It is said that Mozart promised to compose a mass when he would bring Constanze Weber as his wife to Salzburg. The marriage took place in 1782 without the blessing of his father, and in a letter to his father the following year, Mozart expressed regret of the delay in his planned visit with Constanze […]
Since the formation of the Friends of Learners Orchestra in 2007 (now called The Learners Orchestra) we have been blessed to have a group of caring and benevolent orchestral musicians partner with us at concerts both great and small; but what if the composer, by arranging an orchestral work for unaccompanied chorus, requires that the […]
Coughing at concerts is often considered as a distracting annoyance, but what if the noise originated from the composer himself? John Tavener’s “The Lamb” was written in 1982 as a dedication to his nephew for his 3rd birthday. However, when the carol was performed in the same year at the Festival of Nine Lessons and […]
Many of you would certainly be aware that our concert in July features two Stabat Maters – one of Verdi from his Quattro pezzi sacri, and one of Rossini. Here’s a sneak peek of how our two Italian opera masters accentuate the grief of Mother Mary in their respective settings of the Catholic hymn, on […]
Those who are familiar with Rossini operas would no doubt recognize that dotted rhythms, dramatic leggiero/coloratura lines, fast tempos, cadenzas and appoggiaturas, to name a few, are features commonly found in his works. Can you identify any of the above features in Rossini’s “Cujus animam gementem”, an aria for tenor solo from his Stabat Mater […]
A scala cromatica (chromatic scale) can sometimes be a nightmare to practise – and we say so as singers ourselves – but wait till you meet the Scala Enigmatica! The scala enigmatica, as its name already suggests, is an unusual musical scale featuring both major, minor and augmented seconds. Invented by Adolfo Crescentini, a professor […]
Rossini was quoted to have once confessed:- “I have only wept three times in my life: the first time when my earliest opera failed, the second time when, with a boating party, a truffled turkey fell into the water, and the third time when I first heard Paganini play.” His gleeful personality might have molded […]
Do you know that Verdi, as the man behind “Quattro pezzi sacri” (“Four Sacred Pieces”), was in fact not a religious believer himself? He was described by his wife to be “a jewel among honest men… but certainly very little of a believer… I exhaust myself in speaking to him about the marvels of the […]