My latest album, Beacons in the Darkness, is now available on Bandcamp. It’s a living-room album, and I make no great claims for my vocal abilities, so payment is optional. It’s the songs themselves which I think have some interest. The title track, a secular solstice song, is one of my best songs, and it’s on the album in both English and German. 
You can find my other albums, likewise on a payment-optional basis, at garymcgath.bandcamp.com.
Spohr and Faust. You knew I couldn’t resist writing about that combination, didn’t you? The delay was in finding an adequate recording. Years ago, I got a CD set where the opera was so heavily cut it was incomprehensible. Since then, I’ve gotten a CPO recording of the 1852 version by the Bielefeld Opera. It’s complete or nearly so, but the download from Presto Music doesn’t include a booklet. I need a libretto to follow along, and there’s a libretto for reading or downloading here. It’s got a lot of typos, as if it was made from an uncorrected scan, but it will do. The Capriccio recording has brutal cuts, and I can’t recommend it.
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Louis Spohr’s third symphony, Opus 78, dates from 1828, the year after Beethoven’s death, and there are several indications he was thinking of Beethoven when he wrote it, starting with the key of C minor. It’s on a large scale for the early 19th century. In most recordings it runs half an hour. The instrumentation includes a brass section of four horns, two trumpets, and three trombones.
The slow introduction sets an initially tragic tone but quickly opens up into an expression of hope. The main body continues the conflict of emotions. The first theme expresses a struggle, while the second, made from the same material, is dance-like. The development is brief but surprising; it’s based not on the first and second themes, but on the introduction. This approach recalls the opening mood without breaking the tempo. The coda goes into C minor, creating a moment of doubt, but returns to the major for the final measures.
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Musical annotation is a language in its own right. Its words come from Italian, but the syntax is very different, and the meaning of the words often is too. I’m sure linguists have studied it in detail. I’m neither a linguist nor a professional musician, but I have a strong interest in both areas, so let me offer a few thoughts on the subject.
Since the nineteenth century, musical directions have come in other languages, usually the composer’s native language. I think Schumann was the first major composer to do it. For this piece, I’m just talking about annotations based on Italian.
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Apple and Spotify, groveling before China’s government, have reportedly taken down the song “Glory to Hong Kong” worldwide. I don’t know what to make of this, as I can still find the song on both platforms. It may be just the original DGX version that’s been taken down, which seems pointless from a censorship standpoint. Maybe it takes longer to go after the cover performances.
Whatever is happening, it’s something people can push back against. I’d like to see a hundred thousand recordings uploaded to the Web, so the censors will find themselves playing a futile game of Whack-a-Mole. For my part, I’ve written and recorded a piano arrangement of “Glory to Hong Kong” to SoundCloud. As far as I know, they haven’t banned the song, at least in the USA. In China, even instrumental performances can get the performer arrested.
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Most of Spohr’s best works date from before 1840, but he hadn’t completely written himself out after that. The Septet in A minor, composed in 1853, is worth having in a collection of his music. It’s still clearly his work, but it has a different feeling from his earlier Quintet, Octet, and Nonet. It’s denser in its instrumentation and more contemplative. I’d say there’s a hint of Brahms in it, except that in 1853 Brahms was little-known, and almost all of his compositions were ahead of him. All the instruments — flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, cello, and piano — are equal partners in this work. Spohr clearly expected he’d have good musicians to perform this piece; the piano part is as hard as some concertos, but with fewer opportunities for bows.
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The articles I’ve written on Louis Spohr’s works show that he’s a composer worth remembering, one whose works should be a regular part of the concert repertoire. He was highly regarded in his lifetime. Robert Schumann greatly admired him. His 1813 opera Faust was translated into multiple languages and was frequently performed over the next fifty years. In 1852, it had a very successful run in England under Spohr’s direction. Brahms, speaking decades after the premiere of Spohr’s 1822 Jessonda, called it “magnificent.” In Italy his Violin Concerto No. 8 drew so much applause during the music that it drowned out the orchestra at times.
Gilbert and Sullivan put his name next to the two greatest composers of all time. The Mikado sings about
Bach, interwoven
With Spohr and Beethoven
At classical Monday Pops.
Today, many fans of classical music haven’t even heard of Spohr. Why?
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Louis Spohr’s second double string quartet is a more lyrical work than his dramatic first double quartet. Like all the double quartets, it has two distinct groups of four players, each playing as a unit. The terminology is tricky. When I say “quartet 1” or “quartet 2” here, I’m referring to a subgroup of four players. The work is the “nth double quartet.” For individual violin players I’ll use colon-based notation (group:part). For example, the first violin of the second quartet is “violin 2:1.”
As in the first double quartet, quartet 1 gets the most interesting parts, but the imbalance isn’t as great this time. Violin 1:1 still has the most exciting part; Spohr played this part himself in most of the early performances. He may simply have been a better player than the others he could recruit. George Jellinek’s notes to the Heifetz recording of the first double quartet notes that “wealthy amateurs” often participated in the performances.
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Louis Spohr wrote four chamber works in a little-used form, the double string quartet. It’s not the same as a string octet; rather, it presents two quartets playing antiphonally and occasionally together. In performance, they’re seated on opposite sides of the stage. This kind of piece is best appreciated by attending a live performance near the stage or using headphones.
His first double quartet, Opus 65, written in 1823, makes good use of the opportunity for back-and-forth music. Performances are likely to involve two existing quartets getting together, in which case the second quartet would feel cheated; most of the good lines go to quartet 1. More specifically, violin 1:1 (the first violin of quartet 1) dominates the music; in early performances, it would have been Spohr himself. His later works in the form treat the two groups more equally.
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In this post I’m looking at a single song by Spohr, “Das heimliche Lied” (the secret song). It’s part of a set of “Six German Songs,” Opus 103, where the singer is accompanied by a piano and a clarinet. The combination is unusual, but the clarinet is one of my favorite instruments, and he uses it effectively. The Spohr Society has a discussion of the Six German Songs, with information on the people who wrote the texts. Ernst Koch, the author of “Das heimliche Lied” and a contemporary of Spohr, is obscure today but not forgotten.
Right at the start, there’s a question about the song’s title. Most of the sources I’ve found give “Das heimliche Lied,” but the Spohr Society article gives it as “Das heimliche Leid” (the secret suffering). The latter is a more literal description of the poem’s contents, but “secret song” has a poetic feeling that fits. Neither word occurs in the text. It turns out that Koch’s title for the poem was actually “Relique eines Verschollenen” (relic of a missing person), but nobody uses that title for Spohr’s setting. The poem is about emotions that aren’t expressed or perceived, so we don’t know what they are, making the text broadly applicable. We all have feelings we hide from others.
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