by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 noon in Trinity Cathedral, Rosa Lee plays the Chinese zither, and at 6pm, the Cleveland Museum of Arts presents Will Dudley in an exploration of music for the kora in Toby’s Gallery for Contemporary Art.
ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
By Mike Telin
As we begin the gradual shift from winter into spring, we celebrate the birth of the composer whose name is synonymous with all four seasons. On this day in 1678 Antonio Vivaldi made his world debut in Venice, Italy.
Vivaldi’s page on London’s Classic FM highlights many fun facts about the red-haired composer, who was nicknamed il Prete Rosso (“The Red Priest”). Here are a few to ponder.
- Vivaldi was baptized immediately after he was born, in his own home. This could have been due to his ill health, or the earthquake that shook Venice on the day of his birth.
- Vivaldi suffered from what he called ‘strettezza di petto’ (tightness of the chest) throughout his life — this severe asthma inhibited his speech, and even made him weak and dizzy when he spoke.
- Despite the fact Vivaldi wrote around 800 different works, his music was rarely played after his death in 1741, when his manuscripts were locked away or even attributed to other composers because he was deemed to be out of favor.
- Alongside his religious duties, the composer spent 37 years of his life as a composer, teacher, and conductor at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà asylum for orphaned girls.
- Vivaldi wrote fragments of poetry on the manuscript for his The Four Seasons, and no one’s sure who authored them.
- The Four Seasons may well be his most famous piece, but Vivaldi wrote more than 500 other concertos for other instruments including mandolin, cello, flute, viola d’amore, recorder, and lute. Around 230 of these are for violin — he was, after all, a violinist, like his father.
A fun fact that was not included is that Vivaldi wrote 39 Bassoon Concertos. Click here to listen to Klaus Thunemann perform the Concerto in g, RV 495 with I Musici.
On this same date 256 years later, composer Mario Davidovsky was born in Argentina (that’s 1934 in case you don’t want to do the math).
The young Davidovsky began studying the violin at age seven and began composing at thirteen. After studying composition and theory at the University of Buenos Aires, in 1958 he went on to work with Aaron Copland and Milton Babbitt at what is now known as the Tanglewood Music Center. That experience was transformative for Davidovsky, Because of Babbitt he became interested in electroacoustic music and it was Copland who encouraged him to move to the United States. In 1960 he relocated to New York.
Davidovsky’s best known compositions are his Synchronisms, which incorporate acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds. From 1981 until 1993 he taught at Columbia University as well as serving as director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1994 he was appointed to the music faculty at Harvard.
His many recognitions include The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, the Aaron Copland-Tanglewood Award, the Naumburg Award, and the Peggy Guggenheim Award. In 1982 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In his New York Times obituary, composer and Davidovsky student Eric Chasalow remembered his mentor as being among the first “to make electronics nuanced the way a violin is,” adding, “He tried to make the electronic an extension of the organic.”
In the same article, guitarist and New Focus Recordings founder Dan Lippel said that “[Davidovsky] wrestled with this idea that he didn’t want to be someone who contributed to the dissolution of the human being onstage,” adding that “He was a real humanist.”
Click here to listen to violinist David Bowlin play Synchronisms No. 9.
