BBC Composers of the Year for 2009

Apparently the BBC has decided to select four composers for the year 2009: Purcell, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Handel.  

Purcell -- Henry Purcell (1659-1695) was the earliest of these composers, and the one who can be considered most British of them all. (There appears to be nothing anniversarial about his selection for the year 2009.) He is clearly one of the most brilliant composers of the time, and the British are fond of declaring that it was just bad timing that prevented Purcell from having as large an impact on western music as Bach himself. This is probably true; just as Bach did, Purcell delighted in writing beautiful dances for orchestra, (some of them featured in Jane Austen films, e.g. Pride and Prejudice), and in the pleasure of complex harmonies. Ayres for the Theatre is a collection of dance music and concert dances intended to be played between the acts of plays in London. [Here is an excerpt from the music for Abdelazer, immortalized as the theme in Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.] Just like Mozart some years later, Purcell loved the theatre, and spent so much time there that he was locked out of his house one night by his wife, and subsequently died of pneumonia (or something similar they had at that time. Pneumonia had not been yet invented. Ancient diseases, as you know, dear reader, were not as good as modern ones.)

Note: a popular march called the Prince of Denmark's March has long been attributed to Henry Purcell, though it has since been established that it was composed by Jeremiah Clarke. This error puts hardly a dent in Purcell's amazing output. One of Purcell's greatest works is a masque called Dido and Aeneas, which contains some lovely music. He also wrote incidental music to Shakespeare's Tempest, as did Thomas Arne and others.  

Handel -- Georg Friderick Händel was a contemporary of J.S. Bach, and lived in Halle, in Saxony, not far from where Bach was born and lived most of his life. In contrast to Bach, Handel traveled south, through Italy, finally arriving in Britain. While he traveled, he absorbed all the music he heard, and in fact his musical writing was a wonderful synthesis of German and Italian styles, with the Italian sensibility predominating. (Bach admired this style, and adopted it as far as he could in his arias, with moderate success. Apparently his German tendency to work a theme extensively got in the way of the leaner profiles required by the Italian style. Don't quote me on this; I'm not an expert.) We know Handel best for his oratorio, Messiah. He wrote brilliant operas, though, whose quality exceed that of Messiah by many estimates, as well as other oratorii, such as Israel in Egypt, which I have heard nominated to be his greatest work. The Watermusic Suites and the Music for the Royal Fireworks are delightful, grand works for royal celebrations, the kind of thing the British aristocracy love so much. Handel's music deserves to be heard more than it commonly is.  

Haydn -- Franz Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of great significance. The year 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death. The vast majority of his music was composed at the court of the Esterhazys, a wealthy aristocratic family. Haydn, in retrospect, was very much influenced by a couple of visits to Britain, at which time he heard the wonderful works of Handel, as well as the British national anthem, which he admired greatly. Subsequently, with the encouragement of one Baron Gottfried van Sweiten (whom you can see in the movie Amadeus, having been a popular visitor at the Viennese court), Haydn composed his last masterwork, The Creation (Die Schöpfung), which is claimed to be one of the last of his works he heard performed. (When I see that German title, I keep thinking: when the going gets tough, the tough go Schöpfung.) [Here is a clip of Nun beut dir Flur das frische Grün, a lyrical aria that expresses the delight in the verdant woods.  Note 2018/4/9: Blogger has eaten all the video links that had been inserted in these posts, and any you are seeing in these early posts were repaired by me just today, and only a bare minimum have had the treatment.] Haydn also wrote the national anthem of Austria, whose tune is still used in the present German national anthem, and is a model of restrained patriotic musical rhetoric. (The clip features modified harmony.) One must not forget to mention a couple beloved concertos for the 'cello, as well as a trumpet concerto, also played as a concerto for recorder, oboe or flute. And finally, it was Haydn who perfected the classical string quartet, much admired by Mozart. Mozart was born after Haydn was born, and died before the latter, and the two men were musically much influenced by each other to the good. And Haydn was one of Beethoven's teachers. In Haydn's vast output are also numbered a hundred symphonies, a genre that he helped develop, along with the sons of J.S. Bach, in particular Johann Christian Bach. In recognition of his contributions to music, Haydn was granted an honorary doctorate by Oxford University on one of his journeys to Britain.  

Mendelssohn -- Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born to a Jewish family that converted to Lutheranism in the 18th century. 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. A renaissance man, Felix, together with his sister Fanny, were adept in numerous areas, including painting, literature and music, and had wide interests in all areas of Art. Felix began composing at an early age, and one of his most celebrated compositions originated at around the age of 15, or possibly earlier. The Octet for Strings is a lively work for eight stringed instruments -- four violins, two violas, and two cellos. (Some modern performances add a double bass, as far as I know not in the original scoring.) Its Scherzo, the third movement, is justly famous. Two of Mendelssohn's string quartets are gorgeous, and delightful to play. As did other German composers before him, Mendelssohn traveled through Italy, and eventually to Britain, and Scotland. He was much impressed by the natural beauty of Scotland, which he celebrated with the Hebrides, or Fingal's Cave overture. He wrote several overtures, all still in the orchestral repertoire, and numerous chamber works, and vocal pieces, such as On the Wings of Song. [Clip: Victoria de Los Angeles.] His overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of his most famous compositions, in addition to the magical Violin Concerto in E minor, and his last few symphonies. Long before these last symphonies for full orchestra, he had written symphonies for strings only, to be performed at private musical evenings in the Mendelssohn home with their family orchestra. The British have a particular fondness for the composer, even if his music is not considered as British as that of Handel and Purcell. Still, his oratorio Elijah was a regular offering in Britain through the last century.