Fran Magazine: Issue #70

Classical Music Hour returns: you might not be in Paris but Joseph Haydn once was

Thanks for reading Fran Magazine, a biweekly blog by Fran Hoepfner (me). This issue is for paid subscribers only. Enjoy a short excerpt or consider upgrading your subscription today.

Fran Magazine turns 100

Barbie movie this, Oppenheimer that — the real news of the week is that this is the 100th Fran Magazine post. Issue? No, that’s just regular old #70. But at this point, between regular issues and Sunday Dispatches and guest posts, there have been 100 Fran Magazines, and you’ve (maybe, hopefully?) read 100 Fran Magazines. Thank you for doing that! It has — no exaggeration — kept my career afloat during uncertain times. Here’s to either 100 more or a full-time job with benefits as soon as possible!

As always, Fran Magazine remains open to subscriber feedback, areas of interest, and adjustments within reason. Feel free to take this opportunity to leave a comment with what you might be interested in seeing more or less of, or at the very least say “happy 100 Frans.”

Haydn in plain sight

Ha ha. One of the reasons I am always in one of my classic moods in the summertime¹ is because there’s no regular symphony orchestra season during the summertime. Sure, there’s symphony in the park, and I could schlep up to Tanglewood, and that doesn’t mean the classical music ecosystem is dead, but it’s just not the time for it. The summer is for listening to “the song of the summer,” and not Bedřich² Smetana AGAIN (that’s Christmas music anyway!). Just because there is no symphony subscription does not mean there is no classical music. I can’t escape it even if I tried! Summer classical is full of Copland and Bernstein and Bruckner (random?) and Liszt (yay), but the other day I was listening to WQXR and heard my old friend Joseph Haydn.

In all of my years of writing about classical music, I’ve never written about Haydn’s music. Insane? I guess I haven’t written about Handel either. Look, there’s a rich library through which I’m able to sift, and for years of my classical music writing practice, I ignored the traditionally, academically “classical” composers in lieu of the sexy, weird, emotional, and entertaining Romantic composers. The idea with reading and watching and listening is not that you develop good taste instantaneously but you keep reading and watching and listening for as long as possible to cultivate ongoing curiosity. Because I grew up playing classical piano, a lot of classical music — Mozart, Beethoven, and the like — sounded like straight-up homework to me. Little did I know I would one day pursue a career in “doing homework.”