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On being a musicologist-pianist – guest post by Dr Samantha Ege

As a musicologist-pianist, my repertoire tends to reflect the areas that I am researching. When I started my PhD at the University of York in 2016 with the goal of writing my dissertation on the composer Florence Price (1887-1953), her piano music instantly became a part of my research journey. I found that studying Price’s scores and playing her music helped me write more insightfully about her life. Reciprocally, my writings then helped illuminate new ideas for interpreting her piano works.

In 2017, I went on my first archival research trip to Chicago, Illinois, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. This was a really exciting adventure as I would be visiting Price’s home state and spending time in the Midwestern city that she moved to in the late 1920s. I visited the Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Center to see the documents surrounding the premiere of Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor. I managed to attend a concert too. I remember waiting in the foyer and meeting Sheila Anne Jones. Sheila ran the African American Network of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and told me about her work. I then told her about my research, and we exchanged details.

A year later, Sheila hosted my first major lecture-recital at the Chicago Symphony Center. It was called ‘A Celebration of Women in Music: Composing the Black Chicago Renaissance’. At this time, I was two years into my doctoral studies and had just recorded my first album, ‘Four Women: Music for Solo Piano by Price, Kaprálová, Bilsland and Bonds’. The musicological and performance strands of my work were moving along, but when I brought them together in this lecture-recital format, I felt like I had really found my identity as a musicologist-pianist.

CSO photo

In this lecture-recital, I discussed key themes that would later surface in my published articles and book projects, i.e., themes of community-building and women’s leadership and advocacy. In my performance, where I played Price’s music alongside works by Margaret Bonds, Nora Holt, and Irene Britton Smith, I realised that my programming choices could really assist in conveying historical narratives, as well as striking up new connections and meanings for modern audiences. (See the blog post I wrote on “Connection not Perfection.”)

In the summer of 2019, I prepared for what would be my last archival research trip before the pandemic. I had a one-month fellowship at the Newberry Library in Chicago where my project entailed looking at women’s contributions to concert life in interwar Chicago. This led to me writing an article called “Chicago, ‘the City We Love to Call Home’: Intersectionality, Narrativity, and Locale in the Music of Florence Beatrice Price and Theodora Sturkow Ryder” (which will be published in American Music journal later this year). I also returned to Fayetteville with a mission: I wanted to find Price’s complete Fantasie Nègre compositions for solo piano and record them with the label LORELT.

My biggest challenge was recovering the third fantasie as it was thought to be incomplete. As I looked through the archives, all I could see were the first two pages of the fantasie. As I puzzled over where the rest of the music could be, I found myself drawing upon my entwined experiences of writing about and performing Price’s music. I thought about her approaches to key, form, and melody, and started looking for loose sheets of manuscript paper that might match the other possibilities I had in mind. And that’s when I located the missing parts of the fantasie. I pieced it together and it was truly magical hearing Fantasie Nègre No. 3 come to life, perhaps even for the first time since Price’s death in 1953.

I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had over time to shape my voice as a musicologist and pianist. My new album, ‘Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price’, brings all of these experiences together. Fantasie Nègre combines my passion for scholarship and performance, and demonstrates how both strands can work together to uncover hidden histories.

Samantha Ege’s new album ‘Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price’ is released on 8 March 2021 on the LORELT label.

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Dr. Samantha Ege is the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She is a leading interpreter and scholar of the African American composer Florence B. Price. She received the Society for American Music’s Eileen Southern Fellowship (2019) and a Newberry Library Short-Term Residential Fellowship (2019) for her work on women’s composers in Chicago. She has written for American Music, Women and Music, and the Kapralova Society Journal. She released Four Women: Music for Solo Piano by Price, Kaprálová, Bilsland and Bonds with Wave Theory Records in 2018. Her latest album is called ‘Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price’.

www.samanthaege.com

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En Pleine Lumière – Sandra Mogensen, piano

A multi-volume recording and concert project

Women such as Clara Schumann, Amy Beach and Cécile Chaminade are now recognised as a significant pianist-composers, who also enjoyed international performing careers, but in the course of her research, pianist Sandra Mogensen discovered many other women composer-pianists who were well-regarded, but whose names and music are hardly known today. These include Mélanie Bonis, Helen Hopekirk, Agathe Backer-Grøndahl, Luise Aldopha Le Beau, and Laura Netzel. The piano music of these composers was widely known and played during their lifetimes, but for much of the 20th century, their works were rarely played. Now, in the changing climate of classical music, with a greater emphasis on diversity, these once-forgotten composers are being given the recognition they deserve.

The music I have found is again incredibly beautiful….and all of it is new to me

Sandra Mogensen

Released in December 2019, the bicentenary year of Clara Schumann’s birth, the first volume of pianist Sandra Mogensen’s multi-CD and concert project, En Pleine Lumière (“in full light”), focuses on piano music by women composers born in the middle part of the nineteenth century (c.1840-1870). Each composer is represented by two short works and the entire project will have an international reach. Volume one includes composers from France (Chaminade and Bonis), the USA (Beach), Scotland (Hopekirk), Norway (Backer-Grøndahl and Lærum-Liebig), Sweden (Netzel and Aulin), and Germany (Le Beau and Menter). The subsequent two volumes will include music by women composers from Canada, Russia, Australia, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Latvia, Estonia and the Netherlands.

En Pleine Lumière will eventually comprise six albums, each focusing on a 30-year period – rather like a recital disc. En Pleine Lumière Volume 1 was recorded at Immanuelskirche in Wuppertal, Germany in June 2019, produced by an all-female team, and crowdfunded via Indiegogo. The subsequent volumes will be recorded with the same team and also supported by crowdfunding.

En Pleine Lumière is available on CD or digital download.

Canadian pianist Sandra Mogensen is equally at home in two worlds: performing as a solo pianist and co-performing with singers in recital. She has played in concert in both capacities in Canada, the United States, Denmark, Latvia, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Austria. Sandra is also well-known as a vocal coach and piano pedagogue

Meet the Artist interview with Sandra Mogensen

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7372kArthur Sullivan, Haddon Hall

Following the critical success of ‘The Mountebanks’, John Andrews’ recording of Sullivan’s late opera ‘Haddon Hall’ with the BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers  and a cast featuring Sarah Tynan and Henry Waddington was released at the weekend.

Further information and buy CD

Meet the Artist interview with John Andrews

 

img_5978En Pleine Lumière volume 1 – Sandra Mogensen, piano

This first album in the “en pleine lumière” project features 10 composers born in the mid-19th century, including Mel Bonis, Cecile Chaminade, Germaine Taillferre and Amy Beach.

Further information and buy CD

Meet the Artist interview with Sandra Mogensen

 

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Calling female musicians, composers and conductors to take part in the Meet the Artist interview series

 

Established in 2012 by blogger Frances Wilson (“The Cross-Eyed Pianist”), Meet the Artist is a series of interviews in which musicians, conductors and composers discuss aspects of their creative lives, including inspirations, influences, repertoire, performance, recording, significant teachers and more. The interviews offer revealing insights into the musician’s working life and each one provides advice to young or aspiring musicians.

The interview takes the form of a short questionnaire. Originally hosted entirely on the The Cross-Eyed Pianist site, the series has grown in popularity to such an extent that it now has its own dedicated website.

If you would like to take part in the Meet the Artist series, please download an interview questionnaire and return it to Frances Wilson (contact details on questionnaire).

Meet the Artist questionnaire – musician/performer

Meet the Artist questionnaire – Composer

Meet the Artist questionnaire – Conductor

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Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and pursue a career in music?

At the age of 5, having heard classical music on the radio and piano lessons at my mother’s school, I asked my parents if I could have piano lessons. After piano lessons started I decided I wanted to be a concert pianist and a few years later I began writing pieces for myself.

Who or what were the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

Contemporary dance. People, songs, dance and the landscapes of my native Jamaica. The music of Bela Bartok. Later also the music of J S Bach, Birtwistle, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Schoenberg, Robert Cohan.

What have been the greatest challenges/frustrations of your career so far?

Two things: issues of race and gender in as much as they have defined me in the minds of others.

Not having had what is considered a thorough and proper university education as a composer.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?

Deadlines; they are as energising as they are terrifying.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras?

Finding out and knowing about the special strengths of particular soloists or groups. I found that working with, for instance, Mary Plazas whilst writing my opera was a big influence in how that role was shaped. Ditto writing my first violin concerto for my violinist husband, Thomas Bowes.

Of which works are you most proud?

‘Snow White’ as it was my first piece for that size of orchestra. Far from being intimidated I felt instantly at home.

My three String Quartets I can now look back on with great pride. I managed three quite substantial pieces I feel, and that they are all very different from each other pleases me especially now that they have been recorded.

The Opera ‘Letters of a Love Betrayed’ because it so clearly moved people when they saw and heard it.

I was also proud of ‘Arise, Athena!’ which I wrote for the last night of the BBC Proms.

How would you characterise your compositional language?

I have a language which ranges from things clearly derived from my Jamaican childhood and heritage through to the sort of sounds people more often associate with modernism. There always seems to be a sliding scale of the proportions of these two extremities. This has been a problem for some people – even me – at times. But I’m now quite relaxed about this. I write to be me.

Who are your favourite musicians/composers?

There are those I’ve admired from afar; composers Schoenberg, Berg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Messiaen, JS Bach; pianists Martha Agerich, Sviatoslav Richter, conductors Kleiber and Furtwangler amongst others.

And then those who I’ve actually had the pleasure of hearing or getting to know or working with – Jeremy Huw Williams, Mary Plazas, Thomas Bowes, Joseph Swensen, Joanna MacGregor, Peter Ash, Harrison Birtwistle to name a few.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

Sensing an audience has been moved or thrilled or for whom one senses time has stood still during a performance. All three at once is good.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Be serious about what you are doing. Be persistent, dedicated, disciplined and passionate. Be yourself – that’s the tricky bit.

What is your most treasured possession?

My home.

What do you enjoy doing most?

Composing, playing. Relaxing with my hubby and friends.

 

London’s premiere youth orchestra, the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, will mark Eleanor Alberga’s 70th birthday with a performance of her musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at London’s Barbican Hall on 23 September. More information

With her 2015 Last Night of the Proms opener ARISE ATHENA! Eleanor Alberga cemented a reputation as a composer of international stature.  Performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Chorus and conducted by Marin Alsop, the work was heard and seen by millions.

Her music is not easy to pigeon-hole.  The musical language of her opera LETTERS OF A LOVE BETRAYED (2009), premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury stage, has drawn comparisons with Berg’s Wozzeck and Debussy’s Pelleas, while her lighter works draw more obviously on her Jamaican heritage and time as a singer with the Jamaican Folk Singers and as a member of an African Dance company.  But the emotional range of her language, her structural clarity and a fabulously assured technique as an orchestrator have always drawn high praise.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Alberga decided at the age of five to be a concert pianist, though five years later she was already composing works for the piano.

Read more

eleanoralberga.com

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guest post by Elizabeth de Brito

Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, the three composers every truly cultured music student knows (as well as their scales and arpeggios of course). Together they are known as the First Viennese School.

Now classical music history books and the enormous performance bias (one-third of all classical performances are either of Mozart or Beethoven) make it seem that these were the only three composers who wrote anything worthwhile in the Classical era.

This is so far from the case. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were part of a huge music scene in Vienna. Actually these three composers spent most of their lives hanging out with various highly regarded musicians and respected composers, most of whom were women.

So, in an expansion of the First Viennese School, I give you the ‘Vienna 10’.

1. Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809) Austrian

In the 1740s Haydn was a struggling musician living in a leaky attic room in Vienna, the clichéd image of a composer found in romantic novels everywhere. Several floors below lived the Martines family and Haydn gave the daughter Marianna Martines piano lessons.

2. Marianna Martines/Marianna von Martinez (May 4, 1744 – December 13, 1812) Viennese

Marianna grew up to become a pianist and composer. Being of a certain class she was never allowed to work professionally as a musician but she was very well respected. Marianna was known for her regular musical salons, well attended by all the hobnobs and hotshots on the Vienna scene, including Mozart and Salieri. Marianna was good friends with them both and performed with them on several occasions. She was the first woman to be inducted into the Accademia Filharmonia in 1773, the prestigious academy that Mozart was admitted to three years earlier. Her works number nearly 200 and include the first known symphony to be written by a woman, the Dixit Dominus she wrote for her entrance to the Accademia, several cantatas and keyboard sonatas along with three harpsichord concertos.

In the 1780s Haydn was back in Vienna, hanging out with his old pupil Marianna and in 1784 he met:

3. Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791). Austrian

Mozart was born in Salzburg and moved to Vienna in 1781. He met Haydn in 1784 and he was good friends with Marianna Martines. Mozart and Haydn were frequent guests at Marianna’s musical salons, Mozart and Marianna frequently played duets together, and it is thought that Mozart wrote his Piano Concerto in D for Marianna.

Mozart did also go on to teach music. One of his pupils was:

4. Josepha Barbara Auernhammar (25 September 1758 – 30 January 1820) – Viennese pianist and composer

Mozart taught her from 1781. Josepha and Mozart played together often, both in public and at private concerts. Mozart dedicated Violin Sonatas to her and she performed several of his piano sonatas. Sadly only one of her compositions has been recorded, this delightful 6 Variations on a Hungarian theme.

Josepha Barbara Auernhammar also went on to perform works by fellow Mozart pupil:

5. Anton Eberl (13 June 1765 – 11 March 1807). Eberl was born in Vienna and was taught by Mozart from around 1781. Many of his works were misattributed to Mozart. He wrote many piano concertos, including dedicating his Piano Concerto to Josepha Auernhammer. Josepha Auernhammer performed his Piano Concerto in E Flat.

A good friend and benefactor of Eberl was:

6. Anton Salieri (18 August 1750 – 7 May 1825), Italian by birth, and supposedly Mozart’s great rival, Salieri lived and worked in Vienna from the 1770s onwards as a court director at the Austrian court. Salieri was a well known composer of opera and a conductor, known to conduct Haydn’s The Creation with the composer in attendance. He was a frequent guest at Marianna Martines’ parties and he was also a sought after teacher. He wrote this organ concerto as a commission from one of his pupils. Maria Theresia von Paradis.

7. Maria Theresa von Paradis (May 15, 1759 – February 1, 1824) Viennese. Blind since chilodhood, Maria Theresa von Paradis became an extraordinary pianist and composer. She wrote a ton of music including operas, piano concertos and sonatas. Unfortunately most of it has been lost except her Sicilienne, a popular piece for cello.

Even this one short but gorgeous work is only spuriously connected with her. As well as her own compositions Maria Theresia also commissioned music by Haydn and commissioned Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.18 in Bb Major. Her father Joseph was court councillor to Empress Maria Theresa. Empress Marie Theresa oversaw much of the musical activity in Vienna and was a great patron of the arts. Marianna Martines performed for her while still a child. It’s very likely the two pianists knew each other, especially given Marianna’s role as hostess of popular parties.

Now we come to:

8. Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) German, moved to Vienna in 1792. Taught and mentored by Haydn, Beethoven also received some assistance from Salieri. Among the thousands of pieces he wrote in Vienna was his Appassionata Sonata.

The first person to perform the Appassionata sonata from autograph was:

9. Marie Bigot (3 March 1786– 16 September 1820) French teacher, composer and pianist. She moved in Vienna in 1804. Beethoven was so impressed with her performance he gave her his copy of the Apassionata. Marie Bigot was also friends with Salieri and Haydn. Again hardly any of her music has been recorded except this Suite D’Etudes which is wonderfully strident and full of power chords.

Marie Bigot returned to Paris in 1808 and introduced Beethoven’s music to Parisian society. She also went on to teach the Mendelssohn siblings.

The last member of the ‘Viennese 10’ was:

10. Marianne Auenbrugger/Marianne D’Auenbrugg (19 July 1759– 25 August 1782). Viennese.

A student of Haydn and Salieri, she was a highly regarded composer and sought after pianist and Haydn dedicated six sonatas to her including this one.

Only one recording of her work exists – her phenomenal Sonata in E Flat major, published by Salieri after her death.

There you have it, the Vienna 10. 10 awesome composers including 5 women who were completely wiped from the history books, until now.

Let’s rewrite the story.

Elizabeth de Brito is a gender equality champion, classical music radio producer, researcher, writer and obsessive Florence Price fan. She is the Producer of The Daffodil Perspective, a radio show which champions gender equality in classical music.