The Hammock Papers: Tchaikovsky, "The Nutcracker"

05 December 2010

Tchaikovsky, "The Nutcracker"

Snowflakes ...

Vsevolojsky proposed The Nutcracker of Nuremberg based on the book L’Histoire d’un Casse Noisette (The Story of a Hazelnut-cracker) by Dumas père, itself based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the King of the Mice). Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) was born in Königsberg, East Prussia to a family with strong ties to the legal profession. Originally his middle name was Wilhelm, but he changed it to Amadeus in honor of Mozart. He went on to study law at the University of Königsberg. Despite his course of studies, Hoffmann was mostly interested in the arts, music, painting and literature. He became a civil servant and was very successful, but his personal life took control and he was forced to move from posting to posting on account of one local scandal or another. He was transferred from Königsberg to Glogau, to Posen to even lesser Plock and eventually to Warsaw with the influence of a friend. All the while he composed music and painted.In Warsaw, Hoffmann founded an orchestra and composed his first important piece, the incidental music to Kreuz an der Ostsee. With the arrival of Napoleon's rule, Hoffmann had to try and make a living in Warsaw as a professional musician. Refusing to take an oath of allegiance to France, he was deported to Berlin where he almost starved to death. He worked various odd jobs until, in 1808, he was offered the post of musical director in Bamberg, Southern Germany, a cultural shrine at the time. In Bamberg he was very active in the theater and also wrote his best music, the opera Undine. He also began to write literature.Leaving Bamberg in 1813 on account of the lost love of a 16 year old girl, Hoffmann’s career moved between Dresden and Leipzig, depending on the location of the opposing armies of The Napoleonic Wars. He drank heavily and it is said that he sold the rights to his first book, Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier for a cellar of wine.The final period of Hoffmann’s life began with his being recalled to Berlin to official duties, again with the help of Hippel. There he became chairman of the Kammergericht (Prussian Supreme Court) and continued to produce his fiction and criticism. Forever a part of his life, heavy drinking and overworking made Hoffmann’s living hard. He contracted digestive difficulties, degeneration of the liver and neural ailments, the treatment for which was applying red hot pokers to the base of his spine. Eventually on June 25, 1822 he died having just finished dictating the story Recovery. As a critic, Hoffmann was highly respected. He wrote under the name of Kreisler, he was one of the first to recognize the talent of J.S. Bach and he championed Beethoven.Hoffmann’s influence extended beyond literature into opera and dance where his works have inspired, among others, Coppélia, and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann in addition to The Nutcracker.

Read more history of The Nutcracker here.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL