PROGRAM NOTES – March 2019
WEBERN – Six Pieces for Orchestra
In spite of earlier influences that included the music of Wagner and Mahler, it was more importantly the philosophy and teaching of Arnold Schoenberg, whose student he became, that put Austrian composer Anton Webern on the path he would follow to independent and carefully crafted success as a leading proponent of new musical directions, which most importantly included the abandonment of tonality (music structured in major and minor keys) either in favor of atonality or (later) twelve-tone serialism. Webern and his close musical associates (also Schoenberg students) quickly discovered that abandoning tonality forced them to abandon thematic structuring as well, because thematic development is inseparably dependent on tonal modulation. Consequently, they would have to explore new ways to project musical expression. Arguably, of course, listeners whose enjoyment of music has been shaped by responses to lyrical flow and tonic-based harmonic shaping can find the enjoyment of atonal music challenging, at least initially. Webern was twenty-six when he composed his Six Pieces for Orchestra, in which, he explained, no motif is developed, only brief progressions might be immediately repeated, no theme is repeated because once it is heard, there is nothing more to say, and personal “musical microorganisms” are used to express intimate messages. Also, although the work is scored for full orchestra, for the most part the music is fashioned with internal “chamber” segments that express moods which alternate between delicate and violent. The slow first piece moves through short expressions of gentleness, brusqueness, and a return to gentleness. The second piece, Bewegt (with motion), proceeds from tense repeated notes in the strings, trombone trills, and fearful interjections by other instruments to fierce outbursts at the end. The very brief and ethereal third piece makes virtuosic use of the interval of the second and of instrumental registers and timbres. The fourth piece, Langsam marcia funebre (Slow funeral march), by far the longest of the pieces, begins with the winds and percussion playing very softly. Towards the end, though, the brass section’s volume increases with alarming speed, bringing the piece to an almost frightening conclusion. The very slow final two pieces conclude Webern’s impressive early work in nearly solemn quietude. RESPIGHI – Trittico Botticelliano Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s deep love for his country and its rich cultural, artistic, and musical heritage inspired many of his works, including his three richly orchestrated and frequently heard tributes to Rome (The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals) and his tribute to fifteenth-century artist Sandro Botticelli, the Trittico Botticelliano. The three musically visited Botticelli masterpieces, all of them on display in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, are La Primavera (Spring), L’Adorazione dei Magi (The Adoration of the Magi), and La Nascita di Venere (The Birth of Venus). La Primavera is a woodland scene depicting shepherds, nymphs, the goddess Flora, and the three Graces. With a stylistic bow to the composer Vivaldi, Respighi greets spring with a bucolic dance tune and musical bird calls. L’Adorazione dei Magi is a small painting that depicts lavishly clothed pilgrims dismounting their horses as they arrive to worship Mary and the infant Christ. The music is a lovely Siciliana with a lyrical flow flavored with hints of Gregorian chant. La Nascita di Venere shows the nude Venus, born at sea, standing in a sizeable scallop shell on life-giving waters. Over a musical undercurrent that suggests the sound of waves, a sensuous melodic line that represents Venus flows in a crescendo and then softens and fades. HAYDN – Cello Concerto in C Major Musicologists are sadly aware that there are works (including masterpieces) by great composers of the past that were not preserved and are hopelessly lost – a number of Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantatas for instance. Occasionally, though, to their surprise and joy, lost or previously unknown musical scores are unearthed. Specific ones that come to mind include numerous songs by Schubert and the incidental music that he wrote for the failed play Rosamunde, Johann Sebastian Bach’s keyboard masterpiece known as The Goldberg Variations, and Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major. The Haydn Concerto was identified in 1961 in Prague’s National Library nearly 200 years after Haydn composed it, probably early in his forty-nine-year stay in the service of Prince Esterházy. The Czech government had confiscated the impressive collections of numerous noble families at the end of World War II, relocating them in the National Library, and musicologists have determined that the Haydn score had previously lain unappreciated in one of them for most of its nearly 200-year anonymity. The Concerto’s twentieth-century premiere performance was given at the 1962 Prague Spring Festival, and the first performance for American audiences was given two years later in New York, with cellist Janos Starker as soloist. Although undeniably “Classical” in its stylistic intent, residual elements from an earlier (“Baroque”) period are evident in the score. One can imagine, for instance, a very small orchestra of about fifteen or so players, with Haydn conducting while seated at a harpsichord, and with the solo cello very lightly accompanied and the full ensemble used only for introductions, endings, and in between solo spots. Except for attempts at an “authentic period” approach, of course, modern performances can bypass efforts at period authenticity in favor of enhancing the music’s impact for present-day audiences. The first movement (Moderato) begins with first violins and a solo oboe singing a trippingly jaunty theme that will skip along merrily throughout the entire movement, including the development and recapitulation, without challenging contrast from a second theme; and once the solo cello enters, happily joining the merriment, Haydn has it hold our attention unchallenged right through a virtuoso cadenza display at the movement’s conclusion. Haydn begins the slow second movement (Adagio) by having the solo cello enter softly and expressively with a long, sustained note beneath the sound of the strings as they continue to play before the solo cello’s sustained note blossoms into a rich development of the thematic material. There is a middle section with an even deeper thematic flavor that urges a correspondingly greater expressive richness from the solo cello and a shortened return to the opening material before the movement ends with a second cadenza. The lighthearted finale (Allegro molto) opens with a very short thematic fragment played by fist violins and an oboe that becomes a basic element of the movement. The solo cello enters in the same way as in the slow movement, with a long, sustained note, but one that ends this time in an upward-rushing scale to join the orchestra in a frenetic romp that flavors the rest of the movement. Rather than as a contrasting element, Haydn obviously composed the movement’s central segment mainly as a display ground for the soloist’s virtuosity; and the same intent seems obvious for the rest of the movement as well, all the way to an exuberant close that Haydn must surely have hoped would leave listeners both smiling and in awe of a soloist’s mastery. From a present-day point of view, of course, it should also leave listeners very happy that Haydn’s Concerto didn’t remain lost. Program Notes by Courtenay Caublé PROGRAM NOTES – December 2018 TCHAIKOVSKY – Romeo & Juliet Fantasy-Overture It was Russian composer Mily Balakirev in 1869 who successfully encouraged his twenty-nine-year-old fellow composer and friend Tchaikovsky to use Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as the inspiration for his next composition. Balakirev suggested that instead of attempting to retell the story programmatically, he should musically capture the intense drama of Shakespeare’s tale by focusing on the interplay of the story’s three essential dramatic elements (the feud between the two families, the love between Romeo and Juliet, and the benevolent Friar Laurence) in a “fantasy overture” adaptation of the classical sonata-allegro format. The result, polished with further criticism and suggestions by Balakirev, was a masterpiece that critics cite as the first work in which Tchaikovsky’s genius is fully evident. Shakespeare’s story, set in sixteenth-century Verona, is about two “star-crossed” lovers – Romeo (who is a Montague) and Juliet (who is a Capulet) – whose ardent love is tragically doomed by a mindless feud between their two families. When Romeo kills Tybalt (a Capulet), the benevolent Friar Laurence helps Romeo to escape from Verona; and later, when Juliet’s father decides to marry off his daughter to someone else and Juliet appeals to Friar Laurence, Friar Laurence gives her a potion that makes her appear to be dead. The Friar then sends a letter to Romeo to tell him about the deception. The letter never reaches the young lover, though; and when Romeo returns to Verona and finds Juliet and believes her to be dead, he takes poison and dies. Juliet then revives, finds Romeo dead, takes what remains of Romeo’s poison, and also dies. When the Montagues and Capulets arrive on the scene and see what has happened, Friar Laurence admonishes them for causing the tragedy because of their pointless feuding. Then, effectively chastised, the two families come together and end their discord. At the end, therefore, although Romeo and Juliet are gone, in a sense their love has triumphed and lives on. In the extended Introduction of Tchaikovsky’s piece, church-like music in the style of a chorale in four-part harmony played by pairs of clarinets and bassoons evokes a medieval atmosphere with its archaic-sounding harmonies and parallel motion. Later, Tchaikovsky will use a modified version of the chorale in the sonata-allegro’s development section to represent Friar Laurence, and then, with masterful effect, will repeat the atmospheric chorale at the end of the work in a “bookends” or prelude-postlude manner as a unifying element. The Introduction’s quietly liturgical mood is suddenly shattered by the Allegro section’s rhythmically abrupt and sharply syncopated first theme, with its explosive undercurrent of up and down runs in the violins that suggest the violent feuding of the two families. The contrasting second theme, which represents the love between Romeo and Juliet, is a long melodious outpouring sung by an English horn and muted violas. The exposition ends with a lyrically expressive secondary melody played by muted strings. The development section is dominated by the violent feud theme, with dramatically challenged fragments of the troubled love theme and frequent intrusions by the transformed chorale theme that represents the gentle Friar Laurence in his attempt to aid the beleaguered lovers. Throughout the development Tchaikovsky displays virtuosic skill at managing the interplay of musical ideas in order to build and maintain tension. The recapitulation brings back the feud theme virtually intact, with the love theme expanding and rising to new emotional heights until (suggesting the tragic death of the two lovers) the segment abruptly cuts off and segues into the dramatic coda epilogue, which is derived from the love theme. Quiet drumbeats suggest a mournful dirge for the dead lovers, and there is the balancing return of the Introduction’s chorale theme. Then, finally, celestial harp arpeggios lead to an ethereal return of the rapturous love theme, likely indicating that the love between Romeo and Juliet still lives on in the reconciliation of the no-longer-feuding Montagues and Capulets. BRAHMS – Symphony No. 2 Inhibited by his hesitation to attempt to write a symphony following what he regarded as the unmatchable genius of Beethoven, Brahms took between ten and fifteen years to get around to completing his first symphony. His friends were understandably a bit surprised, therefore, when he managed to complete his second symphony only a year later. They reckoned that perhaps the answer was that Brahms may have felt that having devoted almost fifteen years to writing his first symphony, perhaps it was time to get on with it. Brahms answered his friends’ bewilderment by attributing his newfound alacrity to the influence of the serenity and beauty of the Austrian resort of Pörtschach, where he had spent his summer. If true, that might explain why his Symphony No. 2 in D Major, unlike his Symphony No. 1 in C minor, which was stormily dramatic, turned out to be warmly lyrical. Brahms completed the score in October of 1877, and it received its premiere performance with the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter the following December and a second performance a month later under Brahms himself at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The first movement (Allegro non troppo) begins with a richly lyrical first theme, heralded by the bucolic sound of horns that lends credence to the restful influence Brahms attributed to the Pörtschach countryside and proceeds in a melodic flow that includes several instances of a three-note figure that will serve as a unifying motto or motive in a variety of transformations throughout the symphony. In three-part form (A-B-A), with the third part more of a variation than a repetition of the first part, the second movement (Adagio non troppo), although deeply meditative in tone, continues the symphony’s essentially melodic nature. Although a scherzo in form, with three refrains separated by two episodes, the third movement (Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino), with its moderate tempo, is more gently lyrical than exciting in nature. Instead of serving as contrasts in content, the two internal segments (episodes) are inventive variations of the movement’s main theme. In sonata-allegro form, the final movement (Allegro con spirito) begins with a brisk but quietly sung theme built on the aforementioned three-note motto that serves to reinforce both the score’s structural interrelationships and to continue the symphony’s essentially lyric nature. Then, with its brisk tempo, contrasting nuances and bold development, the music moves forward with a building tension to a bold climax and heroic ending. Program Notes by Courtenay Caublé M. THURBER – Love Letter Out of all of the pieces of music I have had the privilege of writing in my life, none have brought me more joy than “Love Letter”. This music is a pure, joyous expression of my endless admiration for Tessa both as a musician and human being. “Love Letter” is constructed in 4 movements, of which the middle two are seamlessly connected without pause. Each movement is a tone poem that depicts different sides of Tessa’s personality and musicianship. The piece draws from a broad and eclectic spectrum of musical traditions including Hip-Hop, Bluegrass, Classical, Jazz, African and Rock. MOV I – “Weirdo” The name explains it all. This movement is an attempt to capture the silly, bizarre side of Tessa’s sense of humor. The simple theme stated in the beginning by the Oboe sets up a pastorale, American sound that is quickly shattered when the woodwinds enter with their ⅝ groove. The whole movement is an abstract conversation between the vocabulary of American fiddle music and the more angular, African influenced groove of the woodwinds/percussion. This movement also function as a ‘riddle’ that presents all of the musical material that gets unpacked and developed throughout the rest of the concerto. MOV II – ‘Bimbleboo’ This movement is lighthearted and childlike. It draws inspiration from the Appalachian style of fiddle playing that is central to Tessa’s musical upbringing in Kentucky. For me, it evokes the innocence and nostalgia of childhood. Musically, I was inspired by the juxtaposition of fiddle music that is in the 12/8 time signature and African music that has a 2 over 3 hemiola. The grooves have many interesting similarities and I wanted to try to bring those two influences together. This really culminates in the middle section, where the solo violin rips through different triadic patterns over the top of the cymbal and marimba groove. This movement gradually winds down and dissipates into a trance like vamp in the strings and woodwinds that begins to morph tonally and lead us seamlessly into Movement III. MOV III – ‘Forever You’ This movement is the heart and soul of the piece. It’s all about showcasing the nuance of color and phrasing that Tessa is able to achieve in her beautiful sound. The melody is lyrical and simple, drawing inspiration from the great American ballads of Duke Ellington. After the first time through the melody, the solo violin takes off into an improvisatory, swirling middle section. This section evokes a spiritual, pentatonic sound akin to the Native American songs Tessa and I have heard during our experiences in sweat lodges. Eventually, the violin returns to a recap of the melody, this time as a duet with the clarinet. MOV IV – ‘Whiskey Woman’ Woo! This movement is a party! Stylistically, it’s somewhere between a bluegrass song and a rock song. I was inspired by a memory from last summer…I went to visit Tessa at The Marlboro Music Festival and we went to “Square Dancing Night”. Everyone had indulged in copious amounts of Maker’s Mark whiskey and couldn’t follow the dance steps. Refusing to be deterred, we all passionately staggered around, trying our best to follow the steps and making up our own as we went. This is all depicted by the jagged time-signature changes and odd rhythms you’ll hear. After that night, we found a shirt that said, “Whiskey Woman” and bought it for Tessa. She’s worn it ever since. Program Notes by Michael Thurber (Composer b. 1987)PROGRAM NOTES – October 2018 BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 1 Provided with financial support from the admiring Elector in Bonn, along with a pre-arrangement for study with Haydn, Beethoven, encouraged by an admirer (Count Waldstein) to “work well and receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn,” happily left Bonn forever at the age of twenty-two and settled in Vienna. His welcome there proved to be a bit mixed, though. Nurtured in his generation’s belief, inspired by the French Revolution, in the uninfringeable worth and freedom of the individual, he had the sort of self-assurance and personal direction that was sure to cause problems for him in an artistic climate still strongly tied to neoclassical formulas and values. Haydn quickly found himself annoyed by Beethoven’s stormy temperament and judgmental independence; and other teachers were at a loss with him, one of them commenting that “he refuses to learn anything and will never do anything in acceptable style.” Fortunately, however, his virtuosic pianism and improvisational creativity soon made him a celebrity with members of the wealthy aristocracy, one of whom, Austrian Prince Lichnowsky, even assured him of financial support until he could assume a position worthy of his talents. Beethoven was happy with the arrangement, but with a reservation. “It is good to live among ‘the princely rabble,” he commented to a friend, “but first you must make them respect you.” He even frankly told his benefactor, Prince Lichnowsky, “You’re what you are through an accident of birth. I am what I am though my own efforts. There will be many more princes, but there is only one Beethoven.’” When he wrote Symphony No. 1 in C Major, mindful of the devotion many of his aristocratic admirers had for the music of Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven followed, at least on the surface, an exact Haydn formula. Even so, however, at the symphony’s premiere performance in April of 1800, something in the music confused, annoyed, and even angered many of the contemporary conservative listeners – as unfamiliar music always seems to do. One German critic called the music “the confused explosions of the outrageous effrontery of a young man.” Even years later, another annoyed critic complained that the symphony’s inexplicable success posed “a danger to musical art.” In one respect, of course, the early critics were right in sensing that what they were hearing was not as advertised, that there was something beneath the musical surface that made the work’s Haydn-like formula seem like a disguise. The first movement (Adagio molto; Allegro con brio) opens with the sort of slow introduction Haydn would have used, but with unusual harmonic shifts that would have bothered conservative ears. The following Allegro begins, though, with a very jaunty “classical” sounding first theme followed by a contrastingly lyrical one with interchanges among oboe, flute and strings. The short development section dealing mainly with the first theme is followed by a varied and more powerful restatement of the opening material. The second movement (Andante cantabile con moto), developed in sonata-allegro form, begins with a song-like melody that returns in reprise at the end with added embellishments. The third movement (Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace) would have raised more critical eyebrows. Although nominally a Menuet, as in a typical Haydn symphony, no one in Beethoven’s audience would have called it one. It begins with a rapid upward onrush with a crescendo and proceeds accordingly in a manner very much like what would be labeled a Scherzo in later Beethoven symphonies. The Finale (Adagio; Allegro molto e vivace) begins with a musical trick worthy of Haydn at his musical wittiest. Beginning on g, the violins very slowly play the first three notes in an upward-moving scale, then repeat the performance several times, each time adding an additional note until finally rushing up the entire C Major scale to begin a frolicsome Haydn-like theme that Beethoven develops in the simple sonata-rondo form that Haydn seems to have invented. Although Beethoven was probably not yet polished enough to match the boldly experimental skill Haydn displays in his late symphonies, his result is equally fun-loving and joyous – at least to our ears today. And since Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, in spite of all the initial negative criticism, quickly received an enthusiastic response and continues to enjoy audience approval, we can claim ignition status for it since it spawned all the greatness that followed. BARTOK – Concerto for Orchestra Béla Bartók decided early in his career to make a dedicated effort to forge a unification between the folk music of his native Hungary and European music in general; and his consequent exploratory contact with peasant life gave him an insight into the elements of unity he was seeking, deepened his innate humanity, and helped him to develop a personal musical language which he subsequently used to express his love both for his native land and for all humanity. A strong rebirth of national patriotism in Hungary after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 provided just the right atmosphere for his music, and within ten years Bartók became recognized as one of his country’s leading composers. Unfortunately, though, Hungary’s alliance with Nazi Germany shortly before the second World War forced Bartók, who was an adamant anti-Fascist, to take a personal stand. He vehemently protested the playing of his music on Berlin radio, and subsequently, unwilling to compromise and aware that his stand would inevitably endanger both himself and his family, he decided that he had no choice but to leave his country; and he did so in 1940, resettling in New York. The remaining five years of his life were disastrous. American audiences knew nothing of either him or his music, and although he and his wife made several appearances playing his music on two pianos, they garnered barely enough money to survive. Then he developed leukemia and was no longer able to appear in public, leaving him with no personal means of support and with only a small allowance that his friends managed to persuade ASCAP to provide for basic needs and nursing home care. Then, in 1943, two years before his death, Bartók was in Doctors Hospital in New York when his fellow countryman and friend, violinist Joseph Szigeti, urged Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitsky to visit him and offer him $1000 (an enticing amount at the time) as a commission plus a guaranteed performance for any work he would agree to write. Not just the fee, but the opportunity to have a work of his performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra revived his spirits, and he was able to leave the hospital and work on and complete his new composition in Ashville, North Carolina. Bartók called the new work Concerto for Orchestra because of its tendency “to treat individual instruments in a soloistic manner.” Virtuosity is present, but instead of an individual, it is the orchestra that is the virtuoso. “The general mood of the work,” Bartók commented, “represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death song of the third to the life-assertion of the last.” Introduction: Andante non troppo; Allegro vivace. A broad introduction opens with the dark voices of cellos and basses against flute and upper-string tremolos. The first theme of the ensuing Allegro is a strongly syncopated line that moves upward to a climax and then quickly subsides. A development then creates tension contrapuntally before the movement ends in a brief recapitulation. Game of Pairs: Allegretto scherzando. Wind instruments are paired with specific intervals – bassoons in sixths, oboes in thirds, clarinets in sevenths, flutes in fifths, muted trumpets in seconds. The structure is a sequence of five little sections, each featuring a pair of instruments. Then a chorale for bass instruments is followed by a recapitulation with elaborated instrumentation. Elegy: Andante non troppo. In Bartók’s “lugubrious death-song” an oboe sings a long lamentation against flickering sounds from flute, clarinet, and harp. The song soars to a tragic climax. The music is dramatically hymn-like and rhapsodic. Intermezzo interratto: Allegretto. An errantly charming folk-like melody with an asymmetrical rhythm is first sung by an oboe and then by a flute. Then a warmly songful theme for strings is suddenly interrupted by a change to sophisticated café music. After that the lyric theme returns, played by muted strings. The movement’s music is alternately capricious and tenderly sentimental. Finale: Presto. An introduction marked pesante (heavily), played by horns, announces the germinal subject, and then what Bartók calls “life-assertion” gets underway in a whirlwind of perpetual motion in the strings. After that, with its subject announced by a trumpet, an intricate fugue ensues, its intricacies so skillfully managed that they never cover the effect of the music. The folk tone as Bartók manages it, with its pungent harmonies and primitive strength, ends the Concerto with heroic affirmation. The Concerto for Orchestra was received with boundless enthusiasm at both its Boston premiere on December 1, 1944 and its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall (also by the Boston Symphony Orchestra) on January 10, 1945 (only a few months before Bartók’s death). Although his final work, it can be thought of as an ignition for him because it established an enthusiastic appreciation for his music which is still in force in this country. Program Notes by Courtenay Caublé
