Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

RINGFLUENTIAL
4

o, the world MINUS the Wagmeister. What sort of an effect will that have on the price of eggs? Well, let me come up to the surface somewhere in 1883. The year that the Metropolitan Opera House opened in New York, and, more pertinently to us, here and now, it's the year that Leo Delibes had an unexpected hit on his hands.

Apart from Coppelia, Delibes has been more or less dining out on his only other great success, the ballet music to Sylvia.

Delibes was another child prodigy, born in 1836 at St Germain-du-Val, midway between Angers and Le Mans. He attended grown-up Conservatoire from the age of twelve - a little late by prodigy standards (remember, Bizet was there by nine) - but struggled to find any real success with his work. Then, when he was thirty, the Paris Opera put on his ballet, La Source, a work that was to start his composition career in earnest. Coppelia followed soon, a work still very much in the repertoire of ballet companies today. Opera-wise, though, he had lesser success.

Then all of a sudden, just eight years before he's due to pop his pointe shoes, he comes up with the music to an opera with so breathtakingly ludicrous a plot that even Barbara Cartland would have put it back in her bottom drawer. Yet, as so often happens, Delibes is virtually libretto-blind, and he somehow came up with the score to save it. Lakme - the world's favourite opera, if you like, considering it contains the delicious 'Flower Duet', beloved of British Airways ads, but nonetheless beautiful for it - thus giving the cue for? further fifteen minutes of fame and a few more suppers where he can turn to the woman on his right and start with the line, 'Haven't you seen me somewhere before?'

Not a million miles away, in Troldhaugen, the composer Edvard Grieg is also allowing himself to enjoy life a litde more. He's currendy at work on a tribute to one of the founders of Danish literature, one Ludvig Holberg. In 1883, Grieg was forty and had the benefit of a Norwegian government annuity to keep him comfortable. So he was able to take it all a litde easier, something which might account for why he had done almost all his best work by the time he was thirty-three. Still, he duly finished his suite of pieces for piano, which he called, not surprisingly, the Holberg Suite. Then, no doubt, he made himself a cup of coffee. Then, maybe, stared out of the window for a few moments. Maybe he would go down and lean on his gate later that afternoon. He took another sip of his coffee. Maybe he'd look out of the window again. Or should he save that for later, after 'the gate'? So he looked down at his new piano suite. 'I could always… what… transcribe it for strings?' And so he did.

It was this latter piece, by EG, that Debussy called 'the bizarre and charming taste of a pink sweet stuffed with snow'. Right. Yes. Not quite sure I know what he's on about, there, but still. (I'd take him out, Matron, he's almost ready!)

Now, a brief insight into the heady twelve months that liked to call itself 1884 - or 'Toby' to its friends.