In the style of Mike Rowe’s “The Way I Heard It” and Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” this episode of the Piano Parent Podcast brings you the backstory of how one young musician convinced his older and wiser teacher to try something new by singing something old.
Listen to the full episode here
Every January 1 my husband’s family gathers, not only to bring in the new year but to celebrate my father-in-law on his birthday. It’s always a nice post-Christmas, pre-back-to-normal celebration. This year, among the many various topics of conversation, my daughter and nieces were talking about the recent passing of Betty White. They, like many others of their generation, were cheering for Betty to reach her 100th birthday on January 17. They were sincerely saddened that she died “too soon.”
While I am familiar with Betty’s career – I know who she was and watch a few of her movies and TV shows from time to time, I wouldn’t classify myself as a raving fan. I don’t have anything against her but I just don’t seem to have the same connection to her as the generation after me. My daughter, Keri, has become a huge fan, thanks to the ability to binge-watch “The Golden Girls” online. She is the proud owner of several Golden Girls tchotchkes. including coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets, maybe even pajama pants.
I feel a bit like I missed the Betty White arrival and revival. I was too young to really appreciate her in her early work, including the Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s, and was not particularly interested in The Golden Girls when it first aired in the late ’80s. By the time her career resurged with shows like “The Proposal” and “Hot in Cleveland”, she was a token of the past to my way of thinking.
Honestly, I am glad she regained popularity in her later years. I love that my daughter and her cousins share such a fondness for her. They help me view Betty White from a different perspective.
This makes me think of another person in history who may have been dismissed by one generation only to be revived and deeply appreciated again by the next generation.
Before I reveal that mystery, I have one more quick story about my husband’s family, this time, from his mother’s side. I never had the opportunity to meet Duane’s grandfather, his mother’s father, but I am told he was a great musician and singer – I think we would have gotten along very well.
One of his joys was to host “Singing Schools” at local churches. This was before the days of projected song lyrics on massive screens. Each church had plenty of hymnbooks filled with music notation for every person attending the singing to use. Someone would call out a page number and the group would sing the hymn following the four vocal lines: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Here is a sample of this type of singing (did you catch them singing solfege syllables the second time through?!). These gatherings afforded everyone the ability to learn to read a musical line, sing in harmony, and enjoy a great evening of music-making. It wasn’t a concert to be attended quietly and passively; it was an event in which to participate and sing along.
I never got to play piano for Duane’s grandfather but my church hosted a few informal Sunday night singings. These karaoke-type meetings gave me the occasion to really hone my music sight-reading skills while playing the piano. You never knew what song number someone would call out! Sometimes people would call out songs they didn’t even know, they just liked the title. It was my job to read the music and play the piano to help the congregation sing the newly found song.
I’ve recently learned that singing schools were not an invention of churches in the mid-1900s. Societies of musicians have been gathering for hundreds of years for the simple joy of music-making. One such singing academy in Germany also set itself on a mission to preserve the music of the past.
And thus begins our story…
Music brings people together
You’ve probably heard more than once that music brings people together. It is a universal language. I love the fact that this group of all different kinds of people was able to gather and collaborate with the common mission and sole purpose of making music.
Jacob and his family regularly attended the Sing Academy. They may have attended for years prior but I know that Jacob started attending when he was 10. He not only attended the group singings, but he also took piano lessons and learned composition from Carl Zelter, the director of the group.
Over the course of time, the group grew, not only in number but in skill. Though they were an amateur choir, they held extremely high standards and relished studying sacred music from years past and from other parts of the world. By the time he was 20, Jacob would become more of a leader of the group than merely a participant. Some, including Jacob, might have thought he would take over the directorship when Zelter stepped down. (He didn’t, but that’s not the focus of our story.)
A few years prior, Jacob’s grandmother had given him a rare score of music. How she got her hands on it is up for a little debate. Amazon wasn’t a thing so she couldn’t have ordered it online. Her family had a long heritage of musical study so she might have added it to her own personal collection at some point. In fact, her family had a long connection with the composer of this particular score. Though he was most regarded at the time as a composer of educational music, Jacob’s mother was proud to be the student of a student of the son of the composer. In essence, she was his great great great grandstudent. She passed her musical respect on to her own daughter, Jacob’s sister, who had memorized the entire collection of his most well-known educational material.
The fact that this was one of the composer’s lesser-known sacred compositions made it even more rare and hard to come by. One scholar speculates that Jacob’s grandmother managed to talk Zelter into handing over his treasured copy so that she could have the entire manuscript transcribed for her grandson.
However she acquired the music, it was gifted to Jacob around his 15th birthday. He had known of some of the parts of this masterpiece but seeing the whole collection together inspired him to one day produce this epic work with his musical friends.
The love of music is contagious
Whenever he had a spare moment, Jacob would go to the piano and plink out a few notes. A few friends would gather around and sing some of the arias. Jacob’s enthusiasm for this music was contagious. Soon, other members of the academy agreed that this music should be shared with the masses.
Their one problem – getting the approval of Heir Zelter.
Remember when I told you Jacob’s grandmother might have ‘borrowed’ Zelter’s copy of the music to make a fresh copy for a birthday gift? That must have been no small feat. Zelter had been collecting these old artifacts for years. The idea of handing over the most valuable item from his collection, even for a few days to be hand transcribed, must have been difficult to fathom.
When his students approached him about producing the epoch, his first reaction was a solid and resounding, “No, absolutely not!” Those youth had no idea what they were asking! Zelter had considered making the production himself, more than once, but each attempt had withered before it ever had a chance to take root.
You would need an incredible amount of singers and musicians to pull off such a thing. Not to mention the fact that several of the instruments called for were considered old and outdated back in the day when the production first premiered. There would be no way of procuring those instruments now. The fact that Zelter and Jacob had two copies of the scarce manuscript was a miracle in and of itself.
On top of that, this music was over 100 years old. Contemporary audiences wanted to hear fresh, new music – even better if it came from Italy. They weren’t interested in the past. They weren’t interested in music from their part of the world. It was one thing to sing the old music within the confines of their little choir but there is no way the general public would accept it.
One other problem from Zelter’s point of view is that the pious religious text did not align with modern thinking. Current, enlightened music lovers would reject music and lyrics that celebrated the old views. It would be better to protect the past, protect this very special music, and, ultimately, protect the sing academy, by performing less controversial selections.
Who better than an enthusiastic, 20-year-old musician to look past those perceived barriers?
You need lots of musicians to pull this off? No problem. Jacob and his sing academy friends knew lots of people who would join the campaign.
You need a sponsor to underwrite the production? No problem. Jacob’s family, remember, had great respect for this historic composer and his music. They had the financial means to support the project.
Modern audiences won’t accept such outdated, sacred text? No problem. The composition might have been about a sacred subject but the music, itself wasn’t ‘sacred’. Jacob could abridge the original version. Without changing a note or word, he simply selected which portions of the original manuscript to keep and which to cut. Leaving out approximately 10 arias, Jacob felt this was a reasonable compromise. It would allow the audience to savor this significant masterpiece without leaving a bad taste on their enlightened palate.
The more Jacob and his friends studied and practiced the music, the more Zelter came to trust that not only could these young people pull off such a massive musical production but they would give it the full respect it deserved. He finally relented and granted permission for them to set a performance date.
Arriving and Reviving
I wish I could tell you there was something significant about the date Jacob selected to perform his musical revival but I couldn’t find anything in my research. The original premiere of this sacred commemoration presented by the composer himself was April 11, 1727, Good Friday. As a matter of fact, Good Friday and the importance of the Sunday which follows is the reason this musical devotion came into existence at all.
Almost as far back as the time of the gospels, it has been a tradition to remember and honor the suffering of Jesus. Since those early days, these remembrances were called the Passion of Christ. The word passion has taken a different meaning in our day but it has its roots in the Latin pati, meaning to suffer. Composers throughout the centuries have set this important story to music, from Jesus’ triumphant arrival into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) to his death, burial, and resurrection (Easter Sunday) using text from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John in the Bible.
Jacob didn’t select Good Friday for his performance date, at least not the first performance. The Sing Academy, complete with two choirs and two orchestras with Jacob conducting from a piano in the center, debuted their revival of this old Passion on Wednesday, March 11, 1829. That seems to be a strange day for such a big performance but it didn’t stop people from attending. About 1,000 people, including the king and his court along with all the elites of Berlin, attended that great revival of the Passion of Christ based on Matthew’s gospel. It was met with rave reviews and was the talk of the town for weeks.
March 11 may have been the first time Berlin’s Sing Academy presented the historic “St. Matthew’s Passion” but it wouldn’t be the last. They performed it again on April 17 of that year – Good Friday, as it turns out. Between those two presentations, there was one more very special performance. This time on March 21st, to honor the original composer’s birthday.
Does that date ring a bell? One of the most revered composers in our entire musical history was born on March 21, 1685. Johann Sebastian Bach is such a prominent musical figure now that it is hard to believe that he was once generally known as simply a composer of educational music, a relic of the past if he was considered at all.
Today, Bach is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time and his “St. Matthew’s Passion” is THE most well-known of all similar works. But, if it hadn’t been for Jacob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn and his friends at the Sing Academy, Bach’s music and his life might have faded into history.
I think it is significant that the revival of Bach’s sacred music corresponds with the arrival of a young, adventurous musician; someone who convinced his older and wiser teacher to try something new by singing something old.
Do you have a mystery you’d like me to share? Send me the details at shelly@pianoparentpodcast.com. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
This story was compiled using data from several sources including the following:
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