''The Classical Style: An Opera (of Sorts)'' is an American
comic opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue.
Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a ne ...
in seven scenes, with music by
Steven Stucky and libretto by
Jeremy Denk
Jeremy Denk (born May 16, 1970 in Durham, North Carolina) is an American classical pianist.
Early life
Denk did not come from a musical family. After several years in New Jersey, his family settled in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he grew up. He ...
. The opera was a joint commission from the
Aspen Music Festival,
Carnegie Hall, the
Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival is an annual classical music festival in the United States. Held in Ojai, California (75 miles northwest of Los Angeles), for four days every June, the festival presents music, symposia, and educational programs emphasizi ...
, and Ojai North!, and was premiered under the conductor
Robert Spano
Robert Spano ( ; born 7 May 1961, Conneaut, Ohio) is an American conductorDavidson, Justin. "CLASSICAL MUSIC: Looking for Magic: Mixing visuals and language into a performance is just part of conductor Robert Spano's pursuit of orchestral risk" ...
on June 13, 2014 at the Ojai Music Festival in
Ojai, California. The opera is inspired by the
musicologist
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some m ...
and pianist
Charles Rosen
Charles Welles Rosen (May 5, 1927December 9, 2012) was an American pianist and writer on music. He is remembered for his career as a concert pianist, for his recordings, and for his many writings, notable among them the book ''The Classical Sty ...
's 1971 book ''
The Classical Style
''The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven'' is a book by the American pianist and author Charles Rosen. The book analyses the evolution of style during the Classical period of classical music as it was developed through the works of Joseph ...
'' and thus follows composers
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition r ...
,
Joseph Haydn, and
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...
as they descend from heaven into a modern-day classical music climate.
''The Classical Style'' was Stucky's last large-scale composition before his death in 2016.
Background
Denk was a longtime friend of the pianist and author
Charles Rosen
Charles Welles Rosen (May 5, 1927December 9, 2012) was an American pianist and writer on music. He is remembered for his career as a concert pianist, for his recordings, and for his many writings, notable among them the book ''The Classical Sty ...
, and had discussed the idea of adapting a comic opera from Rosen's celebrated book ''
The Classical Style
''The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven'' is a book by the American pianist and author Charles Rosen. The book analyses the evolution of style during the Classical period of classical music as it was developed through the works of Joseph ...
''. Rosen died in December 2012 before the opera's completion, but had nevertheless given his blessing in time for Denk to proceed with the work.
On the inspiration to write a comic opera, Denk remarked:
Roles
Synopsis
The opera opens in heaven on the bickering
Classical period composers Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Observing present-day Earth, they are dismayed at the seeming decline of classical music and their growing irrelevance. After pulling Rosen's ''The Classical Style'' from a bookshelf at random, the three composers decide to descend to Earth to visit the author.
The trio crashes a symposium on
sonata form
Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...
in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
where Rosen is to be speaking. There, a sniveling PhD candidate from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
named Henry Snibblesworth breaks the
fourth wall
The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...
of an opera within the opera as he stumbles into a performance of Mozart's ''
Don Giovanni''. Snibblesworth's protracted analysis of the music eventually causes
Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni ( Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, ''El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' ...
to lose his lust for Donna Anna and question what to do with his life, leading Snibblesworth to offer Don work (with limited benefits) at Berkeley.
Another
subplot
In fiction, a subplot is a secondary strand of the plot that is a supporting side story for any story or for the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or thematic significance. Subplots often involve supporting c ...
leads Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven to a bar, where they meet the
anthropomorphized
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
chords
Dominant,
Tonic,
Subdominant, and
Tristan Chord
The Tristan chord is a chord made up of the notes F, B, D, and G:
:
More generally, it can be any chord that consists of these same intervals: augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and augmented ninth above a bass note. It is so named as it is ...
.
The three composers finally meet the eloquent and inquisitive Rosen at his Manhattan apartment. Rather than encourage them of their stature in the face of fleeting relevance, Rosen kindly admonishes the composers, holding that all things must change and that no one can be relevant forever. They accept his response and return to heaven—disappointed, but understanding.
The opera ends with Rosen being visited by the composer Robert Schumann (also descended from heaven), who himself signaled a shift from the Classical era to the
Romantic era
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
of classical music.
Instrumentation
The work is scored for an orchestra consisting of two
flutes
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
(doubling
piccolos), two
oboe
The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range.
...
s, two
clarinets, two
bassoons, two
horns Horns or The Horns may refer to:
* Plural of Horn (instrument), a group of musical instruments all with a horn-shaped bells
* The Horns (Colorado), a summit on Cheyenne Mountain
* ''Horns'' (novel), a dark fantasy novel written in 2010 by Joe Hill ...
, two
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
s,
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
,
timpani
Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...
,
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...
,
harpsichord (doubling
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
and
celesta), and
strings
String or strings may refer to:
*String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...
.
Reception
Reviewing the world premiere, Joshua Kosman of the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The ...
'' lauded ''The Classical Style'' as an "exuberantly witty and often touching one-act opera" and wrote, "There has been plenty of musicology written about opera, the brilliant pianist and writer Jeremy Denk points out, but never an opera about musicology. Now he and composer Steven Stucky have rectified that oversight in glorious fashion." Mark Swed of the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' similarly called it an "illuminating, academic, occasionally combative, close study of the musical style of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven by a brilliant pianist and scholar who died in 2012." Richard Scheinin of the ''
San Jose Mercury News
''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidia ...
'' declared it a "winning little opera" and further described it as "gorgeous to hear, and filled with laughs."
Reviewing the
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
premiere,
Anthony Tommasini
Anthony Carl Tommasini (born April 14, 1948) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' wrote, "It’s hard to say what the future holds for ''The Classical Style''. But even those who lack understanding of the rudiments of harmony would surely enjoy it, while also learning something in the most entertaining way." Simon Williams of ''
Opera News'' also praised the work, saying:
Scott Timberg of ''Arts Journal'' was more critical, however, admonishing the work for possessing "an oddly anti-intellectual batch of bad puns and inside jokes" and called it "a missed opportunity."
In July 2015 the Aspen Music Festival gave the first-ever complete staging of ''The Classical Style'' as part of a double bill with ''The Cows of Apollo'' by Christopher Theofanidis and William Hoffman.
References
External links
Aspen Music Festival and School 2015 programme
{{DEFAULTSORT:Classical Style, The
Operas by Steven Stucky
2014 operas
Opera buffa
Operas based on literature
One-act operas
Operas