Various people seemed to be on the move: 1838 - the Boers started the Great Trek; ten years later the Mormons would set out for the Great Salt Lake. And, oddly enough, with the exploration of the new, came an increased passion for the old - it may sound odd, but it's fi Revolutions per minute. true: the homeland becomes all the more cherished when it is left behind. So nationalism would increase apace - and it would be matched in music. Not just Chopin, with his urn of Polish earth, but deeper, in the very heart of music. Glinka wrote the first truly Russian opera in 1836 - A Life for the Tsar, with its story of real Russian peasants, not nobility, and complete with real Russian folk songs, embedded into the score.
BLACK AND WHITE RAGE
lsewhere, one of the chief phenomena that would advance the Romantic manifesto, as it were, was the further rise of the pianist-composers. Chopin himself, as well as Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, were the real big movers and shakers of this part of the romantic era, and not surprisingly, really, considering that Beethoven's nine-fold legacy left many composers in absolute fear of taking on the symphony, for want of appearing inadequate. Berlioz, of course, was too loopy to care, but the rest were more than a little daunted.
As he couldn't play an instrument to any great level, Berlioz, then, became the standard bearer for the romantic orchestra. So, if Chopin was, say, Billy Joel (gentle, thoughtful stuff for piano), and Liszt was Elton John (rather camp, over the top stuff for piano), then Berlioz is like James Last - a mad, orchestra man, with big hair. It is true, of course, that other people composed for the orchestra around this time, but, because he took it on in such a different way, Berlioz brought it to another level, before anyone else. His orchestral works were both highly individual and EPIC - the perfect recipe for moving any art form into its next phase.
Finally, into all this, add the ever-present ingredient of better technical resources. Instruments became so markedly different too. New trumpets, with keys, were now becoming more and more common, whereas previously the trumpet played would have several different 'crooks' - a crook was a piece of the trumpet tubing that could be removed. If you put a crook of a different length back in, you were effectively changing the length of the trumpet tubing, and, thus, the notes it could play. This was all eventually replaced by keys. Similar things happened with the clarinet, with more keys added to increase its versatility. The orchestra could make almost a completely different sound from the one available to, say, Mozart, only thirty-odd years ago. Thirty-odd years ago - amazing, isn't it? It seems like another world. Pianos, too, were just beyond comparison. The advent of the iron-stringed piano made dynamics so much more pronounceable -so, not only did the Romantic pianist-composers want to go somewhere different, they also had the means to get there. What more could you want?
WELL, BERGAMO
ooming back in, now, and the time has come for another opera composer to get his fifteen minuets of fame. Post 1829, he was becoming as popular in Paris - remember, the current centre of the music world - as he was in his native Bergamo. He was the final three-ninths of the opera triumvirate that was: Rossini, Bellini and… Donizet [pause for full Italian effect] ti.
Donizet ti was a man who'd been given a huge shot in the arm, as far as composing operas went, in 1829, the year Rossini stopped composing. The shot in the arm was, well, that Rossini stopped composing, frankly. Up to this point, Donizet ti had produced more or less one opera every twenty-five minutes. OK, I say 'more or less', but, to be fair, it was in fact less. OK. It just seemed like he was producing an opera every twenty-five minutes. And, also to be fair -because I do like to be fair - more or less ALL of them were not so good. Of course, the audiences enjoyed them enough, and so he kept churning them out. Well, why not, I suppose. Who would be prepared to say they would have done any differently? But then, all of a sudden, Rossini made his sudden and unexpected move - suddenly and unexpectedly retreating from music. And, lo and behold, the effect on Donizet ti was astonishing. He started to write his best ever stuff. In fact, all his operas which could fairly stake a claim to be labelled 'masterpieces' came from the time after Rossini had decided to shtay shtum: Anna- Bolena, Maria Stuarda, Don Pasquale, Lucia di Ilkley Moor/ and, my own personal favourite, the darling Uelisir d'amore - The Elixir of Love.
The Elixir of Love, from 1832, is a comic opera that conceals a divine tragic kernel in its best-known aria, 'Una furtiva lagrima'. MMMMMMMMMMWHAH! A gorgeous aria, on many people's list of Top Five Tracks to Propose To, alongside 'Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool' by Little Jimmy Osmond. Donizet ti is said to have composed the entire opera in only two weeks - which, if it's true, makes it all the more astonishing. Try it some time. The Royal Opera House used to have an 'oldie but goldie' production of it, which was quite charming in a quaint, country bumpkin sort of way. The only thing which I ever found hard to take about it was the fact that I always seemed to see it with Pavarotti in the role of Nemorino - the guy who gets to sing 'Una furtiva lagrima'. This is meant to be the young, virile lover, but sometimes the sight of Big Luc in a country smock, trying to gambol and skip, strained my limited suspension of disbelief. And in opera, that's saying something.
A full five years and, it would seem, a whole million miles separate UElisir d'amore by Donizet ti from the next MASSIVE work by Bonkers Berlioz, the Grande Messe des Morts. In between, he'd had a strange run-in with Paganini, which I want to tell you all about.
BERLIOZ'S STRANGE RUN-IN
aganini was, by now, a bit of a megastar.
If you remember, apart from a passing reference, when we last really came across Paganini, he was only eleven and both he and his acne had just made their first public appearance. Well, the fiddling had gone well for Mr P. He'd spent virtually all his teens practising and fi Correction - Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia di Ilkley Moor was one of a triptych of operas, only ever sketched, out, following a brief stay in Yorkshire, ana" was, along with its sister operas, II Barbiere di Odey and The Italian Girl in 'alifax, never actually finished!^ performing and, financially, it had paid off. He did blow a great deal of it on gambling, but, ever since he'd landed the job of violinist to Princess Elise - Napoleon's sister - in Lucca, his pizzicato prowess had led to fame and fortune.
In fact, in our age of manufactured pop and even manufactured classical, it's hard to put into perspective quite how much of a star Paganini was. He had, as I mentioned, toured just Italy for most of his life, only venturing abroad when he was well into his forties. When he did, though, he became the toast of every venue - London, Vienna, Berlin - you name it. And, of course, Paris too. Wherever he went, he was hailed as a truly miraculous player. The now famous legend that he had sold his soul to the devil in return for his playing skills - which really were beyond any performer that had gone before - was something which he himself did nothing to disprove. For Paganini, he had nothing to lose from the story - people simply flocked more and more to his concerts to hear the 'devil' playing in person. One critic even swore he had seen a small devil, perched on the fiddler's shoulder during a concert, helping him reach notes beyond the grasp of mere mortals. Some even came to simply try and touch the man himself, to see if he was genuinely human. Whatever the reason they came, Paganini lapped it up and continually raised his ticket fees - occasionally quite simply doubling them.
Over the years, then, Paganini made an absolute fortune from his performing and he spent the last few years of his life wondering quite what to do with it. He'd kicked up a bit of a stink already, trying to open up a gambling house, the 'Casino Paganini', in Paris. He clearly had money to burn. Which is why, when he acquired a beautiful - and, let's not forget it, expensive - viola, he ended up on the doorstep of one Hector Berlioz with a request for a new work. He commissioned the composer - who was, after all, the shock jock of 1830s music, the Damien Hirst of romantics - to provide him with a viola concerto. What Paganini had in mind was something that would allow him to do with the viola what he already did with the violin. Quite why he didn't just write one himself, as he had done till now, is anybody's guess. Maybe he had lost his muse, a little. Whatever. He asked Screaming Lord Berlioz to write the dots for him.