Consider This Your Classical Education

The plot contains elements which also appear in The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and in Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, and has been described as a “sad, modern fairy tale”, in a similar vein to his previous play, Princessa Pampeliška. The libretto was completed by 1899, when Kvapil began looking for composers interested in setting his text. His composer friends were engaged with other works, but mentioned that Dvořák was looking for a project. The composer, always interested in Erben’s stories, read the libretto and composed his opera quite rapidly, with the first draft begun on 22 April 1900 and completed by the end of November. Coming after his four symphonic poems inspired by the folk-ballads of Erben of 1896–97, Rusalka may be viewed as the culmination of Dvořák’s exploration of a “wide variety of drama-creating musical techniques.” His music is generally through-composed, and uses motifs for Rusalka, her damnation, the water sprite and the forest. His word-setting is expressive while allowing for nationally inflected passages, and Grove judges the work shows the composer at the height of his maturity. He uses established theatrical devices – dance sections, comedy (Gamekeeper and Turnspit) and pictorial musical depiction of nature (forest and lake). 

Daily routines of creative people

Happy birthday Tchaikovsky! (h/t San Francisco Symphony)

Anatol Ugorski, Piano

Performer: Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; conducted by Neville Marriner

Mozart, Mass in C minor, K. 427 (1783): Kyrie Ileana Cotrubas, soprano John Alldis Choir • New Philharmonia Orchestra • Raymond Leppard (1974) Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, Joseph Wright

#MusicMonday: Is this the sound of genius? Behold the Andalusian Cadence. Never heard of it? Perhaps, but you sure have heard it! It’s a simple sequence of four notes—in the key of A major, it would be A, G, F, E—and it’s been used from the Renaissance to Rihanna, with Beethoven, Mozart, the Beatles, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan and Green Day in between. Listen to 50 different examples of Andalusian Cadence from our friends at WNYC Radio. Is that genius? We think so. #thatsgenius

Performer: The King’s Consort; conducted by Robert King

Illustration for German opera magazine “Engelsloge”. Explaining the term “opera dialogué”, which is a form of opera that is compromised of mainly recitative, without arias. It has been favoured by ”The Mighty Five”, a group of Russian composers in the 1860s.

Join us, and give thanks for, and with, Mozart.