Mozart. Haydn. Those are probably at the top of your list of famous Viennese composers. Maria Theresia von Paradis? Probably not. However, it’s time people discover what she overcame to become a musician and composer. As if being a woman composer wasn’t difficult enough, she was also blind.

Born in 1759, Paradis was named for the Empress Maria Theresa. She lost her eyesight sometime between the age of 2 and 5. Her sight improved temporarily while she was under the care of the famous Franz Anton Mesmer (yes, the doctor who inspired the word mesmerize), but once she was removed from his care, her blindness returned permanently.

Her loss of eyesight didn’t hold her back, however. She received a broad education in the musical arts from a variety of piano and singing instructors and learned composition from Antonio Salieri. By the age of 16, she was already performing as a singer and pianist in Viennese salons and concerts. She even commissioned works to perform from Salieri, Haydn, and Mozart. Many believe the Mozart piano concerto was probably No. 18, K. 456 (although this is disputed) while the Haydn composition appears to have been lost. The Salieri work was an organ concerto and is now missing its second movement.

Paradis set out in 1783 on an extended tour towards Paris and London and performed in a variety of places including Germany and Switzerland. She was well-received in Paris performing a total of 14 times to excellent reviews and acclaim. While there, she also helped establish the first school for the blind. She finally made it to London in late 1784 where she performed for a few months at the home of the Prince of Wales who was a cellist. She returned to Vienna in 1786.

It was during her tour of Europe that Paradis began composing. She used a composition board that was invented by librettist Johann Riedinger. She started with solo piano works as well as pieces for voice. After she returned to Vienna, she spent a lot more time composing, writing five operas ans three cantatas between 1789 and 1797. It was during this time she wrote Der Schulkandidat – the Overture from which we will be performing.

After the failure of her opera Rinaldo und Alcina in 1797, Paradis shifted her focus to teaching and founded her own music school in Vienna in 1808. She taught singing, piano, and theory to young girls up until her death in 1824.

Unfortunately, most of her manuscripts have been lost including part of Act 2 and all of Act 3 of Der Schulkandidat. The Overture is one exception thanks to Hidemi Matsushita who transcribed it from the original manuscript in 1992 (on the work’s 200th anniversary).

When Parker Symphony music director, René Knetsch, who worked under Matsushita for a time, needed pieces for the PSO’s Works by Women concert, he immediately thought of the Overture from Der Schulkandidat and found it for the orchestra.

On Friday February 14, 2020, you can discover this “not lost” work by Maria Theresia von Paradis and other works by women composers.

Despite all that, there are 3 great reasons to perform the Die Fledermaus Overture for Halloween:

1. The opera is about a masquerade: The operetta (a term used to describe a short opera with a light or humorous theme) is centered around a masquerade ball. And what’s more Halloween than dressing up in costumes?

2. The title means “The Bat”: Die Fledermaus is German for “the bat”. The operetta’s main character, Eisenstein, left his friend Dr. Falke abandoned and drunk on the street. Dr. Falke was dressed in a bat costume and from that point on he took on the nickname of “Dr. Bat”. Interestingly, “fledermaus” does not translate to “flying mouse”. “Fleder” is an old form of “flattern” which means “flutter”. So “fledermaus” is “fluttermouse”.

3. It’s fun!: Who says Halloween music has to be creepy? After all, it is meant to be a fun holiday and what’s more fun than clapping or swaying along with the famous waltz melody of this overture once called the “pièce de resistance” of the operetta by a Viennese critic. In fact it was so well-received at its premiere that it was interrupted several times by applause.

Be sure to join us on October 27, 2017 and hear us perform this and other Halloween music at “Sounds of the Deep”

Yes, there is at least one classical piece about a cave and it’s a mysterious, dramatic, and beautifully melodic work. It’s everything you’d expect from a piece about a stunning yet lonely cave surrounded by the ocean. It’s Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture which we performed live on May 5, 2017.

Learn more about this fascinating overture. Here are 9 interesting facts you should know about The Hebrides.

1. It has had several titles. When Mendelssohn completed the work in 1830, it was originally titled Die einsame Insel or The Lonely Island. He revised the score 2 years later and, at that time, renamed the work Die Hebriden (The Hebrides). It was published in 1833 with the “Hebrides” title on various orchestral parts and Fingal’s Cave on the score.

2. It was inspired by a trip to the real cave. Mendelssohn visited England in 1829 and after touring the country, proceeded to Scotland. He and his friend, Karl Klingemann, traveled to the Hebrides Island off the west coast of Scotland and later to Fingal’s Cave, a real cave on the island of Staffa. The sea cave is known for its natural acoustics which project the rumbling of the waves inside for miles. Mendelssohn tried to capture the phenomenon in his overture. The cave is also known for its hexagonal basalt columns similar to those you can find at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.

3. It is not a traditional overture. Many overtures serve as the opening to an opera or ballet, but The Hebrides represents a new type of overture called the “concert overture”, intended to stand as a complete work. Also, unlike some pieces, it does not tell a story, but rather depicts a mood and “sets a scene”. That also makes it an early example of a musical tone poem.

4. Mendelssohn was seasick on his trip to Fingal’s Cave. The composer and his friend took a skiff to Staffa to view the cave and sat at the mouth of the awe-inspiring formation. Mendelssohn was terribly seasick during the trip, but enjoyed it nonetheless. His friend, Klingemann, wrote that he got “along better with the sea as an artist than as a human being with a stomach.”

5. The overture didn’t come easily. Mendelssohn apparently came up with the opening phrase of the overture while on his tour of Scotland. He sent it home on a postcard with a note to his sister Fanny that read, “In order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, I send you the following, which came into my head there.” Unfortunately, despite this stroke of genius, he completed at least 2 versions of the piece and wrote to his sister that he was still wrestling with it in 1832 because it did not savor enough of “oil and seagulls and dead fish”.

6. It was dedicated to King Frederick William IV of Prussia. He was the Crown Prince of Prussia at the time and Mendelssohn’s patron.

7. The final autograph manuscript still exists. It is held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Its 34 pages are full of deletions and revisions in a fine calligraphy that was characteristic of Mendelssohn.

8. It consists of two distinct themes. The opening notes state the theme Mendelssohn conceived while visiting the cave and is played by violas, cellos, and bassoons. It sets an initial scene of haunting solitude until the violins take over and the lower voices begin a pattern of sixteenth notes that represent the ebb and flow of the sea. The second theme is a soaring melody meant to convey the drama of the scene. It was once called “the greatest melody Mendelssohn ever wrote” by musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey. There are also recognizable crescendos and crashes that represent the often stormy tides of the area.

9. A theory claims that first draft was completed on a very important cave-related date. Scottish writer Iain Thornber pointed out that the initial draft of The Hebrides was completed on the only day of the year the cave is illuminated by the sun. The cave is only fully illuminated when the sun lies 5.6 degrees above the horizon which is generally on or about December 16. Mendelssohn completed the draft on December 16, 1830. Either this was on purpose or it’s a big coincidence.

Hear the Parker Symphony Orchestra perform The Hebrides and other nature-inspired works on May 5, 2017.