Gluck, Christoph Willibald, Ritter Von

Gluck, Christoph Willibald, Ritter von, renowned German composer; b. Erasbach, near Weiden-wang, July 2, 1714; d. Vienna, Nov. 15, 1787. His father was a forester at Erasbach until his appointment as forester to Prince Lobkowitz of Eisenberg about 1729. Gluck received his elementary instruction in the village schools at Kamnitz and Albersdorf near Komotau, where he also was taught singing and instrumental playing. Some biographers refer to his study at the Jesuit college at Komotau, but there is no documentary evidence to support this contention. In 1732 he went to Prague to complete his education, but it is doubtful that he took any courses at the Univ. He earned his living by playing violin and cello at rural dances in the area; also sang at various churches. He met Bohuslav Czernohorsky, and it is probable that Gluck learned the methods of church music from him. He went to Vienna in 1736, and was chamber musician to young Prince Lobkowitz, son of the patron of Gluck’s father. In 1737 he was taken to Milan by Prince Melzi; this Italian sojourn was of the greatest importance to Gluck’s musical development. There he became a student of G.B. Sammartini and acquired a solid technique of composition in the Italian style. After 4 years of study, he brought out his first opera, Artaserse, to the text of the celebrated Metastasio; it was premiered in Milan (Dec. 26, 1741) with such success that he was immediately commissioned to write more operas. There followed Demetrio, or Cleonice (Venice, May 2, 1742), Demofoonte (Milan, Jan. 6, 1743), II Tigrane (Crema, Sept. 9, 1743), La Sofonisba, or Siface (Milan, Jan. 13, 1744), Ipermestra (Venice, Nov. 21, 1744), Poro (Turin, Dec. 26, 1744), and Ippolito, or Fedra (Milan, Jan. 31, 1745). He also contributed separate numbers to several other operas produced in Italy. In 1745 he received an invitation to go to London; on his way, he visited Paris and met Rameau. He was commissioned by the Italian Opera of London to write 2 operas for the Haymarket Theatre, as a competitive endeavor to Handel’s enterprise. The first of these works was La Caduta dei giganti, a tribute to the Duke of Cumberland on the defeat of the Pretender; it was premiered on Jan. 28, 1746; the second was a pasticcio, Artamene, in which Gluck used material from his previous operas; it was premiered on March 15, 1746. Ten days later, he appeared with Handel at a public concert, despite the current report in London society that Handel had declared that Gluck knew no more counterpoint than his cook (it should be added that a professional musician, Gustavus Waltz, was Handel’s cook and valet at the time). On April 23, 1746, Gluck gave a demonstration in London, playing on the “glass harmonica.” He left London late in 1746 when he received an engagement as conductor with Pietro Mingotti’s traveling Italian opera company. He conducted in Hamburg, Leipzig, and Dresden; on June 29, 1747, he produced a “serenata,” Le nozze d’Ercole e d’Ebe, to celebrate a royal wedding; it was performed at the Saxon court, in Pillnitz. He then went to Vienna, where he staged his opera Semiramide riconosciuta, after Metastasio (May 14, 1748). He then traveled to Copenhagen, where he produced a festive opera, La Contesa del Numi (March 9, 1749), on the occasion of the birth of Prince Christian; his next productions (all to Metastasio’s texts) were Ezio (Prague, 1750), Issipile (Prague, 1752), La demenza di Tito (Naples, Nov. 4, 1752), Le Cinesi (Vienna, Sept. 24, 1754), La danza (Vienna, May 5, 1755), L’innocenza giustificata (Vienna, Dec. 8, 1755), Antigono (Rome, Feb. 9, 1756), and II Re pastore (Vienna, Dec. 8, 1756).

In 1750 Gluck married Marianna Pergin, daughter of a Viennese merchant, and for several years afterward conducted operatic performances in Vienna. As French influence increased there, he wrote several entertainments to French texts, containing spoken dialogue, in the style of opera-comique; of these, the most successful were Le Cadi dupe (Dec. 1761) and La Rencontre imprevue (Jan. 7, 1764; perf. also under the title Les Pelerins de la Mecque, his most popular production in this genre). His greatest work of the Vienna period was Orfeo ed Euridice, to a libretto by Calzabigi (in a version for castrato contralto; Oct. 5, 1762, with the part of Orfeo sung by Gaetano Guadagni). Gluck revised it for a Paris performance, produced in French on Aug. 2, 1774, with Orfeo sung by a tenor. There followed another masterpiece, Alceste (Vienna, Dec. 16, 1767), also to Calzabigi’s text. In the preface to Alceste, Gluck formulated his aesthetic credo, which elevated the dramatic meaning of musical stage plays above a mere striving for vocal effects: “I sought to reduce music to its true function, that of seconding poetry in order to strengthen the emotional expression and the impact of the dramatic situations without interrupting the action and without weakening it by superfluous ornaments.” Among other productions of the Viennese period were II trionfo di Clelia (Vienna, May 14, 1763), // Parnaso confuso (Schonbrunn Palace, Jan. 24, 1765), II Telemacco (Vienna, Jan. 30, 1765), and Paride ed Elena (Vienna, Nov. 30, 1770).

The success of his French operas in Vienna led Gluck to the decision to try his fortunes in Paris, yielding to the persuasion of François du Roullet, an attache at the French embassy in Vienna, who also supplied him with his first libretto for a serious French opera, an adaptation of Racine’s Iphigenie en Aulide (Paris, April 19, 1774). He set out for Paris early in 1773, preceded by declarations in the Paris press by du Roullet and Gluck himself, explaining in detail his ideas of dramatic music. These statements set off an intellectual battle in the Paris press and among musicians in general between the adherents of traditional Italian opera and Gluck’s novel French opera. It reached an unprecedented degree of acrimony when the Italian composer Nicola Piccinni was engaged by the French court to write operas to French texts, in open competition with Gluck; intrigues multiplied, even though Marie Antoinette never wavered in her admiration for Gluck, who taught her singing and harpsichord playing. However, Gluck and Piccinni themselves never participated in the bitter polemics unleashed by their literary and musical partisans. The sensational successes of the French version of Cluck’s Orfeo and of Alceste were followed by the production of Armide (Sept. 23, 1777), which aroused great admiration. Then followed his masterpiece, Iphigenie en Tauride (May 17, 1779), which established Gluck’s superiority to Piccinni, who was commissioned to write an opera on the same subject but failed to complete it in time. Gluck’s last opera, Echo et Narcisse (Sept. 24, 1779), did not measure up to the excellence of his previous operas. By that time, his health had failed; he had several attacks of apoplexy, which resulted in partial paralysis. In the autumn of 1779 he returned to Vienna, where he lived as an invalid. His last work was a De profundis for Chorus and Orch., written 5 years before his death.

Besides his operas, Gluck wrote several ballets, of which Don Juan (Vienna, Oct. 17, 1761) was the most successful; he also wrote a cycle of 7 songs to words by Klopstock, 7 trio sonatas, several overtures, etc. Wagner made a complete revision of the score of Iphigenie en Aulide; this arrangement was so extensively used that a Wagnerized version of Gluck’s music became the chief text for performances during the 19th century. A complete ed. of Cluck’s works was begun by the Barenreiter Verlag in 1951. A thematic catalogue was publ. by A. Wotquenne (Leipzig, 1904; Ger. tr. with suppl. by J. Liebeskind). See also C. Hopkinson, A Bibliography of the Printed Works of C.W. von Gluck, 1714-1787 (2nd ed., N.Y., 1967).

Bibliography

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—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire