Suffering Sopranos! … or, Where did my aria go?

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In the umpteen years that I’ve been working in the 19th-century music world, I’ve encountered endless names which were new and unexplained (duly, since, explored) and a great deal of music which was naught but a title to me. I’ve explored some of that too, with the help of youtube, but alas, that excellent teaching aid has some sad and, in some ways surprising, lacunae. Huge hits of the C19th are not there. I suppose no one has recorded them, their day of glory was in the years before recording was invented. So, I have to fall back on sheet music. But in one notable case, that too had left me bereft. Story.

In the early decades of the Victorian era there was one number, above all, which star sopranos, prime donne … and little girls at their pianos … put on show if they wanted to exhibit the then fashionable ‘elasticity’ and ‘flexibility’ of their voices. You know, like Cecilia Bartoli in her ‘Agitata da due venti’. It was not the Queen of the Night, not even ‘Bid me Discourse’, ‘Cease your funning’, ‘Non piu mesta’ or chunks of Proch and Pucitta. The piece was known as ‘Rode’s Air and Variations’. Must have a look at this, I thought.

Brick Wall. Youtube rendered up a piano version. How odd, a piano version of something so widespread, yet not a vocal one. Well, as I know now, the piece went by several different titles and appeared in a multitude of different arrangements. And I’m still not wholly certain which is which.

Pierre Rode was a French violinist, considered, with Viotti (his teacher) and Kreutzer, as one of the best players of, and writers for, the instrument around the turn of the C18th. He operated variously in France, Russia and Germany, was sometime named violinist to Napoléon and the King of all the Russias, and in the last years of the C18th early years of the C19th turned out some highly popular concertos for violin. But the most popular, it seems, was our ‘Air Varié’. Written in G major. When? Where? When was it first performed? Well, I have scrabbled through yards of old German script, and I have no precise answer.

The following Vienna sheet-music has to be very early 1800s, when Napoléon was still ‘premier consul’ of France rather than Emperor..

So it seems it was premiered (?) while he was in France.

Alas, Rode’s worklist is annoyingly muddled. Even the Bibliothèque Nationale de France doesn’t seem to have things ordered and dated. There is strange inconsistency in opus numbers. The 12 concertos (most, like his Caprices and Études, recorded in our day) are numbered 1-12, but the rest? Our Air Varié was published as opus 10 in Vienna (above) and France. Elsewhere it seems to be opus 12. One text says it was written circa 1794, which can’t be right. Opus 9 (the 7th concerto) seems to have been be premiered in 1803. And Opus 11 in 1804. When he was in Russia…

But I think I see our Opus 10 (?) already published in France in December 1802. I find it, by 1805, called the ‘bekannten Variationen von Rode’ in Leipzig (Einert) and Hamburg (Seidler). By 1812 they’re ‘die himmelschen Variationen von Rode’, and being played not only by the masters but by a 13 year-old amateur, a blind man from Munich, arranged as an organ solo … and I see versions (undated) for flute, for clarinet, for piano, for harp, for cornet, for concertina. In 1818 the ‘cellist Wranitzky is playing it …

So when did the vocal version happen. Well, it seems to have been round about this time. The first reference is to Catalani singing it ‘exactly as written’ at the Paris Italiens in the 1817-8 season. Apparently with no words. Just as Madame Mara had done with a similar Italian piece the year before. I haven’t yet found this performance (which must have provoked some reaction!) but I pick her up in September 1818 in Prague and Dresden in November showcasing her new number 'mit unterlegtem Text' alongside her regular Pucitta (‘Deh frenate’, ‘Della tromba’), Paer (‘La placida campagna’), Guglielmi (‘Mio bene’), Portogallo (‘Vorrei frenar le lagrime’), Mozart ‘Done sono’ and the pasticcio ‘O dolce contento’), Handel (Messiah) and ‘God Save the King’ (of whichever country was appropriate, this time it was 'König Franz').

One wee point. It wasn’t ‘exactly as written’. It had been transposed to E flat, so that the top note in the piece was theoretically B flat. But of course, Madame embellished the embellishments!

Other sopranos were on to it soon. I see Elizabeth Feron giving a very Catalani-esque programme, including the Rode, in Berlin as soon as 1819. And meanwhile the violinists and the clarinettists and the pianists (‘originally composed for the Violin, adapted for the Voice, and sung with extraordinary effect at Paris by Madame Catalani, and now arranged for the Piano Forte’) continued to give their G major variations.

In 1821, Catalani and the piece hit England. She gave two concerts in Birmingham and featured the piece both nights, she moved to London’s Argyll Rooms and out it came again. ‘The celebrated air by Rode with the variations as sung by Madame Catalani is published under her sanction …’. When Mary Ann Paton jumped on the bandwagon she stoutly announced her piece as ‘Rhode’s Violin Variations’.  And Skillern published it for harp. So did Bochsa. Lavenu published it ‘as sung by Mme Catalani’ for two pianos. The flautist Nicholson tried it and got a rapped knuckle: ‘If Mme Catalani will venture to sing a violin air, surely the flute-player may venture to blow it, but Madame C performs its most valourously note for note as M Rode plays it, while Mr Nicholson more prudently adapts it to the genius of his instrument’. And he added three extra variations.

Cheltenham muso Pio Cianchettini published what passed for an official Catalani arrangement, ‘which it would seem she deems to be the highest possible demonstration of her powers’. Later Levy made it over for cornet and Mr Purkis performed it on the Apollicon.

1822 seems to have been the year of issue of the most successful of the other ‘arrangement of the arrangement’. Carl Czerny had heard Catalani sing her version in Vienna the previous year and come up with his piano version (opus 33). That’s the one on youtube. Gloriously played by Horowitz...

https://youtu.be/JgWWAGzB6lQ

But the vocal version was about to get another fillip. Henriette Sontag took it up, and not only gave it in concert but introduced it into the lesson scene of her performances of The Barber of Seville. First in London and then in Paris. It was for the nonce an accepted part of Rossini’s score. Cramers even published it as a pair with ‘Una voce poco fa’.

In the years to come, other stars took their turn at the piece. I see Grisi (1834, ‘surpasses any other performance we have heard of the same piece’), Cinti-Damoreau (1835), Charlott Ann Birch (1846), ‘the return of Sontag’ (1849), Louisa Pyne (1851), Castellan (1851), Sofie Cruvelli in Il Barbiere (1852), Marie Comte-Borchard (1853), Alboni in concert and Il Barbiere (1856-7), Helen Lemmens-Sherrington (1859), Artôt (1860), and others less or unknown to fame, singing the now famous melody. Julia Harland, Mesdames Gautrot and Testar (Australia), Mrs Emma G Bostwick (USA), Herta Westerstrand, Molina di Mendi, Annie Thirlwall, Guiseppina Finoli, Pauline Rita, Pauline Lewitzky, Amalia Colombo, Caroline Schmeroschi, Rose Hersee, Elvira Gambogi, Antoinette Trebelli ..

By the 1880s it was occasionally qualified as ‘sadly hackneyed’ or ‘that useful voice-training exercise’ and by the 20th century it had largely gone back to being a violin piece and the vocal version was surrounded by journalistic mythology: ‘Rode's Air and Variations [was] sung by Miss M Blanche Foulke. The vocal arrangement was originally written for Mme Sontag who, jealous it would seem, of the effect Rode could obtain from the violin in this exquisite creation, determined to emulate his efforts. In spite of his decidedly expressed…’.

So there is its history. Enough of a history, surely, for a copy – just one copy -- of the vocal version to have somewhere survived. But for many, many years, in spite of the aid of some of the world’s most knowledgeable music librarians. I couldn’t find one.

Well, this week I have. In Germany, Russia, England? Breitkopf & Hartel? Cramer? Nope. In the U S of A. In good old Virginia. I’ve sent the URL to a few soprani of my acquaintance, and Paulie is recording the piano accompaniment so we can all have a go…

The vanished vocalises are vanished no longer. Maybe I can get Madame Bartoli to have a crack at them (only B flat, dear!). Well, let’s see!

Nota bene. Pougin states categorically that our base piece is the second of Deux airs Variés (en sol majeur) avec accompagnement d’un second violon, alto et violoncello … Op 9 et 12. He is doubtless right. But why doesn’t he give a date? And what happened to Opus 10?

Virginia’s sheet is of the Sontag Barber of Seville version of circa 1829, published in ... Chicago!

Becoming an addict, or, Masterchef Australia

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It’s silly to say ‘I don’t watch television’ as if that were something to be proud of. I’ve been guilty of saying it, in the past. But, nowadays, I watch my share. When I’m in New Zealand, I watch some sport and the races, the very, very occasional bit of fiction (Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple), some of the travel and cooking shows (Rick Stein is my favourite) and some of the other programmes that Wendy likes, and which play between 5.30 and 8.30 pm … 

Here, in Australia, I am inclined to listen to the races on Trackside computer, as I don’t have Foxtel, and of the two TVs supplied with my flat, one hasn’t yet been turned on yet (3 months) and the other is keyed to the one programme that I watch without fail. I don’t shift it off that setting for fear I can’t find my way back! After our last power failure, it took me ages.

Oh, my unmissable show is, of course. Australian Masterchef. No, I don’t care for the uncharismatic English equivalent or any of the other like-style ripoffs. Just this one. Why? I’ve no idea. But the first year we watched, I got hooked by one contestant … she (she was Italian, and I think called Luisa) came second, I was indignant and shocked … but I had got hooked by the style of the show, and the people involved, and I just returned and returned and simply got addicted. Even though there are things that really irritate me … I can’t stop myself. I, a professional showbiz critic of some 30, oh Lord is it 40?, years standing, and a sometime food writer, go back nightly, in season, for more.

So why am I commenting on this? I couldn’t cook one dish that is displayed on the programme, I am amazed how these youngsters have acquired such knowledge … but, then again, I couldn’t sing Pamina or Rosina or Scarpia, and I’ve been telling people how to do so, for half my life. So here goes!

I can’t rightly explain what gets me. The presenters-judges are a good combination and good fun – unpretentious, normal and pretty darned credible – anyway, kilometres above the types who ‘judge’ all those singing Talent Quests. The competitors actually have skill (unlike most of the Talent Questers) and we see them displaying it. There are no camp Cowell-esque pauses before announcing the winners. There are very few fake errors and breakdowns and dramas. We are allowed to explore these young folks’ talent unshowbizzed … 

So carried away was I with the show in that first year, that the wrinkles didn’t start to show till year two or three … and then the joins … and then ... other things.

I don’t know when it came to me that, as well as being cooks, the people involved aren’t bad actors, either. But the first thing that dawned on me was … the ‘judges’ taste, before the cameras and us, cold food. It is not possible for every dish to retain its heat through fifteen, twenty minutes. And once you see through the first bit of fakery, you look for others. And either I’m getting cannier or they’re getting careless, but this year the ‘joins’, the huge amount of editing that goes to making up the finished programme, has been more and more obvious. I suppose it has to be, but it is disappointing when you realise that what is supposed to be spontaneity is nothing of the sort. I’ve only done continuity on a film once, and it’s a stinker of a job … but it matters. Never mind. I try to ignore it.

So when I rule the world, what would I change about the show? Very little. But. First the opening of the programme. Far too much of the content is shown as a taster. I sometimes feel I don’t need to watch the show proper. Second, the opening titles, with the eliminated contestants greeting you every week. Update them.

The format of the contest? To me, it is almost perfect. Mystery Box/Invention Test ..  Team Challenges … Masterchef kitchen, on location … However, there are getting to be, I feel, too many ‘immunities’ and ‘powers’. I would cut the cook-off against the professional who has been previously asked if he would be willing to lose. These folk are competing against EACH OTHER. Not against the outside world. Yet.

The guest chefs. Yes, fine, great for recognition factor. Some are good value, some less. Some are more credible than others. Lovely Nigella was really there for her face. Then there is Marco Pierre Whites’s faux-fierce act with its ghastly crying of ‘yes, Marco’ which has me reaching for the mute button. That’s a nono. When he is normal, instead of acting, he is most enjoyably cuddly. Heston Blumenthal was my least favourite: until this year, when he put on a dazzlingly fun show and rose to Undisputed Number One on my hit-parade. His week of pop-up restaurants was, for me, the best week ever on Masterchef.

The contestants? The ’lingo’ bothers me. How come they all learned the same modern kitchenspeak, at home, in Cairns, Adelaide and Towoomba. Caramelised? You mean ‘browned’? Blast-chiller? Every country kitchen has one. Do they all, perhaps, go to Masterchef pre-school? And one really maddening thing, kids (and judges). Kill the pre-commercial break standard: ‘and if my parfait doesn’t set (gasp) I’m GOING HOME’. It’s become a bad giggle.

But in the end, it all comes down to the three anchor men, who make the show run on spiced olive-oiled wheels. I have to pause to recall their names, because unlike their vainer colleagues of the Talent Quests they don’t paste themselves in spangles and tinsel over the titles. Gary, little George, and the grand and glorious funny one. Matt. They just work together perfectly, like poached peaches and clotted cream and some divine liqueur, to drive along a splendid programme. If they are also responsible for the concept and the layout, I hope they are making (more) fame and (more) fortune than ever ..

One request chaps. When your editor is sticking the voice-overs and things together, DO stop the writers from making a contestant say ‘Oh dear, I think I put one drop too much rose water in my soup’ only to have the judges come out later on and say ‘very nice, but there’s one drop too much rose water in that soup’. Giggle. See what I mean about the joins showing?

OK. I’ve got to go. Its 7.32. The teaser and the credits will be over. Time to put the TV on. Last three tonight. Sound still on MUTE, because the three are doing some too repetitive heartfelt chat. Open some Aussie bubbly. I’ll switch on the sound when the action starts. My favourite is still there. She’s the best. But can she outglam the pretty boys …

Let’s see. Gooo Elena!

'Watching Little Things Grow'

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It’s nice, isn’t it. That’s why we have gardens. Until I came to Gerolstein, aged 55, I had never really had a garden of my own. The only places I’d stopped long enough to grow anything except roots were either in the heart of London, or in places which hired a gardener to look after their exteriors. The very occasional window box was my limit.

 When we arrived, Gerolstein had a rose garden and lots of trees. Then, thanks to Wendy’s work, it had several rose gardens, several other gardens and lots of trees. 

Then, thanks to bad-tempered grandmother Nature, half the trees got blown over and/or died, the gardens got flooded, diseased and, well, now it’s a work in progress all over again. And I have only half-an-arm and have gone back to one pot plant.

But when I arrived in Yamba, I discovered that, as well as having the beautiful gardens of the complex, the terrasse outside my bedroom had a little garden of its own, which my predecessor had tried to set up in herbs. Only a healthy parsley and a struggling bay seemed to have survived. So I thought I’d try to fill in the gaps. I tried the market, but alas very little in the way of herbs.

So I just planted what came along. Including my kitchen rubbish. And just when a lovely basil bush was flourishing and other herby things were peeping out, along came Yamba’s winter, both days of it in succession, and all my little things died.

So I paused, and watered, and while I paused some of the things started to respond. But what were they? Parsley, OK. And I know tomato when I see one, from school-holidays spent pruning and picking the things.

I know this is oregano because I bought it for $1 at the market

 But what is this? Decorative or edible?

And all this?

This is the bay tree, which has responded at last to my care, and is sprouting new bright green shoots, but don’t bays grow huge?

Similarly, I’m sure this is avocado stone I buried a couple of months back, and he’s growing at a rate of knots

Ah well, we’ll see if they survive the summer which starts as I leave town. (Yes, it’s WHY I leave town). Then review the situation next Easter. In the meanwhile, I'll try not to get particularly attached to any single one ...

Adventure Two: Beethoven amid the breakers

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Adventure Number Two was a thoroughly scheduled one. In fact, the Stradbroke Chamber Music Festival is partly responsible for my ending up in this part of the world. Last year – my first visit – I came to north to hear Paul play Haydn and, most particularly, his own original piano quintet, the delicious ‘To Cross the Bay’. This year, he was ‘taking it easy’, performing ‘only’ Beethoven and Britten. The particular charm of this Festival is that – amid a glorious ocean setting, and with a team of superlative international artists -- it gives you a chance to hear lesser-known (to me) music. I remember so fondly last year’s Frank Bridge.

 Anyway, that time of year came round again. Paul had been up at ‘Straddie’ for a week rehearsing and working with local students, so Veronica and Rod picked me up at Yamba and we headed the three hours north into Queensland. Very pretty drive. But unfortunately punctuated by volleys of sneezing from Kurt. Bloody hay fever.

We crossed by the ferry to the Island – it was lovely to be ‘at sea’ again, even if only for 40 minutes. The ocean was such a big part of my life and I miss it – and drove to the Samarinda apartments, where we had stayed last year. Comfortable enough, but the wifi and phone reception are horrendous. Never mind, we weren’t here for work but for the music.

 But on Friday night we had no music. Concert One had been sold out for months! Well, if one can’t music, one can eat. And last year that had been a huge problem. Not a proper restaurant to be found anywhere on the isle. Ugh! But our Harry had done some research. And there was a new place, the Whale’s Way … So that was the way we went. And mighty glad we did! Very nice indeed! Straddie is no longer persona non grata on the foodie trail. It has a Restaurant with a capital R. I had a delightful swordfish carpaccio with scallops (two), and then the newly fashionable pork belly. Very happy, though I had to extricate the capers from my fish (my fault, they were on the menu) and my teeth couldn’t manage the stalk of the rather aggressive greenery. Anyway, it was delicious and I determined right on the spot I would eat nowhere else during my stay!

The Main Event began at lorikeet-breakfast time on Saturday morning. The audience (full house 268 people) assembled at Point Lookout Hall for coffee and yummy cheese muffins, and then squeezed into the hall proper for the concert. The programme started with a little Britten. Now, I’m not usually in favour of rescuing the contents of the waste-paper basket of celebrated composers, and these two Insect pieces for oboe and piano were an obvious part of a larger group that never got written. But the Grasshopper and the Wasp deserve to survive, even if they seem (contrary to what we would soon hear) a little cut off in their prime without their unborn entomological counterparts. Anyway, it was as if two fun creatures had escaped from The Carnival of the Animals (I actually liked them better than Saint-S’s animals) and perched on the sunny seascape that is Lookout Point. And Diana Doherty’s gloriously rich oboe and Paul Hankinson’s busy, laughing piano made the little exercise a total success.

Then came the centrepiece of the morning: Beethoven’s early Piano Trio in G major, played by Festival Director Rachel Smith, her husband ‘cellist Eric de Wit and Mr Hankinson, piano, working overtime. And it was overtime: the trio is a Big Piece, and like last year’s Haydn, seems thoroughly centred on the pianist who has pages black with thousands of notes to play from. I’m not going to be bold enough to pontificate on Beethoven. The work is a glorious piece, and I have to say it got a glorious performance. For 268 people on an island in Torres Strait. London, Edinburgh (where the de Wits are based) or Berlin (where PH lives) should be so lucky.

The final piece of the sensibly not-too-long concert brought the oboe back (with Sophie Rowell violin, Caroline Henbest viola, Louise King cello), and brought Benjy Britten back, for the performance of a quartet entitled Phantasy. I don’t know why it was called Phantasy, but it was very agreeable. And the players were just superb. Ah! I see in the programme note that Britten was a pupil of Frank Bridge and this is influenced by that under-remembered composer. Well, Benjy was 19 when he wrote this, so he still had time to catch up to his master!

 Back to the digs for a much-needed lie down, and to cough and sneeze my chest out. I hadn’t sneezed ONCE in the half-hour of the Beethoven. I was sitting right next to the recording gear and had to stifle myself once or twice! I was feeling a little shattered when we assembled for episode two at 2pm, for one of Straddie’s nice, adventurous programmes. The piano had already left for his annual tour of the island, so we had two violins, viola, two cellos, oboe and flute. Lovely.

The first piece was Prokofiev for two very energetic violins (Smith, Rowell). Four movements. The first two were splendidly flamboyant and beautiful, the latter two fine, and anyway just listening to those ‘fiddlers two’ was a joy. Then came a flute/oboe duet, written almost when I was born, by Alberto Ginastera whom I know only through guitar music (unless that was a relative). This one, I didn’t care for at all. I found it characterless and ultimately dull, and way out of its depth in the company it was keeping. OK, win some, lose some.  Next came Villa Lobos. For flute and cello. Villa Lobos can be fun, he can of course be extremely characterful. But either my ailment was getting to me or this wasn’t one of his best. A one joke piece which meandered on ..

And finally, Arensky. String Quartet for violin, viola and two cellos. Nice. And I’d be safe with Arensky. But there was no pleasing me today. There appeared to be no shape to the piece. It wandered hither and yon, stopping for a breather every so often (‘they’re what? They’re variations? Why?'). The wandering produced some lovely bits (played, it goes without saying, splendidly) but I felt as if I were listening to an integral film soundtrack, background music included … and nothing seemed to be GOING anywhere. Am I getting hyper-critical, or just a bloody awful cold.

I hadn’t planned on taking in the evening concert (5.30pm), by a vocalist of not-my-kind, so I had another lie down, a couple of glasses of wine on the terrace, watched the whales spouting and playing at being dolphins, out in the Pacific Ocean, and then we all headed back to Whale’s Way for a little supper. I, of course, repeated my previous night’s menu and … Matt the chef must have noticed the side of my late plate: the carpaccio came without capers! And the pork belly was even better than the night before. But I was weakening sadly. I tried. I slipped up to the lovely wee bar and ordered a big whisky. That would perk me up. And maybe get my ears back into gear. A table for eleven, and I can’t catch a word anyside …

No use. I was simply a death’s-head at the feast. Rod sussed my distress, and took me home.

The next morning, Sunday, was scheduled to be a Luke Styles piece Bodice and Ribbons, and a little Mozart. But I didn’t make it. Harry was driving back to University in Coolangatta, Renee to Grafton, and I was their luggage. Fragile. Deliver to Yamba. Please Keep Right Side Up. Or Danger of Implosion.

The trip started with a hiccough. We arrived at the ferry station for the 10.25 water taxi to the mainland. The ferry came in a little late, disgorged its passengers, turned round and departed. While we stood on the bank, awaiting our turn to board. A few minutes later, the ‘connecting’ bus arrived with more passengers … gone. The stupid taxi-driver obviously had a beer warming on the other side! But … his inefficiency was to have a silver lining …

 We cruised down the Pacific Highway, had a little lunch at a truly superior café called Ambiente on the Coolangatta waterfront (best toasted sandwich I’ve had in years!), dropped Harry, and then on to Yamba. Renée was taking me to Cole’s to stock up my empty larder and cellar. We arrived at Cole’s to find a crowd of people outside. Electrical failure: everybody had been ‘out’ for 30 mins. But as we arrived, the doors opened … so, Wally the water-taxidriver, you saved us half an hour in an arcade.

 Home. Home! When you’re feeling ‘crook’ there’s nothing like home. And the good fairies of the Cove had been in and cleaned and tidied Number Seven to perfection …  the blessed Renée departed for Yamba, and I collapsed. Shower. I’ll shave in the morning. Bottle of high-class Shiraz. Crumpets. Teeth out.

And so my cultural weekend ended, naked on the couch, glass of shiraz in hand and Masterchef on the telly (no, I don’t have a selfie stick). I just made it to the end of the show and to my bed. Not even to the end of the bottle. ‘Tomorrow is another day, and I will face the day tomorrow’.