FANNY MENDELSSOHN. OMIGOD.

This is a page from the wedding march Fanny Mendelssohn wrote for her own wedding when Felix was unable to attend/get his own there on time. Learning the notes themselves has not been particularly difficult: it's the texture that's really getting to me though. Fanny was trained as a pianist and never actually learned how to play organ. She might have known some of the technical things about it (a few stops, perhaps?) but the way she wrote doesn't show an intimate knowledge of how the instrument works.

I chose this particular page because it has octaves in the left hand and a ton of block chords - typical of piano texture, but very rare in organ texture (particularly German of any era).

I've also chosen this page for "scholarly" reasons. You'll notice that in the second bar in the top system on the fourth beat I have written a giant flat sign in parentheses. There is an A in the alto that I just feel should be an A flat - but it's not notated that way in the score.

Had this been a score by Felix Mendelssohn or Johannes Brahms or Robert Schumann or any other prominent male composer, there would probably be alternate editions and published scholarly opinion on the matter. This is not the case, however, and I am unsure whether to make that decision myself or to just play what's written on the page and not question it. The publisher is this lady out of Pullman, WA whose company publishes music composed by women exclusively.

Obviously, I'll speak more on this during my presentation...but until then, I found this sort of strange and interesting.

Speaking of British women...

One of my favorite actresses of all time is Patricia Routledge. It's probably sort of strange for me to say that because the only things I've actually seen her in are the early 90s British sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances" and a later mystery series called "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates". Routledge plays two very different characters in these - the contrast is amazing! She hasn't been in many movies (though she was in this short awkward one about Hildegard von Bingen), and appears onstage in Shakespeare plays mostly these days (or maybe she's retired - 82 is sort of old...)

In addition to being a fabulous actress, Routledge is also a classically trained singer. She appeared on Broadway and the West End in London in the 1960s (notably in Leonard Bernstein's flop "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" and "The Sound of Music" in those respective venues).

I always thought the fact that she's actually a very good singer pretty amusing, because my first impression of her "singing" was in "Keeping Up Appearances" - a show in which she plays a conceited upper middle class housewife who wishes she was richer than she and her husband really are. In addition to just being downright irritating to the people around her, she is convinced that she is a talented musician and oftentimes offers to perform at her church or for her neighbor's brother (who is the "Head of the Ameture Operatic Society"). As a result, people literally run away and the neighbor hides when he thinks she's around. There are a few instances in which the audience actually hears the "singing" - awful.

One day some years ago, I was watching an episode of "Hetty Wainthropp Investigates" (a show about a housewife detective etc.) in which Routledge's character pretends to sing in a church choir in order to gather information. During one of the rehearsals (probably explicitly to exploit her singing ability) she is shown singing a solo, and it is really her singing voice. I had some sort of personal crisis when I saw it, being used to some sort of infernal screeching.

I find it a little curious too that Routledge has never married or had children. I don't think she's ever come under fire for it, either (which is quite nice, really!). She is truly an actress of a different generation, so I'm not even sure whether she's been in some sort of serious relationship or not or whatever, and I'm also pretty certain there's no way to find out - and that's totally fine.

Japan.

In lieu of Japan being in the news this week 'cause of that earthquake, I thought I'd talk about my favorite genre of music to come out of it: enka. Enka started out in the 19th century as sort of a cross of east and west - it's stayed largely that, though after World War II there was another shift in it with the American occupation and jazz became a huge influence in the 1950s. As a result, enka is very popular with the generation who grew up with it then - that's right: old people.

There are both male and female enka singers who are considered stars in that universe - one in particular of whom I am thinking is Hibari Misora. This lady was born in the late '30s, and made her debut when she was twelve. She had more of a jazz career in the '50s and '60s, (which too became very popular in post-war Japan) but starting in the '60s and going into the '70s she turned more to enka. She continued appearing on TV and doing some shows until she died in 1989.

In Japan, cross-dressing has always been somewhat common in the entertainment industry, starting with the all-male casts of both noh and kabuki plays hundreds of years ago. Once women began to take the stage prominently (mostly in the 20th century, though women sometimes did appear in kabuki - I don't think in noh too much, though) the same applied; though it is curious that the cross-dressing was usually only in kimono rather than western clothes (basically, men wear dark, subdued colors at any age; girls and young women typically wear brighter colors. Once a women is married, however, her kimono gradually gets more...uhh, boring?...as with the knot in the obi) - and might sing from a man's point of view.

Another woman in this world is Sachiko Kobayashi - her work is definitely best-known in Japan (as with most of these stars, of course), most notably her work for Pokemon. She has sung for the popular songs in the original Japanese shows and the first movie (all of which the American companies dubbed over or replaced completely).

One last note: although in Japanese culture women are expected to speak very high (the higher, the more polite/feminine), female enka singers typically sing VERY low and in their chest. Not sure why - maybe they're trying to imitate the men? Perhaps too to manipulate their vibrato more - I don't know much about how to do that, but I do know that one particular characteristic of enka is a VERY wide vibrato - purposefully.

Fanny Mendelssohn

You know, I'd always sort of figured Fanny Mendelssohn must have been something to have been remembered in "classical" music history, a largely male-dominated world. I'm doing my final project on her, so I also figured I would be able to find more on her than I'd ever imagined.

GET THIS: I found this book in the school library, The Reception of Bach's Organ Works from Mendelssohn to Brahms - looked pretty cool, so I checked it out for fun. Since it is wholly impossible to write seriously about Felix without at least mention of Fanny or two, it didn't shock me to find her mentioned a few times.

It DID, however, shock me to find out that she had memorized the entire (probably first book, it doesn't specify) Well-Tempered Clavichord by Bach and played it for her dad at the age of thirteen. I mean, I knew she was amazing and all...but wow. Wow. What's more, it would appear that during the 1820s she kept track of what Bach (mostly organ) scores the Mendelssohn family owned (they were rich, after all). I also didn't realize that Felix and Fanny's mother and aunt both studied with Kirnberger, one of Bach's pupils.

I've found myself a book for my bibliography!...

This book also mentions that while Fanny never took organ lessons (I'll have to cross check, but it wouldn't really surprise me), she would often to with Felix to his and probably picked it up that way. Apparently when Felix was playing in London, there were two women that I think he did end up meeting who were "prominent church organists there" - blast if I can remember their names off the top of my head! - another thing I found strange, as so many people took Paul's words that "women should keep their silence in the Church" seriously for so long.

Another one?!

At least the first part of this post is not quite directly about "women in music" - but that's okay.

While I was looking through Carmina Burana (which Symphonic Choir is singing presently), I found that the second section (In Taberna - "in the tavern) features tenor and baritone solos and only the tenors and basses of the chorus. While this arrangement didn't particularly surprise me, I was both mildly offended and confused: I spend as much time in a tavern/bar/pub as much as the next person (but I suppose I'm not your ordinary female, either). I don't know whether Orff just assumed that it would fit the text more not to use higher voices or what, but it was just...well, sort of strange.

In other (more women in music-related) news, the past two Symphonic rehearsals have been graduate choral conducting auditions. There was a pretty equal balance of men and women auditioning (seven and six respectively). Every candidate had strengths and weaknesses (as would be expected), and I'm certain each one was pretty nervous (auditioning by conducting 200 people simply can't NOT be scary). On the whole, the women tended to talk about and conduct in such a way that suggested we literally embrace the music. The men tended to request that we be more aggressive with what we were singing; one suggested we sing a passage "like Russians, as though [we had] just drunk a fifth of vodka."

This seems to come out between the conducting styles of the two directors of symphonic: in my experience, Dr. Miller has done all in his power to have us learn notes with no leniency towards slacking therein; when we do know our notes, he hammers them out to make we know them. While Dr. Quist doesn't exactly let people not know notes, she tends to help the sections go over passages where people may not have looked on their own time in order to get the notes. Both of them focus pretty equally on ideas, but the way they express them are very different. Dr. Miller is far more interactive (though this could be because it's Dr. Quist's first year at Westminster and she's not quite sure how to interact with us yet) physically: he will grab a soprano from the front row to demonstrate an idea, while Dr. Quist will often stick with an analogy and sometimes a story.

It is also worth mentioning that last year in the search for a new director for Chapel (freshman) Choir (for which Dr. Quist was hired), only female candidates were looked at apparently because of a "motherly" quality that was desired. Interestingly enough, Schola (sophomore choir) was the audition choir for these candidates, and we chose Dr. Quist largely because she was the most aggressive and her rehearsals were very efficient. Huh.

Der Rosenkavalier

So Richard Strauss was married to a soprano. I'm sure neither where or what she sang, nor whether whatever she may have had of a career continued after she married. I do know, however, that a good portion of his songs (many of which are for soprano to begin with) were for her.

I wouldn't necessarily call Strauss a "feminist" - I'm really not sure - but his opera, "Der Rosenkavalier" has some interesting points in it to that flavor (though Hugo von Hofmannsthal was the librettist). I first came across the music some years ago while playing in a summer orchestra program (during which the orchestra prepared one or two major works and performed it at the end of the week); Strauss took the major themes from the opera and condensed it into an orchestral suite shortly before he died. The conductor that week had assigned each of the sections to research a certain aspect of the work (the section who completed that the most quickly and accurately was dismissed for lunch first on Friday - I don't remember). The bass section was assigned the synopsis. I (being both the youngest and most excited out of the seven bassists) went to the library immediately and took notes. Golden stars for that week, for sure.

The basic story (in a very short and Cara-fied version) is that two kids fall in love but the girl is engaged to this old fat man who really does not treat her very well. Sophie (the young girl) and Octavian (the young boy, sung by a mezzo, something Strauss deliberately chose for the two reasons that the character is so young and so that some "fat old tenor" would never end up playing the role) devise a plan to get her out of the marriage. This is made interesting by the fact that Octavian and the Marschelin ("Princess" in the English versions) have been having an affair and Octavian is ultimately forced to choose between the two.

Okay, I know those paragraphs haven't really at all been about "women in music." But here's my thing about this opera: a third of the way into second act, Sophie realizes she doesn't want to marry the fat old guy, having not only fallen in love with Octavian, but quite literally having been "looked at like a horse" by the fat old guy. What's more, directly preceding this realization, she is shown to be quite the firecracker while making small talk with Octavian, venturing into topics which earn her many a nasty glare from her (for lack of a better term) nanny.

After Sophie's realization that she'd rather not enter this marriage, she asks Octavian for help - pretty typical of an opera, right? Girl is betrothed so some guy. Girl asks local hero to save her. This is where your typical opera with this sort of story ends: Octavian agrees to help her on the condition that she stand up for herself first (reasoning that there is nothing he can do until she makes it known that she is not happy with the arrangement).

Maybe it's not such a big thing, I don't know. Every time I come across that particular scene I am shocked; Octavian sings, "for you and me you must defend yourself and remain what you are." For the last three words ("was Sie ist"), Strauss first introduces Octavian's horn call, and he sings those words for the last part of the phrase. He is encouraging her to stand up for herself rather than be "the man" and do it for her. It's also in the following duet between the two when they switch from the formal to familiar forms of 18th century Viennese German (which also means that Sophie begins to address Octavian directly rather than saying things like, "Would it please him to sit down?").

...on the other hand, when I first saw this opera, the old man next to me said that he'd paid to see an opera, not some "lesbian sex scene". Eh.

Wow, posting on time! (Bach-related)...

So I brought up in class yesterday a little about Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena. I thought I'd elaborate on her a bit.

Anna Magdalena's family was one of musicians; her father was a trumpeter at the court of Weissenfels, a town not too far from Köthen, where Bach was living when his first wife (Maria Barbara, who was a removed cousin of his) died. Her maternal grandfather was an organist in another relatively nearby German town (the name of which escapes me at the moment). Magdalena and her older sisters were all trained as singers; she and the second eldest sister were trained (perhaps by a woman by the name of Pauline Kellner - a WOMAN?! WOW) as singers. Magdalena was known to have been employed in this capacity at Zerbst, a neighboring court ot Weissenfels. By the time she was hired by Bach at Köthen in 1721 (not quite a year after Maria Barbara had died) Magdalena was the only unwed sister left in her family - and when she did marry Bach at the end of 1721, she was the only one not married to a trumpeter.

The prince Bach worked for was a particularly rich one; Prince Leopold was the ruler over a small but very wealthy area, and a generous one at that: while Leopold was a Calvinist, he allowed his employees to worship however they liked (allowing Bach to continue in his Lutheran tradition). Magdalena too was a Lutheran, making their marriage fairly simple; she presumably would have had to convert had she not been - but maybe not. At any rate, when hired, she was in a pay grade higher than both her elder brother (yet another trumpeter) and father (though they both worked for dukes rather than princes). After they married, Magdalena continued singing in her position professionally (rather than retiring to domestic life). She did so until their move to Leipzig in 1723.

It is also worth mentioning that Bach employed a few other female singers while in Köthen, though if I remember correctly they were...well, only singers. All the other instrumentalists were men. But hey, it's a start, right?

On THAT token, I also wanted to mention that Bach was friends with Johann Adolfe Hasse and his wife Faustina, that opera singer in chapter 5 of the Pendle book. Bach would make fairly frequent trips to Dresden while he lived in Leipzig for various reasons; there are accounts of him giving organ recitals there, but it would appear that he would go to see opera. It is likely, therefore, that he saw Faustina perform (and as a small side note, since Staatskapelle Dresden has definitely played for the big opera company there for like 500 years, he heard them as well - what fun, since we just performed with them a few months ago!).