Albert Roussel (1869-1937)
Bacchus et Ariane, Op.43
Act 1: Prelude - Games of the young men and women - Dance of the Labyrinth - Bacchus appears - Dance of Bacchus
Act 2: Prelude (Ariadne sleeps) - Ariadne awakes - The kiss - Bacchus’s spell - Parade of the Worshippers of Bacchus- Dance of Ariadne - Dance of Ariadne and Bacchus - Bacchanale - Coronation of Ariadne.
Roussel was born in to trade, and suffered a series of early bereavements: both his parents were dead by the time he was eight, and he was moved between various relatives as a boy, from grandparents who also died, eventually to his maternal aunt. He showed some early signs of musical talent and had lessons from the parish organist, but his real strength was in mathematics. He left home at 15 to study in Paris, and at 17 enrolled in the French Naval College. He spent seven years as a midshipman, and only decided to pursue a career in music at 25. His earliest attempt at composition is a fantasy for violin and piano, written in 1892 while he was serving on the naval ship Melpomène. Following a period of leave in 1894 during which he studied with Julien Koszu, who urged him to settle in Paris, he resigned his commission and moved to the capital. He studied with Vincent D’Indy, who soon entrusted his pupil to take his counterpoint classes for him. Roussel thus became the teacher of Varèse and Satie among others.
His relatively late decision to become a musician perhaps accounts for the fact that his earliest music seems torn between influences: his music owes something both to the French symphonic tradition exemplified by his teacher D’Indy, while also drawing on the innovations of his contemporaries Debussy and Ravel. Asian and Far Eastern music also left a profound impression on him when he encountered it on his voyages with the navy.
One of his earliest major successes as a composer was his first ballet, Le festin de l'araignée, premiered in 1913. By the time he came to write his second, Bacchus et Ariane, Roussel was in his early 60s and at the height of his career, having recently travelled to the U.S.A. to hear Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony première his Third Symphony. His music by now had evolved from the Debussy influenced impressionism of his youth to a more neo-classical style. His orchestral writing retains its sumptuousness, as Bacchus et Ariane amply demonstrates, but this is paired with a new clarity of line and a rhythmic vigour that acknowledges the influence of Stravinsky’s ballets.
The plot of Bacchus et Ariane is fairly minimal. Prior to the events depicted in the ballet, Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, has fled her home of Crete with Theseus, whom she has helped in his quest to kill the Minotaur that lived in the labyrinth built by her father. The ballet opens with a scene of young men and maidens dancing and celebrating Theseus’s defeat of the Minotaur and escape from the Labyrinth to the island of Naxos. Theseus and his comrades reenact his adventures on Crete. The god Bacchus appears, disguised, and envelops Ariadne in his black cloak, causing her to faint. Theseus and his men rush at Bacchus, but fall back when he reveals his identity. He commands them to leave the island and claims Ariadne for his wife. He enters her dreams and dances with her, then lays her down on the rock where she sleeps.
Act 2 begins with a prelude depicting the sleeping Ariadne. She awakens, and sees Theseus’s ship sailing away. Believing herself to be alone and abandoned, she attempts to throw herself into the sea, but falls instead into the arms of Bacchus. Bacchus and Ariadne reprise their dream-dance, now awake, in music of ever intensifying eroticism. At the climax of their dance, Bacchus kisses Ariadne and transforms her into an immortal. Bacchus’s followers appear for a final wild dance, before Bacchus leads Ariadne to the highest rock, and crowns her with stars.
Ibert: La ballade de la geôle de Reading
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962)
La ballade de la geôle de Reading
Oscar Wilde’s poem 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' was written in exile after his release from prison in 1897 and was the last major work he completed. He had been sentenced in 1895 to two years’ hard labour after being found guilty of gross indecency (the legal term at the time for homosexual acts). By the time he was released his health had deteriorated severely and he would die three years later. In prison he had been addressed not by his name but by his cell number: Prisoner C.3.3 (Block C, Landing 3, Cell 3), and the Ballad was initially published under the pseudonym “C.3.3”. The first edition of 800 copies sold out within a week. The third edition, a limited signed run of 99, first revealed the identity of the author, but it was not until the seventh edition in 1899 replaced the number with Wilde’s name that the identity of its author became widely known.
The inspiration and dedicatee of the poem was Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a soldier in the Royal Horse Guards who had been convicted of murdering his wife. He was also imprisoned at Reading and hanged there in 1896 while Wide was resident. Wilde’s poem makes no judgement of the inmates or the laws that brought them to prison , but reflects on how the brutality of prison dehumanises its inmates. Wooldridge's experience is widened to stand for all prisoners, including Wilde himself: he famously observes that “each man kills the thing he loves” (itself an allusion to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice).
Ibert’s orchestral work inspired by Wilde’s poem was written between 1920 and 1922. He had studied at the Paris Conservatoire until the First World War intervened. Ibert worked as a nurse and stretcher bearer at the front and later as a naval officer at Dunkirk. Despite this interruption to his studies he still managed to win the coveted Prix de Rome at his first attempt in 1919. La ballade de la geôle de Reading is thus the work of a young man, still absorbing the influences of Debussy and Dukas, but filled with confidence, and undoubtedly drawn to the subject matter buy his own experience of the brutality of war. Its première in October 1922 was the first public concert to feature his work and established him as a major composer. In 1937 it was choreographed and presented as a ballet at the Opéra Comiquei. Ibert’s music has taken rather longer to cross the channel: tonight’s performance is the first time that La ballade de la geôle de Reading has been performed in the U.K.
The work is divided into three sections which run without a break. Each of them is headed by translated quotations from Wilde’s poem. The brooding opening movement sets the scene, portraying the oppressive prison and its inmates. Strange limpid interludes suggest the “little tent of blue / Which prisoners call the sky.” The second part evokes the terrors of night, when distant, disembodied sounds seem to suggest ghosts and spirits haunting the prison: “in ghostly rout they trod a saraband... And loud they sang, For they sang to wake the dead.” The final section returns to the mood of the opening, and builds to a passionate outburst before sinking back into Stygian mist. It is headed by lines relating to the execution of Woodridge, and his burial: “The warders stripped him of his clothes, And gave him to the flies... And there, till Christ call forth the dead, In silence let him lie.”
La ballade de la geôle de Reading
Oscar Wilde’s poem 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' was written in exile after his release from prison in 1897 and was the last major work he completed. He had been sentenced in 1895 to two years’ hard labour after being found guilty of gross indecency (the legal term at the time for homosexual acts). By the time he was released his health had deteriorated severely and he would die three years later. In prison he had been addressed not by his name but by his cell number: Prisoner C.3.3 (Block C, Landing 3, Cell 3), and the Ballad was initially published under the pseudonym “C.3.3”. The first edition of 800 copies sold out within a week. The third edition, a limited signed run of 99, first revealed the identity of the author, but it was not until the seventh edition in 1899 replaced the number with Wilde’s name that the identity of its author became widely known.
The inspiration and dedicatee of the poem was Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a soldier in the Royal Horse Guards who had been convicted of murdering his wife. He was also imprisoned at Reading and hanged there in 1896 while Wide was resident. Wilde’s poem makes no judgement of the inmates or the laws that brought them to prison , but reflects on how the brutality of prison dehumanises its inmates. Wooldridge's experience is widened to stand for all prisoners, including Wilde himself: he famously observes that “each man kills the thing he loves” (itself an allusion to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice).
Ibert’s orchestral work inspired by Wilde’s poem was written between 1920 and 1922. He had studied at the Paris Conservatoire until the First World War intervened. Ibert worked as a nurse and stretcher bearer at the front and later as a naval officer at Dunkirk. Despite this interruption to his studies he still managed to win the coveted Prix de Rome at his first attempt in 1919. La ballade de la geôle de Reading is thus the work of a young man, still absorbing the influences of Debussy and Dukas, but filled with confidence, and undoubtedly drawn to the subject matter buy his own experience of the brutality of war. Its première in October 1922 was the first public concert to feature his work and established him as a major composer. In 1937 it was choreographed and presented as a ballet at the Opéra Comiquei. Ibert’s music has taken rather longer to cross the channel: tonight’s performance is the first time that La ballade de la geôle de Reading has been performed in the U.K.
The work is divided into three sections which run without a break. Each of them is headed by translated quotations from Wilde’s poem. The brooding opening movement sets the scene, portraying the oppressive prison and its inmates. Strange limpid interludes suggest the “little tent of blue / Which prisoners call the sky.” The second part evokes the terrors of night, when distant, disembodied sounds seem to suggest ghosts and spirits haunting the prison: “in ghostly rout they trod a saraband... And loud they sang, For they sang to wake the dead.” The final section returns to the mood of the opening, and builds to a passionate outburst before sinking back into Stygian mist. It is headed by lines relating to the execution of Woodridge, and his burial: “The warders stripped him of his clothes, And gave him to the flies... And there, till Christ call forth the dead, In silence let him lie.”
Chabrier: España
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)
España
Chabrier was raised in the Auvergne. He showed an early gift for music and was composing at 14, but his family were lawyers and tradesmen by trade and he duly followed his father's footsteps, gaining a job at the Ministry of the Interior in 1861 which he held for 19 years. His frustration at the restrictions his work put on his burgeoning composing career grew gradually. During the 1870s he began a number of stage works, but only completed one, L’étoile, which was successfully staged in 1877. In 1880 he heard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde for the first time, and within months resigned his post to concentrate on music.
Chabrier composed España after a holiday in Spain in 1882. It is based on two dance forms that he encountered there: the lively Jota and the more sensuous Malagueña. It was originally titled Jota before finding its final title at its completion in October 1883. On hearing it, the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla said that no Spaniard had composed a finer evocation of the Jota. It rapidly spread through the salons and drawing rooms of Europe via a number of arrangements and made Chabrier internationally famous.
Chabrier is today known almost exclusively for España, and familiarity has perhaps dulled our reaction to it. What is generally considered now to be an attractive piece of light orchestral music was declared by Gustav Mahler introducing it to the players of the New York Philharmonic as nothing less than "the beginnings of modern music." Renoir's wife Aline meanwhile recalled hearing Chabrier playing it on the piano: "it sounded as though a hurricane had been let loose."
España
Chabrier was raised in the Auvergne. He showed an early gift for music and was composing at 14, but his family were lawyers and tradesmen by trade and he duly followed his father's footsteps, gaining a job at the Ministry of the Interior in 1861 which he held for 19 years. His frustration at the restrictions his work put on his burgeoning composing career grew gradually. During the 1870s he began a number of stage works, but only completed one, L’étoile, which was successfully staged in 1877. In 1880 he heard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde for the first time, and within months resigned his post to concentrate on music.
Chabrier composed España after a holiday in Spain in 1882. It is based on two dance forms that he encountered there: the lively Jota and the more sensuous Malagueña. It was originally titled Jota before finding its final title at its completion in October 1883. On hearing it, the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla said that no Spaniard had composed a finer evocation of the Jota. It rapidly spread through the salons and drawing rooms of Europe via a number of arrangements and made Chabrier internationally famous.
Chabrier is today known almost exclusively for España, and familiarity has perhaps dulled our reaction to it. What is generally considered now to be an attractive piece of light orchestral music was declared by Gustav Mahler introducing it to the players of the New York Philharmonic as nothing less than "the beginnings of modern music." Renoir's wife Aline meanwhile recalled hearing Chabrier playing it on the piano: "it sounded as though a hurricane had been let loose."
Beethoven: Symphony No.7
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 7 in A, Op.92
The first performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony on 8 December 1812 was one of the greatest triumphs of his career. The occasion was a benefit concert for soldier wounded at the battle of Hanau. In the way of early 19th century concerts, the programme was exceptionally long, and as well as the Seventh included the premier of his Eighth Symphony. Both were received well (and the Seventh’ second movement proved popular enough that it was encored), although it was the potboiler “Battle Symphony” that really attracted attention, celebrating Wellington’s recent victory at Vitoria, a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars.
Beethoven was certainly well-acquainted with the course of the wars. An avowed supporter of the Republican revolution in France, he had originally dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon, only to strike the dedication from the title page when Napoleon declared himself Emperor. He had also suffered in 1809 when Napoleon’s forces occupied Vienna. Already suffering deteriorating hearing, he complained that the noise of shelling was accelerating his descent into deafness.
Life in an occupied city was difficult enough, but Beethoven was also wrestling with poor health and depression. In 1811 on the advice of his doctor he went to stay for six months at the spa town of Teplice in Bohemia. The break evidently did some good: on his return to Vienna in the winter he began work on his Seventh Symphony. However, his health remained poor enough that his doctor ordered him back to Teplice in summer 1812. It was here that he wrote his famous letter addressed to “The Immortal Beloved”: a passionate love letter, never sent. Speculation continues to this day about the intended recipient. It is an extraordinary document, that reveals a man in emotional disarray, torn between his evident desire for the intended recipient and a conviction that his vocation as a composer means he cannot commit to a relationship.
Beethoven may have been filled with doubt and depression, but the Seventh Symphony is a statement of absolute conviction. It is characterised by a rhythmic obsessiveness that is relentless even by Beethoven’s standards. Coupled with this is a strong tendency to build structures on drones or repeated bass figures, something also heard in a number of folksong arrangements Beethoven made at the time. The combination of obsessive repetition and abrupt, violent changes of mood and texture led some to speculate that he had composed the symphony while drunk. His contemporary Weber went as far as to suggest that passages such as the coda to the first movement, in which cellos and basses waver around a drone for a full 22 bars, demonstrated that Beethoven was “ripe for the madhouse.”
The first movement’s slow introduction is on such an expansive scale that it might almost be considered a movement in itself. It reaches a climax and dies away to a moment of indecision, one of those moments where the listener is almost put into the mind of the composer: an idea is repeated, turned, and gradually changed until it becomes the rhythm that dominates the main part of the movement. This begins quietly and innocuously before erupting into a forceful galop that hardly lets up.
The second movement is similarly built on an obsessive repeated rhythm. At its first performance it was taken to be a funeral march for the dead of the Napoleonic Wars, and in fact its structure closely resembles the funeral march from his Third Symphony: a sombre opening alternating with a gentler more pastoral idea. Beethoven also borrows another idea from his Third here, in presenting the accompaniment first, before the theme appears winding its way over the dactyls of the bass.
The third movement is an altogether earthier dance. Its opening "scherzo" [in Italian, literally "joke"] section is a rumbustious triple time canter, full of unexpected twists and turns. The contrasting "trio" section’s theme was originally sketched in 1806 and intended for a string quartet. It derives from a Lower Austrian pilgrims’ hymn tune and builds from a quiet prayer to a full blooded cry, as though the congregation has joined in. Both sections are reprised before a final outing of the opening. At the very end Beethoven suggests that he might even go round again, before dismissing the idea with a series of short sharp chords.
The finale picks up where the third movement left off, and then proceeds without respite. It is not so much the speed of the music (Beethoven wrote plenty of faster music) so much as its muscularity that creates its sense of unstoppable force. How deaf Beethoven was by 1811 is a matter of debate; his pupil Czerny maintained that he was still able to hear relatively well and only succumbed to profound deafness later. But he certainly pushes his orchestra here to the extreme, and having exhorted the players to produce an almost unyielding fortissimo [“strongest” or “loudest”] in the final bars he demands for the first time that they produce a triple-forte, effectively demanding that they play “louder than possible.”
In 1816 The Seventh Symphony broke new ground by being the first of his symphonies to be published as a score. This was a significant event: music had hitherto been published purely in the form of instrumental parts, intended for performers. Increasingly, an expanding middle-class audience had the means and desire to study orchestral works. This marked the birth of the notion of a canon of “great works” that largely persists today. As Beethoven’s letters to his publisher complaining of the many mistakes in the score attest, he found the experience thoroughly aggravating. However, given his appalling handwriting, it is perhaps appropriate to spare a sympathetic thought not only for the challenge presented to the musicians, but also the no less Herculean task faced by Beethoven’s copyists.
Symphony No. 7 in A, Op.92
- Poco sostenuto – Vivace
- Allegretto
- Presto
- Allegro con brio
The first performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony on 8 December 1812 was one of the greatest triumphs of his career. The occasion was a benefit concert for soldier wounded at the battle of Hanau. In the way of early 19th century concerts, the programme was exceptionally long, and as well as the Seventh included the premier of his Eighth Symphony. Both were received well (and the Seventh’ second movement proved popular enough that it was encored), although it was the potboiler “Battle Symphony” that really attracted attention, celebrating Wellington’s recent victory at Vitoria, a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars.
Beethoven was certainly well-acquainted with the course of the wars. An avowed supporter of the Republican revolution in France, he had originally dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon, only to strike the dedication from the title page when Napoleon declared himself Emperor. He had also suffered in 1809 when Napoleon’s forces occupied Vienna. Already suffering deteriorating hearing, he complained that the noise of shelling was accelerating his descent into deafness.
Life in an occupied city was difficult enough, but Beethoven was also wrestling with poor health and depression. In 1811 on the advice of his doctor he went to stay for six months at the spa town of Teplice in Bohemia. The break evidently did some good: on his return to Vienna in the winter he began work on his Seventh Symphony. However, his health remained poor enough that his doctor ordered him back to Teplice in summer 1812. It was here that he wrote his famous letter addressed to “The Immortal Beloved”: a passionate love letter, never sent. Speculation continues to this day about the intended recipient. It is an extraordinary document, that reveals a man in emotional disarray, torn between his evident desire for the intended recipient and a conviction that his vocation as a composer means he cannot commit to a relationship.
Beethoven may have been filled with doubt and depression, but the Seventh Symphony is a statement of absolute conviction. It is characterised by a rhythmic obsessiveness that is relentless even by Beethoven’s standards. Coupled with this is a strong tendency to build structures on drones or repeated bass figures, something also heard in a number of folksong arrangements Beethoven made at the time. The combination of obsessive repetition and abrupt, violent changes of mood and texture led some to speculate that he had composed the symphony while drunk. His contemporary Weber went as far as to suggest that passages such as the coda to the first movement, in which cellos and basses waver around a drone for a full 22 bars, demonstrated that Beethoven was “ripe for the madhouse.”
The first movement’s slow introduction is on such an expansive scale that it might almost be considered a movement in itself. It reaches a climax and dies away to a moment of indecision, one of those moments where the listener is almost put into the mind of the composer: an idea is repeated, turned, and gradually changed until it becomes the rhythm that dominates the main part of the movement. This begins quietly and innocuously before erupting into a forceful galop that hardly lets up.
The second movement is similarly built on an obsessive repeated rhythm. At its first performance it was taken to be a funeral march for the dead of the Napoleonic Wars, and in fact its structure closely resembles the funeral march from his Third Symphony: a sombre opening alternating with a gentler more pastoral idea. Beethoven also borrows another idea from his Third here, in presenting the accompaniment first, before the theme appears winding its way over the dactyls of the bass.
The third movement is an altogether earthier dance. Its opening "scherzo" [in Italian, literally "joke"] section is a rumbustious triple time canter, full of unexpected twists and turns. The contrasting "trio" section’s theme was originally sketched in 1806 and intended for a string quartet. It derives from a Lower Austrian pilgrims’ hymn tune and builds from a quiet prayer to a full blooded cry, as though the congregation has joined in. Both sections are reprised before a final outing of the opening. At the very end Beethoven suggests that he might even go round again, before dismissing the idea with a series of short sharp chords.
The finale picks up where the third movement left off, and then proceeds without respite. It is not so much the speed of the music (Beethoven wrote plenty of faster music) so much as its muscularity that creates its sense of unstoppable force. How deaf Beethoven was by 1811 is a matter of debate; his pupil Czerny maintained that he was still able to hear relatively well and only succumbed to profound deafness later. But he certainly pushes his orchestra here to the extreme, and having exhorted the players to produce an almost unyielding fortissimo [“strongest” or “loudest”] in the final bars he demands for the first time that they produce a triple-forte, effectively demanding that they play “louder than possible.”
In 1816 The Seventh Symphony broke new ground by being the first of his symphonies to be published as a score. This was a significant event: music had hitherto been published purely in the form of instrumental parts, intended for performers. Increasingly, an expanding middle-class audience had the means and desire to study orchestral works. This marked the birth of the notion of a canon of “great works” that largely persists today. As Beethoven’s letters to his publisher complaining of the many mistakes in the score attest, he found the experience thoroughly aggravating. However, given his appalling handwriting, it is perhaps appropriate to spare a sympathetic thought not only for the challenge presented to the musicians, but also the no less Herculean task faced by Beethoven’s copyists.
Stravinsky: Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
The piano was central to Stravinsky’s composing routine, but it was not until 1924 that he began to see performing on it in public as a potential source of revenue for himself. Always of an entrepeneurial bent, he had in the years since the Russian Revolution and the end of the First World War been working hard to expand his sources of income through a variety of means. As well as performing, the early 1920s saw Stravinsky take up conducting, and engage in the creation of piano rolls of his music. There were certainly good incentives to engage in these activities: all enabled his music to be propagated to a wider audience. However, another advantage was the control they gave Stravinsky over the presentation of his music. He was spurred to take up the baton by the cool reception given to the premiere of Symphonies of Wind Instruments and in 1923 as well as conducting the early performances of his Octet took advantage of another new technology by making a recording of the piece. Meanwhile, he had been taking advantage of facilities offered by the Pleyel Company in Paris to create pianola versions of his works. In an interview he explained that his aim in creating these rolls was not to produce ‘a photograph of my playing... but rather a “lithograph”, a full and permanent record of tone combinations that are beyond my ten poor fingers to perform.’
These activities - the taking charge of performances and using various means of mechanical reproduction to relay his music - may be seen as a reflection of his increasingly vocal antipathy to the very idea of “interpretation”, which he characterised as “a crime against the composer”. His music, he asserted, should be performed exactly and precisely as he had written it, with no liberties whatsoever to be taken by the performers. The player-piano in particular appealed, as an instrument able to produce a performance without any interpretive interference.
It is ironic that with the premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments in 1924 Stravinsky used music designed to deny the possibility of individuality to launch his career as an interpretive performer. Whether he intended this from the start or whether that he should take the soloist’s role was suggested as he neared completion of the work by its commissioner Serge Koussevitsky, is unclear. Certainly the influence of Carl Czerny's studies that Stravinsky practised to prepare for his public performance can be heard in the concerto. Also unclear is whether there is any truth in the tale of his memory lapse at the first performance. As Stravinsky himself relates it in his memoirs, “After finishing the first movement and just before beginning the Largo which opens with a passage for solo piano, I suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten how it started. I said so quietly to Koussevitzky, who glanced at the score and hummed the first notes. That was enough to restore my balance and enable me to attack the Largo.” Stravinsky was a master of inflating his own myth, however, and Sergei Prokofiev, who was present, remembered no such incident. The concerto was performed over 40 times in the first five years of its existence, all with the composer at the piano - Stravinsky had made sure to retain exclusive performing rights for himself, realising that the fees he earned as performer of the concerto were rather greater than the performing royalties he received as its composer.
The Concerto is one of the earliest manifestations of his so-called "neoclassical" style. The distinctly Russian voice of his earlier works is abandoned in favour of what appears to be a mask stitched together from gestures drawn from earlier music. In addition to the exercises of Czerny's, the concerto displays a debt to baroque. The absence of strings follows the example of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments and his cantata Les noces [The Wedding], which was originally envisioned as an orchestral work but ended up scores for pianos and percussion. “The short, crisp dance character of the Toccata (the concerto's first movement)," explained Stravinsky, "engendered by the percussion of the piano, led to the idea that a wind ensemble would suit the piano better than any other combination. In contrast to the percussiveness of the piano, the winds prolong the piano's sound as well as providing the human element of respiration."
The music of the concerto swings between two poles. These are set out in the first movement, in which a slow, monumental, Handelian introduction leads to a hyperactive toccata which embodies the "sewing machine" view of baroque music. The subsequent two movement repeat this pattern: a solemn slow movement and a sparkling motor of a finale, which pauses slightly for a recollection of the very opening before speeding to its conclusion.
Stravinsky recalled that on another occasion performing the concerto,“I suffered a lapse of memory because I was suddenly obsessed by the idea that the audience was a collection of dolls in a huge panopticon. Still another time, my memory froze because I suddenly noticed the reflection of my fingers in the glossy wood at the edge of the keyboard.” Such detached, isolated feelings perhaps offer a clue to the unsettling effect of his neoclassical style. The mechanical sewing-machine rhythms and the ironic appropriation of archaic musical gestures suggest something more than simply the donning of a mask, but the disturbing possibility that there is nothing behind the mask.
Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
- Largo - Allegro - Maestoso
- Largo
- Allegro
The piano was central to Stravinsky’s composing routine, but it was not until 1924 that he began to see performing on it in public as a potential source of revenue for himself. Always of an entrepeneurial bent, he had in the years since the Russian Revolution and the end of the First World War been working hard to expand his sources of income through a variety of means. As well as performing, the early 1920s saw Stravinsky take up conducting, and engage in the creation of piano rolls of his music. There were certainly good incentives to engage in these activities: all enabled his music to be propagated to a wider audience. However, another advantage was the control they gave Stravinsky over the presentation of his music. He was spurred to take up the baton by the cool reception given to the premiere of Symphonies of Wind Instruments and in 1923 as well as conducting the early performances of his Octet took advantage of another new technology by making a recording of the piece. Meanwhile, he had been taking advantage of facilities offered by the Pleyel Company in Paris to create pianola versions of his works. In an interview he explained that his aim in creating these rolls was not to produce ‘a photograph of my playing... but rather a “lithograph”, a full and permanent record of tone combinations that are beyond my ten poor fingers to perform.’
These activities - the taking charge of performances and using various means of mechanical reproduction to relay his music - may be seen as a reflection of his increasingly vocal antipathy to the very idea of “interpretation”, which he characterised as “a crime against the composer”. His music, he asserted, should be performed exactly and precisely as he had written it, with no liberties whatsoever to be taken by the performers. The player-piano in particular appealed, as an instrument able to produce a performance without any interpretive interference.
It is ironic that with the premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments in 1924 Stravinsky used music designed to deny the possibility of individuality to launch his career as an interpretive performer. Whether he intended this from the start or whether that he should take the soloist’s role was suggested as he neared completion of the work by its commissioner Serge Koussevitsky, is unclear. Certainly the influence of Carl Czerny's studies that Stravinsky practised to prepare for his public performance can be heard in the concerto. Also unclear is whether there is any truth in the tale of his memory lapse at the first performance. As Stravinsky himself relates it in his memoirs, “After finishing the first movement and just before beginning the Largo which opens with a passage for solo piano, I suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten how it started. I said so quietly to Koussevitzky, who glanced at the score and hummed the first notes. That was enough to restore my balance and enable me to attack the Largo.” Stravinsky was a master of inflating his own myth, however, and Sergei Prokofiev, who was present, remembered no such incident. The concerto was performed over 40 times in the first five years of its existence, all with the composer at the piano - Stravinsky had made sure to retain exclusive performing rights for himself, realising that the fees he earned as performer of the concerto were rather greater than the performing royalties he received as its composer.
The Concerto is one of the earliest manifestations of his so-called "neoclassical" style. The distinctly Russian voice of his earlier works is abandoned in favour of what appears to be a mask stitched together from gestures drawn from earlier music. In addition to the exercises of Czerny's, the concerto displays a debt to baroque. The absence of strings follows the example of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments and his cantata Les noces [The Wedding], which was originally envisioned as an orchestral work but ended up scores for pianos and percussion. “The short, crisp dance character of the Toccata (the concerto's first movement)," explained Stravinsky, "engendered by the percussion of the piano, led to the idea that a wind ensemble would suit the piano better than any other combination. In contrast to the percussiveness of the piano, the winds prolong the piano's sound as well as providing the human element of respiration."
The music of the concerto swings between two poles. These are set out in the first movement, in which a slow, monumental, Handelian introduction leads to a hyperactive toccata which embodies the "sewing machine" view of baroque music. The subsequent two movement repeat this pattern: a solemn slow movement and a sparkling motor of a finale, which pauses slightly for a recollection of the very opening before speeding to its conclusion.
Stravinsky recalled that on another occasion performing the concerto,“I suffered a lapse of memory because I was suddenly obsessed by the idea that the audience was a collection of dolls in a huge panopticon. Still another time, my memory froze because I suddenly noticed the reflection of my fingers in the glossy wood at the edge of the keyboard.” Such detached, isolated feelings perhaps offer a clue to the unsettling effect of his neoclassical style. The mechanical sewing-machine rhythms and the ironic appropriation of archaic musical gestures suggest something more than simply the donning of a mask, but the disturbing possibility that there is nothing behind the mask.
Prokofiev: Symphony No.7
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor, Op.131
The Prokofiev who wrote the Seventh Symphony in 1951-2 was a world away from the precocious young talent who had penned his First, the "Classical" Symphony 45 years earlier. In 1917, Prokofiev was a prodigy, a bright young talent to watch out for. The Seventh Symphony in contrast is the final desperately sad outpouring of a sick and broken man.
He had spent most of the period following the Russian Revolution in 1917 abroad in Europe and the United States. However, he felt increasingly homesick and from 1927 began to visit Russia again. Stalin's regime was keen to court him as one of the foremost Russian composers of the day, and in 1936 persuaded Prokofiev and his family returned permanently to the Soviet Union. Prokofiev had been assured that his international touring career would not be curtailed, but he soon found his movements as restricted as anyone else.
Prokofiev's naivety had led him to believe that his own music would not be subject to the restrictions applied to his peers. He was after all committed to the ideal of producing positive music that would appeal to the common man, and therefore his work was fully aligned with the concept of "Socialist Realism." He had a first inkling of the capriciousness of the Stalinist regime shortly after he settled in the Soviet Union in 1936. A new adaptation of Eugene Onegin which was being prepared for the centenary of Pushkin's death and for which Prokofiev was composing the incidental music was abruptly declared to be unsuitable for performance. On this occasion Prokofiev himself was not in the firing line, and was simply left with a collection of music which he would recycle into a number of future projects.
The full force of the regime eventually hit him in 1948, when the infamous Zhdanov Decree accused him, along with Shostakovich and Khachaturian, of composing "Formalist" music. For Shostakovich, a cynic who had been through this kind of condemnation before, the path was clear: lie low, produce a few potboilers praising Stalin and wait until the wind changed. For Prokofiev however the experience was devastating: he had no strategy to deal with such a situation. He was almost immediately reduced to penury, as nearly all his works were banned from performance. Prokofiev's health by now was already poor, and the situation exacerbated matters. Over the next few years his health deteriorated further.
In 1952 some respite finally came when two of his works were unexpectedly rehabilitated: Zdravitsa, which he had written for Stalin's 60th birthday celebrations in 1938, and his ballet Cinderella. He was already working on a new symphony which like Cinderella reused ideas from his music for Eugene Onegin, and hoped that this would help restore him to favour.
The new symphony was played in a piano arrangement to the Union of Soviet Composers and approved, and even gained the approval of the State Radio Orchestra ("Oh wonder!" Prokofiev sarcastically noted). Prokofiev was too ill to complete the writing out of the full score himself and had to enlist the help of a younger colleague, but managed to attend its première on 11 October 1952. It was suggested that it might even be in line for a Stalin Prize. There was however, the state Prize Committee declared, a problem: the ending of the symphony was not joyful enough. perhaps Prokofiev could compose a new one? It was implied that such a revision might make the difference between a third division and first division prize. Even had he not been in such dire straits this kind of request could not be refused, and so Prokofiev wrote an alternative ending, and pretended to like it. Meanwhile he pleaded with his friend, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, "Slava, you will live much longer than I, and you must take care that this new ending never exists after me." (Tonight's performance observes Prokofiev's preferred original scheme.)
Prokofiev originally suggested that the Seventh was a symphony for children. Its melodies and construction have a simplicity bordering of the naive ("Is it too simple?" he asked Kabalevsky). The apparent simplicity is undermined however by his penchant for abrupt shifts of tonality, and by his orchestration, which lends a pallor to the music that undermines its superficially cheerful elements. There seems little or no fight here, only a deep and weary sadness. Even the warm theme that follows the desolate opening seems to have more of yearning than satisfaction about it, while the ticking sounds that interject add a subtly unnerving aspect. The second movement is an apparently cheerier affair that plays with waltz forms, although sudden high-pitched interjections and other twitches undermine its pretensions to light-heartedness. The third movement reuses material from Eugene Onegin relating to its heroine Tatyana and her feelings for Onegin, and seems to inhabit a world of nostalgia and regret. The finale seems to begin in a livelier vein, and proceeds through what appears to be a compendium of clichés common in Soviet music of the time. It is as though Prokofiev is taking a flick through the scores of his contemporaries in search of something. Whatever it is is not to be found though, and so eventually the yearning theme from the first movement returns, and the ticking which counts slowly down to the quietly desperate end.
Prokofiev’s death on 5 March 1953 went barely noticed in Russia: it was overshadowed by the death of Stalin the same day. The Seventh Symphony was eventually awarded its state prize. By then Stalin’s name had been removed from all such official recognition, and so in 1957 Prokofiev became the posthumous recipient of a Lenin Prize.
Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor, Op.131
- Moderato
- Allegretto
- Andante espressivo
- Vivace
The Prokofiev who wrote the Seventh Symphony in 1951-2 was a world away from the precocious young talent who had penned his First, the "Classical" Symphony 45 years earlier. In 1917, Prokofiev was a prodigy, a bright young talent to watch out for. The Seventh Symphony in contrast is the final desperately sad outpouring of a sick and broken man.
He had spent most of the period following the Russian Revolution in 1917 abroad in Europe and the United States. However, he felt increasingly homesick and from 1927 began to visit Russia again. Stalin's regime was keen to court him as one of the foremost Russian composers of the day, and in 1936 persuaded Prokofiev and his family returned permanently to the Soviet Union. Prokofiev had been assured that his international touring career would not be curtailed, but he soon found his movements as restricted as anyone else.
Prokofiev's naivety had led him to believe that his own music would not be subject to the restrictions applied to his peers. He was after all committed to the ideal of producing positive music that would appeal to the common man, and therefore his work was fully aligned with the concept of "Socialist Realism." He had a first inkling of the capriciousness of the Stalinist regime shortly after he settled in the Soviet Union in 1936. A new adaptation of Eugene Onegin which was being prepared for the centenary of Pushkin's death and for which Prokofiev was composing the incidental music was abruptly declared to be unsuitable for performance. On this occasion Prokofiev himself was not in the firing line, and was simply left with a collection of music which he would recycle into a number of future projects.
The full force of the regime eventually hit him in 1948, when the infamous Zhdanov Decree accused him, along with Shostakovich and Khachaturian, of composing "Formalist" music. For Shostakovich, a cynic who had been through this kind of condemnation before, the path was clear: lie low, produce a few potboilers praising Stalin and wait until the wind changed. For Prokofiev however the experience was devastating: he had no strategy to deal with such a situation. He was almost immediately reduced to penury, as nearly all his works were banned from performance. Prokofiev's health by now was already poor, and the situation exacerbated matters. Over the next few years his health deteriorated further.
In 1952 some respite finally came when two of his works were unexpectedly rehabilitated: Zdravitsa, which he had written for Stalin's 60th birthday celebrations in 1938, and his ballet Cinderella. He was already working on a new symphony which like Cinderella reused ideas from his music for Eugene Onegin, and hoped that this would help restore him to favour.
The new symphony was played in a piano arrangement to the Union of Soviet Composers and approved, and even gained the approval of the State Radio Orchestra ("Oh wonder!" Prokofiev sarcastically noted). Prokofiev was too ill to complete the writing out of the full score himself and had to enlist the help of a younger colleague, but managed to attend its première on 11 October 1952. It was suggested that it might even be in line for a Stalin Prize. There was however, the state Prize Committee declared, a problem: the ending of the symphony was not joyful enough. perhaps Prokofiev could compose a new one? It was implied that such a revision might make the difference between a third division and first division prize. Even had he not been in such dire straits this kind of request could not be refused, and so Prokofiev wrote an alternative ending, and pretended to like it. Meanwhile he pleaded with his friend, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, "Slava, you will live much longer than I, and you must take care that this new ending never exists after me." (Tonight's performance observes Prokofiev's preferred original scheme.)
Prokofiev originally suggested that the Seventh was a symphony for children. Its melodies and construction have a simplicity bordering of the naive ("Is it too simple?" he asked Kabalevsky). The apparent simplicity is undermined however by his penchant for abrupt shifts of tonality, and by his orchestration, which lends a pallor to the music that undermines its superficially cheerful elements. There seems little or no fight here, only a deep and weary sadness. Even the warm theme that follows the desolate opening seems to have more of yearning than satisfaction about it, while the ticking sounds that interject add a subtly unnerving aspect. The second movement is an apparently cheerier affair that plays with waltz forms, although sudden high-pitched interjections and other twitches undermine its pretensions to light-heartedness. The third movement reuses material from Eugene Onegin relating to its heroine Tatyana and her feelings for Onegin, and seems to inhabit a world of nostalgia and regret. The finale seems to begin in a livelier vein, and proceeds through what appears to be a compendium of clichés common in Soviet music of the time. It is as though Prokofiev is taking a flick through the scores of his contemporaries in search of something. Whatever it is is not to be found though, and so eventually the yearning theme from the first movement returns, and the ticking which counts slowly down to the quietly desperate end.
Prokofiev’s death on 5 March 1953 went barely noticed in Russia: it was overshadowed by the death of Stalin the same day. The Seventh Symphony was eventually awarded its state prize. By then Stalin’s name had been removed from all such official recognition, and so in 1957 Prokofiev became the posthumous recipient of a Lenin Prize.
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, Op. 43
The trauma of being forced to leave Russia in 1917 left its mark on Rachmaninoff’s output: between then and his death in 1943 he completed only six original works. The combination of homesickness and the punishing touring schedule he had to undertake in order to provide for his family both took their toll, and his inspiration seemed to desert him.
Of those six works, four were composed in the 1930s. The revival of his compositional activity was partly a result of his feeling more settled: he built a villa by Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, which he christened Senar (a portmanteau of his and his wife’s names). He spent every summer until 1939 at Senar, which more than one visitor observed had the atmosphere of the kind of Russian homestead where Rachmaninoff had spent his youth. As well as recreating the kind of home he was familiar with from his childhood (all the staff at Senar were Russian), he was also able to indulge his love of gadgetry and novelty by acquiring a speedboat which he would race across the lake.
Although his schedule did not permit him to compose prolifically, the works he did complete during this time rank as some of his finest: The Corelli Variations, the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, the Third Symphony and the Symphonic Dances all date from this period. These works on the whole were less well received by audiences than his earlier music, but the Rhapsody was an immediate hit and quickly established itself as a necessary part of any pianist’s repertoire. In 1937 the choreographer Mikhail Fokin approached Rachmaninoff with the idea of a ballet on the legend of Paganini, using the Rhapsody. This was eventually produced at Covent Garden in 1939. Rachmaninoff had planned to attend but in the event was unable to as he had injured himself in a fall. The advent of war meant he would never have the opportunity to visit London again.
These late works all see Rachmaninoff expanding his outlook as a composer. They are more adventurous in his harmony and orchestration, occasionally nodding towards Prokofiev as the most prominent of the younger generation of Russian composers. Thus the Rhapsody, while it is as generously upholstered as one might expect from its composer, has its voluptuousness tempered with a certain amount of brittle, steely wit. Rachmaninoff’s design for the work is one of his tightest and most successful. There are 24 variations, which group together into four distinct sections: The first ten variations form an opening “fast movement”, variations 11-15 are a moderate sequence in triple time, variations 16-18 correspond to a slow movement, and variations 19-24 a finale.
The theme itself is one of the most famous and widely appropriated themes, from Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin. It has provided inspiration for a bewildering variety of musicians, from Brahms to Benny Goodman. Unusually, the first thing we hear is not the theme but the first variation: a skeletal outline which is then fleshed out by the appearance of the theme itself. The subsequent variations follow largely seamlessly and there is little point in cataloguing them here. However, one significant development that should be noted is in the sixth variation, in which Rachmaninoff introduces a countermelody in the form of his recurring obsession, the Dies Irae [“Day of Wrath”] plainchant from the Requiem mass. From hereon this shadows, and occasionally overwhelms the main theme.
The eleventh variation, a Lisztian cadenza, heralds the second “movement”: a moderate triple-time which builds in energy before evaporating in another cadenza. The sixteenth and seventeenth variations then introduce a mystical mood, which eventually softens into the eighteenth variation, in which Rachmaninoff inverts the theme (a process more readily associated with Bach or Schoenberg) to produce one of his finest melodies (“That one is for my agent”, he commented dryly.) The 19th-24th variations then form a finale, in which the Dies Irae is combined with the main theme in music of increasingly frenetic character. Everything seems to be building to an apocalyptic conclusion before Rachmaninoff pulls the rug from under everyone’s feet in a brilliantly deadpan conclusion.
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, Op. 43
The trauma of being forced to leave Russia in 1917 left its mark on Rachmaninoff’s output: between then and his death in 1943 he completed only six original works. The combination of homesickness and the punishing touring schedule he had to undertake in order to provide for his family both took their toll, and his inspiration seemed to desert him.
Of those six works, four were composed in the 1930s. The revival of his compositional activity was partly a result of his feeling more settled: he built a villa by Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, which he christened Senar (a portmanteau of his and his wife’s names). He spent every summer until 1939 at Senar, which more than one visitor observed had the atmosphere of the kind of Russian homestead where Rachmaninoff had spent his youth. As well as recreating the kind of home he was familiar with from his childhood (all the staff at Senar were Russian), he was also able to indulge his love of gadgetry and novelty by acquiring a speedboat which he would race across the lake.
Although his schedule did not permit him to compose prolifically, the works he did complete during this time rank as some of his finest: The Corelli Variations, the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, the Third Symphony and the Symphonic Dances all date from this period. These works on the whole were less well received by audiences than his earlier music, but the Rhapsody was an immediate hit and quickly established itself as a necessary part of any pianist’s repertoire. In 1937 the choreographer Mikhail Fokin approached Rachmaninoff with the idea of a ballet on the legend of Paganini, using the Rhapsody. This was eventually produced at Covent Garden in 1939. Rachmaninoff had planned to attend but in the event was unable to as he had injured himself in a fall. The advent of war meant he would never have the opportunity to visit London again.
These late works all see Rachmaninoff expanding his outlook as a composer. They are more adventurous in his harmony and orchestration, occasionally nodding towards Prokofiev as the most prominent of the younger generation of Russian composers. Thus the Rhapsody, while it is as generously upholstered as one might expect from its composer, has its voluptuousness tempered with a certain amount of brittle, steely wit. Rachmaninoff’s design for the work is one of his tightest and most successful. There are 24 variations, which group together into four distinct sections: The first ten variations form an opening “fast movement”, variations 11-15 are a moderate sequence in triple time, variations 16-18 correspond to a slow movement, and variations 19-24 a finale.
The theme itself is one of the most famous and widely appropriated themes, from Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin. It has provided inspiration for a bewildering variety of musicians, from Brahms to Benny Goodman. Unusually, the first thing we hear is not the theme but the first variation: a skeletal outline which is then fleshed out by the appearance of the theme itself. The subsequent variations follow largely seamlessly and there is little point in cataloguing them here. However, one significant development that should be noted is in the sixth variation, in which Rachmaninoff introduces a countermelody in the form of his recurring obsession, the Dies Irae [“Day of Wrath”] plainchant from the Requiem mass. From hereon this shadows, and occasionally overwhelms the main theme.
The eleventh variation, a Lisztian cadenza, heralds the second “movement”: a moderate triple-time which builds in energy before evaporating in another cadenza. The sixteenth and seventeenth variations then introduce a mystical mood, which eventually softens into the eighteenth variation, in which Rachmaninoff inverts the theme (a process more readily associated with Bach or Schoenberg) to produce one of his finest melodies (“That one is for my agent”, he commented dryly.) The 19th-24th variations then form a finale, in which the Dies Irae is combined with the main theme in music of increasingly frenetic character. Everything seems to be building to an apocalyptic conclusion before Rachmaninoff pulls the rug from under everyone’s feet in a brilliantly deadpan conclusion.
Bray: Black Rainbow
Charlotte Bray (b. 1982)
Black Rainbow
A moonbow or “black rainbow” is a rarely-observed phenomenon. It occurs when moonlight is refracted through moisture in the air. It is not only rarely-occurring, but rarely seen. When one does appear the low light levels and muted colours produced make it difficult to see.
The close, humid atmosphere of New Hampshire in summer provides good conditions for a black rainbow to appear. It was there that Charlotte Bray found the inspiration for her orchestral work Black Rainbow, when she spent time at the MacDowell Colony in 2013. The Colony was established in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, wife of the composer Edward MacDowell. Many composers have been awarded fellowships to stay there, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Ruth Crawford-Seeger. In the 1920s an amphitheatre was constructed. This remarkable structure is a recreation of the similar spaces found in Greece where the works of Ancient Greek dramatists were performed.
Black Rainbow was commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for their Youth Orchestra and first performed in 2014, continuing a connection with the city that stretches back to Bray’s student days. In it Bray imagines scenes played out at the amphitheatre. The black rainbow of the title is “a metaphor for something sought after but impossible to attain, an alluring ongoing search.” The piece is in two parts: “The first movement is dark and ritualistic. It’s mid summer and the air is tight, uncomfortable. The light grey, purple almost. The second is fleeting, sensual; time is suspended, a dream-like state.”
Black Rainbow
A moonbow or “black rainbow” is a rarely-observed phenomenon. It occurs when moonlight is refracted through moisture in the air. It is not only rarely-occurring, but rarely seen. When one does appear the low light levels and muted colours produced make it difficult to see.
The close, humid atmosphere of New Hampshire in summer provides good conditions for a black rainbow to appear. It was there that Charlotte Bray found the inspiration for her orchestral work Black Rainbow, when she spent time at the MacDowell Colony in 2013. The Colony was established in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, wife of the composer Edward MacDowell. Many composers have been awarded fellowships to stay there, including Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Ruth Crawford-Seeger. In the 1920s an amphitheatre was constructed. This remarkable structure is a recreation of the similar spaces found in Greece where the works of Ancient Greek dramatists were performed.
Black Rainbow was commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for their Youth Orchestra and first performed in 2014, continuing a connection with the city that stretches back to Bray’s student days. In it Bray imagines scenes played out at the amphitheatre. The black rainbow of the title is “a metaphor for something sought after but impossible to attain, an alluring ongoing search.” The piece is in two parts: “The first movement is dark and ritualistic. It’s mid summer and the air is tight, uncomfortable. The light grey, purple almost. The second is fleeting, sensual; time is suspended, a dream-like state.”
Sibelius: Symphony No.5
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No. 5 in E flat, Op. 82
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.”
Symphony No. 5 in E flat, Op. 82
- Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato
- Andante mosso, quasi allegretto
- 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)
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.
Three Songs of Travel (texts: Robert Louis Stevenson)
- The Vagabond
- Whither Must I Wander?
- 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.
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.”
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
“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.
La Mer
- De l'aube à midi sur la mer [from dawn to noon on the sea]
- Jeux de vagues [Play of the Waves]
- 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.
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”
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.
Symphony No. 2, “The Four Temperaments”
- Allegro collerico (The Choleric)
- Allegro comodo e flemmatico (The Phlegmatic)
- Andante malincolico [sic] (The Melancholic)
- 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.”
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.
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
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.
Symphony No.4 in E minor, Op.98
- Allegro non troppo
- Andante moderato
- Allegro giocoso
- 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
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.”
Concerto for Double String Orchestra
- 1 Allegro con brio
- 2 Adagio cantabile
- 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.
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.
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