by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Organist Nataly Pak (pictured) will play an all-Johann Sebastian Bach program at the Church of the Covenant today at noon at the Church of the Covenant. You can watch a live stream here.
For details of this and other events, visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was born on March 26, 1925 in Montbrison, while Renaissance composers Heinrich Isaac and Antonio de Cabezon, and German composer Ludwig van Beethoven took their final bows in 1517, 1566, and 1827 in Florence, Madrid, and Vienna, respectively.
Cabezon, who was blind from early childhood, rose to become the first major Iberian composer for keyboard instruments and a member of the Spanish royal household. Listen here to his Diferencias sobre la Gallarda Milanesa played by Arturo Barba Sevillano on the historic organ at Villar de Cañas, Cuenca, in 2013.
The remoteness of the Iberian peninsula encouraged the development of unique organs and a body of literature especially created for them. Among the thirty-some instruments in the collection of the Oberlin Conservatory is a 1989 organ in traditional Spanish style built by Greg Harrold that was recently acquired and moved to its new home at the rear of Warner Concert Hall (Photo above by Abe Frato). Oberlin organ curator David Kazimir and organ professor Jonathan W. Moyer demonstrate it here.
One of the most prolific and well-traveled of Renaissance composers, Isaac enjoyed the patronage of the Medicis, whose coat of arms is associated with his Palle palle, played here by Voices of Music. And click here to watch the Italian Consort play another Isaac tune, A la battaglia.
Beethoven’s Elegischer Gesang for string quartet and four voices dates from 1814 and was dedicated to a friend whose wife had died three years earlier at the age of 24. It’s a lovely way to celebrate the departure of Beethoven as well. Listen to it here performed by the San Francisco Choral Artists.
Lest we become too sentimental, it’s worth remembering that the earthy composer was told on his deathbed that a gift of a dozen bottles of wine had arrived from his publisher. According to his American biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Beethoven’s last recorded words were “Pity, pity — too late!”
Pierre Boulez enjoyed a special relationship with The Cleveland Orchestra, palpably represented by his performance with them of the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, but also preserved in musicians’ tributes on the occasion of his 90th birthday. And more recently, in principal trumpet Michael Sachs’ remembrances in the 10th episode of the Orchestra’s On a Personal Note podcasts.
