Lectures by Will Crutchfield
Tuesday Morning Music Class
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Archives

Fall 2016

September 20 |  Tristan I:  “A sort of chromatic moan”  Thus Hector Berlioz, upon first exposure to Tristan und Isolde; he added that he “had not the faintest idea what the composer was driving at,” but detected along the way “cruelty” and “horrors.” What was Wagner driving at? How did he get so far ahead of what even a progressive like Berlioz could understand?
 
September 27 |  Tristan II:  “I would happily go to the stake for that belief”  The belief was in Tristan as the greatest achievement in all the history of music; the believer was one of New York’s leading music critics in the early 20th century; and the religious image was scarcely an exaggeration of the musical world’s devotion. What were they celebrating? Performances of overwhelming beauty, for one thing; we can recapture Tristan’s glorious Met history through a century of inspired recordings.
 
October 11 |  Rossini at the Summit  In 1829, the world’s most celebrated living composer gave his all at the Paris Opera, and then, with four decades left to live, said farewell to the stage. The mystery of his retirement has never ceased to fascinate, but our generation is only now discovering the fascination of the work itself, one of the richest and most satisfying ever composed.

October 25 |  Ahead of his Time   When Jenufa first came to the Met in 1924, Ernest Newman (the great biographer of Wagner and the critic of the Evening Post) wrote that its composer “is only a cut above the amateur,” and found nothing to notice but some charm in the folk-dances.  It took half a century for the world to recognize one of opera’s greatest dramatists – and one of its grimmest tragedians.
 
November 1 |  Harmonic Convergence  There is always more to say about Aida; this time around, we will delve into the score to see how Verdi, already Italy’s greatest composer, became one of the whole world’s greatest late in life.  Everything the young Verdi had – melody, passion, dramatic urgency – he kept. (See Nabucco later in the series for the first outburst of those.) What he added: harmonic wizardry.
 
November 15 |  The Opera Singer’s Afterlife  Opera singers, like dancers and athletes, work at peak physical function, and so must often leave the stage while still in the prime of life. But there are many interesting ways to go on singing. 
 
November 29 |  Loved from afar  Few operas in the last quarter-century have been as enthusiastically received as Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin, which premiered at the 2000 Salzburg Festival. It spread across Europe quickly, reached the West Coast in 2002 and Canada ten years later, but until now New Yorkers have had to admire it de loin. 
 
December 6  |  Rage, Invective, Bloodshed, and Murder  That is the composer Otto Nicolai’s description of Nabucco, whose libretto he had turned down for Verdi to pick up. The red-hot work, his first success, established Verdi on the long career whose maturity we have examined in Aida. But the raw fire of his youth fueled it all.
 
December 13  |  Shakespeare à la mode  Berlioz spent half his life chasing Goethe and Shakespeare in jagged music, only to see the far less ambitious Gounod turn first Faust and then Romeo and Juliet into comfy, well-made operas that were exactly to the taste of Paris. The public loved them immediately and still does, and there are many good reasons why.

Other Semesters

Spring 2019

Fall 2018

Spring 2018

Fall 2017

Spring 2017

Spring 2016

Fall 2015

Spring 2015

Fall 2014

Spring 2014

Fall 2013

Spring 2013

Questions? Please email WillCrutchfieldAssistant@gmail.com