by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 8 in Evans Amphitheater in Cain Park, the BlueWater Brass Quintet (Neil Mueller and Larry Hermon, trumpets, Ken Wadenpfuhl, horn, David Mitchell, trombone, and Ken Heinlein, tuba) will close out the last month of summer with music by J.S. Bach, Victor Ewald, Paul Dukas, and George Gershwin, along with a selection of Civil War-era brass band music. It’s free.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Two very different figures in Germanic classical music history were born on this date one year apart: Albert Riemenschneider in Berea, Ohio in 1878, and Alma Schindler Mahler-Werfel in Vienna, Austria in 1879.
Riemenschneider’s father was president of German Wallace College, which later became Baldwin-Wallace College, then Baldwin Wallace University (dropping a hyphen on the way). Albert was offered the directorship of the music department in 1898 while still an undergraduate, and went on to found the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival in 1932, modeled after the one in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That became a Riemenschneider family enterprise with the agenda of allowing students to participate in each of J.S. Bach’s four great choral works — the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in b-minor, and the Christmas Oratorio — during their undergraduate years.
His most well-known contribution to Bach studies was his publication of the 371 Harmonized Chorales in 1941 (along with 69 chorales with figured bass), a collection that had previously been published by Bach’s sons and others, but which has remained in publication and popularity.
Riemenschneider’s wife, Selma, was instrumental in founding the Baldwin Wallace Bach Institute with her 1951 gift of Albert’s books and manuscripts to the College (he died in 1940).
Tom Riemenschneider and Laura Kenelly considered his legacy in a paper on the 75th anniversary of the Festival. Click here to watch a video featuring the 2016 Matthew-Passion performance with Rufus Müller as Evangelist, Dashon Burton as Christus, and soloists Yulia Van Doren, Luthien Brackett, Matthew Anderson, and Jason Steigerwalt, with Dirk Garner conducting.
Alma Mahler was one of the truly liberated women of the early years of the 20th century, having become notorious for her serial marriages (Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, Franz Werfel) and numerous interlocking affairs. She abandoned composing at Gustav’s insistence (he later relented), but her music, mainly Lieder, makes for interesting listening. Click here for a selection performed by soprano Charlotte Margiono and members of the Brabant Orchestra.
But her racy emotional life eclipsed everything else. Here’s a rare, brief interview. And Harvard math instructor and witty cabaret performer Tom Lehrer had a field day with her story in his song Alma:
Her lovers were many and varied
From the day she began her beguine
There were three famous ones whom she married
And God knows how many between
Alma, tell us
All modern women are jealous
Which of your magical wands
Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?
