by Daniel Hathaway
Question: “Ada, Countess of Lovelace and Lord Byron’s daughter, has been asked to help Charles Babbage with his work on the Difference Engine. Can she pursue her love of mathematics while upholding her reputation?”
Find out when Oberlin’s Winter Term Opera, The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace, with score by Kamala Sankaram and libretto by Rob Handel, opens in Warner Concert Hall for two performances on Friday and Sunday at 7:30. Cara Consilvio stage directs, Daniel Michalak is music director, and Matthew Brown conducts. Tickets here.
For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Arts Tax: Today’s “The Wake Up” from Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer notes that “When Cuyahoga County Council agreed to send a cigarette tax increase to the ballot last fall, their support came with a warning to the arts community to find a more sustainable funding source long-term. Now, the council is planning to help fund the search for those solutions. Kaitlin Durbin reports that the council is poised to approve $50,000 in one-time stimulus money to help the Assembly for the Arts hire researchers to identify new funding sources to continue supporting over 300 area nonprofits.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Among the entrances and exits on the classical music stage on January 24: the birth of Frederick the Great (in 1712 in Berlin, the flute-playing king of Prussia (pictured above), who challenged the father of his court musician C.P.E. Bach to improvise a fugue on the spot during a visit in 1747. Also the natal days of English oboist Evelyn Barbirroli in 1911 (spouse of conductor Sir John), and of Klaus George Roy in 1924, long-time program editor and annotator for The Cleveland Orchestra. January 24 also marked the demise of conductor Robert Shaw, who began his career as George Szell’s associate with The Cleveland Orchestra, and went on to become music director of the Atlanta Symphony while continuing his leadership of the Robert Shaw Chorale.
This would be a good time to revisit Johann Sebastian Bach’s Musical Offering, a collection of canons, fugues, ricercars and a trio sonata inspired by the elder Bach’s visit to Potsdam, where Frederick proudly showed off his new-fangled fortepianos by Gottfried Silbermann and challenged the Cantor of Leipzig to improvise a six-voice fugue on his own “royal theme.”
Click here to listen to a 2013 Music at Menlo lecture by Michael Parloff on the Musical Offering — the first part of a two-part discussion about Bach’s late contrapuntal tours de force.
And here are two period instrument performances to enjoy and compare. Click here for a version by the Kuijken brothers — Sigiswald, flute, Wieland, violin, and Robert, viola da gamba, with harpsichordist Robert Kohnen — from the Old Town Hall in Leipzig during the Bach anniversary year in 2000. And click here for a version by Le Consort de Nations led by Jordi Savall with harpsichordist Pierre Hantal.