Now let me build a bridge between Wagner's 1859 and Verdi's 1862.
RECKANKREUZUNGS KLANGKEWERKZEUGE!
W
ell, as good a tide as any for a section that bridges three years. It's 1859 that we need to jump from, the year that a fifty-year-old naturalist really puts the cat among the pigeons when he finally writes up the notes from his trip on die HMS Beagle some twenty-three years earlier. Clearly a one-finger typist. He calls his finished opus On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Very nice. Caused quite a stir, I would imagine. Elsewhere, in 1860, a soldier and one-time member of Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy Society, marched on Palermo and Naples with 1,000 men, dressed in red shirts, and claimed them for Victor Emmanuel II. Not the red shirts, you understand - Palermo and Naples, I mean. He then proclaims Victor Emmanuel 'King of Italy' after the seizure of the Papal States. Garibaldi and 'I mille' - the thousand - as it comes to be known.
Across the pond, Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the sixteenth president of the US and, immediately, South Carolina secedes from the union. What a gorgeous phrase, 'secedes from the union', isn't it? A beautiful and almost poetic way of saying 'goes off in a sulk'. I wish I'd tried it when I was young. Imagine it. [Scene - somewhere in Norfolk.] Where's Stephen?' cOh, I told him he couldn't have one of my liquorice allsorts, so he said he was seceding from the union.' 'Not again.' Well, it might have worked. Who knows? Anyway, 1861 now, and it's not only South Carolina, it's Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Texas - the Confederate States, as they were known -and America has itself a civil war. In the UK, Queen Victoria goes into an age-long period of mourning, and begins to contemplate living the next forty years without her consort and companion. And so to 1862, then, and Abraham Lincoln makes his 'Emancipation Proclamation', which win, in just a short while, bring about the freedom of slaves. What else? Of course. Prussia gets a new PM, one Otto Eduard Leopold Bismarck.
Artistically speaking, it's been a good few years too: George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Dickens's Great Expectations, Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, new stuff from Manet and Degas - all of them since 1859. Also worth mentioning is the debut of Sarah Bernhardt - went down a storm in Racine's Iphigenie. Also in 1862 a forty-nine-year-old Giuseppe Verdi makes the long trip to St Petersburg, to the Imperial Opera, the august body who had commissioned his latest opera, La Forza del Destine: The Force of Destiny. Verdi, like Wagner, was advancing from work to work, although maybe not quite as dramatically as Little Richard. The harmony and orchestration in The Force of Destiny are steps up from his last work, Un Ballo in Maschera - The Masked Ball - and that was a step up, itself, on the previous La Traviata/Il Trovatore. Oddly enough, it's considered by some to be the opera equivalent to Macbeth, in that its name is not meant to be mentioned in the theatre or opera house. Don't know why. It just is. Personally, I think it's gorgeous, even if I can't prevent myself thinking of Stella Artois every time I hear it. And, if you're into connections, then it was written the same year that Bizet offered up his classic opera The Pearl Fishers, with its hit duet, 'Au fond du temple saint'.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE SLEEPING GIANT
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Ah yes. Curious indeed, this one. The Sleeping Giant. Far off, away with the fairies, way off up the wooden hill to dreamland. To be fair, I should explain. The Sleeping Giant is actually a composer, and, again to be fair - because I like to be fair -_zZzzzZZZ he isn't really sleeping. He's just… not found his „„.zzzzZZZ voice, shall we say. Finding your voice is „„zzzzzzZZ composer-speak „„zzzzzZZZ for finally writing in a style with which you are „,,„*zzzzZZZ comfortable and which is your own. So the Sleeping „„^zzzzZZZ Giant is a composer who hasn't found his voice.,™zzzzzZZZ He's forty already. Forty! And he hasn't published a -zzzzzZZZ note. He's been studying composition for some „zzzzzZZZ twenty-three years, but hasn't felt confident enough ™«zzzZZZ yet to let the great unwashed hear his work. So _„*zzzZZZZ instead, he has just carried on playing the organ - „azzzZZZ which was one of his passions - studying, sketching „„„zzzzzZZZ the odd composition, studying, learning music „.zzzzzZZZ „„zzzzzZZZ theory, studying, learning harmony… did I mention „„„zzzzzzZZ studying? Anyway, some time soon, the giant is due,_*zzzzzZZ to wake up, and you'd do well to be around .„azzzZZZ when he does. In the meantime, let me fill you in „„„«zzzZZZ on the last couple of years.
1363, was „„jzzzzzZZ quite an important one for the USA. Following the….zzzzZZZ battle for one small town, the Federal forces set.„^zzzZZZ about making a ceme tery to take the war dead. At „.^zzzzzZZ the dedication of the cemetery, Lincoln gives a „.zzzzzZZ speech. The speech goes down in history, named „,-zzzzZZZ a f t e r „«.zzzzZZZ the small town where the cemetery was built - -azzzZZZ Gettysburg. The following year, he is re- „.«zzzZZZ
„„„zzzzzZZZ elected President. „„„zzzzZZZ What else? Well, Florence is, albeit briefly, „,,„,.zzzzZZZ the capital of Italy in place of (a) Rome, (b) „„.zzzzZZZ Turin or (c) Milan? The answer's Turin acta- „„„??????? ally, with Rome having to wait another six,,„,zzzzzZZZ years before it achieves capital status. „„.zzzzzZZ Elsewhere, on the world's battlefields, the „.zzzzZZZ Geneva Convention is set up to establish the „,„z2zzzZZZ neutrality of medical facilities in war, the ^«zzzZZZ words 'In God we Trust' appears for „«.zzzzZZZ the first time „„azzzZZZ on American coins, and, let's see, Louis „„zzzzzzZZ Pasteur invents 'pasteurization', initially for „,-zzzzZZZ wine, would you believe. I raise a glass to him as -zzzzzZZZ I write. Good old Louis.,„,,zzzzzZZZ ,„2ZzzzzZZ Other than that, nothing much else to report. ,„.,zzzzzZZZ Charles Dickens churns out another one, Our ..??,?????? Mutual Friend, and Tolstoy starts War and Peace. I „„«zzzZZZ say 'starts' because it takes him a good five years. Five „.zzzzzZZ YEARS! Jeepers, you could write War and Peace in ^„.zzzzZZZ that time. Last year was a good year for art, _JZzzzzZZZ though. A couple of biggies saw the light of „zzzzzZZZ day - Manet's Dejeuner sur I'herbe and Dante „-zzzzzZiZZ Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix. Lovely. Now „.«zzzZZZ back to the 'Z'
The Sleeping Giant, I „^zzzzZZZ called him, and I think that's fair at forty. He'd „„zzzzzZZZ been training and studying for most of those forty „,„2zzzzZZZ years, but just lacked the confidence to publish. But,„*zzzzzZZ then, this „«^zzzzZZZ year - 18©4 - just as Meyerbeer dies, he wakes up, so „^zzzZZZ to speak, and finishes his first symphony. Well, actually, „„«zzzZZZ to be more accurate, he finishes bis first symphony, then gets another fit of insecurity and decides it's not fit to publish, so renumbers it 'Symphony No. Zero!' Can you believe that? I'm not kidding, honest, he did. Thought it simply wasn't good enough to be called his first symphony. Composers - fimny bxinch. And he was an organist, too, so that might explain it some more. Anyway, the world disagrees with him, eventually, and, I have to say, so do I. It is now a published and recorded symphony, known as Die Nulte - literally, the Nought, the 'Zero'! Astounding. You couldn't make it up. Anyway, let's wake him up, shall we? I want to introduce you. Bruckner… you're on, love. Bruckner, this is the reader: reader, this is Bruckner.