The message is a glitch. Biography of Christoph Gluck

Date of birth: July 2, 1714.
Died: November 15, 1787.
Place of birth: Erasbach, Bavaria.

Gluck Christoph Willibald- an eminent composer who worked in Austria. Also Christoph Gluck known as the reformer of Italian opera.

Christoph was born in Bavaria, in the family of a forester. From childhood, the boy was fascinated by music, but his father did not share this passion and did not allow the thought that his first-born would become a musician.

The teenager completed his studies at the Jesuit academy and left home. By the age of seventeen, he reached Prague and was able to enter the university, the Faculty of Philosophy.

To earn some money, he was a chorister in the church, played the violin in traveling musical groups. Nevertheless, he found time for music lessons, which were given to him by the composer B. Chernogorsky.

After completing his studies, Christophe left for Vienna, and there he was invited by A. Melzi to become a court musician at the chapel in Milan. Having left there, the young man gained knowledge not only in the theory of composition, but also studied many operas by the most prominent masters of this genre. Soon Christophe himself created the opera, and it was staged in Milan.

The premiere was a success, new orders followed and four more equally successful operas were written. Having become successful, the composer went on tour to London and then to Vienna.

Soon he decided to stay in Vienna for good and accepted the offer of the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen to become the bandmaster of his orchestra. Every week this orchestra played a concert with a variety of Sami pieces.

Christophe, as a leader, sometimes took the conductor's stand, sang, played various instruments. Soon the composer began to direct the court opera. He became one of its reformers and popularizers of French opera.

He was able to turn the comedy genre into a dramatically directed genre. In addition, he taught music to Archduchess Maria Antoinette. When she married a French heir, she invited her teacher to move to Paris.

There he continued to stage operas and create new ones. In Paris, he created his best work - "Iphigenia in Taurida". After the premiere of the composer's last opera, he suffered a stroke.

Two years later, another one happened, which could not but affect the ability to work.

However, he created a small piece, which was performed on the day of his funeral in 1787.

Achievements of Christoph Gluck:

Reformer of Italian and French opera
Created about 50 operas
Author of a number of works for orchestra
Was the inspiration behind Schumann, Beethoven, Berlioz

Dates from the biography of Christoph Gluck:

1714 was born
1731 settled in Prague
1736 moved to Vienna
1741 the first production of an opera in Italy
1745 tour in London
1752 settled in Vienna
1756 received the Order of the Golden Spur
1779 had a stroke
1787 died

Besides having good vocal abilities, Gluck sang in the choir of St. Jakub and played in the orchestra under the direction of the largest Czech composer and music theorist Bohuslav Chernogorski, sometimes he went to the outskirts of Prague, where he performed in front of peasants and artisans.

Gluck attracted the attention of Prince Philip von Lobkowitz and in 1735 was invited to his Viennese home as a chamber musician; Apparently, the Italian aristocrat A. Melzi heard him in Lobkowitz's house and invited him to his private chapel - in 1736 or 1737 Gluck ended up in Milan. In Italy, the homeland of opera, he got the opportunity to get acquainted with the works of the greatest masters of this genre; At the same time, he studied composition under the guidance of Giovanni Sammartini, a composer not so much an operatic as a symphonic one; but it was under his leadership, as S. Rytsarev writes, that Gluck mastered the “modest, but confident homophonic writing”, which was already fully established in Italian opera, while the polyphonic tradition still dominated in Vienna.

In December 1741, the premiere of Gluck's first opera - the opera-series Artaxerxes to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio - took place in Milan. In Artaxerxes, as in all of Gluck's early operas, there was still a noticeable imitation of Sammartini, nevertheless he was a success, which attracted orders from different cities of Italy, and in the next four years no less successful opera-series were created “ Demetrius "," Por "," Demofont "," Hypernestra "and others.

In the fall of 1745, Gluck went to London, from where he received an order for two operas, but in the spring of the following year he left the English capital and joined the Mingotti brothers' Italian opera troupe as a second conductor, with which he toured Europe for five years. In 1751 in Prague, he left Mingotti for the post of Kapellmeister in the troupe of Giovanni Locatelli, and in December 1752 he settled in Vienna. Having become the conductor of the orchestra of Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen, Gluck directed his weekly concerts - "academies", in which he performed both other people's compositions and his own. According to the testimony of contemporaries, Gluck was also an outstanding opera conductor and knew well the peculiarities of ballet art.

In search of a musical drama

In 1754, at the suggestion of the manager of the Viennese theaters, Count G. Durazzo, Gluck was appointed conductor and composer of the Court Opera. In Vienna, gradually becoming disillusioned with the traditional Italian opera-seria - "opera-aria", in which the beauty of melody and singing acquired a self-contained character, and composers often became hostages to the whims of prima donnas, he turned to French comic opera ("Merlin's Island", " Imaginary Slave "," The Reformed Drunkard "," The Fooled Cadi ", etc.) and even to the ballet: created in collaboration with the choreographer G. Angiolini, the pantomime ballet Don Juan (based on the play by J.-B. Moliere), a real choreographic drama, was the first embodiment of Gluck's desire to turn the operatic scene into a dramatic one.

In his quest, Gluck found support from the chief intendant of the opera, Count Durazzo, and his compatriot, the poet and playwright Ranieri de Calzabigi, who wrote the libretto Don Giovanni. The next step in the direction of musical drama was their new joint work - the opera "Orpheus and Eurydice", staged in the first edition in Vienna on October 5, 1762. Under the pen of Kaltsabiji, the ancient Greek myth turned into an ancient drama, in full accordance with the tastes of that time; however, neither in Vienna nor in other European cities was the opera successful with the public.

The need to reform the opera-series, writes S. Rytsarev, was dictated by objective signs of its crisis. At the same time, it was necessary to overcome "the age-old and incredibly strong tradition of an opera-spectacle, a musical performance with a firmly established separation of the functions of poetry and music." In addition, the opera-seria was characterized by a static drama; it was based on the "theory of affects," which assumed for each emotional state - sadness, joy, anger, etc. - the use of certain means of musical expression established by theorists, and did not allow the individualization of experiences. In the first half of the 18th century, the transformation of stereotype into a value criterion gave rise to, on the one hand, an endless number of operas, on the other, their very short life on stage, on average from 3 to 5 performances.

Gluck in his reformatory operas, writes S. Rytsarev, “made the music“ work ”for the drama not at separate moments of the performance, which was often found in contemporary opera, but throughout its entire duration. Orchestral means acquired efficiency, secret meaning, began to counterpoint the development of events on the stage. A flexible, dynamic change of recitative, arias, ballet and choral episodes has developed into a musical and storyline eventfulness, entailing a direct emotional experience. "

Searches in this direction were also carried out by other composers, including in the genre of comic opera, Italian and French: this young genre had not yet had time to petrify, and it was easier to develop its healthy tendencies from the inside than in the opera-seria. Commissioned by the court, Gluck continued to write operas in the traditional style, generally giving preference to comic opera. A new and more perfect embodiment of his dream of a musical drama was the heroic opera Alcesta, created in collaboration with Kaltsabigi in 1767, and presented in the first edition in Vienna on December 26 of the same year. Dedicating the opera to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the future Emperor Leopold II, Gluck wrote in the preface to Alceste:

It seemed to me that music should play in relation to a poetic work the same role played by the brightness of colors and correctly distributed effects of chiaroscuro, animating figures without changing their contours in relation to the drawing ... common sense and fairness. I believed that the overture should illuminate the action for the audience and serve as a kind of introductory overview of the content: the instrumental part should be conditioned by the interest and tension of situations ... All my work should have been reduced to the search for noble simplicity, freedom from ostentatious heap of difficulties at the expense of clarity; the introduction of some new techniques seemed to me valuable insofar as it suited the situation. And finally, there is no rule that I would not break in order to achieve greater expressiveness. These are my principles.

This fundamental subordination of music to poetic text was revolutionary for that time; in an effort to overcome the numbered structure characteristic of the opera-serial of that time, Gluck not only combined the episodes of the opera into large scenes permeated with a single dramatic development, he tied the opera and the overture to the action, which at that time usually represented a separate concert number; for the sake of achieving greater expressiveness and drama, he increased the role of the chorus and orchestra. Neither Alcesta, nor the third reformist opera on Calzabigi's libretto, Paris and Helena (1770), found support either from the Viennese or from the Italian public.

Gluck's duties as court composer included teaching music to the young Archduchess Marie Antoinette; becoming in April 1770 the wife of the heir to the French throne, Marie Antoinette invited Gluck to Paris. However, other circumstances influenced the composer's decision to move his activities to the capital of France to a much greater extent.

Glitch in Paris

In Paris, meanwhile, a struggle was going on around the opera, which became the second act of a struggle that had gone off in the 50s between the adherents of the Italian opera ("buffonists") and the French ("anti-buffonists"). This confrontation even split the royal family: the French king Louis XVI preferred Italian opera, while his Austrian wife Marie Antoinette supported the national French. The famous “Encyclopedia” was also struck by the split: its editor D'Alembert was one of the leaders of the “Italian party”, and many of its authors, led by Voltaire and Rousseau, actively supported the French one. The stranger Gluck very soon became the banner of the "French party", and since the Italian troupe in Paris at the end of 1776 was headed by the famous and popular composer Niccolo Piccinni in those years, the third act of this musical and social polemic went down in history as a struggle between the "Gluckists" and By the "picchinists". In the struggle, which seemed to unfold around the styles, the dispute in reality was about what an opera performance should be - just an opera, a magnificent spectacle with beautiful music and beautiful vocals, or something significantly more: encyclopedists were waiting for a new social content, consonant with pre-revolutionary era. In the struggle between the "glukists" and the "picchinists", which 200 years later already seemed to be a grandiose theatrical performance, as in the "war of the buffoons", "powerful cultural layers of aristocratic and democratic art" entered into polemics, according to S. Rytsarev.

In the early 1970s, Gluck's reformist operas were unknown in Paris; in August 1772, the attaché of the French embassy in Vienna, François le Blanc du Roule, drew them to the attention of the public on the pages of the Parisian magazine "Mercure de France". The paths of Gluck and Calzabigi parted: with a reorientation to Paris, du Rullet became the main librettist of the reformer; in collaboration with him, the opera Iphigenia at Aulis (based on the tragedy of J. Racine) was written for the French public, staged in Paris on April 19, 1774. The success was consolidated, although it caused fierce controversy, a new, French edition of "Orpheus and Eurydice".

Recognition in Paris did not go unnoticed in Vienna: if Marie Antoinette granted Gluck 20,000 livres for “Iphigenia” and the same amount for “Orpheus”, then Maria Theresa on October 18, 1774 in absentia awarded Gluck the title of “actual imperial and royal court composer” with an annual a salary of 2000 guilders. Thanking for the honor, Gluck, after a short stay in Vienna, returned to France, where at the beginning of 1775 a new version of his comic opera "The Enchanted Tree, or the Deceived Guardian" (written back in 1759) was staged, and in April, at the Royal Academy music, - a new edition of "Alcesta".

The Paris period is considered by music historians to be the most significant in the work of Gluck. The struggle between the "glukists" and "picchinists", which inevitably turned into a personal rivalry between composers (which, however, did not affect their relationship), went on with varying success; by the mid-70s, and the "French party" split into adherents of traditional French opera (J. B. Lully and J. F. Rameau), on the one hand, and the new French opera by Gluck, on the other. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Gluck himself challenged the traditionalists, using for his heroic opera "Armida" the libretto written by F. Kino (based on T. Tasso's poem "Jerusalem Liberated") for the opera of the same name by Lully. "Armida", which premiered at the Royal Academy of Music on September 23, 1777, was apparently so differently received by representatives of various "parties" that 200 years later, some spoke of "a huge success", others - of "failure ".

And nevertheless, this struggle ended with Gluck's victory, when on May 18, 1779 at the Royal Academy of Music his opera Iphigenia in Taurida was presented (to a libretto by N. Gniyar and L. du Roullet based on the tragedy of Euripides), which is still considered by many the best opera by the composer. Niccolo Piccinni himself recognized Gluck's "musical revolution". Earlier, J. A. Houdon sculpted a white marble bust of the composer with an inscription in Latin: “Musas praeposuit sirenis” (“He preferred the muses to the sirens”) - in 1778 this bust was installed in the foyer of the Royal Academy of Music next to the busts of Lully and Rameau.

Last years

On September 24, 1779, the premiere of Gluck's last opera, Echo and Narcissus, took place in Paris; however, even earlier, in July, the composer was struck by a stroke that turned into partial paralysis. In the autumn of the same year, Gluck returned to Vienna, which he never left: a new attack of the disease occurred in June 1781.

During this period, the composer continued the work, begun in 1773, on odes and songs for voice and piano on verses by F.G. Klopstock (German. Klopstocks Oden und Lieder beim Clavier zu singen in Musik gesetzt ), dreamed of creating a German national opera based on Klopstock's plot "The Battle of Arminius", but these plans were not destined to come true. Anticipating his imminent departure, around 1782, Gluck wrote "De profundis" - a small work for a four-part choir and orchestra on the text of the 129th psalm, which was performed by his student and follower Antonio Salieri on November 17, 1787 at the composer's funeral. On November 14 and 15, Gluck experienced three more apoplectic strokes; he died on 15 November 1787 and was originally buried in the churchyard of the Matzleinsdorf suburb; in 1890, his remains were transferred to Vienna's Central Cemetery.

Creation

Christoph Willibald Gluck was a predominantly operatic composer, but the exact number of operas belonging to him has not been established: on the one hand, some works have not survived, on the other, Gluck has repeatedly reworked his own operas. The Musical Encyclopedia names the number 107, while listing only 46 operas.

At the end of his life, Gluck said that "only the foreigner Salieri" adopted his manners from him, "for not a single German wanted to study them"; nevertheless, he found many followers in different countries, of which each applied his principles in his own work in his own way - in addition to Antonio Salieri, these are first of all Luigi Cherubini, Gaspare Spontini and L. van Beethoven, and later Hector Berlioz, who called Gluck "Aeschylus of Music"; among the closest followers the influence of the composer is sometimes noticeable outside of operatic creativity, as in Beethoven, Berlioz and Franz Schubert. As for the creative ideas of Gluck, they determined the further development of the opera house, in the 19th century there was no major opera composer who, to a greater or lesser extent, did not experience the influence of these ideas; Gluck was also approached by another operatic reformer, Richard Wagner, who, half a century later, faced on the opera stage the same "costume concert" against which Gluck's reform was directed. The composer's ideas turned out to be no stranger to the Russian opera culture - from Mikhail Glinka to Alexander Serov.

Gluck also owns a number of works for orchestra - symphonies or overtures (during the composer's youth, the distinction between these genres was still not clear-cut), a concert for flute and orchestra (G-dur), 6 trio sonatas for 2 violins and general bass, written back in the 40s. In collaboration with G. Angiolini, in addition to Don Juan, Gluck created three more ballets: Alexander (1765), as well as Semiramis (1765) and The Chinese Orphan - both based on the tragedies of Voltaire.

Write a review on "Gluck, Christoph Willibald"

Notes (edit)

1. , with. 466.
2. , with. 40.
3. , with. 244.
4. , with. 41.
5. , with. 42-43.
6. , with. 1021.
7. , with. 43-44.
8. , with. 467.
9. , with. 1020.
10. , with. Chapter 11.
11. , with. 1018-1019.
12. Gozenpud A.A. Opera Dictionary. - M.-L. : Music, 1965 .-- S. 290-292. - 482 p.
13. , with. ten.
14. Rosenschild K.K. Affects theory // Musical encyclopedia (under the editorship of Yu.V. Keldysh). - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1973 .-- T. 1.
15. , with. 13.
16. , with. 12.
17. Gozenpud A.A. Opera Dictionary. - M.-L. : Music, 1965 .-- S. 16-17. - 482 p.
18. Cit. Quoted from: Gozenpud A.A. Decree. cit., p. 16
19. , with. 1018.
20. , with. 77.
21. , with. 163-168.
22. , with. 1019.
23. , with. 6, 12-13.
24. , with. 48-49.
25. , with. 82-83.
26. , with. 23.
27. , with. 84.
28. , with. 79, 84-85.
29. , with. 84-85.
30. . Ch. W. Gluck... Gluck-Gesamtausgabe. Forschungsstelle Salzburg. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
31. , with. 1018, 1022.
32. Tsodokov E.... Belcanto.ru. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
33. , with. 107.
34. ... Internationale Gluck-Gesellschaft. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
35. , with. 108.
36. , with. 22.
37. , with. 16.
38. , with. 1022.

Literature

• Markus S.A. Gluck K.V. // Musical encyclopedia / ed. Yu. V. Keldysh. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1973 .-- T. 1. - S. 1018-1024.
• Rytsarev S. Christoph Willibald Gluck. - M .: Music, 1987.
• Kirillina L.V. Gluck's Reformed Operas. - M .: Classic-XXI, 2006 .-- 384 p. - ISBN 5-89817-152-5.
• Konen V.D. Theater and symphony. - M .: Music, 1975 .-- 376 p.
• Braudo E. M. Chapter 21 // General history of music. - M., 1930. - T. 2. From the beginning of the 17th to the middle of the 19th century.
• Balashsha I., Gal D. Sh. Opera Guide: In 4 volumes. - M .: Soviet sport, 1993 .-- T. 1.
• Bamberg F.(German) // Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. - 1879. - Bd. nine . - S. 244-253.
• Schmid H.(German) // Neue Deutsche Biographie. - 1964. - Bd. 6. - S. 466-469.
• Einstein A. Gluck: Sein Leben - seine Werke. - Zürich; Stuttgart: Pan-Verlag, 1954 .-- 315 p.
• Grout D. J., Williams H. W. The Operas of Gluck // A Short History of Opera. - Columbia University Press, 2003 .-- S. 253-271. - 1030 p. - ISBN 9780231119580.
• Lippman E. A. Operatic Aesthetics // A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. - University of Nebraska Press, 1992 .-- S. 137-202. - 536 p. - ISBN 0-8032-2863-5.

Links

• Glitch: sheet music at the International Music Score Library Project
• ... Internationale Gluck-Gesellschaft. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
• . Ch. W. Gluck. Vita... Gluck-Gesamtausgabe. Forschungsstelle Salzburg. Retrieved February 15, 2015.

Excerpt from Gluck, Christoph Willibald

“A great sacrament, mother,” answered the clergyman, running his hand over his bald head, along which lay several strands of combed, half-gray hair.
- Who is this? was the commander-in-chief himself? - asked at the other end of the room. - What a youthful! ...
- And the seventh decade! What, they say, the count will not know? Did you want to unleash?
“I knew one thing: I had unction seven times.
The second princess just left the patient's room with tear-stained eyes and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose under the portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbows on the table.
“Tres beau,” said the doctor, answering a question about the weather, “tres beau, princesse, et puis, a Moscou on se croit a la campagne. [beautiful weather, princess, and then Moscow looks so much like a village.]
"N" est ce pas? [Isn't that so?] - said the princess, sighing. - So can he drink?
Lorrain considered.
- Did he take the medicine?
- Yes.
The doctor looked at the Breguet.
- Take a glass of boiled water and put une pincee (he showed with his thin fingers what une pincee means) de cremortartari ... [a pinch of cremortartar ...]
“Don't drink, listen,” the German doctor said to the aide-de-camp, “that the shiv remained with the third blow.
- And what a fresh man he was! - said the adjutant. - And who will this wealth go to? He added in a whisper.
“There will be an okotnik,” the German answered, smiling.
All again looked at the door: it creaked, and the second princess, having made the drink shown by Lorrain, carried it to the patient. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
- Still, maybe it will reach tomorrow morning? Asked the German, speaking badly in French.
Lorrain pursed his lips and waved his finger sternly and negatively in front of his nose.
“Tonight, not later,” he said quietly, with a decent smile of self-satisfaction that he clearly knows how to understand and express the patient’s position, and walked away.

Meanwhile, Prince Vasily opened the door to the princess's room.
The room was half dark; only two lamps burned in front of the images, and they smelled good of incense and flowers. The whole room was installed with small furniture, wardrobes, cupboards, tables. Behind the screens were the white bedspreads of the high down bed. The dog barked.
"Oh, is that you, mon cousin?"
She got up and straightened her hair, which always, even now, was so unusually smooth, as if it had been made from one piece with the head and varnished.
- What, something happened? She asked. “I’m already so scared.
- Nothing, everything is the same; I just came to talk to you, Katish, about the matter, ”said the prince, wearily sitting down on the chair from which she had risen. - How hot you are, however, - he said, - well, sit down here, causons. [let's talk.]
- I thought, hadn’t something happened? - said the princess, and with her unchanging, stone-stern expression on her face, she sat down opposite the prince, preparing to listen.
“I wanted to sleep, mon cousin, but I can't.
- Well, what, my dear? - said Prince Vasily, taking the princess's hand and bending it down, according to his habit.
It was evident that this "well, that" referred to many things that, without naming, they both understood.
The princess, with her incongruously long legs, dry and straight waist, looked straight and dispassionately at the prince with bulging gray eyes. She shook her head and looked at the images with a sigh. Her gesture could be explained both as an expression of sadness and devotion, and as an expression of fatigue and hope for a speedy rest. Prince Vasily explained this gesture as an expression of weariness.
- And then, - he said, - do you think it is easier? Je suis ereinte, comme un cheval de poste; [I'm worn out like a mail horse;] but all the same, I need to talk to you, Katish, and very seriously.
Prince Vasily fell silent, and his cheeks began to twitch nervously to one side or the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression that was never shown on the face of Prince Vasily when he was in the drawing rooms. His eyes, too, were not the same as always: they looked insolently jokingly, then they looked around in fright.
The princess, holding the dog on her knees with her dry, thin hands, looked attentively into the eyes of Prince Vasily; but it was evident that she would not break the silence with a question, even if she had to remain silent until morning.
“You see, my dear princess and cousin, Katerina Semyonovna,” continued Prince Vasily, apparently, not without an inner struggle, starting to continue his speech, “at such moments as now, you need to think about everything. We need to think about the future, about you ... I love you all as my children, you know that.
The princess gazed at him with the same dullness and motionlessness.
“Finally, we need to think about my family,” Prince Vasily continued angrily pushing the table away from him and not looking at her, “you know, Katish, that you, three Mamontov sisters, and my wife, are the direct heirs of the count. I know, I know how hard it is for you to talk and think about such things. And it’s not easier for me; but, my friend, I'm in my sixties, I have to be ready for anything. Do you know that I sent for Pierre, and that the count, pointing directly to his portrait, demanded him to come to him?
Prince Vasily looked inquiringly at the princess, but could not understand whether she was thinking what he had told her, or simply looking at him ...
- I never cease to pray to God for one thing, mon cousin, - she answered, - that he would have mercy on him and let his beautiful soul leave this ...
- Yes, that is so, - Prince Vasily continued impatiently, rubbing his bald head and again angrily pulling the table that was pulled back to him, - but finally ... finally the point is, you yourself know that last winter the count wrote a will, according to which he had the entire estate , in addition to direct heirs and us, he gave to Pierre.
- You never know he wrote wills! - said the princess calmly. - But he could not bequeathed to Pierre. Pierre is illegal.
“Ma chere,” Prince Vasily said suddenly, pressing the table to him, perking up and starting to speak quickly, “but what if the letter was written to the emperor, and the count asks to adopt Pierre? You see, according to the count's merits, his request will be respected ...
The princess smiled, as do people who think that they know the business more than those with whom they are talking.
“I’ll tell you more,” Prince Vasily continued, grabbing her hand, “the letter was written, although it was not sent, and the emperor knew about it. The only question is whether it was destroyed or not. If not, then how soon everything will end - Prince Vasily sighed, making it clear that he meant everything would end by words - and the count's papers will be opened, the will with the letter will be handed over to the emperor, and his request will probably be respected. Pierre, as a legitimate son, will receive everything.
- And our part? - asked the princess, smiling ironically, as if everything, but not this, could happen.
- Mais, ma pauvre Catiche, c "est clair, comme le jour. [But, my dear Katish, this is as clear as day.] Then he is the only legitimate heir to everything, and you will not get any of this. You should know, my dear, were the will and the letter written, and were they destroyed. And if for some reason they are forgotten, then you must know where they are and find them, because ...
- It was just lacking! - the princess interrupted him, smiling sardonically and without changing the expression of her eyes. - I am a woman; according to you we are all stupid; but I know so well that an illegitimate son cannot inherit ... Un batard, [Illegal,] - she added, believing with this translation to finally show the prince his groundlessness.
- How do you not understand, finally, Katish! You are so smart: how do you not understand - if the count wrote a letter to the emperor, in which he asks him to recognize his son as legitimate, therefore, Pierre will not be Pierre, but Count Bezukhoi, and then he will receive everything according to his will? And if the will and the letter are not destroyed, then you, except for the consolation that you were virtuous et tout ce qui s "en suit, [and everything that follows from this] will have nothing left. This is true.
- I know that the will has been written; but I also know that it is not valid, and you seem to regard me as a complete fool, mon cousin, ”said the princess with the expression with which women speak, believing that they have said something witty and insulting.
“My dear Princess Katerina Semyonovna,” Prince Vasily began impatiently. - I came to you not to dive with you, but to talk about your interests as with a dear, good, kind, true dear. I tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the sovereign and the will in favor of Pierre is in the count's papers, then you, my dear, and your sisters, are not the heiress. If you don’t believe me, then believe people who know: I just spoke with Dmitry Onufriich (he was a lawyer at home), he said the same.
Apparently, something suddenly changed in the princess's thoughts; her thin lips turned pale (her eyes remained the same), and her voice, as she spoke, burst out in such rumblings as she apparently did not expect herself.
“That would be nice,” she said. - I didn’t want anything and I don’t want anything.
She kicked her dog off her knees and straightened the folds of her dress.
“Here is gratitude, here is gratitude to the people who sacrificed everything for him,” she said. - Perfectly! Very good! I don't need anything, prince.
- Yes, but you are not alone, you have sisters, - answered Prince Vasily.
But the princess did not listen to him.
- Yes, I knew this for a long time, but I forgot that, apart from baseness, deception, envy, intrigue, except ingratitude, the blackest ingratitude, I could not expect anything in this house ...
- Do you know or do not know where this will? Prince Vasily asked with even more twitching of his cheeks than before.
- Yes, I was stupid, I still believed in people and loved them and sacrificed myself. And only those who are mean and disgusting succeed. I know whose intrigue it is.
The princess wanted to get up, but the prince held her hand. The princess looked like a man who was suddenly disillusioned with the whole human race; she glared at her interlocutor.
“There’s still time, my friend. Do you remember, Katish, that all this happened by accident, in a moment of anger, illness, and then forgotten. It is our duty, my dear, to correct his mistake, to facilitate his last moments in order to prevent him from doing this injustice, not to let him die thinking that he made those people unhappy ...
“Those people who sacrificed everything for him,” the princess picked up, trying to get up again, but the prince did not let her in, “which he never knew how to appreciate. No, mon cousin, ”she added with a sigh,“ I will remember that in this world one cannot expect a reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world, one must be cunning and evil.
- Well, voyons, [listen,] calm down; I know your beautiful heart.
- No, I have an evil heart.
“I know your heart,” the prince repeated, “I appreciate your friendship and would like you to have the same opinion of me. Calm down and parlons raison, [let's talk really,] while there is time - maybe a day, maybe an hour; tell me everything you know about the will, and most importantly where it is: you must know. We will now take it and show it to the Count. He probably forgot about him and wants to destroy him. You understand that my only desire is to sacredly fulfill his will; then I just came here. I'm only here to help him and you.
- Now I understand everything. I know whose intrigue it is. I know, - said the princess.
“That’s not the point, my soul.
- This is your protegee, [darling,] your dear Princess Drubetskaya, Anna Mikhailovna, whom I would not wish to have as a maid, this vile, disgusting woman.
- Ne perdons point de temps. [Let's not waste time.]
- Ax, don't say! Last winter she rubbed herself in here and said such nasty things, such nasty things to the count on all of us, especially Sophie — I can't repeat — that the count became ill and did not want to see us for two weeks. At this time, I know that he wrote this disgusting, disgusting paper; but I thought this paper meant nothing.
- Nous u voila, [This is the point.] Why didn't you tell me anything before?
“In the mosaic briefcase he keeps under his pillow. Now I know, - said the princess without answering. “Yes, if there is a sin behind me, a great sin, then it’s hatred of this scum,” the princess almost shouted, completely changed. - And why is she rubbing herself in here? But I'll tell her everything, everything. The time will come!

While such conversations were taking place in the reception room and in the princess's rooms, the carriage with Pierre (for whom it was sent) and with Anna Mikhailovna (who found it necessary to go with him) drove into the courtyard of Count Bezukhoi. When the wheels of the carriage softly sounded on the straw laid under the windows, Anna Mikhailovna, turning to her companion with comforting words, made sure that he was sleeping in the corner of the carriage, and woke him up. Waking up, Pierre followed Anna Mikhailovna out of the carriage and then only thought of the meeting with his dying father that awaited him. He noticed that they had arrived not at the front door, but at the back entrance. While he was stepping off the step, two men in bourgeois clothes hurriedly ran away from the entrance to the shadow of the wall. Pausing, Pierre saw in the shadow of the house on both sides several more people of the same kind. But neither Anna Mikhailovna, nor the footman, nor the coachman, who could not help seeing these people, paid attention to them. Therefore, this is so necessary, Pierre decided with himself, and followed Anna Mikhailovna. Anna Mikhailovna hurried up the dimly lit narrow stone staircase, beckoning Pierre who was behind her, who, although he did not understand why he had to go to the count at all, and even less why he had to go up the back staircase, but judging by Anna Mikhailovna's confidence and haste, he decided to himself that it was necessary. Halfway down the stairs, they were nearly knocked off their feet by some people with buckets, who, with their boots knocking, ran to meet them. These people pressed against the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna pass, and did not show the slightest surprise at the sight of them.
- Are half princesses here? - Anna Mikhailovna asked one of them ...
“Here,” the footman answered in a bold, loud voice, as if now everything was possible, “the door is to the left, mother.
“Maybe the count didn’t call me,” said Pierre as he walked out onto the platform, “I would have gone to my place.
Anna Mikhailovna stopped to catch up with Pierre.
- Ah, mon ami! - she said with the same gesture as with her son in the morning, touching his hand: - croyez, que je souffre autant, que vous, mais soyez homme. [Believe me, I suffer as much as you do, but be a man.]
- Right, I'll go? - asked Pierre, affectionately looking through his glasses at Anna Mikhailovna.
- Ah, mon ami, oubliez les torts qu "on a pu avoir envers vous, pensez que c" est votre pere ... peut etre al "agonie. - She sighed. - Je vous ai tout de suite aime comme mon fils. Fiez vous a moi, Pierre. Je n "oublirai pas vos interets. [Forget, my friend, what was wrong against you. Remember that this is your father ... Maybe in agony. I immediately fell in love with you as a son. Trust me, Pierre. I will not forget your interests.]
Pierre understood nothing; again it seemed to him even more strongly that all this should be so, and he obediently followed Anna Mikhailovna, who had already opened the door.
The door opened into the forward reverse. In the corner sat an old servant of the princes, knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been in this half, had never even imagined the existence of such chambers. Anna Mikhailovna asked the girl who was overtaking them with a decanter on a tray (calling her sweet and dear) about the health of the princesses and drew Pierre further along the stone corridor. From the corridor, the first door to the left led into the living rooms of the princesses. The maid, with a decanter, in a hurry (as everything was done in a hurry at this moment in this house) did not close the doors, and Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna, passing by, involuntarily glanced into the room where, talking, the elder princess sat close to each other with Prince Vasily. Seeing the passers-by, Prince Vasily made an impatient movement and leaned back; The princess jumped up and, with a desperate gesture, slammed the door with all her might, closing it.
This gesture was so unlike the princess's usual calmness, the fear expressed on the face of Prince Vasily was so unusual for his importance that Pierre, stopping inquiringly through his glasses, looked at his leader.
Anna Mikhailovna did not express surprise, she only smiled slightly and sighed, as if showing that she had expected all this.
- Soyez homme, mon ami, c "est moi qui veillerai a vos interets, [Be a man, my friend, I will look after your interests.] - she said in response to his glance and walked even faster down the corridor.
Pierre did not understand what the matter was, and even less what it meant veiller a vos interets, [to look after your interests,] but he understood that all this should be so. They went through the corridor into a semi-lighted room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those cold and luxurious rooms that Pierre knew from the front porch. But even in this room, in the middle, there was an empty bathtub and water was spilled over the carpet. A servant and a clerk with a censer came out to meet them on tiptoe, not paying attention to them. They entered the reception room, familiar to Pierre, with two Italian windows, access to the winter garden, with a large bust and full-length portrait of Catherine. All the same people, in almost the same positions, sat whispering in the waiting room. They all fell silent and looked back at Anna Mikhailovna, who had come in, with her tear-stained, pale face, and at the fat, big Pierre, who, bowing his head, obediently followed her.
Anna Mikhailovna's face expressed the realization that the decisive moment had arrived; she, with the receptions of a Petersburg lady, entered the room, not letting go of Pierre, even bolder than in the morning. She felt that since she was leading the one whom the dying wished to see, her reception was assured. Quickly looking around everyone in the room, and noticing the count's confessor, she, not only bending down, but suddenly becoming smaller, swam up to the confessor with a small amble and respectfully accepted the blessing of one, then another clergyman.
“Thank God that we had time,” she said to the clergyman, “we all, relatives, were so afraid. This young man is the son of a count, ”she added more quietly. - Awful minute!
Having said these words, she went to the doctor.
“Cher docteur,” she said to him, “ce jeune homme est le fils du comte ... y a t il de l" espoir? [This young man is the son of a count ... Is there any hope?]
The doctor silently, with a quick movement, raised his eyes and shoulders. Anna Mikhailovna lifted her shoulders and eyes in exactly the same movement, almost closing them, sighed and walked away from the doctor to Pierre. She addressed Pierre with a particularly respectful and gentle sadness.
- Ayez confiance en Sa misericorde, [Trust His mercy,] - she said to him, showing him a sofa to sit down to wait for her, she herself silently went to the door, at which everyone was looking, and after the barely audible sound of this door disappeared behind her.
Pierre, having decided to obey his leader in everything, went to the sofa, which she had indicated to him. As soon as Anna Mikhailovna disappeared, he noticed that the gazes of everyone in the room, more than curiosity and sympathy, were directed at him. He noticed that everyone was whispering, pointing at him with their eyes, as if with fear and even with servility. He was shown respect that had never been shown before: a lady unknown to him, who spoke to the clergy, got up from her seat and invited him to sit down, the adjutant picked up the glove dropped by Pierre and handed it to him; the doctors were respectfully silent as he passed them, and stepped aside to make room for him. Pierre wanted to first sit down in another seat so as not to embarrass the lady; he wanted to lift his glove himself and bypass the doctors, who did not even stand on the road; but he suddenly felt that it would be indecent, he felt that this night he was a person who was obliged to perform some terrible and expected rite, and that therefore he had to accept services from everyone. He silently accepted the glove from the adjutant, sat down in the lady's place, putting his large hands on symmetrically exposed knees, in the naive pose of an Egyptian statue, and decided to himself that all this should be so, and that he should not to get lost and not do stupid things, one should not act according to one's own considerations, but one must leave oneself completely to the will of those who led him.
Less than two minutes later, Prince Vasily, in his caftan with three stars, majestically, carrying his head high, entered the room. He seemed thinner in the morning; his eyes were larger than usual when he looked around the room and saw Pierre. He walked over to him, took his hand (which he had never done before) and pulled it down, as if he wanted to test if it was holding on tightly.
- Courage, courage, mon ami. Il a demande a vous voir. C "est bien ... [Do not lose heart, do not lose heart, my friend. He wanted to see you. That's good ...] - and he wanted to go.
But Pierre saw fit to ask:
- How is your health…
He hesitated, not knowing whether it was proper to call the dying one a count; he was ashamed to call him a father.
- Il a eu encore un coup, il y a une demi heure. There was also a blow. Courage, mon ami ... [Half an hour ago he had another stroke. Cheer up, my friend ...]
Pierre was in such a state of vague thought that at the word "blow" he imagined a blow from some body. He, perplexed, looked at Prince Vasily and only then realized that a blow is called a disease. Prince Vasily said a few words to Lorrain as he walked and walked through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk on tiptoe and jumped awkwardly with his whole body. The eldest princess followed him, then the clergy and clergymen walked, people (servants) also walked through the door. Behind this door was heard movement, and finally, with the same pale but firm face in the performance of duty, Anna Mikhailovna ran out and, touching Pierre's hand, said:
- La bonte divine est inepuisable. C "est la ceremonie de l" extreme onction qui va commencer. Venez. [The mercy of God is inexhaustible. Unction will begin now. Let's go.]

“Before starting work, I try to forget that I am a musician,” said composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, and these words best characterize his reformist approach to writing operas. Gluck "wrenched" the opera out of the grip of court aesthetics. He gave her the greatness of ideas, psychological truthfulness, depth and strength of passions.

Christoph Willibald Gluck was born on July 2, 1714 in Erasbach, in the Austrian state of Falz. In early childhood, he often moved from one place to another, depending on which of the noble estates his father, a forester, served. From 1717 he lived in Bohemia. He received the rudiments of musical knowledge at the Jesuit college in Komotau. After graduation in 1731, Gluck began to study philosophy at the University of Prague and study music under Bohuslav Matej Chernogorski. Unfortunately, Gluck, who lived in the Czech Republic until he was twenty-two, did not receive the same strong professional education in his homeland as his colleagues in Central Europe.

The lack of schooling was compensated for by the power and freedom of thought, which allowed Gluck to turn to the new and relevant, which lay outside the legalized norms.

In 1735, Gluck became a house musician at the Lobkowitz palace in Vienna. Gluck's first stay in Vienna was short-lived: on one of the evenings in the salon of the Lobkowitz princes, the Italian aristocrat and philanthropist A.M. Melzi. Fascinated by the art of Gluck, he invited him to his home chapel in Milan.

In 1737, Gluck assumed his new position at the Melzi house. During the four years he lived in Italy, he became close to the greatest Milan composer and organist Giovanni Battista Sammartini, becoming his student and later a close friend. The Italian maestro's guidance helped Gluck complete his musical education. However, he became an opera composer mainly due to his innate instinct as a musical playwright and his gift of keen observation. On December 26, 1741, the court theater "Reggio Ducal" in Milan opened the new season with the opera "Artaxerxes" by the hitherto unknown Christoph Willibald Gluck. He was in his twenty-eighth year - the age at which other composers of the 18th century managed to achieve pan-European fame.

For his first opera, Gluck chose Metastasio's libretto, which inspired many composers of the 18th century. Gluck specially completed the aria in the traditional Italian manner in order to highlight the dignity of his music to the audience. The premiere was a great success. The choice of the libretto fell on Metastasio's Demetria, renamed after the main character in Cleonic.

Gluck's fame is growing rapidly. The Milan theater aims to reopen its winter season with its opera. Gluck composes music to Metastasio's libretto "Demofont". This opera was such a great success in Milan that it was soon staged in Reggio and Bologna as well. Then, one after another in the cities of northern Italy, Gluck's new operas were staged: Tigran in Cremona, Sofonisba and Hippolytus in Milan, Hypernestra in Venice, Por in Turin.

In November 1745, Gluck appears in London, accompanying his former patron, Prince F.F. Lobkowitz. In the absence of time, the composer prepared a "pasticho", that is, composed an opera from previously composed music. The premiere of two of his operas, The Fall of the Giants and Artamen, which took place in 1746, passed without much success.

In 1748, Gluck received an order for an opera for the court theater in Vienna. The premiere of The Recognized Semiramis, furnished with magnificent splendor in the spring of the same year, brought the composer a truly great success, which became the beginning of his triumphs at the Viennese court.

Further work of the composer is connected with the troupe of JB Locatelli, who commissioned him to perform the opera Aezio for performance at the 1750 carnival celebrations in Prague.

The good fortune that accompanied the Prague production of Aezio brought Gluck a new opera contract with the Locatelli troupe. It seemed that from now on the composer was increasingly linking his destiny with Prague. However, at this time, an event occurred that dramatically changed his previous way of life: on September 15, 1750, he married Marianne Pergin, the daughter of a wealthy Viennese merchant. Gluck first met his future companion in life back in 1748, when he was working in Vienna on "Recognized Semiramis". Despite the significant age difference, a genuine deep feeling arose between the 34-year-old Gluck and the 16-year-old girl. The substantial fortune inherited by Marianne from her father made Gluck financially independent and allowed him to devote himself entirely to creativity in the future. Having finally settled in Vienna, he leaves it only to attend numerous premieres of his operas in other European cities. On all trips, the composer is invariably accompanied by his spouse, who surrounded him with attention and care.

In the summer of 1752, Gluck received a new commission from the director of the famous Teatro San Carlo in Naples, one of the best in Italy. He writes the opera Titus' Mercy, which brought him great success.

After the triumphant performance of Titus in Naples, Gluck returned to Vienna as the acknowledged master of the Italian opera seria. Meanwhile, the glory of the popular aria reached the capital of the Austrian Empire, arousing interest in its creator from Prince Joseph von Hildburghausen, a field marshal and musical patron of the arts. He invited Gluck to lead the weekly musical academies held at his palace as "accompanist". Under the direction of Gluck, these concerts soon became one of the most interesting events in the musical life of Vienna; outstanding vocalists and instrumentalists performed there.

In 1756, Gluck went to Rome to fulfill an order for the famous Argentina Theater; he was to write the music for Metastasio's libretto "Antigone". At that time, performing in front of the Roman public presented a most serious challenge for any opera composer.

Antigone was very successful in Rome, and Gluck was awarded the Order of the Golden Spur. This order, ancient in its origin, was awarded with the aim of encouraging outstanding representatives of science and art.

In the middle of the 18th century, the art of virtuoso singers reaches its peak, and the opera becomes exclusively a place for the demonstration of singing art. Because of this, the connection between music and drama itself was largely lost, which was characteristic of antiquity.

Gluck was about fifty years old. A favorite of the public, awarded an honorary order, the author of many operas written in a purely traditional decorative style, he seemed unable to open new horizons in music. Intensively working thought for a long time did not break through to the surface, almost did not reflect on the character of his graceful, aristocratic cold creativity. And suddenly, at the turn of the 1760s, deviations from the conventional operatic style appeared in his works.

First, in the 1755 opera, Justified Innocence, there is a departure from the principles that dominated the Italian opera-seria. It is followed by the ballet Don Juan based on the subject of Moliere (1761), another harbinger of the operatic reform.

This was no coincidence. The composer was distinguished by his amazing sensitivity to the latest trends of our time, his readiness for creative processing of a wide variety of artistic impressions.

As soon as he was young in London he heard Handel's oratorios just created and not yet known in continental Europe, as their sublime heroic pathos and monumental "fresco" composition became an organic element of his own dramatic concepts. Along with the influences of the lush "baroque" Handel music, Gluck adopted from the musical life of London the enchanting simplicity and seeming naivety of English folk ballads.

It was enough for his librettist and co-author of the Kalzabiji reform to draw Gluck's attention to the French lyric tragedy, and he instantly became interested in its theatrical and poetic merits. The appearance at the Viennese court of the French comic opera was also reflected in the images of his future musical dramas: they descended from the stilted heights cultivated in the opera-series under the influence of Metastasio's “standard” librettos, and became close to the real characters of the folk theater. Leading literary youth, pondering the fate of modern drama, easily drew Gluck into the circle of his creative interests, which made him take a critical look at the established conventions of the opera house. There are many such examples that speak of Gluck's acute creative sensitivity to the latest trends of our time. Gluck realized that the main thing in the opera should be music, plot development and theatrical performance, and not at all artistic singing with coloratura and technical excesses, subject to a single template.

The opera Orpheus and Eurydice was the first work in which Gluck realized new ideas. Its premiere in Vienna on October 5, 1762 marked the beginning of the operatic reform. Gluck wrote a recitative so that the meaning of the words came first, the part of the orchestra obeyed the general mood of the stage, and the singing static figures finally began to play, showed artistic qualities, and the singing would be combined with action. The singing technique has become much simpler, but it has become more natural and much more attractive to listeners. The overture in the opera also contributed to the introduction of the ambience and mood of the subsequent act. In addition, Gluck turned the choir into an immediate component of the flow of the drama. The wonderful uniqueness of "Orpheus and Eurydice" in its "Italian" musicality. The dramatic structure here is based on complete musical numbers, which, like the arias of the Italian school, captivate with their melodic beauty and completeness.

Following Orpheus and Eurydice, Gluck, five years later, completes Alcesta (libretto by R. Calzabigi after Euripides) - a drama of majestic and strong passions. The civic theme is here carried out consistently through the conflict between social necessity and personal passions. Her drama centers around two emotional states - “fear and sorrow” (Rousseau). There is something oratorical in the theatrical-plot static nature of "Alcesta", in a certain generalization, in the severity of its images. But at the same time, there is a conscious desire to free oneself from the dominance of completed musical numbers and follow the poetic text.

In 1774, Gluck moved to Paris, where, in an atmosphere of pre-revolutionary upsurge, his opera reform was completed and, under the indisputable influence of French theatrical culture, a new opera Iphigenia at Aulis (after Racine) was born. This is the first of three operas created by the composer for Paris. Unlike "Alceste", the theme of civil heroism is built here with a theatrical diversity. The main dramatic situation is enriched with a lyrical line, genre motives, lush decorative scenes.

High tragic pathos is combined with everyday elements. In the musical structure, individual moments of dramatic climaxes are noteworthy, which stand out against the background of more "impersonal" material. “This is Racine's Iphigenia, converted into an opera,” said the Parisians themselves about Gluck's first French opera.

In the next opera "Armida", written in 1779 (libretto by F. Kino), Gluck, in his own words, "tried to be ... more a poet, painter than musician." Referring to the libretto of Lully's renowned opera, he wanted to revive the techniques of French court opera on the basis of a new, developed musical language, new principles of orchestral expressiveness and the achievements of his own reformist drama. The heroic beginning in "Armida" is intertwined with fantastic pictures.

"I am waiting with horror, no matter how they decide to compare" Armida "and" Alcesta ", - wrote Gluck, - ... one should cause a tear, and the other should give sensory experiences."

And, finally, the most amazing "Iphigenia in Tauris", composed in the same 1779 (after Euripides)! The conflict between feeling and duty is expressed in it psychologically. Pictures of mental confusion, suffering brought to paroxysms, form the central moment of the opera. The picture of a thunderstorm - a characteristic French touch - is embodied in the introduction by symphonic means with an unprecedented acuteness of foreboding of tragedy.

Like nine inimitable symphonies that "fold" into a single concept of Beethoven's symphonism, these five operatic masterpieces, so close to each other and at the same time so individual, form a new style in musical drama of the 18th century, which went down in history under the name of Gluck's opera reform.

In the majestic tragedies of Gluck, revealing the depth of a person's spiritual conflicts, raising civic issues, a new idea of ​​the musically beautiful was born. If in the old French court opera "they preferred ... wit to feeling, gallantry to passions, and the grace and color of versification of the pathos demanded by ... the situation," then in Gluck's drama high passions and sharp dramatic collisions destroyed the ideal orderliness and exaggerated grace of the court opera style ...

Every deviation from the expected and the usual, every violation of standardized beauty, Gluck argued with a deep analysis of the movements of the human soul. In such episodes, those bold musical techniques were born that anticipated the art of the "psychological" of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that in an era when dozens and hundreds of operas in a conventional style were written by individual composers, Gluck created only five reformer masterpieces over a quarter of a century. But each of them is unique in its dramatic appearance, each sparkles with individual musical finds.

Gluck's progressive efforts did not go into practice so easily and smoothly. The history of opera has even included such a concept as the war between the picchinists - supporters of old opera traditions - and the Gluckists, who, on the contrary, saw the fulfillment of their long-standing dream of a genuine musical drama gravitating towards antiquity in the new opera style.

The adherents of the old, "purists and aesthetes" (as Gluck branded them), were repelled in his music by the "lack of sophistication and nobility." They reproached him for "loss of taste", pointed to the "barbaric and extravagant" nature of his art, to "screams of physical pain", "convulsive sobs", "cries of sorrow and despair", which supplanted the charm of a smooth, balanced melody.

Today these reproaches seem ridiculous and unfounded. Judging by the innovation of Gluck with historical detachment, one can be convinced that he surprisingly carefully preserved the artistic techniques that were developed in the opera house during the previous one and a half century and formed the "golden fund" of his expressive means. In the musical language of Gluck, a continuity is evident with the expressive and ear-caressing melody of Italian opera, with the graceful "ballet" instrumental style of French lyric tragedy. But in his eyes, "the true purpose of music" was "to give poetry more new expressive power." Therefore, striving with the maximum completeness and truthfulness to embody the dramatic idea of ​​the libretto in musical sounds (and Kaltsabiji's poetic texts were saturated with genuine drama), the composer persistently rejected all decorative and stencil techniques that contradicted this. "Applied beauty not in place not only loses most of its effect, but also harms, throwing the listener out of the way, who is not already in the position necessary to follow with interest the dramatic development," Gluck said.

And the new expressive techniques of the composer really destroyed the conventional typed "prettiness" of the old style, but at the same time expanded the dramatic possibilities of the music to the maximum.

It was in Gluck's vocal parts that speech, declamatory intonations appeared that contradicted the “sweet” smooth melody of the old opera, but truthfully reflected the life of the stage image. The closed, static numbers of the "concert in costumes" style, separated by dry recitations, have forever disappeared from his operas. Their place was taken by a new close-up composition, built on scenes, contributing to the through musical development and emphasizing the musical and dramatic climaxes. The orchestral part, doomed to a pitiful role in Italian opera, began to take part in the development of the image, and in Gluck's orchestral scores, the previously unknown dramatic possibilities of instrumental sounds were revealed.

“Music, the music itself, passed into action ...” - Gretry wrote about Gluck's opera. Indeed, for the first time in the centuries-old history of the opera house, the idea of ​​a drama was embodied in music with such completeness and artistic perfection. The amazing simplicity that defined the shape of every thought Gluck expressed was also incompatible with the old aesthetic criteria.

Far beyond the boundaries of this school, in opera and instrumental music of different European countries, aesthetic ideals, dramatic principles, and forms of musical expression developed by Gluck were introduced. Outside of the Gluckian reform, not only the operatic, but also the chamber-symphonic works of the late Mozart, and to a certain extent the oratorio art of the late Haydn, would not have matured. The continuity between Gluck and Beethoven is so natural, so obvious that it seems as if the musician of the older generation bequeathed the great symphonist to continue the work he had begun.

Gluck spent the last years of his life in Vienna, where he returned in 1779. The composer died on November 15, 1787 in Vienna. The ashes of Gluck, initially buried in one of the nearby cemeteries, were subsequently transferred to the central city cemetery, where all the outstanding representatives of the musical culture of Vienna are buried.

1.five more, please ...

Gluck dreamed of making his opera debut at the Royal Academy of Music, formerly the Bolshoi Opera House. The composer sent the score of the opera "Iphigenia in Aulis" to the theater management. The director was frankly frightened of this unusual - unlike anything - work and decided to play it safe by writing to Gluck the following answer: “If Mr. for this opera transcends and destroys all that existed before. "

2.slightly wrong

A rather rich and noble dilettante, out of boredom, decided to take up music and first composed an opera ... Gluck, to whom he gave it to the court, returning the manuscript, said with a sigh:
- You know, my dear, your opera is quite nice, but ...
- Do you think she lacks something?
- Perhaps.
- What?
- Poverty, I suppose.

3.easy way out

Once passing by a store, Gluck slipped and broke the glass of the shop window. He asked the owner of the shop how much the glass cost, and when he learned that it was one and a half francs, he gave him a coin of three francs. But the owner did not have change, and he already wanted to go to his neighbor to change money, but was stopped by Gluck.
“Don't waste your time,” he said. - No change, I'd rather break your glass one more time ...

4. "the main thing is that the suit fits ..."

At the rehearsal of "Iphigenia in Aulis" Gluck drew attention to the unusually heavy, as they say, "non-stage" figure of the singer Larriva, who performed the part of Agamemnon, and did not fail to notice it aloud.
“Patience, maestro,” said Larriva, “you haven't seen me in a suit. I would argue for anything that I am unrecognizable in a suit.
At the very first rehearsals in costumes, Gluck shouted from the stalls:
- Larriva! You bet! Unfortunately, I recognized you without difficulty!

Christoph Willibald Gluck

The famous composer of the 18th century Christoph Willibald Gluck, one of the reformers of classical opera, was born on July 2, 1714 in the town of Erasbach, located near the border of the County of Upper Palatinate and the Czech Republic.

The composer's father was a simple peasant who, after several years of service in the army, joined Count Lobkowitz as a forester. In 1717, the Gluck family moved to the Czech Republic. Years of life in this country could not but affect the work of the famous composer: in his music you can catch the motives of Czech folk song.

The childhood of Christoph Willibald Gluck cannot be called cloudless: the family often did not have enough money, and the boy was forced to help his father in everything. However, the difficulties did not break the composer, on the contrary, they contributed to the development of vitality and perseverance. These qualities of character proved to be indispensable for Gluck in the implementation of reformist ideas.

In 1726, at the age of 12, Christoph Willibald began his studies at the Jesuit college in Komotau. The rules of this educational institution, imbued with blind faith in the dogmas of the church, provided for unconditional obedience to the authorities, but it was difficult for the young talent to keep himself within the framework.

The positive aspects of Gluck's six-year study at the Jesuit college can be considered the development of vocal skills, mastery of such musical instruments as the clavier, organ and cello, Greek and Latin, as well as a passion for antique literature. In those days, when the main theme of operatic art was Greek and Roman antiquities, such knowledge and skills were simply necessary for an opera composer.

In 1732, Gluck entered the University of Prague and moved from Komotau to the capital of the Czech Republic, where he continued his musical education. The young man was still struggling with money. Sometimes, in search of earnings, he went to the surrounding villages and entertained the locals by playing the cello; quite often the future musical reformer was invited to weddings and folk festivals. Almost all the money earned in this way was spent on food.

The first real music teacher for Christoph Willibald Gluck was the outstanding composer and organist Bohuslav Chernogorsky. The young man's acquaintance with the "Czech Bach" took place in one of the Prague churches, where Gluck sang in the church choir. It was from Montenegro that the future reformer learned what general bass (harmony) and counterpoint are.

Many researchers of Gluck's work mark 1736 as the beginning of his professional musical career. Count Lobkowitz, on whose estate the young man spent his childhood, showed a genuine interest in the extraordinary talent of Christoph Willibald. Soon an important event took place in the fate of Gluck: he received the position of chamber musician and chief singer of the Viennese chapel, Count Lobkowitz.

The fast-paced musical life of Vienna completely engulfed the young composer. Acquaintance with the famous playwright and librettist of the 18th century Pietro Metastasio resulted in Gluck's writing of the first opera works, which, however, did not receive special recognition.

The next stage in the work of the young composer was a trip to Italy, organized by the Italian philanthropist Count Melzi. For four years, from 1737 to 1741, Gluck continued his studies in Milan under the guidance of the renowned Italian composer, organist and conductor Giovanni Battista Sammartini.

The result of the Italian trip was Gluck's passion for the opera seria and the writing of musical compositions based on the texts of P. Metastasio (Artaxerxes, Demetrius, Hypernestra, etc.). None of Gluck's early works have survived to this day in full form, nevertheless, individual fragments of his works allow us to judge that even then the future reformer noticed a number of shortcomings in traditional Italian opera and tried to overcome them.

The signs of the forthcoming operatic reform were most evident in Hypernestr: this striving to overcome the external vocal virtuosity, increase the dramatic expressiveness of the recitatives, the organic connection of the overture with the content of the entire opera. However, the creative immaturity of the young composer, who had not yet fully realized the need to change the principles of writing an opera work, did not allow him to become a reformer in those years.

Yet there is no unbridgeable gap between Gluck's earlier and later operas. In the works of the reform period, the composer often introduced the melodic turns of the earlier works, and sometimes used old arias with new text.

In 1746 Christoph Willibald Gluck moved to England. For the highest London society he wrote the operas "Artamen" and "The Fall of the Giants". The meeting with the renowned Handel, in whose works there was a tendency to go beyond the standard scheme of serious opera, became a new stage in the creative life of Gluck, who gradually realized the need for opera reform.

To attract the metropolitan audience to his concerts, Gluck resorted to the help of external effects. So, in one of the London newspapers for March 31, 1746, an announcement was given as follows: “In the great hall of the city of Hickford, on Tuesday April 14, 1746, Gluck, an opera composer, will give a musical concert with the participation of the best opera artists. By the way, he will perform, accompanied by an orchestra, a concert for 26 glasses, tuned with spring water ... ".

From England, Gluck went to Germany, then to Denmark and the Czech Republic, where he wrote and staged seria operas, dramatic serenades, worked with opera singers and as a conductor.

In the mid-1750s, the composer returned to Vienna, where he received an invitation from the intendant of the court theaters, Giacomo Durazzo, to begin work in the French theater as a composer. In the period from 1758 to 1764, Gluck wrote a number of French comic operas: "Merlin's Island" (1758), "The Corrected Drunkard" (1760), "The Fooled Cadi" (1761), "An Unexpected Meeting, or The Pilgrims of Mecca" ( 1764) and others.

Work in this direction had a significant impact on the formation of Gluck's reformist views: an appeal to the true origins of folk song and the use of new everyday subjects in classical art led to the growth of realistic elements in the composer's musical work.

Gluck's legacy is not limited to operas. In 1761, the pantomime ballet Don Juan, a joint work of Christoph Willibald Gluck and the famous 18th century choreographer Gasparo Angiolini, was staged on the stage of one of the Viennese theaters. The characteristic features of this ballet are the dramatization of the action and the expressive music that conveys human passions.

Thus, ballet and comic operas became another step on Gluck's path to dramatize operatic art, to create a musical tragedy, the crown of all creative activities of the famous composer-reformer.

Many researchers consider the beginning of Gluck's reform activity his rapprochement with the Italian poet, playwright and librettist Raniero da Calzabigi, who contrasted the court aesthetics of Metastasio's works, subject to standard canons, with the simplicity, naturalness and freedom of compositional construction, due to the development of the dramatic action itself. Choosing antique subjects for his librettos, Calzabiji filled them with high moral pathos and special civic and moral ideals.

The first reformist opera by Gluck, written on the text of a like-minded librettist, was Orpheus and Eurydice, staged at the Vienna Opera House on October 5, 1762. This work is known in two editions: in Vienna (in Italian) and in Paris (in French), supplemented with ballet scenes, ending the first act with the aria of Orpheus, re-instrumentation of certain places, etc.

A. Golovin. Set design for the opera "Orpheus and Eurydice" by K. Gluck

The plot of the opera, borrowed from ancient literature, is as follows: the wife of Eurydice died of the Thracian singer Orpheus, who had an amazing voice. Together with his friends, he mourns his beloved. At this time, Cupid, unexpectedly appearing, announces the will of the gods: Orpheus must go down to the kingdom of Hades, find Eurydice there and bring her to the surface of the earth. The main condition is that Orpheus should not look at his wife until they leave the underworld, otherwise she will remain there forever.

This is the first act of the work in which the sad choirs of shepherds and shepherdesses form a harmonious compositional number, together with recitatives and arias of Orpheus mourning his wife. Thanks to repetition (the music of the chorus and the aria of the legendary singer are performed three times) and tonal unity, a dramatic scene with a through action is created.

The second act, consisting of two pictures, begins with Orpheus entering the world of shadows. Here, the singer's magic voice soothes the anger of the formidable furies and spirits of the underworld, and he freely passes into Elysium - the habitat of blissful shadows. Finding his beloved and not looking at her, Orpheus brings her to the surface of the earth.

In this act, the dramatic and sinister character of the music is intertwined with a gentle, passionate melody, demonic choirs and frantic dances of the furies are replaced by a light, lyrical ballet of blissful shadows, accompanied by an inspired flute solo. The orchestral part in the aria of Orpheus conveys the beauty of the surrounding world, filled with harmony.

The third action takes place in a gloomy gorge, along which the main character, without turning around, leads his beloved. Eurydice, not understanding her husband's behavior, asks him to look at her at least once. Orpheus assures her of his love, but Eurydice doubts. The look thrown by Orpheus at his wife kills her. The singer's suffering is endless, the gods take pity on him and send Cupid to resurrect Eurydice. The happy married couple returns to the world of living people and together with friends glorifies the power of love.

Frequent changes in the tempo of the music create the emotional character of the piece. Orpheus's aria, despite the major mode, is an expression of grief over the loss of a loved one, and the preservation of this mood depends on the correct performance, tempo and character of the sound. In addition, Orpheus's aria appears as a modified major reprise of the first chorus of the first act. Thus, the intonational "arch" thrown over the piece preserves its integrity.

The musical and dramatic principles outlined in Orpheus and Eurydice were developed in subsequent operatic compositions by Christoph Willibald Gluck - Alcesta (1767), Paris and Helena (1770), etc. the Viennese classical style emerging at that time, which was finally formed in the music of Haydn and Mozart.

In 1773, a new stage in the life of Gluck began, marked by a move to Paris - the center of European opera art. Vienna did not accept the reformatory ideas of the composer, set out in the dedication to the score of "Alceste" and providing for the transformation of the opera into a musical tragedy, imbued with noble simplicity, drama and heroism in the spirit of classicism.

Music was to become only a means of emotional opening of the heroes' souls; arias, recitatives and choruses, while retaining their independence, were combined into large dramatic scenes, and the recitatives conveyed the dynamics of feelings and denoted transitions from one state to another; the overture had to reflect the dramatic idea of ​​the whole work, and the use of ballet scenes was motivated by the course of the opera.

The introduction of civil motives into ancient subjects contributed to the success of Gluck's works in the midst of advanced French society. In April 1774, the first production of the opera Iphigenia in Aulis was shown at the Royal Academy of Music in Paris, which fully reflected all of Gluck's innovations.

The continuation of the composer's reform activities in Paris was the staging of the operas "Orpheus" and "Alcesta" in a new edition, which brought the theatrical life of the French capital into great excitement. For a number of years, the controversy between the supporters of the reformist Gluck and the Italian opera composer Niccolo Piccini, who held the old positions, did not subside.

The last reformist works of Christoph Willibald Gluck were "Armida", written on a medieval plot (1777), and "Iphigenia in Taurida" (1779). The staging of Gluck's last mythological fairy tale-opera "Echo and Narcissus" did not have much success.

The last years of the life of the famous composer-reformer were spent in Vienna, where he worked on writing songs for texts by various composers, including Klapstock. A few months before his death, Gluck began writing the heroic opera The Battle of Arminius, but his plan was not destined to come true.

The famous composer died in Vienna on November 15, 1787. His work influenced the development of all musical art, including opera.

From the book Encyclopedic Dictionary (D-D) author Brockhaus F.A.

Gluck Gluck (Christoph-Willibald Gluck), famous for him. composer (1714 - 1787). France considers him to be theirs, because his most glorious work is associated with the Parisian opera stage, for which he wrote his best works in French words. His numerous operas:

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GL) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (GU) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (DA) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (PL) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (SH) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (SHE) of the author TSB

From the book of Aphorisms the author Ermishin Oleg

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) composer, one of the reformers of 18th century opera. Music should play in relation to a work of poetry the same role that brightness of colors plays in relation to precise drawing. Simplicity, truth and naturalness are three great

From the book of 100 great composers the author Samin Dmitry

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1713-1787) “Before I start work, I try to forget that I am a musician,” said the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, and these words best characterize his reformist approach to composing operas. Gluck ripped the opera out of -under power

From the book Foreign Literature of the XX century. Book 2 the author Vladimir Novikov

Jean-Christophe An epic novel (1904–1912) In a small German town on the banks of the Rhine, a child is born to the Kraft family of musicians. The first, still unclear perception of the surrounding world, warmth

From the book Big Dictionary of Quotes and Expressions the author Dushenko Konstantin Vasilievich

Lichtenberg, Georg Christof, 1742–1799, German scientist and writer 543 I thank God a thousand times for making me an atheist. "Aphorisms" (published posthumously); hereinafter trans. G. Slobodkina? Dept. ed. - M., 1964, p. 68 Later, the phrase "Thank God that I am an atheist"

In Italy, the struggle between directions took place between the seria (serious) opera, which served mainly the court circles of society, and the buffa (comic) opera, which expressed the interests of the democratic strata.

The Italian opera seria, which took shape in Naples at the end of the 17th century, had progressive significance in the early period of its history (in the work of A. Scarlatti and his closest followers). Melodic singing, based on the origins of Italian folk song, crystallization of the vocal style bel canto ", which was one of the criteria of high vocal culture, the establishment of a viable opera composition, consisting of a number of completed arias, duets, ensembles, united by recitations, played a very positive role in the further development European operatic art.

But already in the first half of the 18th century, the Italian opera seria entered a period of crisis and began to reveal its ideological and artistic decline. The high culture of bel canto, which was previously associated with the transmission of the state of mind of the heroes of the opera, has now degenerated into an external cult of a beautiful voice as such, regardless of the dramatic meaning. Singing began to dazzle with numerous outwardly virtuoso passages, coloratura and grace, which had the purpose of demonstrating the vocal technique of singers and singers. Thus, instead of being a drama, the content of which is revealed by the means of music in an organic combination with theatrical action, the opera, therefore, has turned into a competition of masters of vocal art, for which it received the name “concert in costumes”. The plots of the seria opera, borrowed from ancient mythology or ancient history, were standardized: these were usually episodes from the lives of kings and military leaders with an intricate love affair and with an obligatory happy ending that met the requirements of court aesthetics.

So the Italian opera seria of the 18th century found itself in a state of crisis. However, some composers tried to overcome this crisis in their operatic work. G. F. Handel, individual Italian composers (N. Iomelli, T. Traetta and others), as well as K. V. Gluck in early operas strove for a closer relationship between dramatic action and music, for the destruction of empty "virtuosity" in vocal parties. But Gluck was destined to become a true reformer of the opera during the period when his best works were being created.

Opera buffa

In contrast to the opera seria, the democratic circles put forward the opera buffa, which is also home to Naples. The buffa opera was distinguished by contemporary everyday themes, folk-national music basis, realistic tendencies and life truthfulness in the embodiment of typical images.

The first classic example of this advanced genre was G. Pergolesi's opera The Maid-Lady, which played an enormous historical role in the establishment and development of the Italian buffa opera.

With the further evolution of the buffa opera in the 18th century, its scale increases, the number of characters grows, the intrigue becomes more complicated, such dramatic important elements as large ensembles and finals (expanded ensemble scenes ending each act of the opera) appear.

In the 60s of the 18th century, the lyric-sentimental stream, characteristic of European art of this period, penetrates into the Italian opera buffa. In this respect, such operas as "The Good Daughter" by N. Piccini (1728-1800), partly "The Miller's Woman" by G. Paisiello (1741-1816) and his "The Barber of Seville", written for St. Petersburg (1782) on the plot of a comedy Beaumarchais.

The composer, in whose work the development of the Italian buffa opera of the 18th century was completed, was D. Chi-marosa (1749-1801), the author of the famous, popular opera The Secret Marriage (1792).

French lyric tragedy

Something similar, but on a different national basis and in different forms, represented the operatic life in France. Here, the operatic direction, reflecting the tastes and requirements of court aristocratic circles, was the so-called "lyrical tragedy", created in the 17th century by the great French composer J. B. Lully (1632-1687). But Lully's work also included a significant proportion of the people's democratic elements. Romain Rolland notes that Lully's melodies “were sung not only in the most noble houses, but also in the kitchen, from which he came out,” that “his melodies were sucked in the streets, they were“ pounded ”on instruments, his very overtures were sung to specially selected words ... Many of his melodies turned into folk verses (vaudevilles) ... His music, partially borrowed from the people, returned back to the lower levels ”1.

However, after Lully's death, French lyrical tragedy degraded. If ballet already played a significant role in Lully's operas, then later, due to its dominance, the opera turns into an almost continuous divertissement, its drama disintegrates; it becomes a magnificent spectacle, devoid of a great unifying idea and unity. True, in the operatic work of J. F. Rameau (1683-1764), the best traditions of Lully's lyric tragedy are revived and further developed. According to Rameau, he lived in the 18th century, when the advanced strata of French society, led by encyclopedic educators - J.-J. Rousseau, D. Diderot and others "(ideologists of the third estate) demanded realistic art of life, the heroes of which, instead of mythological characters and gods, would be ordinary, simple people.

And this art, which meets the requirements of democratic circles of society, was the French comic opera, which originated in the fair theaters of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

French comic opera. The performance in Paris in 1752 of Pergolesi's Maidservant-Madame was the final impetus for the development of French comic opera. The controversy surrounding the production of the opera by Pergolesi was called the "war of buffoons and anti-buffonists" 2. It was headed by encyclopedists who advocated realistic musical and theatrical art and against the conventions of the court aristocratic theater. In the decades leading up to the French bourgeois revolution of 1789, this controversy took on acute forms. Following Pergolesi's The Maid-Lady, one of the leaders of the French enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote a small comic opera The Village Wizard (1752).

The French comic opera found its outstanding representatives in the person of F.A. Philidor (1726-1795), P.A.Monsigny (1729-1817), A. Gretri (1742-1813). Gretrie's opera Richard the Lionheart (1784) played a particularly outstanding role. Some of the operas by Monsigny (The Deserter) and Gretry (Lucille) reflect the same lyric-sentimental stream that is characteristic of the art of the middle and second half of the 18th century.

Gluck's arrival at the classical musical tragedy.

However, the French comic opera with its everyday themes, sometimes with bourgeois ideals and moralizing tendencies, ceased to meet the increased aesthetic requirements of advanced democratic circles, seemed too small to embody the big ideas and feelings of the pre-revolutionary era. Heroic and monumental art was needed here. And such an operatic art, embodying great civic ideals, was created by Gluck. Having critically perceived and mastered all the best that existed in contemporary opera, Gluck came to a new classical musical tragedy that met the needs of the advanced part of society. Therefore, the work of Gluck was greeted with such enthusiasm in Paris by encyclopedists and the leading public in general.

According to Romain Rolland, “the revolution of Gluck - this was its strength - was the work of not only the genius of Gluck, but the matter of the age-old development of thought. The coup was prepared, announced and expected for twenty years by the encyclopedists ”1. One of the most prominent representatives of French enlightenment, Denis Diderot, wrote as early as 1757, that is, almost twenty years before Gluck's arrival in Paris: "Let a brilliant man appear who will bring a genuine tragedy onto the stage of lyric theater!" Diderot further declares: “I mean a person who has a genius in his art; this is not the kind of person who can only string modulations and combine notes ”2. As an example of a great classical tragedy that requires musical embodiment, Diderot cites a dramatic scene from Iphigenia at Aulis by the great French playwright Racine, indicating precisely the places of recitatives and arias.

This wish of Diderot turned out to be prophetic: the first opera by Gluck, written for Paris in 1774, was Iphigenia at Aulis.

Life and career of K. V. Gluck

Gluck's childhood

Christoph Willibald Gluck was born on July 2, 1714 in Erasbach (Upper Palatinate) near the Czech border.

Gluck's father was a peasant, in his youth he served as a soldier, and then made forestry his profession and worked as a forester in Bohemian forests in the service of Count Lobkowitz. Thus, from the age of three (from 1717) Christoph Willibald lived in Bohemia, which subsequently affected his work. In Gluck's music, a stream of Czech folk song breaks through.

Gluck's childhood was harsh: the family had meager means, and he had to help his father in a difficult forestry business.This contributed to the development of Gluck's vitality and strong character, which later helped him in implementing reformist ideas.

Years of Gluck's teachings

In 1726, Gluck entered the Jesuit college in the Czech city of Komotau, where he studied for six years and sang in the choir of the school church. All teaching in the college was imbued with a blind faith in church dogmas and the requirement to worship the authorities, which, however, could not subdue the young musician, in the future an advanced artist.

The positive side of the training was Gluck's mastery of the Greek and Latin languages, ancient literature and poetry. It was necessary for an opera composer in the era when operatic art was largely based on antique themes.

While studying at the college, Gluck also played the clavier, organ and cello. In 1732 he moved to the Czech capital Prague, where he entered the university while continuing his musical education. At times, for the sake of earning money, Gluck was forced to leave his studies and wander around the surrounding villages, where he played various dances on the cello, fantasies on folk themes.

In Prague, Gluck sang in a church choir led by the outstanding composer and organist Bohuslav Chernogorski (1684-1742), nicknamed the "Czech Bach". Montenegrin and was the first real teacher of Gluck, who taught him the basics of general bass (harmony) and counterpoint.

Glitch in Vienna

In 1736, a new period begins in the life of Gluck, associated with the beginning of his creative activity and musical career. Count Lobkowitz (who employed Gluck's father) became interested in the outstanding talent of the young musician; taking Gluck with him to Vienna, he appointed him as court choir in his chapel and chamber musician. In Vienna, where musical life was in full swing, Gluck immediately plunged into the special musical atmosphere created around the Italian opera, which then dominated the Vienna opera scene. At the same time, the famous 18th century playwright and librettist Pietro Metastasio lived and worked in Vienna. On the texts of Metastasio Gluck wrote his first operas.

Study and work in Italy

At one of the ballroom evenings with Count Lobkowitz, when Gluck played the clavier, accompanying the dances, the Italian philanthropist Count Melzi drew attention to him. He took Gluck with him to Italy, to Milan. There Gluck spent four years (1737-1741) improving his knowledge of musical composition under the guidance of the outstanding Italian composer, organist and conductor Giovanni Battista Sammartini (4704-1774). Having become acquainted with Italian opera while still in Vienna, Gluck, of course, came into closer contact with it in Italy itself. Beginning in 1741, he himself began to compose operas performed in Milan and in other cities of Italy. These were seria operas, written in large part on the texts of P. Metastasio (Artaxerxes, Demetrius, Hypernestra and a number of others). Almost none of Gluck's early operas have survived in their entirety; of these, only a few numbers have come down to us. In these operas, Gluck, still captivated by the conventions of the traditional seria opera, strove to overcome its shortcomings. This was achieved in various operas in different ways, but in some of them, especially in Hypernestr, signs of Gluck's future opera reform already appeared: a tendency to overcome external vocal virtuosity, a desire to increase the dramatic expressiveness of recitatives, to give the overture more significant content, organically linking her with the opera itself. But Gluck had not yet been able to become a reformer in his early operas. This was opposed by the aesthetics of the seria opera, as well as by the insufficient creative maturity of Gluck himself, who had not yet fully realized the need to reform the opera.

And yet, there is no impassable line between Gluck's early operas and his reformist operas, despite their fundamental differences. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that Gluck used the music of early operas in the works of the reform period, transferring individual melodic turns, and sometimes entire arias, but with new text.

Creative work in England

In 1746, Gluck moved from Italy to England, where he continued to work on Italian opera. For London he wrote the seria operas Artamen and The Fall of the Giants. In the English capital, Gluck met with Handel, whose work made a great impression on him. However, Handel failed to appreciate his younger brother and once even said: "My chef Waltz knows better counterpoint than Gluck." Handel's work stimulated Gluck to realize the need for radical changes in the field of opera, since in Handel's operas, Gluck noticed a clear desire to go beyond the framework of the standard seria opera scheme, to make it dramatically more truthful. The influence of Handel's operatic creativity (especially of the late period) is one of the important factors in the preparation of Gluck's opera reform.

Meanwhile, in London, in order to attract to his concerts the general public, who was greedy for sensational spectacles, Gluck was not shy of external effects. For example, in one of the London newspapers on March 31, 1746, the following announcement was published: “In the Great Hall of Hickford, on Tuesday April 14, the city of Gluck, an opera composer, will give a musical concert with the participation of the best opera artists. Among other things, he will perform, accompanied by an orchestra, a concerto for 26 glasses, tuned with spring water: this is a new instrument of his own invention, on which the same things can be performed as on the violin or harpsichord. He hopes to satisfy the curious and music lovers in this way ”1.

In this era, many artists were forced to resort to this method of attracting the audience to a concert, in which, along with similar numbers, serious works were performed.

After England, Gluck visited a number of other European countries (Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic). In Dresden, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Prague, he wrote and staged operas, dramatic serenades, worked with opera singers, and conducted.

French comic operas by Gluck

The next important period in the creative activity of Gluck is associated with work in the field of French comic opera for the French theater in Vienna, where he arrived after a number of years in different countries. Gluck was attracted to this work by Giacomo Durazzo, the former quartermaster of the court theaters. Durazzo, writing various scenarios for comic operas from France, offered them to Gluck. Thus, a number of French comic operas with the music of Gluck arose, written between 1758 and 1764: Merlin's Island (1758), The Corrected Drunkard (1760), The Fooled Cadi (1761), An Unexpected Meeting, or The Pilgrims from Mecca "(1764) and others. Some of them coincide in time with the reform period in the creative activity of Gluck.

Work in the field of French comic opera played a very positive role in Gluck's creative life. He began to turn more freely to the true origins of folk song. A new type of everyday plots and scripts led to the growth of realistic elements in Gluck's musical drama. Gluck's French comic operas are included in the general flow of development of this genre.

Work in the field of ballet

Along with operas, Gluck also worked on ballet. In 1761, his ballet Don Juan was staged in Vienna. At the beginning of the 1860s, attempts were made in different countries to reform ballet, transforming it from a divertissement into a dramatic pantomime with a certain developing plot.

The outstanding French choreographer Jean Georges Noverre (1727-1810) played an important role in the dramatization of the ballet genre. In Vienna at the beginning of the 60s, the composer worked with the choreographer Gasparo Angiolini (1723-1796), who, along with Noverre, created a dramatic ballet-pantomime. Together with Angiolini Gluck wrote and staged his best ballet, Don Juan. The dramatization of the ballet, expressive music that conveys great human passions and already reveals the stylistic features of Gluck's mature style, as well as work in the field of comic opera, brought the composer closer to dramatizing opera, to creating a great musical tragedy, which was the crown of his creative activity.

The beginning of reform activities

The beginning of Gluck's reform activities was marked by his collaboration with the Italian poet, playwright and librettist Raniero da Calzabigi (1714-1795) who lived in Vienna. Metastasio and Calzabigi represented two distinct trends in 18th century opera librettism. Opposing the courtly aristocratic aesthetics of Metastasio's libretto, Calzabigi strove for simplicity and naturalness, for the true embodiment of human passions, for freedom of composition dictated by developing dramatic action, and not by standard canons. Choosing antique plots for his librettos, Calzabigi interpreted them in a sublime ethical spirit, characteristic of the progressive classicism of the 18th century, invested in these themes a high moral pathos and great civic and moral ideals. It was the commonality of the progressive aspirations of Kaltsabiji and Gluck that brought them closer together.

Reformed operas of the Viennese period

October 5, 1762 was a significant date in the history of the opera house: on this day, for the first time, Gluck's Orpheus was staged in Vienna to the text of Calzabigi. This was the beginning of Gluck's operatic reform activities. Five years after Orpheus, on December 16, 1767, the first staging of Gluck's opera Alcesta (also based on the text by Calzabigi) took place in Vienna. To the score of "Alceste" Gluck prefaced a dedication addressed to the Duke of Tuscany, in which he outlined the main provisions of his opera reform. In "Alceste" Gluck, even more consistently than in "Orpheus", implemented and put into practice the musical and dramatic principles that had finally developed in him by that time. Gluck's last opera staged in Vienna was an opera based on the text of Calzabigi Paris and Helena (1770). In terms of the integrity and unity of dramatic development, this opera is inferior to the two previous ones.

Living and working in Vienna in the 60s, Gluck reflected in his work the peculiarities of the Viennese classical style1 that was emerging during this period, which was finally formed in the music of Haydn and Mozart. The Alceste overture can serve as a typical model for the early period in the development of the Viennese classical school. But the features of Viennese classicism are organically intertwined in the work of Gluck with the influences of Italian and French music.

Reform activities in Paris

A new and last period in the creative activity of Gluck began with his move to Paris in 1773. Although Gluck's operas were a significant success in Vienna, his reformist ideas were not fully appreciated there; he hoped precisely in the French capital - this citadel of the advanced culture of the time - to find a complete understanding of his creative ideas. Gluck's move to Paris, the largest center of operatic life in Europe at that time, was also facilitated by the patronage of Marie Antoinette, wife of the Dauphin of France, daughter of the Austrian empress and former student of Gluck.

Parisian operas by Gluck

In April 1774, the first production of Gluck's new opera Iphigenia in Aulis, the French libretto of which was written by Du Roullet after Racine's tragedy of the same name, took place in Paris at the Royal Academy of Music 2. This was the type of opera that Diderot had dreamed of almost twenty years ago. The enthusiasm for staging Iphigenia in Paris was great. The theater had a significantly larger audience than it could accommodate. The entire magazine and newspaper press was full of impressions of Gluck's new opera and the struggle of opinions around his opera reform; Gluck was argued about, talked about, and, naturally, his appearance in Paris was greeted by encyclopedists. One of them, Melchior Grimm, wrote shortly after this significant production of Iphigenia in Aulis: “For fifteen days now, in Paris, they only talk, they only dream of music. She is the subject of all our disputes, all our conversations, the soul of all our dinners; it even seems ridiculous to be interested in something else. To a question related to politics, you are answered with a phrase from the doctrine of harmony; to moral reflection - by the motive of the arieta; and if you try to recall the interest aroused by this or that play by Racine or Voltaire, instead of any answer they will draw your attention to the orchestral effect in Agamemnon's beautiful recitative. After all this "is it necessary to say that the reason for this ferment of minds is the Iphigenia" of the gentleman Gluck1? French opera, who swore an oath not to recognize other gods than Lully or Rameau; supporters of purely Italian music, who revere only the arias of Iomelli, Piccini or Sacchini; finally, the part of the cavalier Gluck, who believes that they have found music that is most appropriate for theatrical action, music , the principles of which are drawn from the eternal source of harmony and internal correlation of our feelings and sensations, music that does not belong to any particular country, but for the style of which the genius of the composer was able to take advantage of the peculiarities of our language. "

Gluck himself launched a vigorous activity in the theater in order to destroy the routine prevailing there, ridiculous conventions, put an end to ingrained cliches and achieve dramatic truth in the production and performance of operas. Gluck interfered with the stage behavior of the actors, forcing the choir to act and live on stage. In the name of implementing his principles, Gluck did not reckon with any authorities and recognized names: for example, he spoke very disrespectfully of the famous choreographer Gaston Vestris: “An artist who has all knowledge in his heels has no right to kick in an opera like Armida ...

The continuation and development of Gluck's reform activities in Paris was the staging of the opera "Orpheus" in a new version in August 1774, and in April 1776 - the staging of the opera "Alceste" also in a new version. Both operas, translated into French, have undergone significant changes in relation to the conditions of the Parisian opera house. The ballet scenes were expanded ", the part of Orpheus was transferred to the tenor, while in the first (Viennese) edition it was written for viola and intended for castrato.2 In this regard, Orpheus's arias had to be transposed into other keys.

The performances of Gluck's operas brought great excitement to the theatrical life in Paris. Gluck was supported by encyclopedists and representatives of advanced social circles; against him - writers of the conservative direction (for example, Laharpe and Marmontel). The controversy intensified especially when the Italian opera composer Piccolo Piccini came to Paris in 1776 and played a positive role in the development of the Italian buffa opera. In the field of opera, the seria Piccini, while retaining the traditional features of this direction, stood on the old positions. Therefore, Gluck's enemies decided to oppose Piccini to him and rekindle the rivalry between them. This controversy, which lasted for several years and subsided only after Gluck's departure from Paris, was called "the war of the Gluckists and the Picchinists." The struggle of the parties, rallied around each composer, did not affect the relations between the composers themselves. Piccini, who survived Gluck, said that he owed much to the latter, and indeed, in his opera Dido, Piccini used Gluck's operatic principles. Thus, the "war of the gluckists and the picchinists" that broke out was in fact a protest against Gluck by reactionaries in art, who did their best to artificially inflate the largely imaginary rivalry between the two outstanding composers.

Gluck's latest operas

Gluck's last reformist operas staged in Paris were Armida (1777) and Iphigenia in Taurida (1779). "Armida" was written not on an antique (like other Gluck's operas), but on a medieval plot borrowed from the famous poem "Jerusalem Liberated" by the Italian poet of the 16th century Torquato Tasso. According to the plot, Iphigenia in Taurida is a continuation of Iphigenia in Aulis (the same main character acts in both operas), but there is no musical commonality between them 2.

A few months after Iphigenia in Taurida, Gluck's last opera Echo and Narcissus, a mythological tale, was staged in Paris. But this opera had little success.

The last years of his life Gluck was in Vienna, where the composer's creative work proceeded mainly in the field of song. Back in 1770, Gluck created several songs based on Klopstock's lyrics. His idea - to write the German heroic opera "The Battle of Arminius" on the text of Klopstock - Gluck did not realize. Gluck died in Vienna on November 15, 1787.

Principles of Opera Reform

Gluck outlined the main provisions of his opera reform in the dedication, pre-sent to the score of the opera "Alceste". Here are some of the most important provisions that most clearly characterize the musical drama of Gluck.

First of all, Gluck demanded truthfulness and simplicity from the opera. He ends his dedication with the words: "Simplicity, truth and naturalness - these are the three great principles of beauty in all works of art." Music in the opera should reveal the feelings, passions and experiences of the characters. That's why it exists; everything that is outside these requirements and serves only to delight the ears of music lovers with beautiful, but superficial melodies and vocal virtuosity, only interferes. This is how the following words of Gluck should be understood: "... I did not attach any price to the discovery of a new technique, if such did not naturally follow from the situation and was not associated with expressiveness ... there is no such rule that I would not willingly sacrifice for the sake of the power of the impression." 2.

Synthesis of music and dramatic action. The main goal of Gluck's musical drama was the deepest, organic synthesis in the opera of music and dramatic action. At the same time, music should be subordinate to the drama, responsive to all dramatic twists and turns, since music serves as a means of emotional disclosure of the spiritual life of the heroes of the opera.

In one of his letters, Gluck says: “I tried to be a painter or poet rather than a musician. Before I start work, I try to forget that I am a musician by all means ”3. Gluck, of course, never forgot that he was a musician; evidence of this is his excellent music, which has high artistic merit. The above statement should be understood precisely in such a way that in Gluck's reformist operas, music did not exist by itself, outside of dramatic action; it was needed only to express the latter.

On this occasion, AP Serov wrote: “... a thinking artist, creating an opera, remembers one thing: about his task, about his object, about the characters of the characters, about their dramatic collisions, about the color of each scene, in its general and in particular, about the mind of every detail, about the impression on the viewer-listener at any given moment; about the rest, so important for small musicians, a thinking artist does not care at all, because these worries, reminding him that he is a “musician”, would distract him from the goal, from the task, from the object, would make him refined, affected ”

Interpretation of arias and recitatives

The main goal, the connection between music and dramatic action, Gluck subordinates all elements of an opera performance. His aria ceases to be a purely concert piece demonstrating the vocal art of singers: it is organically included in the development of dramatic action and is built not according to the usual standard, but in accordance with the state of feelings and experiences of the hero performing this aria. The recitatives in the traditional seria opera, almost devoid of musical content, served only as a necessary link between concert numbers; in addition, the action developed precisely in the recitative, and stopped in the arias. In Gluck's operas, the recitatives are distinguished by musical expressiveness, approaching arious singing, although they are not formed into a complete aria.

Thus, the previously existing sharp line is erased between musical numbers and recitatives: arias, recitatives, choirs, while retaining their independent functions, at the same time are combined into large dramatic scenes. Examples are: the first scene from Orpheus (at the tomb of Eurydice), the first scene of the second act from the same opera (in the underworld), many pages in the operas Alcesta, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris.

Overture

The overture in Gluck's operas, in terms of the general content and character of the images, embodies the dramatic idea of ​​the work. In the preface to "Alceste" Gluck writes: "I believed that the overture should, as it were, warn the audience about the nature of the action that will unfold before their eyes ..." 1. In Orpheus, the overture is not yet connected with the opera itself in terms of ideology and imagery. But the overtures from "Alceste" and "Iphigenia in Aulis" are symphonic generalizations of the dramatic idea of ​​these operas.

Gluck emphasizes the direct connection of each of these overtures with the opera by not giving them an independent conclusion, but immediately translating them into the first act2. In addition, the overture to Iphigenia in Aulis has a thematic connection with the opera: the aria of Agamemnon (Iphigenia's father), which begins the first act, is based on the music of the opening section.

"Iphigenia in Taurida" begins with a small introduction ("Silence. Storm"), which goes directly into the first act.

Ballet

As already mentioned, Gluck does not abandon ballet in his operas. On the contrary, in the Parisian editions of Orpheus and Alcesta (in comparison with the Vienna ones), he even expands the ballet scenes. But Gluck's ballet, as a rule, is not a plug-in divertissement unrelated to the action of an opera. The ballet in Gluck's operas is largely motivated by the course of the dramatic action. Examples include the demonic dance of the furies from the second act of Orpheus or the ballet on the occasion of the recovery of Admet in the opera Alcesta. Only at the end of some of the operas does Gluck put a large divertissement after an unexpectedly happy ending, but this is an inevitable tribute to the tradition common in that era.

Typical plots and their interpretation

The librettos for Gluck's operas are based on ancient and medieval plots. However, antiquity in Gluck's operas was not like the court masquerade that prevailed in the Italian opera seria and especially in French lyric tragedy.

Antiquity in Gluck's operas was a manifestation of the characteristic tendencies of 18th century classicism, imbued with a republican spirit and played a role in the ideological preparation of the French bourgeois revolution, which, in the words of Karl Marx, draped "alternately in the costume of the Roman republic and in the costume of the Roman empire" 1. This is precisely the classicism that leads to the work of the tribunes of the French Revolution - the poet Chenier, painter David and composer Gossek. Therefore, it is no coincidence that some melodies from Gluck's operas, especially the chorus from the opera Armida, sounded on the streets and squares of Paris during revolutionary festivals and demonstrations.

Rejecting the interpretation of antique plots, characteristic of the court aristocratic opera, Gluck brings civil motives to his operas: marital fidelity and readiness for self-sacrifice in order to save the life of a loved one (Orpheus and Alcesta), the heroic desire to sacrifice oneself for the sake of deliverance people from the trouble that threatens him ("Iphigenia in Aulis"). Such a new interpretation of ancient subjects can explain the success of Gluck's operas among the advanced part of French society on the eve of the revolution, including among the encyclopedists who raised Gluck on the shield.

The limitations of Gluck's operatic drama

However, despite the interpretation of ancient subjects in the spirit of the advanced ideals of their time, it is necessary to point out the historically determined limitations of Gluck's opera drama. It is defined by the same antique themes. Honer Gluck's heroes have a somewhat abstract character: they are not so much living people with individual characters, multifacetedly outlined, as generalized carriers of certain feelings and passions.

Gluck also could not completely abandon the traditional conventional forms and customs of the operatic art of the 18th century. So, contrary to the well-known mythological plots, Gluck ends his operas with a happy denouement. In Orpheus (as opposed to the myth where Orpheus loses Eurydice forever) Gluck and Kaltsabidzhi force Cupid to touch the dead Eurydice and awaken her to life. In "Alceste" the unexpected appearance of Hercules, who entered into battle with the forces of the underworld, frees the spouses from eternal separation. All this was demanded by the traditional opera aesthetics of the 18th century: no matter how tragic the content of the opera was, the end had to be happy.

Gluck's Musical Theater

The greatest impressive power of Gluck's operas in the theater was perfectly understood by the composer himself, who answered his critics in this way: “Did you not like that in the theater? No? So what's the deal? If I have succeeded in anything in the theater, it means that I have achieved the goal that I set myself; I swear to you, it doesn't bother me much whether I am found pleasant in the salon or in the concert. Your words seem to me to be a question of a man who, having climbed onto the high gallery of the Invalides' dome, would shout from there to the artist standing below: “Sir, what did you want to portray here? Is that a nose? Is this a hand? It looks like neither the one nor the other! ". The artist, for his part, should have shouted to him with much greater right: “Hey, sir, go downstairs and look - then you will see!” 1.

Gluck's music is in unity with the monumental character of the performance as a whole. There are no roulades and decorations in it, everything is strict, simple and written in wide, large strokes. Each aria represents the embodiment of one passion, one feeling. At the same time, nowhere is there any melodramatic tear or tearful sentimentality. A sense of artistic proportion and nobility of expression never betrayed Gluck in his reformist operas. This noble simplicity, without pretentiousness and effects, recalls the harmony of the forms of antique sculpture.

Glitch's recitative

The dramatic expressiveness of Gluck's recitative is a great achievement in the field of operatic art. If in many arias one state is expressed, then the recitative usually conveys the dynamics of feelings, transitions from one state to another. In this respect, Alcesta's monologue in the third act of the opera (at the gates of Hades) is noteworthy, where Alcesta seeks to go into the world of shadows in order to give life to Admet, but cannot decide on this; the struggle of conflicting feelings is conveyed with great force in this scene. The orchestra also has a rather expressive function, actively participating in creating the general mood. Such recitative scenes are also found in other reformist operas by Gluck.

Choirs

Choirs occupy an important place in Gluck's operas, organically integrating together with arias and recitatives into the dramatic fabric of the opera. Recitatives, arias and choirs in their totality form a large, monumental opera composition.

Conclusion

Gluck's musical influence extended to Vienna, where he peacefully ended his days. By the end of the 18th century, an amazing spiritual community of musicians had developed in Vienna, which was later called the "Viennese classical school". Three great masters are usually ranked among her: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Glitch in the style and direction of his work seems to also adjoin here. But if Haydn, the eldest of the classical triad, was affectionately called "Pope Haydn", then Gluck generally belonged to a different generation: he was 42 years older than Mozart and 56 years older than Beethoven! Therefore, he stood somewhat apart. The rest were either on friendly terms (Haydn and Mozart), or in teacher-student relationships (Haydn and Beethoven). The classicism of the Viennese composers had nothing to do with the decorous art of the court. It was classicism, imbued with free-thinking, reaching the level of theomachy, and self-irony, and the spirit of tolerance. Perhaps the main properties of their music are cheerfulness and gaiety, based on faith in the ultimate triumph of good. God does not leave this music anywhere, but man becomes its center. Opera and a symphony closely related to it, where the main theme is human destinies and feelings, became their favorite genres. The symmetry of perfectly calibrated musical forms, the clarity of a regular rhythm, the brightness of unique melodies and themes - everything is aimed at the perception of the listener, everything takes into account his psychology. How could it be otherwise, if in any treatise on music one can find words that the main purpose of this art is to express feelings and give people pleasure? Meanwhile, quite recently, in the era of Bach, it was believed that music should first of all instill in a person awe of God. The Viennese classics raised to unprecedented heights purely instrumental music, which was previously considered secondary in relation to church and stage music.

Literature:

1. Hoffman E.-T.-A. Selected works. - M .: Music, 1989.

2. Pokrovsky B. "Conversations about the Opera", M., Education, 1981.

3. Knightsarev S. Christoph Willibald Gluck. - M .: Music, 1987.

4. Collection "Opera librettos", Vol.2, M., Music, 1985.

5. Tarakanov B., "Musical Reviews", M., Internet-REDY, 1998.