Continuing my series of program notes:
Franz von
Suppé (1819-1895)
Light Cavalry:
Overture
Possibly the first piece of classical
music I heard was this overture in a Combined Brass Bands concert in the
Melbourne Town Hall in the 1960s. At the time, the music of Suppé was popularly
thought of as ‘classical’. But was he too lightweight? It is still fairly safe
to say that Suppé’s music is rarely found in major Subscriptions programs, as it
is tonight.
But maybe Suppé is worthy of more
serious consideration. He was one of those brilliant musicians often to be found in theatres in the
German-speaking world in the 19th century. Born to a Czech mother and father of
Belgian extraction in Split on the Dalmatian coast, Suppé was raised as an
Italian. He studied law at Padua University but after his father’s death, went
with his family to Vienna, where he studied music with, among others, Seyfried,
a former pupil of Mozart. Suppé was an all-rounder. Even after his first
conducting appointment (at the Josephstadt Theater in Vienna in 1841), he sang
in The Elixir of Love in Ödenburg in
1842. (The Elixir’s composer,
Donizetti, was a distant relative.) And as a conductor, Suppé was famous in
Vienna for a gimmick in which he took snuff before conducting each of his
famous overtures so they’d begin with a big sneeze! But it is as a composer that
he is best remembered...
And as a composer of superb, attention-getting
overtures. The introduction to Light
Cavalry, an operetta composed in 1866, is a case in point. It is a
marvellous example of the sort of overture often classified as pot-pourri, a collection of distinct themes
bridged by short connecting passages. The different ideas occur one after the other.
Here: a sequence of stirring fanfares in military band orchestration; a
dramatic whirling dance-like segment, then the overture’s most famous ‘quote’ -
the cantering theme announced by trumpets. This ‘canter’ is developed slightly
and leads to a brief clarinet cadenza, after which is heard a more doleful
segment, like the slow section of a Hungarian dance (Hungary would have been on
the minds of many Viennese just prior to the advent of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire). Then the canter returns and finally the fanfares, with thrilling drum
roll accompaniment. This is real ‘sit up and take notice’ music, fulfilling
perfectly the function of an overture.
But ‘overtures to what?’ asks Richard Traubner in
his book, Operetta: A Theatrical History.
Should Suppé’s operettas be better known? Perhaps Traubner is right. Suppé’s Die schöne Galathee (a setting of the
Pygmalion story) still has some currency on the German-language stage and Fatinitza and Boccacio have entries in Gänzl’s
Book of the Musical Theatre. Suppé was more than a musical lightweight or,
rather, no less important for being entertaining. As one of the composers who
achieved a successful Viennese response to the operettas of Offenbach and ended
up composing operettas that often rivalled those of Johann Strauss II, Suppé
could rightly be called, as he is by Traubner, ‘the father of Viennese
operetta’.
Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2015
