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What is there to say of fame and obscurity? Why are some artists favored with lasting popularity, and others fated to fall into oblivion?
I suspect there is no single answer, no sure predictor of who will be remembered and who forgotten, whose work will be valued and whose will not.
By any indicators in the lives of tonight’s composers, they would have seemed destined for lasting popularity and an abiding legacy. Steffano Bernardi (1576-1636), a Renaissance composer and, what’s more, a theoretician and author of a treatise that was widely used in the 17th century to teach counterpoint, should by all rights have achieved a lasting name for himself. Yet I would be surprised if any of tonight’s audience has heard of him before tonight.
Similarly, Jan Václav Kalivoda (1801-1866), a Czech composer born in Prague who was educated under Carl Maria von Weber and engaged to be the
kappellmeister in the Court of the Prince of Donaueschingen – a not inconsequential prince in the early 19th century – whom Robert Schumann called “a green, freshly-growing stem in the German musical world,” would be thought of as having a good chance at fame of a long-standing nature. Yet, like Bernardi, his name is virtually unknown, and his music even less so.
Perhaps a potential starting point for contemplation about tonight’s concert will be the following quotation, also by Robert Schumann. Please ponder it before the concert gets underway:
“How it angers me when someone dismisses a symphony by Kalivoda as ‘certainly not one by Beethoven.’ It’s like the caviar-connoisseur who laughs at a child who finds an apple tasty.”
Timothy J.
Krueger
November 2009
© 2009 Timothy J. Krueger |