Tag: digital scores (Page 12 of 22)

When we began digitizing scores from our collections over a decade ago, one area of focus was works from the operatic repertoire existing in multiple versions. If opera is a genre ripe for reinterpretations – as novels, plays, libretti, and scores themselves are recycled and revisioned – both of this week’s scores are products of the resulting palimpsest of musical influences.

First, a vocal score of Busoni’s two-act number opera, Turandot:

Ferruccio Busoni. Original cover, Turandot. Mus 633.5.605

[Turandot. Vocal score]. Turandot : eine chinesische Fabel nach Gozzi in zwei Akten / Worte und Musik von Ferruccio Busoni; Klavierauszug mit Text von Philipp Jarnach. Leipzig: Brietkopf & Härtel, [c1918]. Mus 633.5.605.

Although it premiered in 1917 as a double-bill with Arlecchino (link to digitized vocal score), Turandot has its origin in incidental music composed over a decade earlier for Carlo Gozzi’s 1762 play of the same title. Writing in a 1911 issue of Blätter des Deutschen theaters devoted to the play, Busoni describes his composition: “I have employed exclusively original oriental motives and forms and believe I have avoided the conventional theatre exoticism.”¹ These themes were themselves taken from examples of Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Indian music published in August Wilhelm Ambros’ Geschichte der Musik, as well as the English song “Greensleeves”.²

Our second work is a full score of Franz Schreker’s Das Spielwerk:

Franz Schreker. Leise's final lullaby, from Das Spielwerk. Mus 800.42.615

[Spielwerk]. Das Spielwerk: Mysterium in einem Aufzug / von Franz Schrecker. Wien: Universal-Edition, c1921. Mus 800.42.615

The simultaneous Frankfurt and Vienna premieres of Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (link to digitized vocal score) in 1913 had not been a success, thanks in part to a hostile reception by the Viennese critic Julius Korngold. Schreker condensed and extensively reworked the opera in 1915 and 1916; his revisions include replacing the original overture with the prelude to the second act, and changing the ending from the fiery disaster of the first version to a lullaby sung by Leise to her deceased son. The new, one-act Das Spielwerk premiered in Munich in 1920, conducted by Bruno Walter.

-Kerry Masteller

1. Busoni, Ferruccio, “The Turandot Music,” in The Essence of Music and Other Papers, trans. Rosamond Ley (New York: Dover, 1965), 61, http://hollis.harvard.edu/?itemid=|library/m/aleph|007922884 (HOLLIS record).

Original text: “Ich habe ausschließlich originale orientalische Motive und Wendungen verwandt und glaube den konventionellen Theater-Exotismus umgangen zu haben.” Busoni, Ferruccio, “Zur ‘Turandot’-Musik,” Blätter des Deutschen theaters (Berlin), Jahrg.1 Nr. 6 (27 October 1911): 83-84, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101018921104?urlappend=%3Bseq=99 (full text).

2. For an analysis of the sources used in the Turandot Suite, see Antony Beaumont, Busoni the Composer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1985), 76-86, http://hollis.harvard.edu/?itemid=|library/m/aleph|000220150 (HOLLIS record).

See also August Wilhelm Ambros, Geschicte der Musik: mit zahlreichen notenbeispielen und musikbeilagen, Vol. 1, Die Musik des griechischen Alterthums und des Orients (Leipzig: F.E.C. Leuckart, 1887-1911), http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.FIG.GITEM:HW2LWX (full text).