Charpentier

Marc-Antoine Charpentier was born in or near Paris into a family of lawyers.

His father was a master scribe, which was perhaps an influence on the beautiful clarity and almost decorativeness of the composer’s manuscripts. Marc-Antoine did study law at university, but left after a term.

He seems to have been educated by the Jesuits, with whom he had a life-long association. So apart from his prestigious position as Mademoiselle de Guise’s court composer, he was also Director of Music at the principal Jesuit church in Paris, St. Paul-St. Louis. He was in constant demand to compose music for numerous churches, colleges and abbeys around Paris. Towards the end of his life he was appointed Director of Music at the Sainte Chapelle. Therefore, while he was never a member of the Chapel Royal, he was the foremost composer working in Paris at the time.

Very little of Charpentier’s music was published in his lifetime, but he took care over its storage. He bequeathed his manuscripts to a nephew, Jacques Edouard, who tried to publish them, but there was by then little interest in his music. So Edouard sold them, bound in 28 large volumes. Some found their way into the king’s library. His music was not rediscovered until the 20^th century.

Michael Haydn

Michael Haydn was five years younger than his more famous brother Joseph.

Both brothers were stars of the Vienna Boys’ Choir in their time, and both went on to spend most of their professional lives working for one employer.

Michael had the better start: while Joseph was still trying to scrape a living teaching the piano and doing free-lance work, Michael landed the job of Kapellmeister to the Archbishop of Grosswardein (now Oradea in Romania). Then in 1762 he was offered a position with better prospects, in the court of Archbishop Schrattenbach of Salzburg. He remained in Salzburg for the rest of his life. He soon was promoted to the position of Konzertmeister in which capacity he was called upon to write dramatic music for the Benedictine University Theatre. This included at one point a collaboration with the 11-year-old W.A.Mozart. When Archbishop Schrattenbach died nine years later, his successor, Heironymus Colloredo, did not support the theatre and it closed. From now on, his output would be mainly for the Church.

He thrived under the rule of Archbishop Colloredo, producing much of his best work, and it appeared he might become Kapellmeister. This stirred jealousies and suddenly there were vicious rumours about his weakness for alcohol and so he was given the position of organist at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche instead. His colleague Leopold Mozart’s nose was instantly put out of joint, because he had hoped his 21-year-old son Wolfgang would get the job at the Dreifaltigkeitskirche – and spiteful things were said.

By the 1790s he was highly regarded both as a composer and teacher – his pupils including one Carl Maria von Weber. His music was in demand in Vienna including at least one commission from his brother’s personal friend the Empress Maria Theresia. Indeed he was much drawn towards Vienna, particularly since Napoleon’s troops had over-run Salzburg exiling the Archbishop. But in 1803 the Archduke Ferdinand stepped in, and on the Archbishop’s behalf gave him a rise in salary which kept him securely in Salzburg until his death on August 10^th 1806.

Dieterich Buxtehude (c.1637 – 1707)

Although he saw himself as Danish, Buxtehude is known as a German composer – the giant of the mid-baroque’. He was known primarily – and employed – as an organist. His first job was in Helsingborg (now Sweden) when he was 10 or 11 years old.

Twenty years later he applied successfully for the post of Organist at the Marienkirche in the centre of Lübeck. He immediately married a daughter of his predecessor, Franz Tunder; he was also automatically appointed Werkmeister of the church. This meant Buxtehude was secretary, treasurer and business manager of the church. Something to keep him busy between the Sundays!

As organist he was responsible for providing music for the main services every Sunday, composing music where necessary. He was greatly revered for his improvisations on the organ. In addition to this and his administrative Werkmeister activities, he became famous for his Abendmusike, ‘Evening-musics’, which had been initiated by Tunder, his predecessor. When Buxtehude took over he assigned them to Sundays in Advent and Trinity.

These Abendmusike would now often take the form of oratorios which were the church equivalent of operas. They were highly dramatic, and clearly were a huge influence on Bach in his settings of the Passion.

In old age he was something of a celebrity. He stayed rooted in Lübeck, but people came from far and wide to hear him play the organ. Handel visited from nearby Hamburg, also Bach from distant Arnheim. Bach’s obituary stated he ‘took Buxtehude as his model in the art of the organ’; it may well have been that seeing Buxtehude as the director of music in the city of Lübeck gave him the idea of pursuing something similar himself – in Leipzig, as it turned out.

Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn grew up in Berlin with his dearly beloved sister and soul-mate Fanny.

They led a charmed life together: highly privileged, both phenomenally clever, moving in the highest circles of Berlin intellectual society. There was much flexing of young intellectual and creative wings, by both of them, to everyone’s astonishment.

The op.69 motets belong to the other end of Mendelssohn’s life, composed in the summer of 1847.

They are remarkably serene, considering the circumstances in which they were written, for they belong to a year of turbulence he had not encountered before.

He was at the height of his career; Elijah had been premièred in Birmingham the previous August to huge acclaim.

In early 1847 he was back in Leipzig doing his regular job directing the Gewandhaus Orchestra. In mid-April he returned to England. He oversaw six performances of Elijah in London, Birmingham and Manchester, and directed a concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra. He also gave a private concert for Gladstone at the Prussian Embassy, and was received again at Buckingham Palace.

Mendelssohn returned to Frankfurt (his wife’s family home) in mid-May completely exhausted, only to be greeted by the dreadful news that his dear sister Fanny had died while he was absent. He was in a state of mental collapse and could not attend her funeral. Trying to recover from the shock and exhaustion, he went to Switzerland with his brother, staying for several months. Being, for the first time in his life, incapable of composing, he turned to painting watercolours.

It was some weeks before he was able to start composing again. Still in Switzerland, he eventually began with the Motets op.69. If in these, perhaps, he found solace, it was in the String Quartet op70 that his anguish found expression. These were the last works he would complete.

At the end of September he finally managed to find the resolve to visit Fanny’s grave in Berlin.

He was so deeply upset by the experience that he could not conduct his next Gewandhaus concert. The following month he suffered a series of strokes, and becoming progressively more incapacitated, he died on 4^th November. He was buried three days later next to the grave of his sister Fanny.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, but although he was deeply involved in the folk-song revival, for most of his adult life he lived in London and saw himself as a city man.

Ralph’s father was a vicar, son of an eminent lawyer, and his mother was niece of Charles Darwin, and great-granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood. Wealthy and cultured, they sent Ralph to Charterhouse, from whence he continued to Trinity College Cambridge via the Royal College of Music. Composing did not come easily to him, so he returned to the RCM to study with Parry, Wood and Stanford, and then went on to study with Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris. It was while he was studying with Ravel that he began composing the first of the Five Mystical Songs.

His slow-burn development delayed his arrival as the leading British composer of his generation. He was consciously an English composer with strong roots in English folk music. He was at pains never to be elitist, an ideal he shared with his friend Gustav Holst. Since the two composers shared so much, they had what they referred to as ‘field days’, which they put aside to criticise one another’s work. Vaughan Williams missed these dreadfully when Holst died in 1934.

Telemann 1681-1721

Georg Philip Telemann

was born in Magdeburg. Like his near contemporary Handel, his family actively discouraged him from making music and as a musician he was virtually self-taught.

He was from a professional family, so he was sent to school; and it was at school his remarkable talent was recognised and he was given opportunities and support. From the age of 16 he made many visits to the courts of Hannover and Brunswick, and by this time he had learned to play the recorder, violin and keyboard instruments, plus the flute, oboe, chalumeau (an early form of the clarinet), viola da gamba, double bass and bass trombone. He would later add the cello to his list, but violin would be his 1st instrument.

When he was 20 he went to Leipzig, ostensibly to specialise in Law in his final year; but he quickly became embroiled in the music of the city, among other things getting commissions to write music for the two main churches. Four years later, after he had thoroughly made his mark in Leipzig , he was appointed Kapellmeister to Count Erdmann II of Promnitz in what is now Poland, and then went on to hold substantial posts in Eisenach and Frankfurt. But it was when he was 40 he landed a plum job in Hamburg where he remained (but for one hiccup) for his remaining 47 years.

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Telemann 1721-67

The plum job

His main positions were Kantor of the Johanneum Lateinschule and Musical Director of the five main churches of the city.

He had been living in Hamburg for about 14 years when he wrote Allein Gott in die Höh sei Ehre , by which time he was securely embedded as a most prominent and influential figure in Hamburg society.

He was also director of the Gänsemarkt opera house, where he mounted performances of his own operas, and those of other composers, particularly Handel’s, to which he added some of his own numbers. He founded a collegium musicum in Hamburg, and also one in Leipzig. It was originally intended that the collegium would give one concert a week during the winter season, but the public demanded two. On top of this he published his own music, wrote poetry and was corresponding agent for the Eisenach court, collecting news from across northern Europe.

Apart from a natural workaholic tendency, some of his workload may have been driven by the need to service the massive gambling debts his 2^nd wife incurred.