By Randi Bjornstad
Imagine you were alive — in Vienna, Austria — during the time that the music scene was dominated by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
And imagine that you were of the social and economic class that gave you entree into the salons of the rich and famous who opened their homes to the privileged few to hear chamber music, arias, and art songs created by these great masters, in the relatively intimate setting of the salons.
If that was the case, you might also been privileged to hear the compositions of another of their contemporaries, an equally brilliant female composer and performer named Marianna von Martines.
Well, that was then and this is now, but it will be possible to listen to her as well as her male counterparts as Eugene Vocal Arts opens its 48th season with a concert titled Viennese Salon.
Martines was born into that milieu in 1744. In fact, she studied music with Haydn, who happened to occupy rooms upstairs from the Martines family in a large building apartment building. She also played four-hand piano pieces with Mozart. So it was no great stretch for her to turn her musical talents into both performance and composition.
One of Martines’ choral masterworks, Dixit Dominus, is on the program of the Eugene Vocal Arts concert, which will open to the strains of Haydn’s Te Deum. Additional pieces include two of Mozart’s arias, Ach ich Fühls from The Magic Flute and Il mio Tesoro from Don Giovanni, two of Schubert’s dramatic art songs, Ständchen and Der Erlkönig, plus perform Mozart’s reverent Ave Verum and on a lighter note, O Swiftly Glides the Bonny Boat from Beethoven’s Scottish collection.
Solos in this repertoire will be soprano Arwen Myers, alto Agnes Vojtko, tenor Esteban Zúñiga Calderón,nand bass Doremus Scudder. Artistic director and conductor Diane Retallack will be on the podium. The Eugene Concert Orchestra will accompany the performances, and pianists Nathalie Fortin and Brad Schultz will play a selection from one of Mozart’s four-hand piano sonatas.
In the meantime, a little more about Martines. Her grandfather was Spanish but lived in Naples, where her father, Nicolo Martines grew up and first became a soldier and later served as the chief steward at the Pope’s embassy in Austria.
Her father had become friends in his youth with a poet, Pietro Trapassi, who used the pen name Metastasio, and who lived in the same building as the Martines family in Vienna. As was common at the time, social class determined the placement of apartments in the building. A dowager princess of the Esterházy family lived on the first floor, for example, and the Martines family lived on the third floor. A struggling composer and musician named Joseph Haydn lived in a cold, damp attic at the very top.
Metastasio took a great interest in the education of the Martines children, and it was he who arranged for Marianna Martines to study keyboard with Haydn. That led to her singing lessons with another of Haydn’s contracts, composer and teacher Nicola Porpora — who also lived in the same building — who taught Martines voice, harpsichord, and composing.
At Metastasio’s insistence, the girl also received a good general education that included proficiency in four languages as well as her musical prowess. She became a frequent performer before the Imperial court at an early age, highly favored by Empress Maria Theresa. Her name and music became well-known throughout Europe, and she was the first woman admitted to the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna, in 1773.
She never married, nor did her sister, but the two often hosted soirées at their home, attended by many well known musicians, such as Haydn, a well-known Irish tenor named Michael Kelly, and Mozart, who composed four-hand pieces to play with her.
Martines died in 1812.
Eugene Vocal Arts: Viennese Salon
When: 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022
Where: Soreng Theater, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (7th and Willamette streets), Eugene
Tickets: $10 to $38, available at the Hult Center box office, 541-682-5000, or online at eugeneconcertchoir.org or hultcenter.org
