, a national hero. But for all his genius Verdi was viewed as bound to a tradition that had its roots in bel canto. The rebellious composers born in the 1850s and ’60s, among them Puccini, Mascagni, Giordano and Leoncavallo, called the Giovane Scuola (Young School), were enamored of contemporary French opera and fascinated by Wagner.

Even when bleakly portraying the downtrodden, Verdi maintained an elevated stance. His operas, Mr. Mallach writes, would be “largely incomprehensible without the presence of an underlying moral order” that typically leads characters to do the right thing by the end, whatever the dismal consequences.

The verismo movement in literature pointed to an uncompromising new path for opera. Mascagni, the son of a baker, took the first step with “Cavalleria Rusticana,” based on a play by Verga.

Set in a Sicilian village in the 1880s, the opera tells of Turiddu, a young peasant back from a stint in the army, who has reignited a love affair with the alluring villager Lola, though she is now married to Alfio. Santuzza, a young peasant woman whom Turiddu has seduced in revenge for Lola’s marriage, is determined to claim him. Santuzza tells Alfio of his wife’s affair. The men duel, Turiddu dies, Santuzza is grief stricken, and the villagers are horrified, though not too horrified. This is life, after all. Fool around, and you may pay a price. Then again, you may not.

Mascagni’s score pulses with lyrical ardor and lush orchestral writing. The opera takes place in the village square as an Easter service is being held. The pacing is taut. You could argue that the opera lightens its punch with evocations of local color, complete with folk serenades. And what village church in Sicily could have assembled such a huge choir to sing the elaborate Easter odes Mascagni gives us here?

Still, without these musical touches the dramatic intensity might have become unbearable. Here was a compellingly real musical drama. Audiences had never seen anything like it, and other composers wanted in on the action.

Mr. Mallach argues that after an initial burst of activity only a limited number of subsequent works from the period truly hewed to the verismo credo. Puccini’s grim one-act “Il Tabarro,” a love triangle ending in a revenge killing, is surely one. A more complicated example is “La Bohème.” This tale of freewheeling bohemians has its tough side. In the face of Mimi’s declining health Rodolfo realizes that he has no means of grappling with her illness. So he cops out. Still, Puccini also wanted to pull in audiences with depictions of Parisian nightlife, youthful high jinks and love-at-first-sight romance.

By the dawn of the 20th century, as Italy lurched toward economic and social crisis, Mr. Mallach writes, the opera audience “was looking less for grim naturalism than for stories into which they could escape, containing characters with whom they could identify” or “costume operas set in exotic places or historic times.” “Madama Butterfly” comes to mind.

Still, whatever you call these operas, it must have been exhilarating to take part in a popular art form driven by fervor for new work. You can poke at the conservatism of the Italian composers of that time, when elsewhere Stravinsky and Schoenberg were instigating revolutions. But as Teatro Grattacielo’s productions over the years have suggested, these operas were well-made, crowd-pleasing works. The cultural climate that produced them would not be matched until the cinema came along. Just as we look back and recognize the skill and style that went into the silent films cranked out by Hollywood, or the screwball comedies of the 1930s, the verismo operas championed by Teatro Grattacielo have their own kind of sophistication.

For a year or so the group’s financing took a hit, Ms. Printz said, further complicated by being displaced from Alice Tully Hall, its favored performance space, during the hall’s renovation. But things are back on track, she said. And tickets are selling for “Il Piccolo Marat.” “This thrilling opera had 50 curtain calls at its premiere,” she said. It went on to productions beyond Italy from Paris to São Paolo.

Ms. Printz suggested that these vibrant operas fell into disrepute among critics and composers in the decades following World War II when contemporary music was increasingly dominated by “the academic composers,” as she put it, who were “really writing for each other.” Mascagni, she said, “wrote for audiences.”

Mascagni never quite equaled the early success he had with “Cavalleria Rusticana.” And by 1921 he was a compromised figure in Italian cultural life who allowed himself to be embraced by the Fascists. “Il Piccolo Marat,” his 14th opera, was to be his comeback work, and he wanted it to shatter people.

“It does not speak, it does not sing, it shouts!” Mascagni wrote to friend in 1919 while composing the score. “Do not look for melody or refinement, there is only blood!”

by Anthony Tommasini at the New York Times, 9 April 2009
*****
Further reading/listening:
• Link to the Teatro Grattacielo website, for reviews of last week’s New York performance and to hear the Love Duet from Act 2 of “Il Piccolo Marat”:
http://www.grattacielo.org/index.html

• Those interested in Pietro Mascagni and his work will find many resources (articles, libretti, scores, photos, audio files, a film clip of Mascagni conducting) at this attractive, well-organized website:
http://www.mascagni.org/

• You’ll find links to two older recordings of "Il Piccolo Marat" at the Italian forum Opera per Sempre:
http://divadivina.forumer.it/about257-divadivina.html&highlight=marat

Umberto Borso, Il Piccolo Marat; Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Presidente del Comitato; Virginia Zeani, Mariella; Teatro La Gran Guardia, Livorno, October 26, 1961/ Oliviero De Fabritiis, dir

Nicola Martinucci, Il Piccolo Marat; Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, Presidente del Comitato; Virginia Zeani, Mariella; Padova-Teatro Verdi, 10 October 1976/ Francesco Maria Martín, dir READ MORE...