by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, Chicago’s Schola Cantorum celebrates the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina with a performance on the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at St. John’s Cathedral. Michael Anderson will direct “a wide sampling of Palestrina’s sacred works, from motets and psalm settings to settings for the Mass and spiritual madrigals.
At the same hour, The Resonance Project (Guillermo Salas-Suarez, Baroque violin, Qin Ying Tan, harpsichord, and Brian Kay, Baroque guitar and percussion) will visit early Spanish Music in a program at Forest Hills Presbyterian Church.
For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
by Jarrett Hoffman
Franz Schubert was born on this date in 1797 in Vienna, while Philip Glass followed suit in 1937 in Baltimore. The connections don’t stop there: Glass has cited Schubert as an important influence, and in an interview in 2011, he even called Schubert his favorite composer.
Some see a bit of Schubert’s lied Du bist die Ruh in Glass’s solo piano work Mad Rush — both works open with oscillating minor thirds — and even suggest that Glass was making an allusion. Click those links to listen and decide for yourself.
Another pairing for today: Schubert and American tenor Mario Lanza, who was born on this date in 1921 in Philadelphia. A popular actor as well, Lanza sings Schubert’s Ave Maria in a scene from the 1956 film Serenade. Watch here.
by Daniel Hathaway
Many have found Schubert’s last three piano sonatas sublime and transcendental. Jonathan Biss wrote about them as an anodyne for loneliness in a recent guest essay for the New York Times.
Loneliness is universal; paradoxically it is a shared part of the human experience. Schubert knew this, and had the gift to convey it in sound, sometimes with profound sadness, but never with bitterness. Schubert’s heart remains open, ready to be broken anew. If you feel alone — because of holiday anxiety, or political uncertainty, or life circumstances, or simply because you are a person — I implore you: Listen to Schubert. He offers his soul to the listener, without armor or guile. He is our best friend.
Click here to watch Biss give a master class on Schubert’s last Sonata in B-flat.
