Sibelius: Symphony No.5

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Symphony No. 5 in E flat, Op. 82

1. Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato
2. Andante mosso, quasi allegretto
3. Allegro molto

When Sibelius completed his Fourth Symphony and began making sketches for his fifth in 1911, Finland was a duchy under the control of the Tsarist Russia on the edge of a Europe whose politics was dominated by Imperial Power. By the time the Fifth Symphony reached its final form eight tortuous years later, war and revolution had torn Europe and its old certainties apart, and Finland found itself finally the master of its own destiny as an independent state.


The early years of the twentieth century were a time of convulsive change in artistic as well as political ways. Sibelius was part of a generation including Strauss, Mahler, Elgar, Nielsen and Debussy, born around 1860, who were trailblazers of post-Wagnerian modernism and reached their peak in the first decade of the twentieth century. By 1910 however, change was in the air. Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony was an austere, radical work that in some ways represents his attempt to engage with the musical landscape that was being reworked by the younger generation of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and their followers. On the surface the Fifth represents a retreat from this to a more conventional soundworld. In fact, a closer hearing reveals a piece profoundly affected by the experiments of its predecessor: while it adopts a superficially more conservative language, it is at a deeper level an extraordinarily radical, groundbreaking work. Content neither to chase his younger contemporaries nor to settle into easy routines and familiarities, Sibelius here strikes out on an utterly individual path. To describe it as either progressive or conservative is redundant: it exists beyond such concerns.


Sibelius worked in earnest on the symphony from autumn 1914 to June the next year: it was now intended as the centrepiece of his forthcoming 50th birthday celebrations. His diary entries from the time reveal a man deeply immersed in nature: “There is warmth in the air and winter is in transmigration. At last it is mild, and radiates youth and adventure,” he wrote on 10 April 1915. A few days later, he noted. “Walked in the cold spring sun. Memories of old affronts and humiliations came back. Had powerful visions of the Fifth Symphony, the new one.”


Successive diary entries display a bewildering and disturbing vacillating of his mood. On 21 April, he wrote, “Just before ten-to-eleven saw sixteen swans. One of the greatest experiences in life! Oh God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the hazy sun like a silver ribbon, which glittered from time to time. Their cries...A low suppressed memory of a small child’s cry. Nature’s mystery and life’s melancholy! The Fifth Symphony’s finale theme. The trumpet will bind it together... That this should now come to me which has so long resonated in the air. Have been transported today.” A day later, he had fallen from this elation to the depths of despair: “Working at the symphony which is further than ever from its final form.” He was intimidated by the intense spiritual experience that he was trying to shape into music, but these mood swings may also reflect the fact that after a period of abstention, he had begun to drink heavily again, a problem that he struggled with throughout his life.


The symphony was premiered on his 50th birthday, 8 December 1915, and was well received. Almost immediately however, Sibelius felt unsatisfied and began to rewrite it. He produced a completely new score in 1916 but still felt that the piece had eluded him and continued working on it for another three years. Finally in 1919 the Fifth Symphony reached its final form.The most obvious change was the first two movements, which he joined together as a single entity which begins as a gentle moderato movement and transforms into an energetic scherzo. So convincing is the final structure and so effortlessly does it appear to proceed that it is difficult to conceive the difficulty he experienced in reaching the final form. The opening indicates that his obsession with the swans goes far beyond the theme that appears in the finale: it uses a motif that he had originally written as part of his incidental music for Strindberg’s play Swanwhite.


The central movement is in some respects a moment of relief: a much simpler piece that is not so much a set of variations on a theme as a series of altering perspectives on a rhythmic idea. Beneath the surface however, hints of something larger emerging can be heard.


The finale pulls off the same trick as the first movement the other way around: it begins as an energetic scurry, which gradually transforms into something more stately as the rising and falling intervals from the preceding movement emerge transformed into Sibelius’s “Swan Hymn”. This is no mere nature painting though: it has a transcendent fervour about it.The ecstatic joy is tempered by an increasingly melancholic streak however, at the climax of which the swan hymn undergoes a tortuous transformation, stretched and distorted in an extraordinary dissonant passage until it reaches its final transformation, and the vision dissolves into the glare of the sun. If there is undoubtedly heroism in the final six hammer blows that bring the symphony to an end, it is not triumph so much as acquiescence to fate, and a reflection of his belief that “a symphony is not just a composition in the ordinary sense of the word. It is more a confession of faith at different stages of one's life.”

Vaughan Williams: Three Songs of Travel

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Three Songs of Travel (texts: Robert Louis Stevenson)

1. The Vagabond
2. Whither Must I Wander?
3. Bright is the Ring of Words

Vaughan Williams had a long apprenticeship: after leaving school he spent two years at the Royal College of Music, then three at Trinity College Cambridge where he gained degrees in music and history. After that he spent a further year back at the Royal College. As late as 1908 he still felt the need to seek instruction and took lessons with Ravel. The Songs of Travel, written mostly in 1904, are a product of the end of his studies. In these songs as well as the Sea Symphony that he began at the same time, the first signs of a distinctive voice emerge.


It was around this time what two events occurred that profoundly shaped his career. The first was in 1903 when he began to collect folk songs. The second came in 1904 when he was invited to edit the English Hymnal. Both of these influences are clearly to be heard in the songs.


Vaughan Williams intended Songs of Travel to be published as a single cycle. In the event, it was came out in two volumes, neither of which contained “Whither Must I Wander.” Only in the 1960s was the set published complete and in the order he intended, including a posthumously discovered song that acts as an epilogue and is intended only to be performed as part of the complete cycle.


Vaughan Williams orchestrated the three songs originally published as “Volume One” himself, including “The Vagabond” and “Bright is the Ring of Words”. The remainder were orchestrated posthumously by his assistant Roy Douglas. “The Vagabond” establishes the romanticism of the cycle, introducing the archetypal character of the wanderer. This reflects Vaughan Williams’ debt to the example of Schubert’s song cycles, in particular Die Winterreise; indeed, Stevenson, who often set his words to tunes of his own and others’ composition, had originally written the poem “to an air of Schubert.”


“Whither Must I Wander” was the first of the songs to be composed, and appeared in print in 1902 in issue two of the Voice, whose first issue had given a major boost to Vaughan Williams’ career by printing his song “Linden Lea” on the advice of his former teacher Stanford. This is another highly lyrical poem: Stevenson indicates that it was written to fit the folk tune “Wandering Willie”. Vaughan Williams’ setting is unaffected, direct and extraordinarily moving.

“Bright is the RIng of Words” has something of the feel of a hymn about it, which is entirely appropriate for a poem that meditates on the way that what we do lives on after us. Apppropriately, it nods towards the tune “Sine Nomine” that he wrote for the hymn “For All the Saints” in the New English Hymnal: a tune to which he repeatedly returned to throughout his career, and which is a legacy so widely known that it is often forgotten that it was he who created it.

Walton: Variations on a theme of Hindemith

William Walton (1902-1983)

Variations on a theme of Hindemith


Theme: Andante con moto – I Vivace – II Allegramente – III Larghetto – IV Moto perpetuo –
V Andante con moto – VI Scherzando – VII Lento molto – VIII Vivacissimo – I
X Maestoso – Finale – Allegro molto


Walton and Hindemith were almost exact contemporaries - the German was the senior of the two by seven years - and enjoyed a friendship that lasted most of their careers. They first met in 1923, but the defining moment of their friendship came in 1929, when the viola player Lionel Tertis rejected the concerto that Walton had written for him. Viola soloists were a breed hard to come by. Fortunately for Walton, Hindemith was an accomplished player as well as a composer and stepped in to give the premiere of the concerto. The success of it was crucial in establishing Walton's reputation. Walton never forgot the debt he owed him.


Walton had been considering writing a set of variations on a theme from Hindemith’s Cello Concerto for some time when he was commissioned by the Philharmonic Society to compose a work for their 150th anniversary in 1963. The timing was perfect: Walton was enjoying one of his increasingly rare productive periods, and had recently completed two major orchestral works, the Partita and the Second Symphony. His music was by this time out of fashion, as was Hindemith's, and he saw the Variations not only as a thank-you to his old friend, but as a declaration of solidarity with one of the few composers alive with whom he felt a real affinity.


Walton repaid the debt just in time. Hindemith and his wife heard the premiere via a private recording that Walton sent them. He declared himself delighted: “Let us thank you for your kindness and for the wonderfully touching and artistically convincing manifestation of this kindness, “ he wrote, promising to programme it as part of his upcoming conducting engagements. The planned performances never came about; within six months Hindemith died.


The opening statement of the theme uses not just Hindemith’s melody, but much of his orchestration, with the cello line redistributed among the winds. There follow nine variations and a finale. Walton had a nagging sensation writing the work that the theme reminded him of something else: he suddenly realised its resemblance to a theme from Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler, from a scene centered around the German painter Matthias Grünewald’s portrait of St. Anthony. Walton duly quotes from the opera in the slow sixth variation, which forms the core of the work. The finale takes the form of an energetic, syncopated fugue in which virtuosity is to the fore - the whole piece could very easily have been styled as a concerto for orchestra - before the theme is restated very simply once more in a calm, elegiac coda.

Lutosławski: Symphony No.3

Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994)

Symphony No.3


Lutosławski’s career, like all artists working in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, was affected by the regime under which he lived. During the War, when Poland was occupied by the Nazis, he survived by playing piano duets in Warsaw cafés with his friend and fellow composer Andrzej Panufnik. After the war was over, Poland became a communist state under the influence of Stalin’s Russia, and Lutosławski found his First Symphony, completed in 1947, proscribed as “formalist” (the standard soviet term for any art that the authorities did not like for any reason). Like many other composers, he diverted his energies into writing folk-derived music.


After 1956 the regime became slightly less oppressive. The creation of the “Warsaw Autumn” festival of contemporary music enabled many Polish composers to hear and take on the influence of the Western avant-garde for the first time. For Lutosławski, who was old enough to remember the relative freedoms of the 1920s and 30s, it was an opportunity to resume the exploration of paths that had been closed to him. He began to explore the use of chance procedures in his music. Unlike John Cage, the western doyenne of chance in music, Lutosławski’s use of chance procedures is very strict and limited: by freeing the players in an orchestra to play independently he is able to produce complex textures that would be unplayable if notated exactly. In contrast to Cage, the outcome is remarkably predictable and consistent in any performance. At the same time he experimented with dense twelve-note harmonies, using all the notes of the western scale (and occasionally extending to the use of quarter-tones). His Second Symphony of 1967 employs all these ideas in a masterpiece of orchestration.


Lutosławski began to contemplate a third symphony as early as 1974, when during a visit to the USA he received a request from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a new work. He became unsatisfied with the sketches he made, and the plan stalled. In 1977 he made another attempt but once again rejected his own efforts. Finally in 1981 he began yet again, and this time work proceeded better: the Third Symphony was completed in 1983, and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti that year.


The symphony’s long gestation means that it occupies a transitional place in Lutosławski’s career. During the course of the 1970s he began to refine his style, writing thinner, more lucid textures and increasingly overly melodic lines. The third symphony owes a lot of its character to the contrast between Lutosławski’s older and later styles. Its structure follows a pattern often used by Lutosławski in which the whole divides into two distinct sections. The first is episodic. A dramatic four-note gesture in the brass, inescapably reminiscent of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, opens the work and sets the woodwind into a flurry of activity. This abruptly peters out, and the brass effectively have to begin the symphony again. A series of episodes follow, which tend to be static and inconclusive; they peter out into woodwind refrains before the opening motif is reasserted. It is as though the orchestra is trying to work out how to respond to the opening gesture.


The second part is a more sustained attempt to find an answer, and is characterised by the alternation of fast, virtuosic passages with slower ones in which a long melody can be heard emerging. The fast ideas are initially dominant. A complex web of counterpoint builds towards a climax, but at the point when a decisive culmination appears to be imminent everything collapses. Out of this failure the melodic idea grows anew, in what Alex Ross describes as “a kind of magnificence without triumph”. Finally everything breaks free in a fast coda, before converging in a decisive final gesture that brings everything full circle.


The early eighties, the period during which Lutosławski worked most intensively on the Third Symphony, was a turbulent and pivotal moment in Polish history. The increasing friction between the communist government and the increasingly open dissent expressed most notably through the trade union Solidarity led in 1981 to the imposition of martial law. Thousands of activists were imprisoned and strikes were broken by military force. Even after the state of emergency was lifted, Poland remained a repressed country. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late eighties did it finally become a free democracy, with Solidarity’s president, Lech Wałęsa, elected as president in 1990.


Lutosławski was always at pains to stress that his music was pure sound and not intended to portray any specific extramusical concern. But, while rejecting speculation in early reviews of the symphony that it portrayed in some manner events in Poland, he qualified his position:

“If we agree that music can mean anything extra-musical, it nevertheless remains ambiguous meaning. But man has a single soul and whatever he experiences in life, must have some influence on him. If man has a single psyche, then the world of sounds, despite its autonomy, is still a function of that psyche. So I would limit myself to stating that if the last movement of the Symphony makes the impression it makes and keeps the listener in suspense, it is certainly not by chance. I would admittedly feel honoured if I managed to express something connected not only to my personal experience but also to that of other people.”

Debussy: La mer

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

La Mer

1. De l'aube à midi sur la mer [from dawn to noon on the sea]
2. Jeux de vagues [Play of the Waves]
3. Dialogue du vent et de la mer [Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea]

“Perhaps you don’t know that I was really destined for the wonderful life of a sailor and it was only chance which diverted me. I have nevertheless retained a sincere passion for [the sea],” wrote Debussy in 1903 to the conductor Andre Messager announcing that he was working on three “symphonic sketches”. Messager had recently played an important part in Debussy’s career by conducting the first performances of his opera Pelléas et Mélisande the previous year. This had been a huge success, and firmly established Debussy at the vanguard of the younger generation of French composers. Having been determined not to follow any established school himself, he found himself set as the leader of a movement, as “Debussyism” became the fashion, both as a term of enthusiasm and abuse.


Ironically, much of La mer was composed almost as far from the sea as it it possible to get in France; he began work on it while on holiday in Burgundy. As the composer explained to Messager, “I have an endless store of memories of the sea and, to my mind, they are worth more than the reality, whose beauty weighs down thought too heavily.” He completed it by the sea, but rather than the kind of sunny European vista one might expect, the scene before him as he finished the score was the seafront at Eastbourne. Debussy described Eastbourne to his publisher as “a charming, peaceful spot. The sea unfurls itself with an utterly British correctness.”


The composition of La mer coincided with a turbulent period in Debussy’s life. He had married a model, Lilly Texier, in 1899, but the marriage soon soured, and four years later he began an affair with Emma Moyse-Bardac, the mother of one of his pupils and wife of a prominent Paris banker. When in 1904 he left Lilly and absconded to Jersey with Emma, a scandal broke which was reported with glee by the French press. Matters worsened when Lilly subsequently attempted suicide, an act that Le Figaro suggested was the result of another affair on Debussy’s part. As a result of all this Debussy lost the support of a number of prominent patrons, as well as providing fuel to those who already felt an antipathy to him and his music. This partly explains the poor reception given to La mer at its premiere in 1905. It did not help that the performance itself was entirely inadequate and poorly prepared, and the result was that La mer was a resounding failure.


The criticism from his enemies came as no surprise. What hurt Debussy more was the negative reaction of some commenters whom he regarded as allies: the critic Pierre Lalo (son of the composer Edward Lalo) wrote, “For the first time listening to a picturesque work of Debussy’s, I had the impression of confronting not nature, but a reproduction of nature...The sea I do not hear, I do not see, and I do not feel.” Wounded, Debussy responded, “I love the sea and I’ve listened to it with the passionate respect it deserves. If I’ve been inaccurate in taking down what it dictated to me, that is no concern of yours or mine. You must admit, not all ears hear the same way. The heart of the matter is that you love and defend traditions which, for me, no longer exist or, at least, exist only as representative of an epoch in which they were not all as fin and valuable as people make out, and the dust of the past is not always to be respected.”


By 1908, Debussy had married Emma and the scandal had died down enough that the second performance of La mer in Paris, this time with the composer himself making his debut as a conductor, was a great success; even Lalo was now convinced. In the light of his experience conducting Debussy made a number of revisions to the score The following year he accepted an offer from Gabriel Fauré to join the advisory board of the Paris Conservatoire. His journey from avant-garde provocateur to the heart of the French musical establishment was complete.

Satie famously lampooned the title of the opening movement, “From dawn to noon on the sea” with the comment that he “particularly liked the bit at a quarter to eleven”. However, Debussy’s aim in all three movements is not to create a literal aural impression of the sea, let alone any particular point in the day, but rather to evoke the emotional and psychological reaction to a natural force (“the invisible sentiments of nature”). It is remarkable how little he falls back on the clichés of portraying the sea in music (and those ideas that seem like cliché to us are generally so because of the composers since who have imitated him). The three movements each present a different fact of the sea: the opening reflects the transformation effected by light, as the music proceeds from the darkness before dawn to the glory of full daylight. The second movement presents a playful image of the waves, which contrasts sharply with the violence of the storm of the finale.

Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

The Isle of the Dead, Op.29


Arnold Böcklin’s painting (or rather paintings; he produced five versions of the image in all between 1880 and 1886) 'The Isle of the Dead' was in the early twentieth century an exceptionally popular artwork in central Europe. In his 1934 novel Despair Nabokov observes that prints of it were to be found “in every Berlin home.” The painting depicts a looming rocky islet in a vast expanse of water. Arriving at the shore is a boat steered by an oarsman, with a figure dressed in white standing in the boat accompanied by an object generally taken to be a coffin.


The title of the painting is not Böcklin’s own, but was coined by an art dealer from a phrase used by Böcklin in a letter to the commissioner of the painting, Alexander Günther. The oarsman is generally assumed to be Charon, in Greek mythology the guide who takes the dea across the River Styx to the Underworld.


Rachmaninoff encountered the painting in Paris in 1907, and was inspired by it to begin a new orchestral work, which he completed in Dresden in 1909. The image he saw in Paris was not any of the originals however, but a black-and -white print. Rachmaninoff later declared that had he seen it in colour he would probably not have composed the music.

Rachmaninoff was at this time at the height of his powers, having recently completed his Second Symphony, and The Isle if the Dead is one of his finest works. The gently rocking rhythm that opens and drives the music through much of its course invokes the pull of the oars in the water, over which fragments of the 'Dies Irae' plainchant that obsessed Rachmaninoff throughout his career float. These two element and a variety . A lighter central section perhaps suggests a reminiscence of the life the figure in the boat has departed, and the tension between this and the tolling of the 'Dies Irae' leads to a dramatic climax, before the boatman sets his oars to the water again, and the isle fades into the mist.

Nielsen: Symphony No. 2

Carl Nielsen (1865-1931)

Symphony No. 2, “The Four Temperaments”

1. Allegro collerico (The Choleric)
2. Allegro comodo e flemmatico (The Phlegmatic)
3. Andante malincolico [sic] (The Melancholic)
4. Allegro sanguineo — Marziale (The Sanguine)

Throughout his career Nielsen had an abiding interest in human nature and characteristics, but the music he wrote at the turn of the 20th century concerns itself so directly with the portrayal of character and personality that it is sometimes referred to as Nielsen’s “psychological period.” This reaches its apotheosis in the opera Saul and David and his Second Symphony. In the opera, composed between 1899 and 1901, the drama is built on the contrast between David the youthful, joyful and obedient servant of god, and the proud, impulsive and melancholic Saul. The Second Symphony, begun in 1901 as he was finishing the opera, takes as its inspiration the four “humours” that medieval philosophers defined as the four fundamental character types: the choleric, the phlegmatic, the melancholic and the sanguine.


This fascination with human character had a number of roots. In common with most artists of the time Nielsen was intrigued by the new ideas of the subconscious expounded by Freud and Jung (he read Freud’s early writings keenly, although was more dismissive of The Interpretation of Dreams). Beyond his awareness of being alive in a period of radical new ideas, Nielsen’s life at this time was filled with turbulence. His wife, the sculptor Anne-Marie Brodersen, was building her own career; she was often away for extended periods leaving Nielsen to cope with their three young children as well as attend to his duties at the Royal Opera, a situation that Nielsen found difficult and frustrating. His work at the Opera was not untroubled either: he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his role as a second violinist in the orchestra. He was by now established as a composer and often deputised as a conductor, but felt that he management continued to dismiss him as a mere orchestral player, and nurtured ambitions to conduct and establish himself as a composer. Saul and David was premiered in November 1902 to a good reception, but was given only two performances. These tensions would eventually lead to his resigning from the orchestra in 1905. He overcame the setback with his second opera, Maskarade, which was a triumph at its premiere in 1906 and established itself as the quintessential Danish opera.


His disappointment over the treatment of Saul and David was alleviated by the premiere of the Second Symphony three days after the opera. This was received well by the audience if less so by the critics. It was dedicated to Busoni, whom Nielsen had met and befriended on a trip to Berlin, and who had promised to secure a German performance of the new symphony. thus in 1903 Nielsen found himself conducting the berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The German audience was considerably more lukewarm than the Danish though, and the reaction of the Berlin press was so hostile that Nielsen had trouble composing for a while, although like the sanguine temperament of the last movement, he eventually bounced back.


The inspiration for the symphony came from a picture Nielsen saw hanging in a village pub while on a walking trip in Zealand. This featured four caricatures of the medieval temperaments: “The choleric man was on horseback; he had a long sword in his hand, with which he slashed wildly at the empty air, his eyes were nearly rolling out of his head, his hair flew madly around his face; it was so full of fury and devilish hate that involuntarily I burst into laughter,” he recalled. The other three portraits were similarly exaggerated and comical, and provided much amusement for Nielsen and his friends. But the images stayed with Nielsen, and he began to consider the deeper implications. Eventually ideas for a new symphony came to him, which he completed in December 1901.


The Four Temperaments may have its roots in caricature, but Nielsen’s symphony is altogether more sophisticated. Each movement aims to portray a credible character, and each contains an element of of some of the other characters; and the whole symphony is perhaps a rounded portrayal of all the facets of a single personality. So the choleric temperament can certainly be heard wildly wielding his sword in the opening movement, but also has his more reflective and noble moments when he rues his own temper.


The phlegmatic temperament of the second movement is more settled in his easy-going nature: “I have never seen him dance; he wasn’t active enough for that, though he might easily have got the idea to swing himself in a gentle slow waltz rhythm,” wrote Nielsen. “Only once is there a forte. What’s that? Did a barrel fall into the harbour from a ship disturbing the young chap lying on the pier dreaming? Maybe. So what? In a moment everything is quiet again: the lad falls asleep, the world dozes, and the water is again smooth as a mirror.”


The third movement expresses “the basic character of a heavy, melancholy man,” beginning with a cry of despair , followed by a plaintive sighing on the oboe. The Melancholic is allowed his quieter, resigned moments too, until the anguish of the opening returns before a gentle, searching coda.


After this tentative close, there is a rude awakening as the Sanguine bursts in. The Sanguine, says Nielsen is “a man who storms thoughtlessly forward in the belief that the whole world belongs to him, that fried pigeons will fly into his mouth without work or bother.” The music thus marches boldly forth without much regard for the niceties of staying in any one key for long. Suddenly the mood changes: “just for once... it seems he has met with something really serious; at least he cogitates about something or other that seems foreign to his character.” However, the Sanguine temperament is irrepressible, and soon reasserts itself in a final march which nevertheless suggests that the protagonist has learned something and has acquired a certain dignity as a result.

Kodály: Dances of Galánta

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)

Dances of Galánta


Kodály spent his childhood in the Hungarian countryside. His father worked as a station master for the State Rail Company at a number of small town stations, including between 1885 and 1892 the small town of Galánta, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, now Slovakia. Kodály’s first musical experiences came care of his parents - his father played the violin, while his mother sang and played piano - and also through the elementary school he attended in Galánta. Here he heard the traditional folk songs of the region sung by his classmates. Kodály retained fond memories of this time; he described it as “the best seven years of my childhood.” When he set out on the first of his folk song-collecting trips, it was to Galánta that he went.


Kodály composed Dances of Galánta in 1933 for the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society. It was written in part as a sequel to an earlier work, Dances of Marosszék, a piano suite which he had recently orchestrated. Dances of Galánta takes most of its themes from a collection of Hungarian songs published in Vienna in the early 19th century. It makes particular use of the themes and structures of verbunkos music: recruiting tunes associated with the Magyar tribes who were the forerunners of the modern Hungarian people. Thus a slow opening section precedes and intersperses a sequence of four fast dances, with a final reminiscence of the slow music just before the music hurtles towards its coda.


The dances, along with the set from Marosszék, were used as the basis for a ballet presented by the Budapest Opera in 1935. The ballet’s failure was certainly nothing to do with the music; one reviewer remarked that its story was “obviously written by someone who was unable either to understand the music or to adapt himself to the requirements of the choreographer.”

Kodály’s remarks about Dances of Marosszék could apply equally to Galánta: “The Hungarian Dances composed by Brahms are typical of urban Hungary around 1860, and were in the main based on the work of composers that were still living. My Dances... have their roots in a much more remote past, and represent a fairyland that has disappeared.”

Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet

Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Fantasy Overture: Romeo and Juliet


In 1869, at the age of 28, Tchaikovsky had one symphony and one opera under his belt. As yet, however, he had not made much of an impact as a composer, and supported himself by teaching at the Moscow Conservatory and also writing music criticism. He had also become acquainted with Mikaily Balakirev, the leader of the “Mighty Handful” of five composers who were forging a distinctive Russian style of art music. Despite his innate suspicion of anyone with a Conservatoire training, Balakirev warmed to Tchaikovsky and his music. He was, however, not one to mince his words, and when Tchaikovsky’s tone poem Fatum [Fate] was performed to a lukewarm reception in St. Petersburg, Balakirev (to whom Tchaikovsky had dedicated the work) was not backwards in informing Tchaikovsky that “there wasn't much applause, probably because of the appalling cacophony at the end of the piece, which I don't like at all.” He went on to declare that the piece was sloppily written and formally inadequate, before signing off “M. Balakirev (who sincerely loves you).”


Tchaikovsky was immensely self-critical and took Balakirev’s comments very seriously indeed, eventually destroying the score. He set to work on a new project suggested by Balakirev: an overture based on Romeo and Juliet. Balakirev helpfully suggested his own King Lear overture as a template on which to base the new piece.


The piece was premiered in 1870, although the performance was overshadowed by the scandal surrounding its conductor Nikolai Rubinstein, who had recently lost a court case involving a female pupil. “After the concert we dined…No one said a single word to me about the overture the whole evening,” complained Tchaikovsky. He also had to contend with Balakirev’s fierce criticism of the music, although even he conceded the quality of the love theme: “I play it very often, and I want to kiss you for it,” he wrote. Tchaikovsky set about rewriting the overture to accommodate Balakirev’s judgements. Balakirev still had his quibbles about this second version, objecting in particular to what he considered a weak ending, but by 1872 when the revision was performed his influence on Tchaikovsky was waning. Nevertheless, in 1880 Tchaikovsky revised it once more, and this time gave it a conclusion of which even Balakirev could approve.

Brahms: Symphony No.4

Johannes Brahms (1913-1994)

Symphony No.4 in E minor, Op.98

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Andante moderato
3. Allegro giocoso
4. Allegro energico e passionato

Brahms famously took 20 years to complete his first symphony, so intimidated was he by the example of Beethoven. Having broken his duck, however, he produced a second within a year. His third and fourth symphonies likewise emerged within a short space of each other. In June 1884, the year after the composition and première of the Third Symphony, Brahms sent a hint to his publisher Simrock in the form of a local newspaper cutting announcing Brahms’s arrival in the Austrian mountain town of Mürzzuschlag. The composer was there, the paper assured its readers, to work on “a major new piece.” In a further letter in August Brahms casually mentioned that “I appear to be taking better paper with more staves on it.” The holiday in Mürzzuschlag and the quality manuscript paper were signs of the genesis of his Fourth Symphony.


Brahms was self-critical at the best of times, but the emerging work seemed to worry him more than usual. Writing to the conductor Hans von Bülow, he described it as “a pair of Entr’actes, such as one commonly calls a symphony... I’m afraid it tastes of the climate here; the cherries never ripen in these parts - you wouldn’t want to eat them!” Brahms’s insecurity as to how palatable the new symphony reflected the pressure of high expectations; the Third Symphony had been received with an unanimous enthusiasm not seen since his German Requiem in 1869.


The roots of the Fourth Symphony can be traced back to before he had written his third. In 1882 Brahms discussed Bach’s Cantata No. 150 “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich” [Unto thee Oh Lord do I lift up my soul] with von Bülow, and in particular its last movement, which is a chaconne - a set of variations over a repeating bass line. “What would you think about a symphony written on this theme some time?” Brahms pondered. “But it is too clumsy, too straightforward. One would have to alter it chromatically in some way.” A version of this theme, altered in precisely the manner Brahms suggests, underpins the finale of the Fourth.


He returned to Mürzzuschlag the following summer, where he completed the new symphony. He sent a copy to his friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, accompanied by a worried note: “In general, and unfortunately, my pieces are nicer than I am, and people find less in them to correct?! But round here the cherries do not ripen, do not become edible – if the item doesn't taste good to you, don't be embarrassed; I'm not at all keen to write a bad number 4.” Herzogenberg was normally an unabashed cheerleader for Brahms’ music, but on this occasion she confessed to some doubts about its accessibility: “The symphony is too cerebral”, she said; “it makes the listener or score reader work too hard: We feel we should like to fold our hands and shut our eyes and be stupid for once, leaning on the composer to rest, instead of his driving us so relentlessly afield.”


In Vienna in October, Brahms and his fellow composer Ignaz Brüll performed the symphony in a piano arrangement for a select audience of supporters. Here too, however, the reaction was more muted than he might have hoped: the critic Eduard Hanslick confessed after the first movement, “For the whole movement I had the feeling that I was being given a beating by two incredibly intelligent people!”


In the event, the first performances were successful, and it is now recognised as one of Brahms’ greatest achievements. The opening movement that so unnerved Hanslick begins almost nonchalantly, although right from the outset there is a sense of a tightly controlled and concentrated structure developing, even as the emotional turmoil gradual comes to the surface. From the opening bars Brahms’s obsessive reworking of tiny motifs to create larger themes suggests the kind of close-knit variations that will emerge in the finale. A contrasting second theme has a quality memorably characterised by Leonard Bernstein as “a kind of strange tango”, which if not a historically accurate description certainly evokes the combination of nobility and tragedy that it projects. The second movement provides a complete contrast: a strident horn call transforms into a tentative, withdrawn melody, floating over a gentle tread of plucked strings. The overall warmth is nevertheless tinged with melancholy.


Daylight bursts out in the third movement, which is perhaps the most boisterous and unbuttoned movement in all Brahms’ symphonies. In its jubilant air (subtly enhanced by the introduction of a triangle) it feels almost like a finale; in fact it takes on some of the function of a finale in resolving much of the tension built up by the previous two movements.


The slate is thus cleared for the actual finale, which is quite simply one of the most extraordinary things Brahms ever wrote. In digging deep into the past, both in his refashioning of an idea from Bach, and through his use of archaic techniques, Brahms in fact creates something new and unprecedented in symphonic writing. Rather than Bach’s Chaconne structure, Brahms presents a Passacaglia - the same principle of variations over a repeated line, except that the line in question may appears in registers other than the bass. The theme (in which the trombones make their first appearance) is followed by 30 variations. These are organised into a three-part structure that mirrors the previous three movements, with a slow and reflective central section contrasting with faster outer sections. When the final climax bursts through though, it is not in the jubilant major of the third movement, but a stern minor key. The rigid pattern that the music is built on only serves to heighten the tension, until in the closing pages it finally breaks free of its strictures. It remains sternly in the minor to its close, but is too full of fire and energy to be tragic.

Tippett: Concerto for Double String Orchestra

Michael Tippett (1905-1998)

Concerto for Double String Orchestra

1. 1 Allegro con brio
2. 2 Adagio cantabile
3. 3 Allegro con brio

Tippett’s apprenticeship as a composer was a long one. Having decided at school that he wanted to be a composer, he entered the Royal College of Music in 1923. However, his distinctive voice only emerged as the result of prolonged effort. It was not until the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, composed in 1938, that he found his distinctive voice as a composer.


The use of folk material is not intended to create any cosy sense of nostalgia; rather it is a reflection of Tippett’s deep humanitarianism, and faith in the ability of a vital tradition to renew itself. Tippett was deeply suspicious of the school of composers that had gathered around Vaughan Williams and had set himself against it. His wider perspective is reflected in the rhythm and harmony, which draw much from the jazz and blues that captivated the young Tippett as so many of his generation. Aaron Copland, on hearing the Concerto for the first time on the radio, assumed that it must be the work of an American.


The term “concerto” is used here in its earlier, Baroque sense of a group playing together rather than the “virtuoso soloist and orchestra” model that it generally refers to today. The two orchestras into which Tippett divides the strings act in tandem rather than opposition. This can be heard clearly in the opening movement, where the melody is passed between the two groups, who answer and imitate each other in a manner reminiscent of Renaissance and early Baroque composers such as Gabrielli and Monteverdi.


The slow movement is a richly lyrical affair, whose languid melodies owe as much to the blues singing of artists such as Bessie Smith as to the string quartet by Beethoven on which it is modelled. The finale builds on the rhythmic playfulness of the opening, and uses a Northumbrian pipe tune to bring the work to a luxuriant close built of intertwining melodic lines.


Tippett conducted the first performance of the Concerto at Morley College in 1940, the same year that he joined the Peace Pledge Union. When the Concerto was performed at the Wigmore Hall in 1943, the Conscientious Objectors’ Bulletin reported, “circumstances beyond his control prevented the composer attending.” The circumstances were that Tippett had refused to undertake full-time fire service or land work as a condition of his status as a conscientious objector. His argument, backed up by no less a figure than Vaughan Williams as witness, was that his most constructive contribution to society was through music. The argument fell on deaf ears, and he was imprisoned for three months.
Vaughan Williams’ willingness to stand up for Tippett was an exceptionally generous act, which began a softening of Tippett’s opinion of him. In later years he admitted that he only came to realise after the elder composer’s death that it was “Vaughan-Williams, rather than any other of his contemporaries, who had made us free.”

Berlioz: Béatrice et Bénédict Overture

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Overture: Béatrice et Bénédict


Berlioz spent most of the 1850s composing and attempting unsuccessfully to secure a production of his epic opera Les Troyens. The strain took its toll, and by 1858 he was showing the first signs of the intestinal illness that would eventually kill him. At the same time, following his divorce from the actress and inspiration for the Symphonie fantastique, Harriet Smithson, he remarried. His second wife, Marie Recio, died suddenly in June 1862, a few months after he completed what would prove to be his last opera, Béatrice et Bénédict.
 
Béatrice, in contrast to Les Troyens, quickly secured a performance and was unveiled in August 1862 in Baden-Baden. Ever the perfectionist, Berlioz found much to vex him in the production, from his difficulties in persuading the musicians to play quietly enough to the inadequate size of the orchestra pit, but despite all this the production was a success. Berlioz conducted it himself, despite his advancing illness, and later remarked that his conducting, which in his earlier years had been criticised for its indiscipline, was greatly improved by his health; the pain forced him to be “less excitable.”

If Les Troyens is Berlioz’s self-consciously grand, tragic magnum opus, then Béatrice et Bénédict is in character its polar opposite, an effervescent, exuberant comedy whose wit and lightness of touch belies the pain he was in as he wrote. The libretto, written by Berlioz himself, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. (Some commentators have suggested, somewhat unkindly, that Berlioz’s adaptation amounts to “Much Ado About Nothing without the Ado.”) Berlioz’s fascination with Shakespeare was a recurring obsession throughout his career, and it is entirely fitting that a Shakespeare based work should prove to be his swansong.

Opera overtures at this time tended to be pot-pourris of themes from the ensuing drama. Berlioz here weaves together themes from six arias and ensemble pieces from the opera, but with rather more care than most of his contemporaries. The result is a satisfying and coherent piece that has found a regular home in the concert hall.

Walton: Symphony No.1

William Walton (1902-1983)

Symphony No.1

1. Allegro assai
2. Scherzo: Presto con malizia
3. Andante con malinconia
4. Maestoso – Allegro, brioso ed ardentemente – Vivacissimo – Maestoso

"Your oeuvre is not a very large one, is it?" observed Roy Plumley of William Walton during his appearance on Desert Island Discs in 1982. "Not at all," replied Walton, going on to observe that he had composed only two symphonies: “Two too many!"

Walton's own flippant assessment aside, his first symphony undoubtedly consolidated a meteoric rise to fame, and is regarded by many as one of his defining works. He once described it as “the climax of my youth.” It sits as the work that definitively moved him into the musical establishment, and yet in its protracted genesis foreshadows the increasing difficulty he found in composing, which would leave his output at his death shortly after his encounter with Roy Plumley so meagre.

Walton in 1930 stood as one of a triumvirate of British composers who would dominate the musical landscape of the country. One one side of him was Britten, the prodigious talent ("the head prefect" as Walton described him to friends). On the other side was the mercurial, eccentric Michael Tippett. Walton stood between these two poles. He felt acutely aware that his background, born in Oldham to a provincial organist, was considerably less privileged than the likes of Britten. Despite this, he made a very good job of ingratiating himself with the upper echelons of British society. He first came to widespread attention as the prodigy of the Sitwell family, and achieved his early success through controversial avant garde works such as Façade, mixing high and low art with a liberal dose of ironic archness. He established himself as a serious composer with his Viola Concerto and the the brilliant, extravagant oratorio Belshazzar's Feast. In the wake of this success, he began in 1930 to write a symphony, a genre that anyone who wanted to be regarded as a musical heavyweight needed to tackle. This was especially true in England at the time, where the enthusiasm for the symphonies of Sibelius was at its height.

The composition of the symphony coincided with a major shift in Walton's life. His move from enchant terrible towards the heart of musical establishment was mirrored by his gradual estrangement from the eccentric Sitwells, which was fuelled not simply by artistic differences, but by Walton's relationship with Baroness Imma Doernberg, whom he had met in 1929 and by 1931 was living with in Switzerland.

It was a stormy affair, and perhaps contributed to the slow progress on the symphony, although Walton's increasing self-doubt was also a factor. By 1934 three movements were complete, but Walton, depressed after the Baroness left him for a doctor, was stuck on the finale. He took the unusual step of allowing the three extant movements to be performed. They proved a great success, but this only put more pressure on Walton to come up with a finale to match. He could not work out how to write the central part of the movement. His friend and fellow composer Constant Lambert suggested he write a fugue, dismissing Walton’s protest, “but I don’t know how to write one” with the observation that there were “a couple of rather good pages on the subject in Grove’s Dictionary.” Walton followed his friend's advice, read the article, and wrote the fugue. The complete symphony was finally performed in 1935.

Walton’s decision to allow performances of the symphony without its final now rebounded on him: inevitably critics began to suggest that the finale he had come up with was not up to the standard of the earlier movements, and that there was an abrupt change of character between them and the finale. In fairness, Walton is hardly the only composer to have dramatically switched tones in a finale; but it cannot be denied that there is a distinctly new atmosphere in the last movement. The crack was made that “the trouble was that Willie changed girlfriends between movements.” This may not be an entirely facetious observation: by 1935 Walton had taken up with Lady Alice Wimbourne, a relationship that would last until her death in 1948.

The opening movement is relentless: a churning maelstrom of long melodies underpinned by a relentless rhythmic drive. It is followed by an extraordinary scherzo whose spiky, constantly wrong-footing rhythms fully embody the direction “con malizia”.

The third movement by contrast is weighed down by melancholy whose gently pulsing opening builds to ever more anguished climaxes before sinking back into a stygian gloom. The contrast with the subsequent movement is starling. The finale combines grandiose fanfares with buzzingly energetic music and builds to a triumphant conclusion. The style points the way towards the work he would write not long after that cemented his place in the British establishment: the coronation anthem for George VI, Crown Imperial. Although by the time he completed the symphony he was fully ensconced in his new life with Lady Wimborne, Walton dedicated the symphony solely to Baroness Imma Doernberg. Perhaps the stridently optimistic tone of the finale is as much a kiss-off to an ex as a paean to new love.

Britten: Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes

Benjamin Britten (1913-19765)

Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes

1. Dawn
2. Sunday Morning
3. Passacaglia
4. Moonlight
5. Storm

George Crabbe’s collection The Borough is a set of 24 poems in heroic couplets describing life and characters in a 19th-century Sussex fishing village. Each poem is styled as a letter describing an aspect or character from village life. The model for the poems was drawn from the poet’s childhood home of Aldeburgh. Benjamin Britten was born further up the same coastline in Lowestoft and later made his home in Aldeburgh. He therefore knew Crabbe’s world well, and the music he composed for his opera Peter Grimes, based on the 22nd of Crabbe’s letters, is vividly evocative of the Sussex coast. However, his first encounter with the poems was in Los Angeles, where he found a copy in a second-hand bookshop in 1941 after reading an article about Crabbe by E.M. Forster in the Listener.

Britten and Peter Pears had travelled to America to escape an uncertain situation in Britain as Europe drifted towards war. In 1942 they returned home, constructing a scenario for an opera from the poem while on the plane back to England. Having appeared before a tribunal for conscientious objectors, Britten was spared prison, and set to work on the opera, which was mostly composed in 1944. It was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky in memory of his wife Natalie. The first performance was intended for the Berkshire Festival in New England in 1944, but the war prevented this, and so Peter Grimes was eventually unveiled at Covent Garden in 1945.

Britten’s take on the character of Grimes is considerably more sympathetic than Crabbe’s, but he is nevertheless an ambiguous character: Britten clearly identifies with him as an outsider in an intolerant and often hypocritical society, but Grime’s brutality is not glossed over. Through the course of the opera, a series of seascapes portray not only the Sussex coast, but Grime’s mental anguish as he is progressively alienated from even those villagers who are initially sympathetic. The first interlude evokes the cold wind of dawn, with low brass chords implying something oppressive lurking in the background. “Sunday Morning” in contrast depicts a bright scene, with sunlight sparkling on the waves and church bells ringing. The Passacaglia is built on a recurring bass line which derives from Grimes’s cry of “May God have mercy upon me!” as he strikes Ellen Orford, alienating the one friend he has left in the village. This same phrase is subsequently heard as the villager’s insinuating refrain, “Grimes is at his Exercise!” as they speculate about his treatment of his apprentice. “Moonlight” depicts a tranquil night in the harbour, though punctuated with stabbing phrases suggesting Grime’s mental agony. The final “Storm” appears before Act One, Scene Two of the opera; Britten changed the sequence when he extracted the Interludes as a concert work in order to provide an effective conclusion. In the middle of an increasingly violent tempest emerges briefly an ecstatic moment, which, wrote Britten, “describes the ecstasy of Peter Grimes... whose existence is a solitary one and whose soul is stimulated by such a storm as this.”

Arnold: Tam O'Shanter

Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)

Overture: Tam O’Shanter


Robert Burns’s poem 'Tam O’Shanter' was written in 1790, and swiftly established itself as a classic not only of Scottish literature but folk culture too. It tells the tale of a hard-drinking farmer who is warned by his infuriated wife that if he continues in his misspent ways he will be “catch’d wi’ warlocks”. One evening, having spent his day getting stewed in the pub while his wife stews at home waiting for him, Tam rides home on his horse, Meg. A storm is brewing, and as Tam passes a haunted church, he sees it lit, filled with witches and warlocks dancing to a tune played by the devil on the bagpipe. Drunk as he is, Tam stays to watch the gathering, and becomes more and more entranced. One particularly lascivious witch, dressed in a scanty nightshirt (a “cutty-sark... In longitude tho' sorely scanty”) catches his eye, and pleases him so much that he forgets himself and shouts out, “Weel done, cutty-sark!'” The music stops, the lights go out, and the witches give chase. Tam rides furiously, closely pursued, until he crosses the River Doon. The witches may not cross running water and Tam is saved - although the unfortunate Meg loses her tail, grabbed and pulled off by the witches as she reaches the bridge.

Burns’ tale has entrenched itself in Scottish culture to a remarkable degree. Tam lends his name to the traditional men’s bonnet, while the phrase “Well done, cutty sark!” crossed the border and entered popular parlance in England as an equivalent of “Bravo!” The famous tea-clipper now residing in Greenwich also takes its name and its figurehead from the witch.

Malcolm Arnold was a great admirer of Burns, and the tale of Tam proved to be an ideal match with his style. The overture he wrote in response to the poem was composed in 1955, dedicated to his then publisher Michael Diack, and received its first performance at that year’s Proms season. It follows Burns’s narrative closely, opening in distinctly woozy fashion as Tam staggers out of the pub before mounting his mare and beginning the ride home at a furious gallop. He pauses to watch the devilish dancing, and his appreciative cry to the witch with dress “in longitude tho’ sorely scanty” is clearly heard in a trombone solo that precedes the chase. A short, sardonic coda reflects the moral of the tale:

Now wha this tale o’truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother’s son tak heed
Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think ye may buy the joys o’er dear,Remember Tam O’ Shanter’s mare.

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Symphonie fantastique

1. Rêveries – Passions (Daydreams – Passions)
2. Un bal (A ball)
3. Scène aux champs (Scene in the Country)Marche au supplice (March to the Scaffold)
4. Songe d'une nuit de sabbat (Dream of a Witches' Sabbat)

Above all, Berlioz was a dramatic composer. That he wrote symphonies at all is a testament to the impact that Beethoven’s symphonies had on him. His experience of hearing the Third and Fifth Symphonies at a concert in 1828 was one of two encounters with great artists that had a decisive influence on the Symphonie fantastique that he wrote soon after.

The other artist whose work became a touchstone was Shakespeare. In 1827 Berlioz attended a performance of Hamlet which sparked a lifelong obsession. Shakespeare’s influence took a while to work its way into his music. A more immediate interest sparked by the play was the Irish actress who played Ophelia, Harriet Smithson. Berlioz became obsessed with her, projecting onto her his romantic ideals as filtered through Shakespeare’s heroines (he called her “My Ophelia” or “My Desdemona”). For the next two years he sought in vain to engineer a meeting with her, during which time his infatuation with her bordered on the outright deranged. He bombarded her with love letters, which the probably terrified Smithson studiously failed to answer. His unrequited ardour eventually turned sour. It is this phantom relationship which inspired the Symphonie fantastique.

The Symphonie was written in 1830, and first performed in December of that year. By this time Berlioz's attentions had transferred from the unresponsive Smithson to Camille Moke, a talented young pianist who proved rather more susceptible to his overtures. All the bitterness at his failure to woo Smithson was poured into the symphony. Although he felt compelled to turn to an instrumental form in imitation of Beethoven, Berlioz's dramatic instincts remained paramount, and he wrote a programme to explain what the symphony depicted for the first performance. The main theme, described by Berlioz as an "idée fixe", recurs throughout all five movements. It represents the woman with whom the hero of the drama has become besotted. He encounters her through a variety of situations, culminating in an opium-fuelled fantasy in which he is executed and then witnesses a gathering of witches and other monstrosities jeering at his funeral. The autobiographical element in this is not hard to discern.

The first performance, attended by some of the leading musicians of the day including Liszt, was a great if not uncontroversial success, and marked a turning point in Berlioz's fortunes. He had also just been awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome after many unsuccessful attempts, and his composing career finally appeared to be going somewhere. Unfortunately the conditions of the Prix required him to spend two years in Italy. Berlioz was loathe to leave Paris just as he was making progress there, but after a lengthy and unsuccessful appeal, he travelled to Italy in 1831. While there he received news that Camille Moke had broken off their engagement to marry Camille Pleyel, son of the famous piano maker. Initially he vowed to return to Paris and murder Camille, her mother and her new fiancé (a tale told at great and hilarious length in his memoirs); however, as he recovered from a serious illness his resolve wavered, and he decided that his “survival”, both of his illness and his emotional trauma, would inspire a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique entitled Le retour a la vie (later retitled Lélio).

In an improbable turn of events, the Paris performance of Lélio in tandem with the Symphonie in 1832 led to his finally meeting Harriet Smithson, whom he married after a short and bizarre courtship. By now her popularity was on the wane and she was heavily in debt, which may have been a factor in her decision to marry. Many might doubt whether a marriage born of such circumstances could possibly end in anything other than disaster, and such people would be entirely correct: the relationship soon collapsed in acrimony and the pair separated in 1844. Berlioz nevertheless continued to support Smithson financially until her death in 1854. After her death, Berlioz revived Lélio and rewrote the accompanying programmes to both works to make it appear that both were about Smithson, and that all the artist’s antics depicted in the entire symphony, rather than just the last two movements, were an opium-induced fantasy.

The audience at the first performance of the Symphonie fantastique would been struck by Berlioz’s original approach to orchestral writing. On the other hand, they would have been very familiar with the kind of melodramatic scenario described in the accompanying note. Here it is in full:

The composer has aimed to develop, as far as they may be musically, various situations in the life of an artist. The plan of the instrumental drama, lacking the assistance of words, needs to be explained in advance. The following programme should be considered as the spoken text of an opera, serving to lead one to the musical movements, of which it explains the character and expression.

Part 1: REVERIES – PASSIONS
The author imagines that a young musician, affected by that moral malady a certain writer calls the tide of passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies the ideals of his imagination, and is insanely infatuated. By a curious quirk, this comely creature is connected in the man’s mind with a musical motif, in which he finds that same certain passionate, but also noble and shy, character that he attributes to the object of his affections.

This melodic reflection and its model pursue him unceasingly as a double idée fixe. This is the reason for the constant appearance, throughout all the movements of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first allegro. The passing from this state of melancholy reverie, interrupted by bouts of baseless bliss, to one of delirious desire, with its fits of fury, of jealousy, its returns to tenderness, its weeping, its religious consolations, is the subject of the first movement.

Part 2: A BALL
The artist is placed in the most varied circumstances of life, in the middle of the pandemonium of a party, in the peaceful contemplation of nature’s beauties; but everywhere, in the town, in the country, the beloved image haunts him and troubles his soul.

Part 3: SCENE IN THE COUNTRY
Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds who pipe in dialogue a ranz des vaches. This pastoral duet, the vista, the soft swishing of trees gently stirred by the wind, the hopes he has conceived, all conspire to give his heart an unaccustomed calm, and to give his fancies a more cheerful colour. He reflects on his solitude; he hopes soon no longer to be alone. ….But if she were to be unfaithful!... This fusion of faith and fear, these fancies of fortune fermented by frightful forebodings, form the subject of the Adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds sounds again the ranz des vaches; the other no longer responds… Distant rumble of thunder…. solitude… silence…

Part 4: MARCH TO THE SCAFFOLD
Now certain that his love is unrequited, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the drug, too dilute to deliver him death, plunges him into a sleep beset by the most terrible vision. He dreams that he has killed she whom he loves, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold, and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession proceeds to the sounds of a march sometimes sombre and fierce, sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a muffled sound of sober steps cedes suddenly to stentorian surges. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear, like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part 5: DREAM OF A WITCHES’ SABBAT
He sees himself at the Sabbat, surrounded by a terrifying troupe of spectres, sorcerers, all manner of monsters, gathered for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries to which other cries seem to respond. The beloved melody appears once more, but has lost its nobility and shyness; it is now nothing more than a despicable dance ditty, trivial and grotesque; She has come to the Sabbat… Howling of joy at her arrival… She joins the diabolical orgy. Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies Irae*. Rondo of the Sabbat. The Rondo of the Sabbat and the Dies Irae together.

*Hymn sung in the funeral rites of the Catholic Church.

Liszt: Totentanz

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Totentanz


There were virtuosi before Liszt; but when we think of a superstar performer now, we are really thinking of the persona that Liszt created. His father was a musician in the service of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, who knew Haydn and Beethoven personally. He began teaching his son piano at 7, and Franz soon began to compose as well. Aged 11 he had his first composition published, one of 50 variations on a waltz by Diabelli that formed part 2 of Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein anthology (Part 1 consisted of Beethoven’s epic set of variations on the same theme). In 1832 Liszt saw Paganini perform, and determined to bring the same level of virtuosity to his piano playing. His career thereafter is the stuff of legend; a scandalous affair, an induction into the priesthood, and a punishing concert schedule in which he became the first musician to perform entire concerts by himself. Brahms declared that as far as piano playing went, ‘He who has not heard Liszt play really cannot speak on the subject. He leads the way, and then, a long way behind, there is no one else.’ The scenes of “Lisztomania” at his performances in the 1840s were unprecedented, in which audiences succumbed to the levels of hysteria that would later greet Elvis Presley and the Beatles. He was so successful that after he was 35 he never performed for money again, donating all his fees to charity.

Liszt’s Totentanz (Dance of Death) is in effect a bravura concerto. He first planned it in 1838, and revised it twice before it reached its final form in 1859. It received its first performance in 1865, when the soloist was Liszt’s son-in-law Hans von Bülow. The theme of the “Dance of Death” was a popular one in the 19th century, as the burgeoning Romantic movement developed a taste both for the medieval period and the macabre. Liszt’s piece is a set of variations on the “Dies Irae” plainchant that also appears in the finale of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the first performance of which in 1830 Liszt had attended. The other inspiration was Francesco Traini’s fresco “The Triumph of Death” in the Campo Santo, Pisa, which Liszt visited in 1838 when he eloped to Italy with his mistress the Countess d’Agoult. A second theme, based on the opening of Mozart’s Requiem, appears in the middle and is the subject of a subsidiary set of variations before the “Dies Irae” returns to conclude the piece.

The piano part of the Totentanz is remarkable even now, and must have been truly shocking at the time. Instead of the smooth lyrical lines of most contemporary music, Liszt presents a violent, angular and percussive score which anticipates nothing so much as the music of Bartók - indeed the work was a mainstay of Bartók’s own repertoire as a soloist.

Musorgsky: St John's Night on Bare Mountain (Orginal Version)

Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881)
St. John’s Night on Bare Mountain (original version)

Of the group of composers who congregated around Balakirev in the 19th century to forge a new Russian music, Musorgsky is among the most famous, and yet little heard. Although many of his titles are well-known, the music itself is very rarely heard as the composer intended. Pictures at an Exhibition is much more familiar in Ravel’s orchestral adaptation, while the 1867 tone poem St. John’s Night on Bare Mountain (or Night on the Bare Mountain as it is more widely known) was never performed in his lifetime, nor even published until 1968. The version usually heard is a posthumous rewrite by Rimsky-Korsakov, and so utterly different in its conception as to constitute an entirely different work that happens to use some of the same themes.

The roots of Bare Mountain lie as far back as 1858, when Musorgsky made tentative plans to compose an opera on Gogol’s short story St. John’s Eve. No trace remains of this, but two years later he wrote to Balakirev that he was working on a libretto by Georgy Mengden called The Witch. This too is lost, but apparently contained “a whole act to take place on Bare Mountain... a witches’ sabbat... I already have some material for it; it may turn out to be a very good thing.” In 1866 Musorgsky heard Liszt’s Totentanz, which made a great impact on him. Inspired by that and by a book on witchcraft he had recently read, he began to plan a new work, initially titled The Witches. In July 1867 he wrote to Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov to announce the completion on St. John’s Eve of St. John’s Night on Bare Mountain.

If Musorgsky hoped for enthusiasm from his teacher, he was disappointed: Balakirev was harshly critical of the piece and refused to perform it. Musorgsky revised the work twice: in 1872-3 he reworked it as a chorus for the collaborative opera Mlada. This version is lost, but was almost certainly the basis for the second revision, intended for his unfinished opera Sorochintsy Fair. It was this version that served as the basis for Rimsky-Korsakov’s reimagining of Night on Bare Mountain.

Musorgsky’s original is considerably more raucous than Rimsky's smoother rewrite (in particular the familiar quiet ending is entirely absent), and in its adventurous and aggressive harmonies it is a good 30 years ahead of its time. In a letter to Rimsky, Musorgsky identified four sections to the work: “(1) Assembly of the witches, their chatter and gossip; (2) cortege of Satan; (3) unholy glorification of Satan; and (4) witches’ sabbat.” Musorgsky is often considered not to be an effective orchestrator, but the cautiousness he exhibits in later music is perhaps a result of the criticism of Bare Mountain by Balakirev. Certainly in his first major work for orchestra he is gloriously unconstrained by any sense of propriety, and the result is a relentless and thoroughly exciting slice of devilry.