The complete idiot's guide to classical music (24 page)

Actually, Horowitz was making studio recordings all through those dozen years away from the concert platform, and indeed his discography spans the full musical gamut, from Scarlatti to Scriabin and on to such later 20th century masters as Prokofiev, Kabalevsky, Samuel Barber (whose celebrated piano sonata he premiered in 1949), and of course his friend Rachmaninoff.

During a news conference, the nearly 80-year-old Horowitz told a
New York Times
reporter that he would keep playing as long “the devil and the angel” remained within him. “In the end I do everything,” he said, and so he did. In 1982, he gave his first overseas concerts in more than 30 years; in 1986 he returned to Russia after a lifetime away (61 years to be exact), including a never-to-be-forgotten concert at Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, which formed the basis of a worldwide television special.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
It may have been a sentimental journey, but Horowitz didn’t travel light: his own grand piano was cleaned and placed on a special plane to Moscow, and fresh sole and other food favorites were airmailed to him every day. He even brought along his cook to make sure that everything was prepared to his liking, and his own tuner, to attend to any potential ailments of his Steinway piano.

Horowitz also continued to record: Scarlatti, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff at the Metropolitan Opera House (in 1981); Schumann, Scriabin, and Chopin (plus “God Save the Queen”) at the Royal Festival Hall in London (1982); Bach and Schubert at home in New York (1985); and Mozart and Moszkowski in Vienna’s Musikverein (1987). In the fall of 1989, Horowitz decided to record various works of Haydn, Chopin, and Liszt that he had never played for the American public. The last of six sessions was completed on November First; four days later, the pianist died suddenly in his Manhattan apartment. An era ended. Music lovers around the world mourned his loss. Vladimir Horowitz, as the title of a film documentary put it, had been “the Last Romantic.”

 

• The harpsichord was a significant improvement over the clavichord as it was louder.
  
 

• The piano brought keyboard instruments into their own with its capability to play loud and soft and sustain notes.
  
 

• Franz Liszt wrote more than 1,000 piano pieces.
  
 

• Pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski became Premier of Poland.
  
 

• Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz rank among the greatest pianists of our time.
  

Chapter 12
 
More Makers of Music: Bows and Batons Department

 

• The Italian violin makers
  
 

• The early composers
  
 

• The dictators
  
 

• American conductors
  

A number of folk instruments are credited with being the ancestors of the violin, among them the Arabic rabab, which turned into the rebec when it arrived in Western Europe, and was often called the fiddle in England (without any of the slightly snide connotations the term later acquired). A more sophisticated branch of the bowed string family included many sizes of viols, and were in use until the 1700s, at which point the more pliant and expressive violins, violas, and cellos ran them out of town.

During the Renaissance, Italian artists and craftsmen revolutionized the way the world looked at painting, sculpture, and architecture, and thanks to an incredible group of instrument builders—who created the
Davids
and the
Mona Lisas
of the tonal world—music took a giant step forward as well.

Before 1600 or so, musicians were satisfied with viols, string instruments played with a bow that came in all the usual sizes, from the tiny viol de pochette (pocket viol) favored by dancing masters who had to carry their music around with them, to the large bass members of the family. For all their antique beauty, though, viols lacked the carrying power, the resonance, and the flexible tone colors we associate with the violin and cello. For those qualities, we had to await the arrival of the masters who built instruments so remarkable that they are prized to this day for their gorgeous sound and workmanship.

Andrea Amati (1511–1580) was one of the first of these remarkable violin makers. He set up shop in the small town of Cremona, where his work was later carried on by his two sons, Antonio and Geronimo, and his grandson Nicolo. Gaspara de Salo (1540–1609) lived not far away in Brescia, where his workshop was later maintained by his apprentice, Giovanni Maggini. Back in Cremona, Andrea Guarneri (1626–1698), having studied with Amati, proceeded to found his own dynasty of violin makers, the most famous being del Gesu.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The Guarneris were incredible fiddle makers, but they ran out of steam when it came to naming their kids. Andrea’s sons were Giuseppi and Pietro; meanwhile, there was a cousin, also named Pietro, and Giuseppe’s son, who was another Giuseppe. He turned out to be the most distinguished Guarneri of them all, calling himself Giuseppe del Gesu (after the Jesuit movement), so folks could tell him apart from his father.

If you go to Cremona and visit the house in the Piazza Roma where Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737) spent most of his life, you’ll find an inscription installed by the city fathers stating that he “brought the violin to perfection and left to Cremona an imperishable name as master of his craft.” Having served an apprenticeship to Nicolo Amati for seven or eight years, the 22-year-old Stradivari went into business for himself, signing some of his instruments with the Latin form of his name, Antonius Stradivarius, usually adding a Maltese cross and enclosing his initials, A.S., within a double circle.

 
Important Things to Know
Stradivari’s violins tended to be longer than Amati’s, and he worked tirelessly on other improvements: larger sound holes, stronger arches, better forms of varnish, each time improving the instrument’s visual symmetry as well as its sonic beauty. He is credited with having built at least 540 violins. Craftsmen of every succeeding generation—starting with Stradivari’s own sons, Francesco and Omobono—have attempted without success to duplicate his mastery, to discover Stradivari’s “secret,” to build instruments of equivalent eloquence. The “Strads” remain in a class by themselves, however, never to be equaled, let alone surpassed.

The emergence of the violin as the instrumental king of the strings was due in no small measure to the amazing work of Amati, Guarneri, Stradivari and other master craftsmen who built instruments more than 300 years ago that remain unsurpassed to this day (and don’t think people haven’t tried to surpass them!). During this era, the viola and cello, vastly improved, became the essential middle and lower voices of the string family.

With all those fabulous fiddles being produced left and right, it inevitably followed that composers started putting them to good use, and violinists emerged who could play all that difficult new music.

Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) was born into a distinguished family of scholars, poets, and jurists, but he decided to become a musician and started to study violin at the age of 13, developing into a master player and composer even as he maintained his place in high society. Corelli’s fans included Queen Christina of Sweden, who installed him as chamber musician in her palace (it’s too complicated to explain why her palace was in Rome) and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, who invited Corelli to take up residence in his palace. The King of Naples tried repeatedly to get Corelli to move there, but how many palaces can a fellow use? Meanwhile, he dedicated his first 12 violin sonatas to Queen Christina, eventually publishing another five sets, each containing a dozen pieces. Taking into account his own technical mastery, his compositions for the instrument, and his development of new performing methods (playing chords, for instance), Corelli is generally considered to be the founder of modern violin technique.

Like Corelli, Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709) began his training in Bologna and made his reputation as a court violinist (both there and in Vienna), churning out concertos and sonatas by the dozen. He expanded on Corelli’s experiments with the concerto grosso (where several instruments within the large ensemble take on a kind of collective solo role), and was one of the first major composers to produce solo violin concertos.

 
Music Words
Just as a regular concerto implies a solo instrument with orchestra, a
concerto grosso
(literally “grand concerto”) indicates a piece where several instruments within the larger ensemble collectively make up the spotlighted instrumental force.

We can pretty well forget about Francesco Manfredini (1684–1762) and Pietro Nardini (1722–1793), since their music sounds just as similar as their names. Besides, it hardly ever appears on concert programs, with the occasional exception of a rather pretty Nardini concerto that Pinchas Zukerman recorded many years ago, and Manfredini’s
Christmas Concerto
, which is sometimes played when everyone is tired of the Corelli
Christmas Concerto
.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Nardini was definitely the emotional type. They say he used to weep at the beauty of his own playing.

Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) though, is somebody to remember. For starters, he was the teacher of both Nardini and Manfredini (plus Pugnani, whose name, unfortunately doesn’t rhyme), so he got there first. He was also another influential virtuoso, whose acoustical discoveries led to new performance possibilities (among other things, he made the violin strings thicker and the bow lighter), and whose dramatic style of playing became a model for later generations of fiddlers.

Tartini’s most famous piece is called the
Devil’s Trill Sonata
, because Satan himself came to his room one night and played “a sonata of such exquisite beauty that I felt enraptured.” The next morning, Tartini scribbled down as much of the music as he could remember and voilà!—his devilishly difficult piece was born. At least that’s what he told everybody.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Many years earlier, the Cardinal of Padua had asked Tartini to give lessons to his niece, and Tartini obliged—unfortunately, he was teaching her just a little more than the fiddle and she ended up pregnant. When the baby was born, the Cardinal ordered Tartini’s arrest, and poor Giuseppe had to grab his fiddle and sneak out of town disguised as a monk. He hid in the Monastery of Saint Francis of Assisi, practicing every day and waiting for the Cardinal to calm down. It took two years, so it’s no wonder Tartini got to be such a great virtuoso.