Георг Фридрих Гендель
Великий немецкий композитор Георг Фридрих Гендель, проживший 50 лет в Англии, где также по праву считается национальным композитором, родился 23 февраля 1685 года в Галле. С раннего детства он обнаружил большую склонность к музыке, но отец, цирюльник-хирург, желал сделать из своего сына юриста. Тетка подарила маленькому Георгу клавикорд, который был поставлен на чердаке, единственном месте, где ребенок мог играть, не рискуя быть услышанным отцом, запрещавшим ему занятия музыкой.
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Пользуясь частым отсутствием отца, Георг много играл на клавесине, а в последствии и на органе. Однажды его игру на органе услышал князь и посоветовал отцу Генделя не препятствовать более склонности сына к музыке. К десяти годам он уже настолько подвинулся в игре на органе и изучении контрапункта, что написал вполне самостоятельно |
Георг Фридрих Гендель |
шесть сонат для двух гобоев и баса. Все это время Гендель продолжал заниматься научными предметами и лишь в 1697 году, в год смерти отца, вполне отдался музыке. Он уехал в Гамбург, где получил место скрипача в оркестре гамбургской оперы, аккомпанируя также на фортепиано и дирижируя иногда оркестром.
Собрав необходимую сумму денег, он в 1707 году отправился в Италию. Там Гендель сам начал выступать как композитор. Наибольший успех из написанных им здесь сочинений имела опера “Агрипинна”, давшая ему известность.
После четырехлетнего пребывания в Италии Гендель приехал в Англию. Написанная с поразительной быстротой – за две недели – опера “Ринальдо” (1711) была поставлена в Лондонском итальянском оперном театре и принесла композитору широкую известность. В течение многих лет он руководил основанным в 1719 году оперным театром (Королевской академией музыки).
Однако Гендель вошел в историю музыки прежде всего как создатель классического типа оратории. Богатые героическими, драматическими и лирическими эпизодами, идейно содержательные, исполненные величавой простоты и силы, жизнеутверждающие, эти оратории в большинстве выражают идеи патриотизма, чаяния народа, его борьбу за свободу. В 1740 году Гендель написал свою знаменитую ораторию “Мессия”, которая имела колоссальный успех. Во всех ораториях Генделя проведена одна и та же великая идея: спасение народной свободы героем нации. Эпико-драматический характер сюжетов генделевских ораторий отразился и в музыке, особенно в хоровых ансамблях.
Вследствие потери зрения композитор 1751 года не писал больше ничего, но продолжал дирижировать в концертах и играть партии органа в ораториях.
Последний концерт под управлением Генделя состоялся за восемь дней до его смерти. Он умер 14 апреля 1759 года в Лондоне и был похоронен в Вестминстерском аббатстве. Оратории его до сих пор очень популярны у англичан, но не меньшим успехом они пользуются и в других странах Европы, особенно в Германии. Его творческое наследие чрезвычайно велико и разнообразно: 40 опер, написанных в жанре итальянской оперы; много великолепных ораторий, оркестровых и органных концертов, фантазий и фуг, скрипичных сонат.
Supplementary reading
The Beatles
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The Beatles |
The impact of the Beatles – not only on rock and roll but on all of Western culture – is simply incalculable. As musicians, they proved that rock and roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures and sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some precedent on Beatles records. As a unit, they were a musically synergistic combination: |
Paul McCartney’s melodic bass lines, Ringo Starr’s slaphappy no-rolls drumming, George Harrison’s rockabilly-style guitar leads, John Lennon’s assertive rhythm guitar – and their four fervent voices.
One of the first rock groups to write most of their material, they inaugurated the era of self-contained bands, and forever centralized pop. And as personalities, they defined and incarnated the style of the sixties: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic. Their music, from the not-so-simple love songs they started with to their later perfectionistic studio extravaganzas, set new standards for both commercial and artistic success in pop. Although many of their sales and attendance records have since been surpassed, no group has so radically transformed the sound and meaning of rock and roll.
The Beatles became nationally famous in England in October 1962, when their first single record, Love Me Do, entered the Hit Parade at number 27. The famous four who recorded that song were, of course, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and drummer Ringo Starr. This was the original line-up of the band.
Three years before, when John Lennon was 19 and George Harrison approaching his seventeenth birthday, the group was offered its first “big job” – playing at the famous Star Club in Hamburg. In those days there were five Beatles: Pete Best on drums, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and the mysterious fifth Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe. The Beatles returned to England penniless and exhausted. Stuart Sutcliffe left the group and stayed in Germany, where he died a few months later. The Beatles began a series of lunchtime concerts at Liverpool’s Cavern Club. They were now playing better than ever.
The lunchtime concerts were a great success. The road outside the club was always crowded with girls who worked in nearby shops and offices. They came to see the Beatles during their lunch-break. Local shopkeepers often complained about the crowds and the noise. The man who ran the local record shop went to see what all the fuss was about. His name was Brian Epstein, the man who became the Beatles manager. The first thing that Epstein did was to sack Pete Best. There are many different stories about how this happened. Probably it was because there was a serious clash of personalities between Lennon and Best. Lennon said: “He goes, or I go.” In Best’s place came Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr), the drummer they met in Hamburg.
The job of producing the Beatles’ records went to George Martin, an extremely nice and remarkably old-fashioned man who worked at the EMI studios in Abbey Road, North London. George Martin became the brains behind the recording successes of the Beatles (.although John Lennon never agreed with that). Martin had some unusual and immensely successful ideas. He persuaded the group to have instruments on some of
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The Beatles |
their songs that they didn’t want to begin with: the cello on Yesterday, the violins of Eleanor Rigby, the oboe on You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away. During the sixties, it seemed that the Beatles were always in the news headlines. They made successful records and interesting films. Lennon |
caused anti-Beatle demonstrations in America by saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. Beatlemania was the word used to describe the reaction of fans all over the world. When Epstein died in 1967, things began to be wrong for the Beatles’ industry.
The relationship between Lennon and McCartney became very difficult; they disagreed about music, they disliked each other’s wives, and they disagreed about who should be the new manager of their affairs. Eventually, an American called Alien Klein bought a controlling interest in the group. This was the beginning of the end, as McCartney couldn’t stand Klein. During the seventies, the Beatles went off in their different directions. Lennon became a solo performer and then property speculator in New York, buying and selling expensive apartments.
McCartney formed a middle-of-the-road pop group called “Wings” with his wife, Linda. George Harrison was rarely seen, but spent time raising money for charity. Ringo Starr began a surprisingly successful career as a film star. John Lennon was murdered in New York in December 1980.
… In October 1982, 20 years after Love Me Do entered the British Hit Parade, a Beatles song was again in the Top Ten. The song was ... Love Me Do.
Music in Britain from 1920s to the Present Day
1920s – Young people listened to ragtime and jazz.
1930s – Swing became popular. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra were the ‘King of the Swing’, as were Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. The music was fast and frantically paced and led to dances being banned from dance halls, as the young women being flung into the air by their partners showed their stocking tops and underwear. Jazz continued to be popular.
1940s – The Second World War brought fast, frantic (and often American) dance music – boogie-woogie or jitterbug. Dances were held in church halls, village halls, clubs, Air Force bases – everywhere! But slower, romantic songs were also popular as loved ones went away to fight, such as Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and the song about coming home again, ‘The ‘White Cliffs of Dover’.
After the war ‘skiffle’ bands became popular. These bands used household items, such as washboards and tea chests, as part of their set of instruments! Tommy Steele, who later became very famous, first played in a skiffle band.
1950s – Rock and Roll became very popular.
1960s – The Beatles began their career. They leapt to fame in 1963 with ‘Please, Please Me'.
The Beatles moved through the late 1960s as favourites of the ‘flower power’ generation – many young people enjoyed ‘hippie’ music. Other teenagers preferred the music of the ‘Mods’ – ska music and The Who.
1970s – The first big new sound of the 1970s was “Glam Rock”, the main figures of this were David Bowie, Elton John and of course Gary Glitter. In the bleak political backdrop, these larger that life British bands and characters brought a welcome relief with their platform boots, sequins, nail varnish and colourful hair.
The punk movement of the late 1970s began in England. Great British bands of this scene were The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The Punk style was Mohicans, bondage clothes, safety pins, piercings and bovver boots.
1980s – The 1980s saw the rise of hip hop and rap music, with American influences powerful once again in the form of such groups as Run DMC and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It also saw the rise and fall of the ‘New Romantics’, typified by groups like Adam and the Ants, who dressed as pirates and highway men and wore huge amounts of makeup.
1990s – Britpop This was the general name given in the 1990s to a new wave of successful British bands who made a big impact in the United States and Europe, as well as in England. The most successful have been Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Massive Attack and The Spice Girls.
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was one of the foremost English composers of the XX century.
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Sir Michael Tippett |
Tippett was born in London of English and Cornish stock. His mother was a charity worker and a suffragette, and he was a cousin of suffragette leader Charlotte Despard. Although he enjoyed his childhood, after losing their hotel business in southern France, his parents decided to travel through and live on the Continent, and Michael and his brother attended boarding schools in England. |
At that time, Tippett won a scholarship and studied at Fettes College, Edinburgh, but he soon moved to Stamford School after some extremely unhappy personal experience. This, combined with his discovering his homosexuality, contributed to making Tippett’s teenage years lonely and rather stressful. Although he was open about his sexual orientation, it seems that he started to feel emotional strain from a rather early age, and this later became a major motivation to his composition. Before his time at Stamford, Tippett hardly had any contact with music at all, let alone formal musical training. He recalled that it was in Stamford, where he had piano lessons and saw Malcolm Sargent conducting, that he decided to become a composer, although he did not know what it meant or how to start.
He registered as a student in the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with Charles Wood and C. H. Kitson, and the former’s teaching on counterpoint had profound influence on Tippett’s future compositional style; many of his works, despite the complicated sonority, are essentially contrapuntal. At the RCM, Tippett also studied conducting with Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent. In the 1920s, living simply in Surrey, he plunged himself into musical life, conducting amateur choirs and local operas. Later, he taught at Morley College.
Tippett was regarded by many as an outsider in British music, a view that may have been related to his conscientious objector status during World War II. His pacifist beliefs led to a prison sentence during the war: in 1943, at the height of the war, he was summoned to appear before a British government tribunal to justify his conscientious objector status. Instead of receiving an absolute exemption, he was ordered to do full-time farm work. However, Tippett refused to comply with this ruling and was subsequently imprisoned for three months at HMP Wormwood Scrubs.
For many years his music was considered ungratefully written for voices and instruments, and therefore difficult to perform. An intense intellectual, he maintained a much wider knowledge and interest in the literature and philosophy of other countries (Africa, Europe) than was common among British musicians. His (sometimes quirky) libretti for his operas and other works reflect his passionate interest in the dilemmas of human society and the enduring strength of the human spirit.
Tippett was never a prolific composer, and his works, completed slowly, comprised five string quartets, four concerti, four symphonies, five operas and a number of vocal and choral works. His music is typically seen as falling into four distinct periods. The first period (1935 – 1947) includes the first three quartets, the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, the oratorio A Child of Our Time (written to his own libretto at the encouragement of T.S. Eliot and first performed by Morley College Choir) and the First Symphony. This period is characterised by strenuous contrapuntal energy and deeply lyrical slow movements.
The second period, from then until the late 1950s, includes the opera The Midsummer Marriage, the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, the Piano Concerto, and the Second Symphony; this period features rich textures and effervescent melody.
The third period, the 1960s and ‘70s, is in stark contrast, and is characterised by abrupt statements and simplicity of texture, as in the opera King Priam, the Concerto for Orchestra and the Second Piano Sonata. The fourth period is a rich mixture of all these styles, using many devices, such as quotation (from Ludwig van Beethoven and Modest Mussorgsky, among others). The main works of this period were the Third Symphony, the operas The Ice Break and New Year, and the large-scale choral work The Mask of Time.
Unlike his contemporaries William Walton and Benjamin Britten, Tippett was a late developer as a composer and was severely critical of his early compositions. At the age of 30, he studied counterpoint and fugue with R.O. Morris. His first mature compositions show a fascination with these aspects.
Tippett was knighted in 1966, and awarded the Order of Merit in 1983. He remained very active composing and conducting. His opera, New Year, received its premiere in 1989. Then came Byzantium, a piece for soprano and orchestra premiered in 1991. His autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues also appeared in 1991. A string quartet followed in 1992. In 1995 his ninetieth birthday was celebrated with special events in Britain, Canada and the US, including the premiere of his final work, The Rose Lake.
In 1996, Tippett moved from Wiltshire to London. In 1997, in Stockholm for a retrospective of his concert music, he developed pneumonia. He was brought home to England, where he died early in 1998.
items of self-study work
Early music of the British Isles.
Historical and cultural background of Victorian Age.
Folk music traditions and festivals in Great Britain.
Celtic music and dance.
Irish dance. King of the Dance.
The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and Its Music.
Music in the theatre.
Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance.
English Opera: history and present day.
The British musical renaissance 1860 – 1918.
Musical education in Great Britain today.
Royal Philharmonic Society.
Life and creative activity of Benjamin Britten.
Edward Elgar – the musician of great invention.
Britain as a “cradle” of the world’s rock music.
Maestro A.L. Webber.
Rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar: History of performance.
Contemporary musical life in England.
UNIT 2. Painting
Main reading activities
Read Text 1, point out and explain new words and expressions. Answer the questions given below. Give a summary of the text.
text 1. British Art: early modern period
The very idea of British art is intriguing, given the constant flow of outside influences on the arts of the British Isles. A narrative approach to art in Britain often considers it in terms of the nation’s history, but this is reductive and neglects the regional and national traditions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
It is usual to regard English painting as beginning with the Tudor period and for this are several reasons. Yet the fact remains that painting was practiced in England for many hundred years before the first Tudors came to the throne.
The development of the linear design in which English artists have always excelled can be traced back to the earliest illuminations brilliantly evolved in Irish monastic centres and brought to Northumbria in the VII century. Its principal feature is that wonderful elaboration of interlaced ornament derived from the patterns of metal-work in the Celtic Iron Age.
The XIII century had been the century of the great cathedrals, in which nearly all branches of art had their share. Work on these immense enterprises continued into the XIV century and even beyond, but they were no longer the main focus of art. The world had changed a great deal during that period. In the middle of the XII century Europe was still a thinly populated continent of peasants with monasteries and baron’s castles as the main centres of power and learning.
The Church had been the most significant, if not sole, patron of the arts. Vestments, stained glass, candlesticks, prayer-books, altarpieces, wall-paintings, fonts and churches depended on the patronage of the Church or on local benefactors, anxious to commemorate certain events, preserve their memory for posterity and reserve their place in the afterlife.
Portraiture has been the dominant art form in Britain for centuries and much of it has also played a part in propaganda. Portraits were valued in inventories, not for their artistic merit or human likeness, but in terms of their sheer size and the expense of materials used.
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Holbein came to England imbued with Italian and European influences, and his early paintings for the English court have a monumentality and solidity to them that had not been seen in British portraiture prior to his arrival. He brought with him a much more highly developed pictorial tradition with a much fuller sense of plastic relief. Holbein It is a measure of Hans Holbein’s success that he maintained his position principally as a painter at the court of Henry VIII. |
H. Holbein. Self-Portrait. Colored drawing on paper. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. |
Holbein was a supreme master of linear design; he could draw patterns for embroidery and jewellery as no one else, but he never entirely sacrificed the plastic feeling for form to that, and in his early work he modelled in full light and shade. Still, it was not difficult for him to adapt himself somewhat to the English fondness for flat linear pattern. Particularly in his royal portraits, e. g. the portrait of Henry VIII, we find an insistence on the details of the embroidered patterns of the clothes and the jewellery, which is out of key with the careful modelling of hands and face.
In the Elizabethan, as in succeeding periods, portraiture was the only branch of art in Britain in which a painter could find a sure subsistence. The demand for miniatures, or limning, was a specialized section of this demand for portraiture. Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, grown up in the atmosphere of the goldsmith’s craft, understood perfectly the demands of their art.
The miniatures of Hilliard and Oliver bring all the excellencies that portraiture can hold into a portable compass-combining likeness of the feature and harmony of colouring with spirited handling and the ability to transmit the diverse characters of their sitters through the representation of their features.
The work of Hilliard was mainly confined to small-scale portraiture. None the less he was a complete artist. Hilliard specifically refers to his miniatures as “small pictures, which are to be view in hand”. He combined his unerring use of line with a jeweller’s exquisiteness in detail, an engraver’s elegance in calligraphy, and a unique realization of the individuality of each sitter. His miniatures are often freighted with enigmatic inscription and intrusive allegory (e.g. a hand reaching from a cloud); yet this literary burden usually manages to heighten the vividness with which the sitter’s face is impressed.
Hilliard’s active career was at least fifty-six years. A series of splendid works dated 1572 testify to his fully acquired certainty at the age of 25. From then almost to the close of the century he produced a dazzling series of exquisitely studied and characterized portraits, besides ringing innumerable changes on the Queen’s counterfeit.
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Elizabeth I, more than any monarch, knew the power of the regal image and kept right control over its dissemination, to the extent that she stipulated that no shadow should fall upon her face in Hilliard’s miniatures. Rarely could an image of the Queen be made public without her royal approval, whether an iconic image of her as ruler or as the Virgin Queen, clad in white and wedded only to her people, clasping symbols of chastity, such as the sieve, the phoenix and the rose. |
Elizabeth I of England with a crescent moon jewel in her hair 1595-1600
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From the Renaissance until the early XVII century the best painters working in England were imported, often from Flanders. These, besides Hans Holbein, included Van Dyck, Rubens, Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller.
In 1632 Van Dyck settled in London as chief court painter to King Charles I, who knighted him shortly after his arrival. Van Dyck painted most of the English aristocracy of the time, and his style became lighter and more luminous, with thinner paint and more sparkling highlights in gold and silver. At the same time, his portraits occasionally showed a certain hastiness or superficiality as he hurried to satisfy his flood of commissions. In 1635 van Dyck painted his masterpiece, Charles I in Hunting Dress, a standing figure emphasizing the haughty grace of the monarch.
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Charles I, King of England at the Hunt c. 1635 Oil on canvas, 266 x 207 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris |
In the Stuart portrait, Van Dyck evoked an effortless sense of royalty and aristocracy, innate in pose and gesture, and which did not need elaborate gold leaf, and pattern or heraldic symbols. Van Dyck eclipsed his foreign predecessors and the speed and delicacy with which he executed his work, his facility with oil and canvas and his eye, well informed by travel, revolutionized British portraiture. Figures became fully three-dimensional for the first time, placed in a real space with articulated movement, emphasized by the beauty of colour and play of light on exquisite fabrics. |
As for native English talent – the approach of the Civil war stripped away the polish and brought out a sterner strain of character no less in the aristocratic supporters of the royalist cause than in their democratic opponents. William Dobson marks a breakaway from Van Dyckian elegance. Born in London, Dobson comes suddenly into prominence in royalist Oxford after the Civil War had broken out. The rude strength Dobson gives to people he paints contrasts with the aristocratic air of Van Dyck’s figures.
The painting of Endymion Porter, the friend and agent of Charles I in the purchase of works of art, is generally accounted Dobson’s masterpiece. The most striking aspect of the work is its realism. Though Endymion Porter is portrayed as a sportsman who has just shot a hare, there is a stern look about his features which seems to convey that this is wartime.
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The corresponding painter to Dobson on the Parliamentary side, however, Robert Walker, was a much less original artist and still closely imitated Van Dyck’s graceful style. Robert Walker was a painter well known for doing portraits of English politicians, for austere and candid portraits with a “soft” style. A number of other portrait painters are of interest by reason of their subjects. John Greenhill is of some note |
Endymion Porter c. 1643 Oil on canvas, 59 x 50 cm Tate Gallery, London |
as one of the first artists to depict English actors in costume. Besides these private works he made portraits of such important figures as Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury and the philosopher John Locke. John Riley was an artist whose work is distinguished by a grave reticence. Riley maintained a prolific and successful practice as a portrait painter over the next decade against keen foreign competition. His best portraits were not done in the court, they depicted sitters from the lower classes. He was described by Horace Walpole as “one of the best native painters who have flourished in England”.
(from “A Concise History of English Painting”)
Answer the following questions. Look for extra information in the Appendix if necessary.
What historical period is traditionally regarded as the beginning of the English school of painting?
How did the development of linear design in earliest centuries influence the English school of painting? What were its principal features at that time
Why is the Church considered to be the most significant patron of the arts in the late medieval period (XII –XIII c.)?
How did the demand for miniatures influence the production of the new works of art?
What artists are believed to originate the English school of portrait miniature? What artistic features did Hilliard and Oliver manage to combine in their works?
Why was miniature so popular at the Elizabethan Court?
What features distinguished Holbein’s art and in what way did they change during his stay in England?
Why is Van Dyck believed to revolutionize English portraiture? What characteristics are his portraits of aristocracy marked by?
Give some examples of the English preference for flat linear pattern.
Who carried on the Continental standards of design in England in the XVII century?
Name the most important native English artists of the XVII century and characterize their style.
Read Text 2, point out words and expressions connected with painting and painters. Give a summary of the text.