# Somewhat Obscure Composers 2: Gluck



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

What are your favorite works by this composer? Feel free to recommend works alone, or specific recordings!

Thanks very much.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Andante and Dance of the Blessed Spirits from _Orpheus_. It's arranged into a flute solo which I did many years ago. Very lovely.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)




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## CTCarter (Aug 28, 2006)

I listened to a recording of "Echo et Narcisse" a couple of years ago. This was his last Paris opera and was staged in 1779. I don't believe it was very successful, and Gluck left Paris for good after that. The music accompanying pantomime, entrees, and ballet sequences in this opera, and mandatory as well in Gluck's other French operas, is pleasing, lovely, and continues in the tradition of Rameau.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I never think of Gluck in the tradition of Rameau... not that I dislike Rameau... but rather pointing more away from the worst excesses of virtuosity superfluous display of the Baroque and more toward the classical clarity, simplicity, and drama of Mozart and later composers... (even Wagner!) in the manner in which he took opera back from the egotistical singers and their desire for nothing but vocal pyrotechnics... and focused again on the opera as a whole... the music as a means of conveying the drama. With Gluck the orchestra is fully an equal to the singers:






I wish I had the John Eliot Gardiner recording of this... but Oh well... Furtwangler is no slouch.

Such classical clarity and simplicity:


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## CTCarter (Aug 28, 2006)

Yes, clarity and simplicity - words so fitting to the classic period. No, Gluck was not a Frenchman and it would be wrong to say he came from that tradition. The tradition I suppose he may have been observing was the necessity of adding dance to please the public.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Good thread. Not often do we see Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 - 1787) get much of a mention. He was a fine opera composer, did his best to reform the old opera seria as part of the younger generation of opera composers. (Though Handel reportedly said that Gluck "... _knew no more of contrapunctus than mein cook_", referring to Handel's own cook).

I second the list above by member StLukesGuildOhio (post #3), and I have them all except my version of _Iphigenie en Tauride _ is played by Boston Baroque (on period instruments).


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Gluck was certainly not a Baroque composer in the style of his music.


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## CTCarter (Aug 28, 2006)

Daniel Heartz' "From Garrick to Gluck" says the composer was a musical arranger for the opera-comiques performed in Vienna by a resident French repertory company. This company was active for 20 years from the early 1750s, and staged the latest French operas and ballets as well as plays. At the time, there was not an Italian equivalent in Vienna. According to Heartz, French elements Gluck acquired were composite scenes with chorus and ballet, instrumental dances, rondeau structures, folk-like airs nouveaux and the vaudeville finale. "Orfeo" (1761) appears to have elements derived from the French during that period. Music of the high classic period such as Mozart's seem to have fused all traditions into an international style. If one detects something that sounds or behaves like it has Italian, French, German, Scottish, Irish, and folk roots, it probably does. Thanks to scholars who study these things!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm sorry - I guess these threads should be in the "composer guestbook" forum. I didn't understand that forum before....


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I was browsing through a book of essays by Anthony Burgess yesterday and came across one from 1987 (the 200th anniversary of Gluck's death) called "Good Gluck".

Some excerpts:



> The fact that Gluck, by the standards of Mozart and Wagner, was not much of a musician was something of an advantage to his concept of opera. He felt no compunction to show off musically. He had a fine melodic gift, but his orchestration was thin, his bottom lines were unadventurous, and he had no great gift for counterpoint. When he came to London the great Handel said: "Gluck know as much contrapunto as my coke." That last word may mean "cook" or something more vulgar. Gluck could not, like Bach or Handel, dash off a convincing fugue. There was a certain meagreness about his music.
> ...
> If we listen carefully to _Orfeo_ we will hear how Gluck made a virtue out of the simplicity imposed on his music by his comparative lack of skill. He exploited his weaknesses. Music did not get in the way of the direct impact of the drama. ... Gluck's musical slenderness is really an athletic property: it goes along with a forceful energy; at the same time, as we know from the Dance of the Blessed Spirits in _Orfeo_, it is not incompatible with an almost heavenly serenity. Compare the vision of Hades and the vision of Elysium, put side by side in Act Two of _Orfeo_, and the breadth of Gluck's genius cannot be in doubt.
> In the melodic field, perhaps only Mozart and Handel share with Gluck the ability to convey an almost unbearable emotional poignancy in a major key with the simplest of harmonies.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

^^^ I don't feel qualified to debate whether composer X is very skilled or not, but I have certainly enjoyed Gluck's operas a lot (most of the performances in StLuke's posting above) and I recall that Berlioz almost worshipped Gluck for the way he had transformed opera writing


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Headphone Hermit said:


> ^^^ I don't feel qualified to debate whether composer X is very skilled or not, but I have certainly enjoyed Gluck's operas a lot (most of the performances in StLuke's posting above) and I recall that Berlioz almost worshipped Gluck for the way he had transformed opera writing


I didn't want to quote too much of the essay, but Burgess went on to talk about the debt owed to Gluck by Berlioz and Wagner in particular.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

^^ its rather ironic then that Burgess criticises Gluck's orchestration skills when two of the greatest and most innovative orchestrators of the C19 owe such a debt!


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Which Gluck work would you say is the best to start with?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

I haven't heard enough Gluck honestly but the few arias I have caught before were very awesome.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

MoonlightSonata said:


> Which Gluck work would you say is the best to start with?


_Orpheo et Eurydice_ would be my suggestion - a familiar story, some very good recordings available, and some fantastic music throughout


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