Ave Verum Corpus is giving me flashbacks to high school. We used it in conducting class and sang it again and again until we were green in the face. That was over a decade ago and I could still transcribe all the voices in my sleep. In fact I sometimes do.
😂😂 Well at least your personal nightmare is not something you might expect to encounter several times a month, if not a week - such were the large, rubbery, squelching lumps of gristle in the beef stew which was a regular feature on the menu at the boarding school I left 35 years ago - I cannot touch any indeterminate meaty lumps in a gravy because it literally makes me gag... Even as I write this I m getting that spangly feeling in my mouth like when eating sherbet and feel positively queasy!!😂
Thanks so much, Prof. for this latest episode - it's worked wonders to lift my spirits today. Just wonderful to hear this piece again; I first discovered it in a compendium of Mozart piano pieces when I was a teenager & it's so good to hear it again. Really grateful for your Channel.
M. receiv’d the scrittura for La Clemenza di Tito by Guardasoni Director of the Bohemian Estates Opera in Prague on 21 July 1791-after Salieri had turned Guardasoni down not once but twice (5 and 20 July 1791) and knowing it was going to be a rush-job immediately went out to meet the next day with the new court poet Caterino Mazzola to ‘convert & compress Metastasio’s wooden & somewhat lengthy 5-acts into a true opera of 2-acts removing 2 characters altogether -that M. immediately started sketching out the (3) opening numbers in the libretto that same week [20 July to 28 July 1791] is almost certain based on the paper types he us’d for these sketches … So M. had much more than 18 days to sketch out the bare bones of La Clemenza di Tito - in fact he actually had nearly 44-days in which to compose the opera for Prague if you count down from the date of commission on 21 July to its premiere on 5 Sept 1791 - But-there was one giant catch : he was not told the names of any of the solo singers except the part of Vitellia whose voice he knew [Maria Marchetti Fantozzi] until Friday 19 August 1791 - 18 days before the premiere - thus M. had to hold off on composing most of the remaining solo arias until c. 20 August 1791- Hoping to use ‘naturae voci’ rather than castrati for Sesto & Annio at the end of July he began composing 2 arias for Tenor and 1 for Baritone and a duetto for baritone & tenor - which after 19 August 1791 he had to re-transcribe for 2 castrati he did not know… So M. did have ‘a bit of a head start’ on the solo arias - but the trios, quartets & quintet vocal ensembles including a draft for the end of Act I were compleated long before 19 August - we can see evidence of this in his Vienna music sheet paper types I & II & in the later post 25 August 1791 Prague paper types I & II & in the different quills & inks us’d (thank you, Alan Tyson c. 1974)… So ‘M. compos’d La Clemenza di Tito in 18 days’ is not true - it would have been far more disingenuous of Constanza Mozart years later to say the truth : ‘Since the solo cast was only known on 18 August 1781 & the cast not known except Vitellia’s part at the time of the 21 July Commission my husband only had 18 days in which to compose the solo arias for this opera some of them in the 3-day carriage ride to Prague for the rehearsals …’ Which is not quite the same thing … moreover Franz Xaver Suessmayr his 1791 copyist was given the lowly-task of composing the ‘recitativi secci’ between 18 August & 3 Sept 1791 - several of which were replac’d by Mozart’s own recitativi-which if he had another month, would have included several ‘recitativi accompagnati’ as with his later revisions in 1786 for his 1781 Opera Idomoneo …
I didn't realize until watching the videos in the description that you turn the glass with a foot pedal! That makes it extra cool. I imagine the turning speed would definitely affect the quality of the sound, which makes playing it really difficult
Franklin was an amazing person, but the American document he helped draft was the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Although he was (near the end of his life) a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he did not take an active role. But your accent means you get a pass on the niceties of the not-so-"recent unpleasantness".
@garyallen8824 me too!! But my point was purely about knowledge of the existence of... Rather than having attended a performance🙂 Although it was, if I'm absolutely honest, also about getting to write "Emiglia di Liverpool" which sounds like a Lily Savage-esque pantomime countess with all the very many difficulties of conceptualising such a thing. My bestie, from Liverpool but not a Scouser (and cannot STAND opera!) thought this was hilarious 😏
12:27 -- Mozart's preference for three-part harmony coincided with him joining the Freemasons. The number three is an important part of Masonic culture.
I believe most early deaths in midlife in the 18th century were related to diseases that were shameful to discuss because of personal dignity which is very understandable. Then you get those vague diagnosis of the cause of death, that are just secondary symptoms. I believe Mozart liked women and would have visited brothels. But importantly even chaste people who are careful and maybe only had one or two relationships with people not associated with such places can be unlucky in those matters.
Wait.. I think the only two composer busts on my piano are the same Tchaik and Schumann on your cabinet! Unless that's not Schumann, I can't tell. Wild coincidence if it's the same two though
E Power Biggs played the work on the pipe organ and included a for record of mechanical organ music by name composers. He also published sheet music for the organ. The Ave Corpus was written after Mozart visited St Thomas Church at Leipzig and Cantor Doles choir performed one J S Bach’s motets. The singers sang from parts no score which Mozart interrupted with “There’s someone you can learn from!” Mozart traveled to Leipzig for a performance at the at the City Hall. Mozart performed a concert at the St. Thomas organ, which the Cantor Doles said, Bach had been resurrected… The adagio works on the organ with flute stops.
Originally Ben Franklyn was a printer and worked on occasions in London's Little Britain. Later in his life when an ambassador he lived in a house in Craven Street which is immediately to the west of London's Charing Cross which house is the only one of his homes to have survived and better still unchanged since the time he lived there. It is open to the public. His grandparents had come to the Massachusetts colony from (I recall?) Worcestershire and so we can say that the Glass Harmonica is an English or British invention.
