Georg Benda, 2023

This Week in Classical Music: June 26, 2023.  Jiří Benda and.  Jiří Antonin Benda, who is healthier identified by his Germanized identify, Georg Anton Benda, got here from an illustrious household of Bohemian musicians.  His father, his mom’s household and 4 of his siblings had been musicians.  Jiří was born in Staré Benátky (now Benátky nad Jizerou), a village about 25 miles from Prague on June 30^th of 1722.  His older brother Franz (František) grew to become a well-known violinist and located employment with the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick who later grew to become the King of Prussia Frederick II, referred to as the Nice.  In 1743 Franz helped his household transfer to Prussia the place Jiříjoined his brother, the Kapellmeister, within the court docket orchestra.  In 1750 Georg, as was by then his identify, grew to become Kapellmeister on the court docket of Duke Friedrich III of Saxe-Gotha.  There he began composing cantatas and Italian operas.  After a number of years on the court docket, the Duke allowed Benda to go to Italy and even offered him with the cash for the journey.  In Venice Benda met the well-known opera composer Johann Adolph Hasse.  He additionally visited Bologna, Florence and Rome, the place he was launched to the trendy operas of Gluck, Galuppi and others.  Upon coming back from Italy in 1767, Benda composed a number of intermezzi (quick comedian operas) and certainly one of an everyday size.  An necessary occasion occurred in 1774: a well-known theatrical troupe arrived in Gotha, and Abel Seyler, the director, commissioned Brenda a “melodrama,” a staged dramatic work considerably just like opera however with the textual content being spoken somewhat than sung.  His first melodrama, Ariadne auf Naxos, was very profitable.  The second melodrama, Medea, adopted shortly after.  Benda then composed a number of operas, Romeo und Julie amongst them.  He left Gotha in 1778 to reside in Hamburg and Vienna, however after failing to obtain necessary court docket appointments, he returned to Gotha a yr later.  He retired quickly after and lived on a small pension within the village of Köstritz close by however traveled from time to time, even going to Paris to stage Ariadne on the theater Comédie-Italienne.  Benda died in Köstritz on November 6^th of 1795.

So far as we will inform, Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea are the perfect items of music Benda has written.  Mozart loved Benda’s melodramas and in a letter to his father referred to as them “very glorious,” including “I like these two works of his a lot that I carry them about with me.”  The issue with them as a style is that it doesn’t actually work.  Melodramas encompass quick bursts of music, often not than a minute, typically of very prime quality, interspersed with spoken textual content.  The textual content breaks down the music’s improvement ark, and the textual content begs for a melody.  No marvel it didn’t take lengthy foropera to fully changed the melodrama.   Nonetheless, we predict it’s very a lot price a attempt.  Hear’s Ariadne auf Naxos.  A number of the music is kind of Mozartean – no marvel Wolfgang favored it.  The Prague Chamber Orchestra is performed by Christian Benda, the composer’s descendant.  Ariadne is about 40 minutes lengthy; if you’d like a shorter pattern, even when the music is just not on the identical degree, right here’s a scene from Romeo und Julie.  Michael Schneider leads La Stagione Frankfurt and the soloists in a four-minute excerpt from Act III of the opera.

Additionally, June 26^th is the birthday of certainly one of our favourite conductors, Claudio Abbado.  He was born 90 years in the past in Milan.