Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald (
The strong influence of
Life and career
Ancestry and early years
Gluck's earliest known ancestor is his great-grandfather, Simon Gluckh von Rockenzahn, whose name is recorded in the marriage contract (1672) of his son, the
Gluck's father, Alexander, was born in Neustadt an der Waldnaab on 28 October 1683,
About Gluck's mother, Maria Walburga, almost nothing is known, including her surname, but she probably grew up in the same area as she was named after
Although there is no documentary record with Gluck's birthdate at the time of his birth, he himself gave it as 2 July 1714 on an official document requested by Paris that he signed in 1785 in Vienna in the presence of the French ambassador
In the year of Gluck's birth, the
On 1 April 1722 Alexander Gluck took a position as forest-master under Count
In 1727 Alexander moved with his family to Eisenberg (Jezeří in
The Alsatian painter Johann Christian von Mannlich relates in his memoirs, published in 1810, that Gluck told him about his early life in 1774. He quotes Gluck as saying:
My father was forest master at N... in Bohemia and he planned that eventually I should succeed him. In my homeland everyone is musical; music is taught in the schools, and in the tiniest villages the peasants sing and play different instruments during High Mass in their churches. As I was passionate about the art, I made rapid progress. I played several instruments and the schoolmaster, singling me out from the other pupils, gave me lessons at his house when he was off duty. I no longer thought and dreamt of anything but music; the art of forestry was neglected.[24]
In 1727 or 1728, when Gluck was 13 or 14, he went to
Gluck eventually left Prague without taking a degree, and vanishes from the historical record until 1737.[2] Nevertheless, the memories of his family and indirect references to this period in later documents give good grounds for believing Gluck arrived in Vienna in 1734, where he likely was employed by the Lobkowitz family at their palace in the Minoritenplatz. Philipp Hyazinth Lobkowitz, Gluck's father's employer, died on 21 December 1734, and his successor, his brother Johann Georg Christian Lobkowicz, is thought to have been Gluck's employer in Vienna from 1735 to 1736. Two operas with texts Gluck himself was later to set were performed during this period: Antonio Caldara's La clemenza di Tito (1734) and Le cinesi (1735). It is likely that the Lobkowitz family introduced Gluck to the Milanese nobleman Prince Antonio Maria Melzi, who engaged Gluck to become a player in his orchestra in Milan. The 65-year-old prince married the 16-year-old Maria Renata, Countess of Harrach, on 3 January 1737, and not long after returned with Gluck to Milan.[32]
Question of Gluck's native language
According to the music historian
Italy
In 1737 Gluck arrived in Milan, and was introduced to
Nevertheless, Gluck composed an opera for each of the next four
Travels: 1745–1752
In 1745 Gluck accepted an invitation from
The years 1747 and 1748 brought Gluck two highly prestigious engagements. First came a commission to produce an opera for Pillnitz, performed by Pietro Mingotti's troupe, to celebrate a royal double wedding that would unite the ruling families of Bavaria and Saxony. Le nozze d'Ercole e d'Ebe, a festa teatrale, borrowed heavily from earlier works, and even from Gluck's teacher Sammartini. The success of this work brought Gluck to the attention of the Viennese court, and, ahead of such a figure as Johann Adolph Hasse, he was selected to set Metastasio's La Semiramide riconosciuta to celebrate Maria Theresa's birthday. Vittoria Tesi took the title role. On this occasion Gluck's music was completely original, but the displeasure of the court poet, Metastasio, who called the opera "archvandalian music", probably explains why Gluck did not remain long in Vienna despite the work's enormous popular success (it was performed 27 times to great acclaim). For the remainder of 1748 and 1749 Gluck travelled with Mingotti's troupe, contracting a venereal disease from the prima donna and composing the opera La contesa de' numi for the court at Copenhagen, where he repeated his concert on the glassharmonica.
In 1750 he abandoned Mingotti's group for another company established by a former member of the Mingotti troupe, Giovanni Battista Locatelli. The main effect of this was that Gluck returned to Prague on a more consistent basis. For the Prague Carnival of 1750 Gluck composed a new opera, Ezio (again set to one of Metastasio's works, with the manuscript located at the Lobkowicz Palace). His Ipermestra was also performed in the same year. The other major event of Gluck's stay in Prague was, on 15 September 1750, his marriage to Maria Anna Bergin, aged 18 years old, the daughter of a rich (but long-dead) Viennese merchant.[42] Gluck seems to have spent most of 1751 commuting between Prague and Vienna.
The year 1752 brought another major commission to Gluck, when he was asked to set Metastasio's
Vienna
Gluck finally settled in Vienna, where he became Kapellmeister invited by Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen. He wrote Le cinesi for a festival in 1754 and La danza for the eighth birthday of the future Emperor Leopold II the following year. After his opera Antigono was performed in Rome in February 1756, Gluck was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by Pope Benedict XIV. From that time on, Gluck used the title "Ritter von Gluck" or "Chevalier de Gluck".
Gluck turned his back on Italian opera seria and began to write opéra comiques. In 1761 Gluck produced the groundbreaking ballet-pantomime Don Juan in collaboration with the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini; the more radical Jean-Georges Noverre was involved for the first time? The climax of Gluck's opéra comique writing was La rencontre imprévue (1764). By that time, Gluck created musical drama, based on Greek tragedy, with more compassion, influencing the latest style Sturm und Drang.
Under the teaching of Gluck, Marie Antoinette developed into a good musician. She learned to play the harp,[43] the harpsichord and the flute. She sang during the family's evening gatherings, as she had a beautiful voice.[44] All her brothers and sisters were involved in playing Gluck's music; on 24 January 1765 her brother Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor directed one of Gluck's compositions, Il Parnaso confuso.
In Spring 1774, she took under her patronage her former music teacher and introduced him to the Paris public. For that purpose, she asked him to compose a new opera, Iphigénie en Aulide. "Mindful of the Querelle des Bouffons between adherents of Italian and French opera, she asked the composer to set the libretto in French." To get to her goals she was assisted by the singers Rosalie Levasseur and Sophie Arnould. Gluck had gruff ways, demanding strict adherence from the cast when rehearsing. Gluck told the bass-bariton Henri Larrivée to change his ways. The soprano Arnould was replaced. He insisted that the chorus, too, had to act and become a part of the drama – that they could no longer just stand there posing stiffly and without expression while singing their lines. Gluck was assisted by François-Joseph Gossec, director of the Concert Spirituel. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges attended the first performance on 19 April; Jean-Jacques Rousseau was delighted with Gluck melodic style. Marie Antoinette received a large share of the credit.[45]
Operatic reforms
Gluck had long pondered the fundamental problem of form and content in opera. He thought both of the main Italian operatic genres, opera buffa and opera seria, had strayed too far from what opera should really be and seemed unnatural. Opera buffa had long lost its original freshness. Its jokes were threadbare and the repetition of the same characters made them seem no more than stereotypes. In opera seria, the singing was devoted to superficial effects and the content was uninteresting and fossilised. As in opera buffa, the singers were effectively absolute masters of the stage and the music, decorating the vocal lines so floridly that audiences could no longer recognise the original melody. Gluck wanted to return opera to its origins, focusing on human drama and passions and making words and music of equal importance.
Francesco Algarotti's Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for Gluck's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice (and added more ballets).
In Vienna, Gluck met like-minded figures in the operatic world: Count Giacomo Durazzo, the head of the court theatre, and one of the primary instigators of operatic reform in Vienna ; the librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi, who wanted to attack the dominance of Metastasian opera seria; the innovative choreographer Gasparo Angiolini; and the London-trained castrato Gaetano Guadagni.
The first result of the new thinking was Gluck's reformist ballet
Gluck and Calzabigi followed Orfeo with
- no da capo arias
- no opportunity for vocal improvisation or virtuosic displays of vocal agility or power
- no long melismas
- a more predominantly syllabic setting of the text to make the words more intelligible
- far less repetition of text within an aria
- a blurring of the distinction between recitative and aria, declamatory and lyrical passages, with altogether less recitative
- accompanied rather than secco recitative
- simpler, more flowing melodic lines
- an overture that is linked by theme or mood to the ensuing action
Joseph von Sonnenfels praised Gluck's tremendous imagination and the setting after attending a performance of Alceste.[51] In 1769 Gluck performed his operas in Parma.
On 2 September 1771 Charles Burney visited Gluck, living in Sankt Marx. Burney thought Gluck's preface, in which Gluck gives his “reasons for deviating from the beaten track”, important enough to give it almost in its entirety: "It was my intention to confine music to its true dramatic province, of assisting poetical expression, and of augmenting the interest of the fable; without interrupting the action, or chilling it with useless and superfluous ornaments; for the office of music, when joined to poetry, seemed to me, to resemble that of colouring in a correct and well disposed design, where the lights and shades only seem to animate the figures, without altering the out-line."[52] On 11 September Burney went to see Gluck to say goodbye; Gluck was still in bed, as he used to work in the night.
Paris
As his operas were not appreciated by
On 2 August 1774 the French version of Orfeo ed Euridice was performed, more
During the rehearsals for
His musical heir in Paris was the composer Antonio Salieri, who had been Gluck's protégé since he arrived in Vienna in 1767, and later had made friends with Gluck. Gluck brought Salieri to Paris with him and bequeathed him the libretto for Les Danaïdes by François-Louis Gand Le Bland Du Roullet and baron de Tschudi. The opera was announced as a collaboration between the two composers; however, after the overwhelming success of its premiere on 26 April 1784, Gluck revealed to the prestigious Journal de Paris that the work was wholly Salieri's.
Last years
In Vienna Gluck wrote a few more minor works, spending the summer with his wife in
On 15 November 1787, lunching with friends, Gluck suffered a
Legacy
Although only half of his work survived after a fire in 1809,
Works
External audio | |
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You may hear Gluck's " Rise Stevens; Lisa Della Casa; Roberta Peters; Pierre Monteux and the Orchestra & Coro Del Teatro Dell'Opera Di Roma in 1958 Here on Archive.org |
Notes
- ^ Brown & Rushton 2001, Introduction and "1. Ancestry, early life and training."; Heartz 1988, pp. 517–526. Sources differ concerning Gluck's nationality: Kuhn 2000, p. 272, and Croll 1991, p. 308, said he was German, while Brown & Rushton 2001 and Howard 2003 (p. xi) gave Bohemian; Hayes et al. 1992, p. 453, Bohemian-Austrian; and Harewood & Peattie 1997, p. 261, Austrian; G. Banat, p. 144 recognized him as Bavarian.
- ^ a b c d e f g Brown & Rushton 2001, "1. Ancestry, early life and training."
- ^ a b c Croll & Croll 2014, p. 13.
- ^ Heartz 1988, p. 517; Croll & Croll 2014, p. 13.
- ^ Prod'homme 1948 (1985), p. 17;Heartz 1988, p. 518; Brown & Rushton 2001; Croll2 & Croll 2014, p. 13.
- ^ Prod'homme 1948 (1985), p. 17; Brown & Rushton 2001.
- ^ Brown & Rushton 2001; Heartz 1988, p. 518.
- ^ Schmid 1854, p. 11; Prod'hommme 1948 (1985), p. 18; Heartz 1988, p. 518; Brown & Rushton 2001.
- ^ a b Robl 2015.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 14.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 15. The record of ownership from the time it was built to the present is unbroken, and, although the house has been remodeled and modernized, it is believed to retain much of its original appearance. There is a plaque on the side of the house which reads: "Hier wurde am 2.7.1714 der Komponist Christoph Willibald Gluck geboren" ("Here was born on 7/2/1714 the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck"); see a picture of the plaque at Commons.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 15. In the cited document he is named as "Jäger Alexander Gluck zu Erasbach". According to Croll & Croll, a different house, located in Weidenwang, also designated by many as Gluck's birthplace is well documented and was built about ten years after his birth.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2010, p. 12. Other sources giving this date include Einstein 1936, p. 3; Brown & Rushton 2001. The authenticity of the 1785 document has been disputed by Robl 2015, pp. 141–147.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 12.
- ^ See also Schmid 1854, p. 11.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 16; Heartz 1988, p. 518.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 16.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 17.
- ^ During the Lauenburg war of succession (1690–1693) the Habsburg emperor banned Anna Maria Franziska of Saxe-Lauenburg and her sister to Reichstadt and forced them to marry one of his generals in order to pay his debts to them. Franziska refused to marry Eugene of Savoy, accepted the next candidate Gian Gastone, who came to the conclusion Reichstadt was a boring place to live. She refused to follow him to Florence, being more interested in horses and hunting than in him.
- ^ Prod'homme 1948 (1985), p. 20; Howard 1995, p. 1; Croll & Croll 2014, p. 18.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 18; Brown & Rushton 2001.
- ^ Howard 1995, p. 1.
- ^ Daniel Heartz relates that this assertion has been the subject of much debate. Gluck himself does not appear in the list of students, although one of his younger brothers does. All instruction was in Latin, and Gluck's failure to learn Latin, which he had to study later in life, argues against it (Heartz 1988, p. 520).
- ^ Quoted and translated by Heartz 1988, p. 521, who cites and provides the French original: "Gluck à Paris en 1774", La Revue musicale (1934), p. 260: "Mon père, nous disoit-il, étoit maître des eaux et forêts à N... en Bohème; il m'avoit destiné à le remplacer un jour dans son poste. Dans mon pays tout le monde est musicien; on enseigne la musique dans les écoles et dans les moindres villages les paysans chantent et jouent des différens instrumens pendant la grand-messe dans leurs églises. Comme j'étois passionné pour cet art, je fis des progrès rapides. Je jouois de plusieurs instrumens, et le maître, en me distinguant des autres écoliers, me donna des leçons chez lui dans ses moments de loisir.
- ^ Heartz 1988, p. 521.
- ^ Howard 1995, pp. 2–3, provides commentary and an English translation of the entire excerpt from Mannlich.
- ^ Heartz 1988, p. 522; Brown & Rushton, 2001; Croll & Croll 2014, p. 24.
- ^ Moser 1940, p. 24.
- ^ Croll & Croll 2014, p. 25.
- ^ Howard 1995, p. 6; Heartz 1988, p. 522, citing Arnošt Mahler "Glucks Schulzeit. Zweifel und Widerspruche in den biographischen Daten," Die Musikforschung, vol. 27 (1974), pp. 457–460.
- ^ Howard 1995, p. 6.
- ^ Howard 1995, pp. 8–9; Croll & Croll 2014, p. 27.
- ^ Quoted and translated by Heartz 1988, pp. 524–525, citing Mosel 1827, p. 93: "Gluck, dessen Muttersprache die böhmisch war, drückte sich in der deutschen, und noch mehr in der französischen und italienischen, nur mit Mühe aus... ."
- ^ Mosel 1827, p. 93.
- ^ Schmid 1854, pp. 389–390; cited by Heartz 1988, p. 525.
- ^ Heartz 1988, p. 525; Arend 1920, p. 20; Prod'homme 1948, chapter 1.
- ^ Moser 1940, pp. 20–21, cited by Heartz 1988, p. 525.
- ^ Garcin 1772, p. 115; reproduced by Heartz 1988, p. 527; cited by Brown & Rushton 2001.
- ^ Mitteilungen der Internationalen Gluck-Gesellschaft Nr. 2, July 1997 (in German)
- ^ Brown & Rushton 2001.
- ^ a b William Zeitler (2009), "The Glass Armonica, Benjamin Franklin's Magical Musical Invention: C.W. Gluck", at glassarmonica.com. Retrieved 8 June 2019 .
- ^ Wien Geschichte Wiki on Gluck.
- ^ Cronin 1989, p. 45.
- ^ Cronin 1989, p. 46.
- ISBN 1-57647-109-8., p. 146-150.
- ^ Encyclopédie Larousse en ligne – Melchior baron de Grimm, Éditions Larousse, http://www.larousse.fr.
- ^ Thomas, 1995, p. 148
- ^ Heyer (ed.) 2009, p. 248
- ^ Lippman 2009, p. 171
- ^ "Position Papers: Seminar 1. Music: universal, national, nationalistic" Archived 18 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College London
- ^ Historische Drucke mit URN (Verbundkatalog mit Lokalbestand) / Briefe über die wienerische... [36], sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de.
- ^ Charles Burney on Gluck's Reform of Opera Seria (1773)
- ^ Mueller von Asow 1962.
- ^ a b Opera – From the “reform” to grand opera. Encyclopædia Britannica online.
- ^ a b Robl 2013, p. 48.
- ^ The Mozart Compendium, p. ?
- ^ Otto Mitchner (1970) Das alte Burgtheater als Opernbühne, p. 99
- ^ H. C. Robbins Landon (1990) The Mozart Compendium[page needed]
- ^ Robl 2013, pp. 50–54
- ^ ANNO, Neue Freie Presse, 1890-09-29, p. 2, http://www.anno.onb.ac.at.
- ^ Brown & Rushton 2001, "7. Final years in Vienna.".
- ^ "Gluck, Christoph Willibald Ritter von", at Wikisource from Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 1879 (in German).
- ^ Daniela Philippi (2012), "Zur Überlieferung der Werke Christoph Willibald Glucks in Böhmen, Mähren und Sachsen", p. 75.
Sources
- Arend, Max (1920). Gluck, eine Biographie. Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler. Copy at HathiTrust.
- ISBN 978-0-19-316415-4.
- Brown, Bruce Alan; Grove Music Online, edited by L. Macy (accessed 11 November 2007), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
- ISBN 978-0-85229-553-3.
- Croll, Gerhard; Croll, Renate (2010). Gluck. Sein Leben, seine Musik (in German). Kassel; New York: Bärenreiter. ISBN 978-3-7618-2166-4.
- Croll, Gerhard; Croll, Renate (2014). Gluck. Sein Leben, seine Musik (2nd edition, in German). Kassel; New York: ISBN 978-3-7618-2378-1.
- Cronin, Vincent (1989). Louis and Antoinette. Collins Harvill ISBN 978-0-00-272021-2.
- ISBN 978-0-07-019530-1(1972 paperback edition).
- Garcin, Laurent (1772). Traité du mélo-drame. Paris: Chez Vallat-la-Chapelle. Gallica.
- ISBN 0-09-181410-3.
- Hayes, Jeremy; Brown, Bruce Alan; Loppert, Max; ISBN 978-1-56159-228-9.
- .
- Howard, Patricia (1995). Gluck: An Eighteenth-Century Portrait in Letters and Documents. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816385-5.
- Howard, Patricia (2003). Christoph Willibald Gluck. A Guide to Research, Second Edition. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-94072-6
- Kuhn, Laura (2000). Baker's Dictionary of Opera. New York: Schirmer. ISBN 978-0-02-865349-5.
- Mosel, Ignaz Franz von (1827). Ueber das Leben und die Werke des Anton Salieri, K.k. Hofkapellmeister. Vienna: Wallishausser. Copyat Bavarian State Library website.
- Moser, Hans Joachim (1940). Christoph Willibald Gluck : die Leistung, der Mann, das Vermächtnis. Stuttgart: Cotta. OCLC 10663283.
- Mueller von Asov, Hedwig and E. H., editors (1963). Collected correspondence and papers of Christoph Willibald Gluck, translated by Stewart Thomson (copy at Internet Archive). New York: St. Martin's Press.
- ISBN 978-2-213-01575-0.
- Robl, Werner (2013). Christoph Willibald Gluck wurde doch in Weidenwang geboren (in German).
- Robl, Werner (2015). Auf den Spuren der Familie Gluck in den Dörfern Weidenwang und Erasbach Fallstricke und Lösungen der regionalen Gluck-Forschung. Berching.
- Schmid, Anton Franz (1854). Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck. Dessen Leben und tonkünstlerishes Wirken. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. Copy at Google Books.
Further reading
- OCLC 5996991
- Felix, W., Christoph Willibald Gluck (in German) (Leipzig, 1965) OCLC 16770241
- ISSN 0080-4452.
- Gibbons, W. Building the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in Fin-de-siècle Paris. University of Rochester Press, 2013. ISSN 1071-9989
- Howard, P., Gluck and the Birth of Modern Opera. London, 1963 OCLC 699685
- Howard, P., "Orfeo and Orphée", ISSN 0027-4666
- Howard, P., "Gluck"s Two Alcestes: a Comparison", The Musical Times, cxv (1974), pp. 642–93. ISSN 0027-4666
- Howard, P., "Armide: a Forgotten Masterpiece", Opera, xxx (1982), 572–76. ISSN 0030-3526
- ISBN 978-0-520-06274-0.
- Noiray, M., Gluck's Methods of Composition in his French Operas "Iphigénie en Aulide", "Orphée", "Iphigénie en Tauride". Dissertation, University of Oxford, 1979
- ISSN 0027-4224
- Rushton, J., "The Musician Gluck", The Musical Times, cxxvi (1987), pp. 615–18. ISSN 0027-4666
- Rushton, J., "'Royal Agamemnon': The Two Versions of Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide", Music and the French Revolution, ed. M. Boyd (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 15–36. ISBN 978-0-521-08187-0.
- Saloman, O. F., Aspects of Gluckian Operatic Thought and Practice in France (diss., Columbia University, 1970)
- Sternfeld, F. W., "Expression and Revision in Gluck's Orfeo and Alceste, Essays Presented to Egon Wellesz" (Oxford, 1966), pp. 114–29
- Youell, Amber Lynne (2012) "Opera at the Crossroads of Tradition and Reform in Gluck's Vienna", PhD dissertation, Columbia University
External links
- Free scores by Christoph Willibald Gluck in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
- Free scores by Christoph Willibald Gluck at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
- Digital catalogue raisoné
- Gluck the Reformer. William Christie & John Eliot Gardiner feature in this documentary on the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck