Festive Overture, op. 96                                                                    Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75) learned the piano from his mother, a professional, at age nine. He entered the Petrograd Conservatory in 1919, but had to play the piano in cinemas to augment the family income, as his father had died. These were the years of the Civil War; times were hard, and Glazunov, then director of the Conservatory, argued the sickly teenager’s great talent to the authorities in order to obtain funding and extra ration cards for him. He completed a diploma in piano in 1923, and another in composition, under Maximilian Steynberg, two years later. His first symphony was composed as a graduation piece, and was highly acclaimed at its premiere in 1926. Within two years it had been played in Berlin and Philadelphia. In the meantime, Shostakovich had earned an honorable mention as a pianist at the Chopin Competition of 1927.

Shostakovich eventually composed fifteen symphonies, matched by a series of fifteen string quartets, not to mention an enormous amount of music for other media, including opera and film scores, ballets, choral music, other chamber music, and, of course, the piano. Having come of age in revolutionary times, Shostakovich felt that citizenship carried moral duties, with which he was constantly striving to balance his calling as a musician and artist. His struggles with the Party apparachniks during the Stalin years are well known, especially the uproar over his opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. Through it all, he earned among his peers a reputation for honesty and integrity.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, the USSR experienced a period now known as “The Thaw.” Although Shostakovich’s personal life continued to have its troubles, the relative freedom led to a more optimistic artistic expression, including works decidedly less complex in construction and sunnier in disposition than before. Among these is the Festive Overture from 1954. The work is in a very straight-forward sonata form, with a sprightly first theme and lyrical second theme. This is preceded by an introduction that is essentially a fanfare, and which returns at the end of the recapitulation, where it leads into the coda.

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and String Orchestra, op. 109                     Alexander Glazunov

The son of a book publisher and a pianist, Alexander Glazunov (1865-1938) began serious piano study at age nine, and started composing two years later. In 1879, Balakirev recommended him to Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied for two years, making astounding progress. He completed his first symphony at age sixteen, and promptly became associated with the “Belyayev Circle,” a group dedicated to furthering the progress made by the Nationalists. After 1887 he was involved, with Rimsky-Korsakov, in completing Borodin’s unfinished works. His exceptional memory is responsible for the recovery of the overture to Prince Igor, as Glazunov was able to write it down as he had heard Borodin play it at the piano. The 1890s were especially productive years for Glazunov, with the completion of three symphonies, two string quartets, and a successful ballet. His Violin Concerto dates from 1904.  In 1899 he took a position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which he held for thirty years, becoming director in 1905. Two years later he received honorary doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge; during his time in England he studied the curricula at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music, with an eye toward improvements at his own institution. His increasing teaching and administrative duties led to an appreciable falling-off in his compositions after the Fist World War. His prestige paved the way for a good working relationship with the new regime, but by 1928 he was happy for the opportunity to travel. Nominally on leave until he resigned his posts in 1930, he settled in Paris in 1932 as his health began to deteriorate. He composed rather little during his last years, but some of these works, including the Saxophone Concerto, show a revival of his old polish. Although the next generation considered him old-fashioned, he remains an important figure in the history of Russian music, and his works are still often performed in Russia. He is said to have combined Rimsky-Korsakov’s virtuosity in treating the orchestra, Tchaikovsky’s lyricism, and Taneyev’s contrapuntal skill.

The Concerto for Saxophone and String Orchestra was composed in 1934, on a commission from the German-born saxophonist Sigurd Rascher. Rascher (1907-2001) was a pioneer on his instrument, extending the range and commissioning new works from leading composers (including Ibert and Hindemith); in 1939 he moved to the United States, where he founded the Rascher Saxophone Quartet and enjoyed a long and very successful career. Glazunov’s Concerto is cast on one extended movement, though the traditional fast-slow-fast architecture is discernible. The first “movement” is at a moderate tempo, with flowing melodic lines. This is contrasted with a livlier, scherzando section, after which the opening material returns, though much abridged. The middle of the concerto is an Andante, more pensive in character and less stable in key. After building to a passionate climax, an echo of the very opening of the concerto ushers in a cadenza. A short bridge leads to the finale, a vivacious, jig-like movement displaying the composer’s contrapuntal prowess, which is interrupted by brief contrasting sections and ends with a grand flourish. contrapuntal prowess, which is interrupted by brief contrasting sections and ends with a grand flourish.

Symphony No. 2, Op. 73       Johannes Brahms
Of Brahms’s four symphonies, the Second is easily the sunniest in disposition. Brahms began composing the work in the 1877, while enjoying a summer residence in Pörtschach. He played over parts of it (at the piano) for Clara Schumann in October; she found it “genial in mood and so cleverly worked out.” Though given to brooding, Brahms was not without a sense of humor (as the Academic Festival Overture attests). He poked fun at himself by suggesting to several friends and even to his publisher that his new symphony would have to be printed on black-edged paper, and that the performers would need to wear black crepe armbands. The work was premiered on December 30, 1877, by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter.

The symphony is in the traditional four movements. The first is in sonata form; the key scheme is unusual only in that the second theme is presented in F-sharp minor, and a third theme is heard in the expected A Major.  It is no wonder that Clara Schumann  was impressed by Brahms’s cleverness: the opening presents two motives, heard in the cellos and the horn, that nearly saturate the entire movement. The neighbor-note idea of the cellos is transformed by all manners of means: inversion, doubling of note values, halving of note values, and being spun out into longer tunes. The horn call is likewise transformed; it even becomes the accompaniment to the first contrasting theme. But Brahms handles these “learned devices” with such ease that they do not intrude on the listener’s consciousness; rather, they give the movement, which is immediately accessible, a depth that rewards repeated hearings.

The second movement is contrastingly introverted and emotional. The outer parts of its ternary form feature lyrical melody supported by rich harmony. The middle section begins gracefully, but becomes more agitated. After the return of the opening theme, the agitated idea makes one more brief appearance; the movement closes quietly.

The third movement displays more of Brahms’s cleverness. It is a rondo, roughly in ABACA form—but the B and C sections are derived from the A material. The necessary contrast is obtained by altering the tempo and meter: A is in a moderate triple meter, but B is in a fast duple meter, and C is in a fast triple meter. Again, this device is used so deftly that one is scarcely aware of the high art involved. And, in a further twist, the initial idea of the A material is derived from the opening of the first movement.

The last movement is also cast in sonata form, with very clearly drawn themes. The opening is hushed, but a more boisterous idea soon appears, signaling that this will be a high-spirited finale. The second theme is quieter and more lyrical. A closing theme introduces some metric wizardry: although the movement is in duple meter throughout, some passages are written to sound as if they were in quintuple meter, others simulate triple. The development is less extensive than that of the first movement, and the recapitulation is completely straightforward. The coda is suitably large, and builds to a climax featuring the trombones, who eventually get the last word, bringing the symphony to an exciting close.

Excerpts from L’Arlesienne Georges Bizet

The son of musical parents, Georges Bizet (1838-75) first learned the piano from his mother, and entered the Conservatoire in his native Paris shortly before his tenth birthday. Four years later, already a fine pianist (his sight-reading skills became legendary), he began studying composition with Halévy (whose daughter he eventually married). Through his piano teacher he also met Charles Gounod, who became his friend and mentor. In 1857 he won the Prix de Rome, and spent three years abroad—the first and only extended journey. After his return to Paris, he settled into a life of largely routine musical employment (such as arranging other composers’ music), and composing when he could. He was especially interested in opera, and apparently contemplated about thirty operatic projects; of these, only a handful were completed (five staged during his lifetime), and of these only two, Les pêcheurs de perles (1863) and Carmen (1875) have held any place in the repertoire. Carmen, of course, secured Bizet’s place in history, and it is much to be regretted that the composer died only months after its premiere.

In 1872, Bizet undertook the project of writing incidental music for a play by Alphonse Daudet, L’Arlésienne,based on his short story of the same title. The little tale is a very dark tragedy set in southern France, about a farm boy who falls in love with a young woman from Arles, his parents’ objection to the match, the revelation of her lack of virtue, and his eventual suicide. As the budget was limited, Bizet had to compose for an orchestra of only 26 players, including a then-new instrument, the alto saxophone. Bizet later selected four pieces from this music and arranged them for the standard orchestra. In 1879, Bizet’s friend Ernest Guiraud put together a second Suite. This afternoon’s performance includes two numbers from each.

The Prélude is in two parts; the first is based on a Provençal Christmas carol (thus setting the scene for the play in Provence), which is heard five times, varied in mood, orchestration and harmony. The second section contrasts completely, introducing themes associated in the other incidental music with the young lovers. The Adagietto (no. 3 in Suite I) underlies a melodrama (dialogue spoken over music) presenting the reunion of the old mother with her sweetheart of her youth. It is scored muted strings only, and describes a single, exquisite arc from pianissimo to fortissimo and back. The Pastorale (no. 1 from Suite II) is a ternary form, the outer sections of which are in essence the original entr’acte to Act II of the play. The middle section is music sung off stage by a wordless chorus, accompanied by a harmonium and a tambourin; this has of course been re-orchestrated by Guiraud. The Farandole is a Provençal dance, consisting of the winding patterns of a chain of alternating men and women, following a leader. Daudet’s story specifically refers to the dance, which the protagonist leads by way of hiding his deep distress. As it stands in the Suite, the piece is more Guiraud’s composition than Bizet’s; it recalls the carol of the Prélude, superimposing on it the tune of Bizet’s farandole in a tour-de-force of orchestral color, rhythmic energy, and contrapuntal skill.

Elegiac Fantasy Beau Benson

Completed earlier this year, Beau Benson’s Elegiac Fantasy represents a confluence of several current trends. First, in writing for his own performing medium and skills, he is part of a revival of the composer/performer tradition to which Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and many others belonged, but which had become nearly extinct by the time of Rachmanninoff in the early twentieth century. (Hence, his biography appears elsewhere in the program, under his role as soloist.) Second, this music displays the recent neo-tonal tendency exhibited by a number of composers (even including Krzysztof Penderecki). Finally, the incorporation of Medieval materials exemplifies the modern composer’s awareness of history, and the degree of eclecticism now available to all creative artists.

The piece is framed by melodies from two Medieval chants. The piece opens with the first phrase of the “Libera me,” from the service for the dead: “Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda, quando coeli movendi sunt et terra” (“Free me, Lord, from eternal death on that frightful day, when heaven and earth shall be moved”). Following a brief interlude in D minor, the chant resumes with a subsequent phrase (at the text “Tremens factus sum et timeo, dum discussio vernerit atque ventura ira”; “I am made afraid and fear when the scattering comes, and the wrath to be”). This opening is followed by free development of ideas from the plainsong, along with quasi-improvisatory elements, leading to a climactic moment that is followed by a long, cadenza-like section for the solo guitar. The orchestra re-enters for a slower, lyrical section in D major; this breaks off, with a short cadenza for the guitar, after which the music returns to D minor, at a faster tempo, for an orchestral fugato. After another climax, music from the first part of the work is heard again, followed by a gradual crescendo to a final climax. A second plainsong melody, “Ego sum alpha et omega...” (“I am the alpha and the omega...”), from a twelfth-century liturgical drama (Jeu de Pelerins d’Emmaus) is then introduced, and ends the piece quietly and serenely. About the work, Mr. Benson has written, “The underlying message is that I hope and believe that we are part of something larger than we can see, and the suffering that is experienced in life is not in vain.”

Symphony No. 9 Antonín Dvorák

The son of an innkeeper, Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) first learned the violin from a local schoolteacher. Leaving home at 16, he studied at the Prague Organ School, afterward supporting himself as a violist, and later as a church organist. His first compositional successes, in the 1870s, attracted the attention and support of such luminaries as Brahms, Liszt, and von Bülow. Dvorák joined the faculty of the Prague Conservatory in 1891, as a professor of composition. Like Mendelssohn and his contemporary Edvard Grieg, Dvorák also served as an administrator. Though he did not actually found an institution, he spent the years 1892-95 mostly in the United States, as director of the newly-founded National Conservatory. He became director of the Prague Conservatory in 1901. Dvorák’s music incorporates many elements of Czech national and folk music, but is also firmly grounded in the Romantic style then flourishing throughout Europe.

The “New World Symphony” was, befitting its title, the first work Dvorák created entirely, including initial sketches, after arriving in New York. Some thematic ideas were noted in mid-December, 1892, and sketches for the symphony were begun about a month later. The entire symphony was completed and orchestrated by the end of May 1893. The work was premiered in New York on December 16, 1893; the reception was overwhelmingly favorable, and the symphony has remained a favorite in the repertoire ever since.

The symphony is cast in the traditional four movements, in the customary order: fast, slow, dance-like, and fast. The first movement is in the expected sonata form, with a slow introduction, in which the first theme of the Allegro is foreshadowed. The exposition proceeds through the initial theme and a lengthy transition (which has its own theme), finally settling into the second theme, in G major, played by the flute. The themes are treated to a thorough development, and the recapitulation restates them in order—but not all in the home key. Dvorák chooses to place the second theme in A-flat major in the recapitulation, a departure from tradition that is nevertheless in keeping with the tonal freedom of the late nineteenth century.

The famous Largo opens with a striking chord progression in the low winds and brass, which serves not only to bring us to the unexpected key of D-flat, but also acts as a structural marker, reappearing in one guise or another several times during the movement. The main theme, introduced by the English horn, has become familiar through the words added later by W. A. Fisher. The oboe introduces the theme of the contrasting section, in C-sharp minor. A fugato and crescendo bring us to a climax, at which themes of the first movement are echoed, and out of which the return of the English horn melody emerges.

The scherzo is unusual in its formal complexity: though it has relationships with the typical scherzo-trio-scherzo form, the individual sections are not themselves neat, binary structures. The contrasts are wide, and even the tempo is somewhat elastic. In the transition to the trio, and in the coda, the first movement’s main theme makes yet another cameo appearance.

The finale is a large sonata form, with a very substantial coda. The first theme is somewhat modal in character, and resembles the first theme of Dvorák’s own Cello Concerto. The second theme is stated by the clarinet, with counterpoint in the cellos. The development is extensive, and treats not only the themes introduced in this movement, but also weave in echoes of the themes of all three preceding movements. The recapitulation restates the principal themes; in the second theme, the roles of the strings and winds are reversed. In the coda, the previous movements’ themes appear once again, before the triumphant conclusion.

This was not the first cyclic finale—the idea had become almost common by the 1890s—but Dvo ák’s handling of it is particularly compelling. Themes are skillfully modified so as to make their transplantations completely natural. Furthermore, the process is not restricted to the final movement (as in Franck’s Symphony), but grows throughout the entire four-movement cycle, with each movement making reference to at least one of its predecessors. And many of the themes of later movements are latent in the themes of earlier movements: the rising third that forms the oboes’ answer to the horn phrase becomes the English horn melody in the Largo, and the second melody of the third movement’s trio is transformed into the closing theme in the finale. (An interesting reversal of this procedure may be heard in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, to be performed on the Civic Symphony’s season finale on May 11.) Not only is the finale an apotheosis of the symphony, but the symphony seems to have been a sort of final summary of the genre for Dvo ák. He lived and composed actively for a full decade more, but wrote no more symphonies, instead turning his symphonic ideas to the tone poem.

Much has been made of the use Dvorák may have made of American musical materials. He certainly took an interest in the music of both Native Americans and African Americans, and suggested that these musics might be sources for a truly American musical language. Furthermore, he had for some time been intrigued by Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, and was considering writing an opera on the subject. This project came to naught, but some preliminary sketches were recycled in this symphony. The Largo was inspired by the “Funeral in the Forest” scene in Hiawatha, and the scherzo is derived from music intended to depict the Indians dancing in the woods. The actual materials, however, are not identifiably American; the pentatonic scale influence, for example, is also strong in Czech folk music and in Dvorák’s compositions generally. And the technical means employed in working with these materials belong entirely to the European late Romantic era.

The works on this program span just over two centuries, but share a surprising number of features. Apart from certain principles of formal organization, all are for somewhat reduced forces. And even so, all feature unusual combinations of instruments. The Dvorák Serenade is notable for its reliance on double reeds, the inclusion of a cello and a bass, and for its use of three (rather than the normal two or four) horns. Mozart's Symphony no. 25 is one of only four in which he employed four horns. And neither of these uses the flute, which is the featured instrument in the Rutter. The Suite Antique also uses the harpsichord, in a rare appearance in modern music.

Serenade in d minor Antonín Dvorák

The son of an innkeeper, Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) first learned the violin from a local schoolteacher. Leaving home at 16, he studied at the Prague Organ School, afterward supporting himself as a violist, and later as a church organist. His first compositional successes, in the 1870s, attracted the attention and support of such luminaries as Brahms, Liszt, and von B&uumlt;low. Dvorák joined the faculty of the Prague Conservatory in 1891, as a professor of composition. Like Mendelssohn and his contemporary Edvard Grieg, Dvor&aacutek also served as an administrator. Though he did not actually found an institution, he spent the years 1892-95 mostly in the United States, as director of the newly-founded National Conservatory. He became director of the Prague Conservatory in 1901. Dvorák's music incorporates many elements of Czech national and folk music, but is also firmly grounded in the Romantic style then flourishing throughout Europe.

The Serenade in D Minor was composed in early January, 1878, and received its first performance he following November. This was a period in which Dvorák had already achieved fame at home, and was enjoying increasing international recognition. The Serenade's four movements correspond roughly to the usual symphonic cycle. The first is a march, and is in ternary form rather than the sonata form that would be expected in a symphony. The second movement is a minuet in F major (certainly an archaism by this time), with a trio that is at double tempo. This presto is in fact a furiant, a Czech dance that Dvorák incorporated into a number of his works. The juxtaposition is striking; the two seemingly disparate sections are in fact joined by a motive of running scales in thirds, heard first towards the end of the minuet in the clarinets. The third movement, in A major, is rather slow, beginning with a syncopated accompaniment figure. Over this, a dialogue develops between the clarinet and the oboe. The middle part of the movement builds on this material to a climax, after which the opening dialogue returns, this time with the clarinet in dialogue with the bassoon. The finale is constructed on two ideas introduced at the outset, which are subsequently developed through various keys. The theme of the first movement returns for a cameo appearance just before the coda, in D major.

Suite Antique John Rutter

Born in 1945, John Rutter is best known for his work in choral music. He studied music at Clare College, Cambridge, and taught at the University of Southampton and at Clare College. Since 1979, however, he has devoted himself entirely to composition, with a few editing projects (including the Fauré Requiem), and recording choral music with the Cambridge Singers, which he founded. Influences on his style include Holst, Vaughan Williams and Britten; one may also hear traces of Faur$eacute; and Duruflé.

The Suite Antique, one of Rutter's few instrumental works, was composed in 1979. The six movements do resemble the Baroque suite in some ways, but differ decidedly in others. The lush, slightly dissonant harmonies of the prelude are distinctly twentieth-century traits, as is the modal (Dorian) coloring. The Ostinato is not of the Baroque type, which was normally a descending bass line, but is built around an energetic rhythmic pattern (which employs the hemiola effect Bernstein used in I want to live in America”). The Aria is reminiscent of many Baroque slow movements, with its slowly descending bass line, complete with octave skips, und a long-breathed melody. The old-fashioned minuet has been replaced by its descendent, the waltz, and one with a jazzy character at that. The Chanson is much like the Aria, but where earlier movement was in E minor, this one is in B Mixolydian (B Major, with the seventh scale degree lowered). The final movement, Rondeau, is named for its form: ABACADA plus Coda. It acts as the Gigue acts in closing a Baroque suite, but this movement is not quite in jig time: it is an eighth-note per bar short, being in 5/8 instead of 6/8, with a few changes towards the end. Rutter changes the orchestration of the A material at each appearance, so that within this movement, as in the suite as a whole, the old is made new again.

Symphony No. 25 in g minor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and career (1756-91), from child prodigy to supreme artist dead at age 35, are now so familiar that little if any retelling is needed. The sheer volume of output in his short life would be astounding even if it were of mediocre quality; that his vast uvre is so consistently of surpassing quality as well, is truly a miracle. Furthermore, Mozart's interests ran the entire gamut of musical genres: from dances to symphonies, from simple songs to large-scale Masses and operas.

Symphony No. 25 was composed in the autumn of 1773, and comprises the usual four movements of the Classical symphony. Known as the "Little G Minor"” in contrast to the "Great G Minor"”(Symphony no. 40), this symphony is perhaps best known to the public through its use in the film version of Amadeus. These two are Mozart's only extant symphonies in minor keys.

The outer movements and the Andante are all in sonata form (the Andante somewhat abridged). Both first and last movements feature opening themes presented in orchestral unisons, a device more common in the symphonies of J. C. Bach and C.P. E. Bach. Furthermore, the second theme of the first movement shares a prominent motive with the first theme of J. C. Bach's Symphony in G Minor, op. 6, no. 6. The Menuet is in the expected binary form, as is the Trio. For the Trio, Mozart reduced the orchestra to the winds only—another example of the composer's unusual usage of timbre in this work.

Finlandia Jean Sibelius

It is ironic that the greatest of Finnish nationalist composers did not learn Finnish before the age of ten. Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) was originally educated in Swedish, and only later came into contact with nationalist ideas in Finland. A violinist, he also studied law, and was awarded a government stipend for musical study in Berlin. Finland was then under the control of the Russian Tsars, and in the 1890s a program of Russification fueled the nationalist movement.

Sibelius composed Finlandia (originally Suomi herää), one of his many tone poems, in 1899, as part of incidental music for a series of scenes dealing with Finnish history. He revised it for publication the following year. The work begins obliquely, with uncertain tonality and dramatic use of the low brass. The key eventually settles, first into F minor, and then into A-flat Major. A quiet, contrasting theme, now familiar from its adaptation as a hymn tune, makes its appearance two-thirds of the way through. (This theme evokes, but does not really quote, a nationalist song from the 1880s, Herää, Suomi! [ Awaken, Finland! ] by Emil Genetz.) But, in keeping with the Romantic idea of thematic transformation, careful listening will reveal that this melody springs from the same lower neighbor-note figure of the opening, but with its character completely transformed.

Laughing Song from Die Fledermaus Johann Strauss, Jr.

Although intended for a career in banking, it seemed inevitable that Johann Strauss, Jr., (1825-99) would follow his father's footsteps into the world of popular music. A violinist, he led his own orchestra from 1844, merging it with his father's orchestra on the latter's death in 1849. He wrote huge quantities of dance music, which was enormously popular in its day (and some of which still commands respect). At the instigation of his wife (who had a background in the theater), he began trying his hand at operetta in the 1860s. Few of his efforts in that vein had lasting success; certainly none has held the stage like Die Fledermaus (1874). The plot is at least as convoluted and contrived as anything in Gilbert and Sullivan; a synopsis would be unintelligible. Suffice it to say that Adele, a chambermaid, is at a costume ball (in diguise), where she is jokingly accused by a Marquis of resembling a chambermaid. In keeping up her (disguised) appearance, she puts him down thoroughly.

Scene and Aria: Ah! perfido Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven's life, career, and eventual triumph over deafness (1770-1827) are now as much the stuff of legend as of biography. Although now remembered almost entirely for his instrumental works, particularly his piano sonatas, strings quartets, and the nine symphonies, Beethoven also composed a fair amount of choral and vocal music, including an opera, Fidelio, which he described as the dearest of his children, having cost him the most labor pains. Earlier in his life, he composed the present scene and aria, partly based on a pre-existing text by Pietro Metastasio (librettist for innumerable eighteenth-century operas), with a concluding aria on an anonymous text. Beethoven composed this for or during a visit to Prague, at which time it was sung by Josepha Duschek, who had been close to Mozart. The piece is a fine representative of a genre of works presenting abandoned women in anguish. The opening Scena is an extended recitative. The Aria that follows is a gentle Adagio; the finale, which has something of the character of a cabaletta, returns to a quicker pace, but is much more constant in tempo than the opening; it also includes some appropriate vocal fireworks.

Symphony No. 8 in B Minor ( The Unfinished ) Franz Peter Schubert

The short and tragic life of Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) requires little retelling for musical afficionados. Born into a family of amateur musicians, Schubert for a time earned his living as a schoolteacher before turning to composition full time. He spent nearly all of his career quite literally in Beethoven's shadow in Vienna, and Beethoven's experiments with form had profound effects on Schubert. Nevertheless, Schubert's real gift lay in melody, as his nearly 600 songs attest, and even his instrumental music is filled with singing.

Why Schubert left his eighth symphony unfinished is a great mystery. He had sketched the scherzo and a few bars of the trio in piano score (and even orchestrated a little of the scherzo), before abandoning the work in late October, 1822. About two years later, the score came into the possession of Schubert's close friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, again under circumstances not easily explained. Still stranger is the fact that the score lay in Hüttenbrenner's library until 1865, at which time the conductor Johann Herbeck began preparations for its premier, which finally took place on December 17, 1865 more than three dozen years after the composer's death.

The first movement is in sonata form, but is somewhat unusual in that its opening melody (which is not, strictly speaking, an introduction) does not return at the recapitulation. It is heard in the development, and again in the coda, making it integral to the movement. The first theme group also includes a haunting melody, played by the oboe and clarinet in unison. The second theme, quintessentially Schubertian in its lyricism, is surely the most recognizable theme in the symphony. The second movement is also in sonata form. Although the key scheme is relatively conventional, Schubert indulges in many fleeting and very colorful modulations to remote tonalities, which are in large part responsible for the movement's piquant character.

Overture to The Ruins of Athens Ludwig van Beethoven

Even before motion pictures had sound, they had music, and theaters had orchestras to provide what celluloid could not. And before there were movies at all, music had its place in the theater, even in genres not inherently “musical” in nature. Thus Mendelssohn wrote music to accompany Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Edward German provided dances for Henry VIII. Though hardly a man of the theater, with only one opera and one ballet to his credit, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) nevertheless composed incidental music for several plays, scattered over the course of his career. The best known of these efforts are the scores for Egmont and Coriolanus, and these are remembered almost exclusively for their overtures. Beethoven composed music for von Kotzebue’s festival play The Ruins of Athens in 1811; the first performance took place early in 1812. Besides the overture, the music includes several songs and choruses, and the best-known item, a Turkish March.

The Ruins of Athens is not a tragedy (unlike Coriolanus and Egmont), and Beethoven kept his curtain-raiser appropriately light and airy. The general shape is conventional enough: a slow introduction followed by an allegro. But the allegro is here not in the expected sonata form, there being no genuine second theme. Instead, the allegro is a more a ternary design, with the middle section acting as a trio. There is a lengthy preparation for the return of the principal theme, and its ending is slightly elongated to function as a coda.

Concerto in G Minor for Violin and Orchestra Max Bruch

First taught music by his mother (a singer), Max Bruch (1838-1920) began to compose before he was in his teens, and at age fourteen won an award that enabled him to study with three leading composition teachers of the time, Hiller, Reinecke, and Breunung. In the early 1860s he settled in Mannheim and composed an opera, Die Loreley (produced in 1863), and a cantata for male voices, Frithjof (1864); these works quickly earned him a place in German musical life. From 1865-67 he was music director at Koblenz, and it was there that he composed his first violin concerto in G minor. Although he was to compose two more violin concertos and the Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra (among other fine efforts), the present offering quickly became so popular as to upstage the rest of his oeuvre, much to Bruch’s dismay. Bruch ended his career as director of a master class in composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1890-1911), but even before his appointment there he was becoming an outsider in German musical life, due to his forthright criticism of the New German School (Wagner and Liszt). Nevertheless, he was considered a good composition teacher, and the young Vaughan Williams and Respighi were among his pupils.

The G-minor Violin Concerto is in three movements, with the first being somewhat unusual in form. It is titled Vorspiel (Prelude), and begins much like a conventional sonata form movement. An introductory section (which, however, is at the main tempo) is followed by a fairly conventional exposition, in which two themes are presented: the first dramatic with many chords for the soloist, and the second lyrical. A development follows, leading through closely related keys, and returning to the tonic—but there is no conventional recapitulation. Instead, the introductory material returns, framing the movement. There is, however, no final cadence; rather, the introductory material dissolves into a bridge, leading seamlessly to the second movement. This adagio is in sonata form, though the themes are not strongly contrasting, in the expected key of E-flat major. This movement displays Bruch’s considerable skill at shaping melodies. The finale begins with a transition from the slow movement, returning us to the key of G, but this time G major. The sonata-form exposition begins with the entrance of the solo violin; again, the first theme features chords and double-stops, followed by a lyrical second theme. The movement is formally straight-forward and uncomplicated. It is perhaps noteworthy that none of the movements contains a real cadenza.

For further reading:
Fitfield, Christopher. Max Bruch: His Life and Works. New York: G. Braziller, 1988.

A Musical Joke Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) died a month short of his thirty-sixth birthday, the Berlin Musical Weekly printed an obituary notice that included the observation “In his life he was constantly the object of cabals, which he at times may well have provoked by his sans souci manner.” As Peter Davies notes, “Sans Souci, a term coined in 1718, offers an excellent description of Mozart’s carefree manner and frivolity.” Robert Gutman tells how Mozart, his wife Constanze, and their close friend Gottfried von Jacquin engaged in “merrymaking” that he describes as “madcap.” Gutman imagines von Jacquin egging Mozart on in creating a musical practical joke, a lampooning of the failings of lesser composers (or a caricaturing of the work of perfectly competent ones). But where Gutman sees lighthearted humor, Davies presents evidence for cyclothymic disorder as the source of Mozart’s well-documented oddities of character—including his sense of humor.

Whatever the origins of the little divertimento known as A Musical Joke (completed in 1787), it is indeed a delightfully funny piece. The humor varies, moreover, from sly witticisms apparently intended for insiders to near slapstick. Among the former are violations of eighteenth-century part-writing conventions, which would hardly offend anyone now, and whichwould have required a keen ear to detect then. At the other extreme, he writes in the Minuet horn parts calculated make the players sound as though they have mis-transposed and are in the wrong key. In between, there are spoofs of a number of musical conventions of the day. The first movement’s first theme has a metrical structure that somehow comes out a measure short of expectations. The solo violin cadenza in the third movement gets hopelessly lost, and is rescued by a trill of a third (then fashionable, but only briefly so). The main theme of the last movement is a binary form, but a thoroughly atypical one: the first strain modulates to the wrong key, then aborts that and cadences in the tonic; the second strain wanders to tonally distant places, at a stylistically impossible point in the movement. The fugal passages are so bare as to be amateurish. And there are comically inappropriate changes in dynamics throughout all the movements. The final blow is the presentation of the last three chords in four keys simultaneously—as it were, an eighteenth-century Bronx cheer in music.

The literature on Mozart is vast; the following may be of special interest.
Davies, Peter J. Mozart: His Character and Health. NY: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Gutman, Robert W. Mozart: A Cultural Biography. NY: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999.

Huapango J. Pablo Moncayo

José Pablo Moncayo García (1912-1958) was born in Guadalajara, and studied at the Mexico City Conservatory. His principal composition teacher was Carlos Chavez, and he later took some additional lessons from Chavez’s friend Aaron Copland. He began his professional career in 1931, as a percussionist with the Mexico Symphony Orchestra (now the National Symphony Orchestra). He served as conductor of that ensemble from 1949-54. Moncayo was interested in working with Mexican folk idioms in a nationalist vein, and to that end in 1934 was a founder of the Grupo de Jóvenes Compositores, later known as Grupo de los Cuatros (“Group of Four”). The other members were Blas Galindo Dimas (1910-93), Salvador Contreras (1910-82), and Daniel Ayala Pérez (1906-75). Eventually the other composers went their separate ways, adopting various modern idioms, so that Moncayo’s early death represents the closing of that phase of Mexican music. Moncayo himself worked also with Impressionistic techniques in such pieces as Amatzinac and Bosques, and his opera, La mulata de Córdoba. These have, perhaps unfortunately, been overshadowed by his most popular work, Huapango, composed in 1941. This piece is based solidly on Mexican folk materials, incorporating especially the folk dances el siquisirií, el balahú, and el gavilán. The result is a very appealing mix of distinctly Latin rhythms; when two or more are combined, the resulting cross-rhythms become quite colorful.

Overture “Of New Horizons” Ulysses Kay

Born into a musical family in Tucson, Ulysses Kay (1917-95) first studied piano, and later the violin and saxophone. He pursued undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona, followed by an M.A. at Eastman. He also studied composition at the Berkshire Music Center, and at Yale with Paul Hindemith. From 1942-46, Kay served in a Navy band, playing various wind instruments, and played piano in a military jazz orchestra. After the war, he studied further at Columbia University on a Ditson Fellowship, and in Europe on Rosenwald and Fulbright fellowships. He earned many honors, including the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and election to the Institute of the American Academy. He was, in 1958, a member of the first group of American composers sent to the USSR by the State Department on a cultural exchange mission. He also served on cultural missions in Italy, Yugoslavia, France, and England. He was appointed to the faculty of Lehman College of the City University of New York in 1968.

Kay’s style favors vivid orchestral colors; vibrant, jazz-influenced harmonies; and a distinctively angular lyricism. His music often employs complex contrapuntal textures and procedures, and is generally based on neo-classical formal models. His oeuvre includes several orchestral works, band pieces, songs, choral music, and a number of dramatic works, notably an opera, Frederick Douglass. His Overture “Of New Horizons” was composed in 1944, and features most of the elements of Kay’s mature style. It is cast in sonata form with a rhythmically energetic opening theme and a more lyrical second theme. In the coda, these themes are combined contrapuntally, with the first theme in augmentation and the second in canon.

Constance Tibbs Hobson and Deborra A. Richardson, Ulysses Kay: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).
Lucius R. Wyatt, “Kay, Ulysses,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, rev. ed, (London: Macmillan, forthcoming).

Lincoln Portrait Aaron Copland

Born in New York City to immigrant parents, Copland (1900 1990) first learned the piano from an older sister. He progressed quickly, studying piano with Leopold Wolfsohn, Victor Wittgenstein and Clarence Adler. He studied harmony, counterpoint, and form with Rubin Goldmark, and soon began composing. He spent the years 1920 24 in France at the American Conservatory at Fountainbleu, studying composition under Nadia Boulanger. He returned to Europe several times during the 1920’s, hearing music by the leading composers of the era.

His compositions of these early years show a wide range of influences, from Debussy to Jazz, increasingly incorporated into a unique, personal style. Serge Koussevitzky was an important early interpreter and champion of Copland's orchestral music. In the 1930's, Copland began to pursue a more consciously American musical idiom. Though he never pursued an academic career, Copland became very active as a lecturer, and taught at Harvard when Walter Piston was on leave. He wrote a number of articles and two books, What to Listen for in Music and Our New Music (second edition title, The New Music, 1900 1960). His lecture series given as Norton Professor of Poetics at Harvard (1951) was published afterward as Music and Imagination. Not content to rest on his laurels, Copland explored many of the newer musical ideas, including serialism, in the 1950’s and ’60’s.

Lincoln Portrait was composed in 1942, not long before Fanfare for the Common Man. The work is the fruit of a commission from André Kostelanetz, one of three works based on American national figures. (Jerome Kern chose Mark Twain; Virgil Thompson paired New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia and journalist Dorothy Parker.) Interestingly, Copland’s first idea was also for a literary figure, Walt Whitman, but Kostelanetz suggested that he consider a statesman. Copland selected Lincoln, in part because of the impression that Lord Charnwood’s biography of Lincoln had made on him. Copland worked out the text himself, using quotes taken from the Charnwood biography. The piece was premiered May 14, 1942, by Kostelanetz and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with Williams Adams as narrator.

The work is cast in a large ternary design, slow-fast-slow, with the spoken text coming in the final section. The opening section features an early American melody, “Spring Mountain,” which was originally an elegy for a young man. The fast, middle section draws on Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races” for its principal idea. This section, with its snare drum and brass “bugle calls,” not to mention its moments of tonal conflict, “depicts a battlefield as accurately as a military painter,” as Léon Kochinitzky put it in an early review. At the climax, “Springfield Mountain” returns in a canon, leading to the return of the opening material.

A complete and authoritative biography of Copland has appeared recently: Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Man, the Music (New York: Henry Holt, 1999).

Symphonic Variations on an African Air Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Though nearly forgotten in recent decades, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was in his time and for some years after his premature death among the best-known and most frequently performed British composers of his generation. His father, a native of Sierra Leone, had shown considerable intelligence and had been sent by the colonial authorities to England to study medicine. He returned to Sierra Leone about the time Samuel was born, but his mother elected to remain in England. Samuel thus grew up in Croydon, south-east of London, where he attended the local British School and studied violin with Joseph Beckwith. He also began composing, though none of his juvenile efforts has survived. His obvious talent and industry attracted the attention of Col. Herbert Walters, who became, in essence, his patron, underwriting his further education at the Royal College of Music. Victorian society had its prejudices concerning race and class, but the director, Sir George Grove, was in a better position than most Englishmen to see beyond color, and enrolled Coleridge-Taylor for the fall term of 1890.

The Royal College of Music was then relatively new, but was rapidly gaining stature. The composition faculty included Hubert Parry and Charles Stanford, with whom Coleridge-Taylor studied. First, however, he had to learn to play the piano; he did not become a virtuoso, but learned to write competently for the instrument, and to play well enough to perform many of his own compositions. In Stanford’s class he was in very good company; the best remembered now are Gustave Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The next year he published an anthem for mixed chorus and organ, In Thee, O Lord, marking, at the age of sixteen, the beginning of his long relationship with Novello & Co. This was followed a year later by four more anthems. Coleridge-Taylor completed his studies at the Royal College of Music in the spring of 1897, and had already arranged for a livelihood teaching violin and conducting several ensembles in Croydon. In the mean time, his work had come to Elgar’s attention (via Novello); when Elgar was too busy finishing his Caractacus to compose something for the Three Choirs Festival of 1898, he suggested that the commission be given to Coleridge-Taylor. The result was an orchestral work, Ballade in A Minor, op. 33, which was premiered on September 12, 1898, and received enthusiastically. But Coleridge-Taylor was already preparing for the first performance of his cantata, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which took place November 11, 1898, at the Royal College of Music. This premiere was not merely successful, it was sensational. Two more cantatas followed: The Death of Minnehaha in 1899, and Hiawatha’s Departure in 1900. Coleridge-Taylor was suddenly famous, and the trilogy quickly made its way around the concert halls not only of England, but of the entire British Empire. The first American performances took place in Boston, in 1900, with instant success.

The obvious success of a composer of African descent inspired an effort in the African American community in Washington, D. C., to mount a performance of the cantatas using black performers exclusively, with the composer conducting. Preparations proceeded fitfully for some three years, but Coleridge-Taylor did conduct the Hiawatha trilogy in Washington in November, 1904. He made two further trips to the United States, in 1906 and 1910; on the last trip, his activities included an appearance as conductor with the New York Philharmonic. Coleridge-Taylor had prepared for the first visit in part by reading W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks; the composer had met Du Bois in 1900, when they were among the thirty-two participants in the first Pan-African Conference (held in London). Among the musical fruits of his new awareness of the African American community is his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, a set of piano pieces based on melodies from Africa, America, and the West Indies, published in 1904. One of these, Bamboula, was completely reworked and expanded as an orchestral piece for his 1910 visit; another, “I’m Troubled,” was re-used as the theme for the Symphonic Variations on an African Air, composed in 1906.

“I’m Troubled in Mind” was in the repertoire of the Fisk Jubilee Singers; it came to them from a former slave whose father had sung it with great pathos. The melody itself is spare—nearly pentatonic—and recalls in some respects Dvo ák’s Cello concerto and “New World” Symphony. (Coleridge-Taylor had indeed idolized the Czech composer in his formative years.) The melody comprises only two phrases, so Coleridge-Taylor alters the second cadence and doubles its length. But many of the variations that follow transform this essentially binary idea into ternary forms. In this, the variation process resembles Elgar’s in the Enigma Variations; one may also detect some influence of Tchaikovsky in the orchestration. Nevertheless, the work is not derivative, but highly original in its treatment of the materials. There are nine (or perhaps fourteen) variations, during which the theme is transformed in a surprising number of ways, appearing as a scherzo, a waltz, a passage of sweeping lyricism, and more. The middle sections of some of these contrast with their outer sections so greatly as to seem like new variations; the number of variations is thus somewhat unclear. The harmonic and rhythmic resources are similarly large and varied. But perhaps the most outstanding feature is the orchestration, which is colorful without making the orchestra seem disjointed, and rich without being thick. The work ends with a coda—Geoffrey Self calls it a “peroration”—that once again, and not unfittingly, calls to mind the New World Symphony.

Geoffrey Self, The Hiawatha Man: The Life and Work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995).
William Tortolano, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Anglo-Black Composer, 1875-1912 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977).

An Outdoor Overture Aaron Copland

With this work, the Civic Symphony celebrates the centennial of Aaron Copland’s birth, November 14, 1900. Born in New York City to immigrant parents, Copland (1900 1990) first learned the piano from an older sister. He progressed quickly, studying piano with Leopold Wolfsohn, Victor Wittgenstein and Clarence Adler. He studied harmony, counterpoint, and form with Rubin Goldmark, and soon began composing. He spent the years 1920 24 in France at the American Conservatory at Fountainbleu, studying composition under Nadia Boulanger. He returned to Europe several times during the 1920’s, hearing music by the leading composers of the era.

His compositions of these early years show a wide range of influences, from Debussy to Jazz, increasingly incorporated into a unique, personal style. Serge Koussevitzky was an important early interpreter and champion of Copland's orchestral music. In the 1930's, Copland began to pursue a more consciously American musical idiom. Though he never pursued an academic career, Copland became very active as a lecturer, and taught at Harvard when Walter Piston was on leave. He wrote a number of articles and two books, What to Listen for in Music and Our New Music (second edition title, The New Music, 1900 1960). His lecture series given as Norton Professor of Poetics at Harvard (1951) was published afterward as Music and Imagination. Not content to rest on his laurels, Copland explored many of the newer musical ideas, including serialism, in the 1950’s and ’60’s.

An Outdoor Overture was composed in 1938, while Copland was working on Billy the Kid, on a commission from the New York High School of Music and Art. As the English critic Cecil Smith put it, “Youth and freedom and tireless energy are the subject matter of the Overture.” The work has five principal thematic elements: an introductory fanfare, the theme first heard in the solo trumpet, a faster theme featuring repeated notes, a slower theme introduced by the flute, and a resolute march introduced by the violins. The whole falls into two large sections, with the second acting as a varied restatement of the materials introduced in the first. Pollack finds elements of sonata form in this, with the second section acting both as development and recapitulation. Although associated with student and amateur orchestras since its composition, no less a figure than Leonard Bernstein has found the Overture worthy of professional organizations. Elliott Carter, in reviewing the premiere performance, wrote, “Its opening is as lofty and beautiful as any passage that has been written by a contemporary. It is Copland in his ‘prophetic’ vein....”

A complete and authoritative biography of Copland has appeared recently: Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Man, the Music (New York: Henry Holt, 1999).

Concerto in C Major for Cello and Orchestra Franz Joseph Haydn

“Papa” Haydn (1732-1809) was in several respects indeed the father of the Classical period in music. Though he invented neither the string quartet nor the symphony, these genres developed principally in his hands, and his works in these genres are the earliest that have remained continuously in the repertoire. He also composed concerti, operas, oratorios (including two monumental late works, The Creation and The Seasons), piano music, and innumerable trios involving the Baryton, the instrument of his employer, Prince Nicholas Esterházy.

When Haydn entered the service of the Esterházys in 1761, he quickly set about improving the musical establishment there. One of his first recommendations was the appointment of his friend Joseph Weigl (1740-1820) as principal cellist at Eisenstadt. Haydn composed the present concerto for him (judging from the inscription on the only surviving set of parts), apparently prior to 1765. Haydn included this work in his personal catalogue of his compositions (begun in 1765), but the score and parts disappeared within a few decades, leaving the musical world in the uncomfortable state of knowing of the work without being able to hear it. Fortunately, as single set of parts survived, and was discovered in Prague in 1962.

The Concerto is cast in the usual three movements, but on a scale unmatched before Beethoven. All three movements are in the double-exposition variant of sonata form—rather unusual, as this form is normally associated only with concerto first movements. The first movement in particular is very Haydnesque in is “monothematicism”; that is, the second theme begins exactly like the first, but in another key. Contrasting themes follow, of course; the development and recapitulation are as expected, with a cadenza before the coda. The second movement is structurally similar, but with a greatly reduced development. The finale follows the same plan as the first movement, without a cadenza. In both the second and third movements, Haydn gives the soloist dramatically understated entrances, on sustained, soft notes. In the slow movement, this leads to lyrical melody; in the finale, the solo cellist quickly joins the general vivacity of the music. All three movements are demanding, employing the full range of the cello; the finale in particular is filled with virtuoso passage-work.

The following will provide an introduction to the literature concerning Haydn and his music.
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn: Chronicle and Works, 5 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976-80).
Idem, and David Wyn Jones. Haydn: His Life and Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
Wheelock, Gretchen. Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992).

Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, op. 17 Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky

Influenced by folk materials but not strictly a nationalist composer, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840-93) employed the greatest range of compositional technique of any of the Russian romantics. After studying law and a brief career in government service, he returned to school in 1861 at Rubenstein’s conservatory in St. Petersburg. He taught harmony and counterpoint at the then-new Moscow Conservatory from 1866 until 1877, when a yearly stipend from his patroness, Madame von Meck, enabled him to turn his full attention to composing. During his years as a professor, Tchaikovsky was in contact with Mily Balakirev, who, as the foremost Russian nationalist composer, was both encouraging to the obviously talented Tchaikovsky and wary of his academic milieu.

Tchaikovsky composed his Second Symphony in 1872, and it was premiered the following year. The early 1870s were the period when Tchaikovsky was most interested in nationalism, and the symphony reflects this in its use of two Ukrainian melodies and other materials having a Slavic character. The latter part of the decade proved difficult for the composer, though he completed both the Fourth Symphony and Eugen Onegin in 1878, the years 1878-1884 (following his disastrous marriage in 1877) amounted to a creative drought. He thus found work in revising some early compositions, and devoted two months to the Second Symphony, completing the revisions in January, 1879. After 1884, he steadily became both more productive and more recognized on the world scene; his induction into the Order of St. Vladimir by Tsar Alexander III was later matched by an honorary doctorate from Oxford. The last half of the 1880s saw the premiers of such masterworks as the Fifth Symphony, Queen of Spades, Sleeping Beauty, and his string sextet Souvenir de Florence, among others. But the last three years of his life, though still productive, were marked by increasing melancholy and personal crisis, leading to his suicide in 1893, shortly after the premiere of the Sixth Symphony.

The Second Symphony is in the traditional four movements. The first has an introduction that opens with a Ukrainian melody “Down by Mother Volga,” played by the horn. The first theme of the Allegro is marked by its rhythmic vitality; the lyrical second theme could hardly be more contrasting. The closing idea recalls the first theme, now in E-flat major. After an extensive development, a dramatic ritardando and accelerando lead to the recapitulation. The coda dissipates the energy built up in the closing theme, also returning us to C minor, and ends with an echo of the opening horn solo. The second movement is a march, light-hearted but with the occasional, oddly-flavored harmony. It is largely recycled from Tchaikovsky’s opera Undine, most of which he destroyed after it was rejected by the St. Petersburg Opera. The third movement, again in C minor, is a whirlwind scherzo, in the usual binary form. The trio, in E-flat major, presents a change of meter and features a tune that resembles Slavic folk music, especially in its six-bar phrasing. The finale begins with another slow introduction, after which the violins introduce the lively Ukrainian melody “The Crane,” in C major. This feature of the symphony prompted Nicholas Kashkin to give the work its nickname—in Russia, Ukraine was often called “Little Russia.” After treating this tune to a series of variations, all involving increasingly flashiy orchestration, Tchaikovsky brings us, via a transition, to a contrasting theme, in the remote key of A-flat major. This lilting tune is an outstanding representative of Tchaikovsky’s melodic gift. The development is extensive, with several abrupt changes of character. The first theme, having been heard several times in the exposition and treated thoroughly in the development, is omitted in the recapitulation, which begins with the second theme. “The Crane” returns, however, and at an even faster tempo, in the coda, to finish the movement and the symphony brilliantly.

Interested readers may wish to consult the following books:
Brown, David. Tchaikovsky, 4vols, (New York: Norton, 1978).
Leslie Kearney, ed. Tchaikovsky and his World (Princeton,: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Overture to Der Freischütz Carl Maria von Weber

Born into a family of musicians, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) led a short but colorful life. His first musical studies were not promising, and were discontinued, but later, systematic studies with such masters as Michael Haydn and the Abbé Vogler produced rapid development. Weber became an accomplished pianist, and in his younger days also sang to his own guitar accompaniment. He was also an innovator in the field of conducting. In 1804 he took his first post, as Kapellmeister in Breslau. This and several succeeding appointments were short-lived, for various reasons, and his life took on a distinctly unsettled character. As director of the Opera in Prague in 1813 he met his future wife, the soprano Caroline Brandt. They were married in 1817, after Weber had assumed the post of Royal Saxon Kapellmeister at Dresden. As the title indicates, he had to share the limelight—Italian opera still reigned supreme, and he had to work hard to create a Germanic opera, and to generate interest in it. Weber was small, slightly built, and limped from early childhood; by his late thirties his health had begun to fail seriously. In 1825 he accepted a commission to compose an opera (Oberon) for the English stage. Although the libretto left much to be desired, he completed the music that year and went to England the next year, to oversee production. He concealed the gravity of his illness from everyone, apparently driving himself to make the opera a success and secure some financial security for his wife and children. He was found dead in his room a few weeks after the opera had opened, and was buried in London. His remains were removed in 1844 and re-interred in Dresden, under the supervision of a later Dresden Kapellmeister—Richard Wagner.

Weber read Johann August Apel’s ghost story Der Freischütz soon after its publication in 1810, and apparently thought immediately of making an opera of it. The libretto was prepared by the poet Friedrich Kind, and the opera composed during the years 1817-21. Its premiere in Berlin in June, 1821, proved to be an historic event: not only was it an immediate success with the public, but no small number of composers (including Wagner and Berlioz) were later influenced by their first contact with it. The tale is set in eighteenth-century Bohemia, and involves members of the local huntsman’s guild, the local prince’s daughter, a marksmanship contest (her hand is the prize), magic bullets, and an appearance by the evil Samiel (either Satan himself or his emissary). It has been observed that half of the opera is set at night, which is viewed both as beautiful (the heroine sings from her balcony in the moonlight), and as sinister (the casting of the magic bullets in the famous Wolf’s Glen scene).

Cast in sonata form with a slow introduction, the overture to this opera includes several melodies from the opera, and captures the essence of the drama as well. The horn quartet in the introduction immediately conjures up the forest and the hunt. (This association remained strong in German Romantic music: the horn quartet at the opening of the overture to Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel similarly presents the music to which the children, lost in the woods, later sing their evening prayer.) The tremolos and dark harmonies that follow suggest evil, and this music reappears in the Wolf’s Glen scene. The turbulent first theme of the allegro, in C minor, is associated with the forces of evil. The repeated chords in the horns at the end of the transition are used in the opera to signal the hero’s entrance into the Wolf’s Glen. The second theme, first played by the clarinet in E-flat major, is part of the heroine’s second-act aria. A development follows, but, before the recapitulation, we hear again the sinister tremolos from the introduction. After the first theme has been restated, there is a pregnant pause, after which the home key of C major appears in brilliant orchestration, leading to the restatement of the second theme, and on to the coda. The music thus aptly renders the opera’s opposition of the forces of light and darkness: the dramatic change from C minor to C major resembles, and may have been inspired by, the similar change in Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, at the words “and there was light.”

There is no readily available study of Der Freischütz; two biographies of Weber are of interest:
Warrack, John. Carl Maria von Weber, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Weber, Max Maria von [the composer’s son]. Carl Maria von Weber: The Life of an Artist, trans. J. Palmgraves-Simpson, 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hull, 1865; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969).

Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins Johann Sebastian Bach

Few names are more prominent in musical history than that of the family Bach, whose greatest member was Johann Sebastian (1685-1750). He spent the last 27 years of his life in Leipzig, where he produced, among other things, a vast quantity of cantatas and other sacred works. Though he is remembered now largely as a sober church musician, his early career was more checkered. Raised and educated musically in the family home of Eisenach by an elder brother, Johann found himself on his own at the age of fifteen. After several years of traveling, perfecting his art, and holding a succession of positions, he secured his first major post in 1708, at the court in Weimar. Immediately before his move to Leipzig, he was in the employ of Prince Leopold at Cöthen, who “loved and understood music,” from 1717 to 1723.

It has long been assumed that Bach wrote his Concerto for Two Violins while at Cöthen, as most of his work then was instrumental rather than choral, and he is known to have composed the Brandenburg concerti during those years. But Christoph Wolff has recently suggested that the work may actually date from 1730-31. It is certainly a mature work, evincing Bach’s musical depth as much has his technical mastery. It is cast in the three-movement form typical of Baroque concerti. The first and last movements are shaped by the alternation of tutti and solo sections. The opening tutti of the first movement is unusual in that it also involves a fugue-like exposition. It has been suggested that the second movement owes something to the slow movement of Vivaldi’s A-minor Concerto for two violins, op. 3 no. 8; both are marked Largetto and are highly introspective in character. But Vivaldi’s largetto is based on a repeated ground, introduced by the orchestral tutti; Bach’s is duet-aria, featuring the solo violins throughout. Further, Vivaldi set his slow movement in D minor (the subdominant of his concerto’s home key), while Bach used the relative key (F major) for his. This duet is remarkable for the sublime arches of the melodic lines. The final movement is again fast, and formally similar to the first, but with metrical twists that sometimes seem to belie the three-four meter.

The literature on Bach and his music is vast; the following are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
David, Hans T. and Arthur Mendel, eds. The Bach Reader (New York: W. W. Norton, 1945).
Geiringer, Karl. The Bach Family: Seven Generations of Creative Genius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954, repr. New York: Da Capo Press, 1981).
Spitta, Philipp. Johann Sebastian Bach: His Work and Influence on the Music of Germany, 1685-1750, trans. Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller-Maitland (London: Novello, 1889; repr. New York: Dover, 1951).
Wolff, Christoph. Bach: Essays on his Life and Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Symphony No. 85, “La Reine” Franz Joseph Haydn

“Papa” Haydn (1732-1809) was in several respects indeed the father of the Classical period in music. Though he invented neither the string quartet nor the symphony, these genres developed principally in his hands, and his works in these genres are the earliest that have remained continuously in the repertoire. He also composed concerti, operas, oratorios (including two monumental late works, The Creation and The Seasons), piano music, and innumerable trios involving the Baryton, the instrument of his employer, Prince Nicholas Esterházy.

When Haydn entered the service of the Esterházys in 1761, the symphony was in its infancy. Giovanni Battista Sammartini in Italy, Johann Anton Wenzel Stamitz at Mannheim, and Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach at Berlin, among others, had written symphonies. The first symphonies were essentially expansions of the Italian opera overture of the time, the overture’s three sections, fast-slow-fast, becoming three separate movements. The third movement quickly became standardized as a minuet; when that stately dance came to be viewed as an unsatisfactory finale, a fourth movement was added to the cycle, resulting in the form as we know it today. Haydn’s relative isolation at Esterház provided him the freedom him to follow his own Muse; he both expanded the form in structure and deepened it in content, establishing the symphony as a vehicle that has served composers well, to the present day.

In his first two decades at Esterház, Haydn’s expended much effort composing comic operas (which are now seldom performed). But Haydn’s interest in that medium gradually turned to more serious subjects, and by the mid-1780s he was aware that his tastes and his employer’s had diverged. A handsome commission in 1785 from the Concert de la Loge Olympique of Paris, for six symphonies, was thus timely. Haydn completed the set the next year, and in them advanced his symphonic style and technique still further; indeed, the “Paris Symphonies” were later overshadowed in Haydn’s ouevre only by his last six, the “London” symphonies. Symphony No. 85 was probably completed in 1785, and was premiered with the others during the 1787 season. No. 85 proved Marie Antoinette’s favorite. The first edition, issued soon after, consequently bore the title “La Reine de France.”

The symphony is in the customary four movements, though the “slow” movement (the second) is hardly slow. The first is in sonata form, and also has a slow introduction. The second theme is not strongly differentiated from the first in character (though it does not one of Haydn’s so-called “monothematic” sonata forms). The development is substantial though not quite Beethovenian. The second movement is a theme with four variations and a coda; in its general character (and even its opening motive) it calls to mind the Romanze of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The third movement is the expected minuet with trio; trio is distinctive due to the extensive use of pizzicato . The finale is a five-part rondo with coda. As is often the case with Haydn’s rondos, the couplets are not alternate themes but rather developmental episodes. The symphony as a whole, and the finale in particular, may be characterized as buoyant and cheerful.

The following will provide an introduction to the literature concerning Haydn and his music.
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Haydn: Chronicle and Works, 5 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976-80).
Idem, and David Wyn Jones. Haydn: His Life and Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
Wheelock, Gretchen. Haydn’s Ingenious Jesting with Art: Contexts of Musical Wit and Humor (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992).

Overture to La Forza del Destino Giuseppe Verdi

Born in the same year as Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) outlived his German counterpart by more than a fifteen years—and produced in that period two operas (Otello and Falstaff) and various other works, such as the forward-looking Quattro pezzi sacri of 1898. Verdi’s life would itself make an operatic plot: from modest beginnings, with talent recognized early, through many years of supporting himself as a church organist, studying privately with local masters (he was rejected by the Milan Conservatory), finally emerging as the dominant composer of opera in Italy in his century. During the period of his first two operas (which met with mixed success at best), his wife and their two small children all died within two years (1838-40). (Verdi later very happily remarried, but that is another story.) His third opera, Nabucco, produced in 1842, was a great success, and brought him international recognition almost overnight. Following Ernani in 1844, Verdi completed fourteen operas in the next nine years; his pace understandably slowed considerably thereafter.

La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny), which was premiered in St. Petersburg in November, 1862, was one of only two operas Verdi wrote in the 1860s. The libretto was prepared by F. M. Piave, after the play Don Alvaro, o La fuerza del sino (1835) by A. P. Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with additional scenes drawn from Schiller’s play Wallensteins Lager (1799). The overture is essentially of the potpourri type, consisting of music drawn from the opera to follow. But Verdi has taken the remarkable step of unifying the overture by including a particular, restless motive in the counterpoint or accompaniment to nearly all of the melodies used. This motive is first heard in the violins following the introductory bare octaves of the brass, as the principal idea; in the slower segment that follows, it appears as an ominous echo in the low strings. The motive comes in both obvious and subtle guises throughout the overture; it is as inescapable as destiny itself.

The literature on Verdi is quite large; the following may be particularly good starting points.
Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Verdi: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
William Weaver, ed. and trans., Verdi: A Documentary Study (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).

Gymnopédies Satie

Erik Satie (1866-1925) endured an unsettled childhood, living with his grandparents from age six to twelve, following the death of his mother. He then rejoined his father in Paris, and entered the Conservatoire the next year. His talent was recognized, but his laziness and frequent absences could not be overlooked, and he was dismissed after three years for lack of progress. A few years later, Satie’s father founded a music publishing company; Satie published some songs, the three Sarabandes (1887), the three Gymnopédies (1888), and Gnossiennes (1890).

At this point, Satie was introduced to the artistically revolutionary circle active on Montmartre, and quickly took up residence there. He met Debussy the next year, and about that time became active in the “Rose + Croix” artistic movement. He left Montmartre in 1898, and supported himself for several years as a café-concert pianist. He studied under D’Indy and Roussel at the Schola Cantorum from 1905-08. He first gained prominence in 1911, when Ravel played the Sarabandes at a concert, and Debussy conducted his orchestration of the Gymnopédies. Soon after the beginning of the First World War, Jean Cocteau heard Satie’s music and took up his cause. The scandalous opening of Satie’s ballet Parade in May, 1917, resulted in the formation of a group of young composers around him. Though actually fluid, perception of the group was defined in 1920 by Henri Collet, who dubbed them “Les Six.” Ravel summed Satie up aptly as a “precursor both brilliant and clumsy.” Satie continues to fascinate, as much for his aesthetics as for his actual compositions.

Debussy orchestrated two of the three Gymnopédies in 1896. He chose the first and the third, but ordered them in reverse. Both resemble very slow, languid waltzes. Like much of Satie’s music, they have an aimlessness in both melody and harmony. Cadences are seldom clear, and one may find it difficult to know when the piece has reached its conclusion. All this is in keeping with Satie’s idea of “wallpaper music”—a precursor of our modern “background music”—which was intended to provide ambiance, but not command attention.

Among writings about Satie are the following:
Alan M. Gillmore, Erik Satie (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
Pierre-David Templier, Erik Satie. transl. Elenor L. French and David S. French (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1973).

Concertino for Trombone and Orchestra, op. 4 Ferdinand David

Ferdinand David (1810-73), was a leading violinist of his generation, a leader in chamber music and orchestral circles, and active as a composer and editor. It is thus curious, if not ironic, that his compositional output is today represented almost entirely by a concertino for trombone. Born in Hamburg, David studied violin with Spohr and theory with Hauptmann. While a violinist in the Koenigstadt theater orchestra, he made the acquaintance of the Mendelssohns, with whom he played chamber music. He led a string quartet in Estonia from 1829-35. The next year, at Mendelssohn’s invitation, he assumed leadership of the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig; he was also involved with the Stadttheater orchestra, and took charge of church music in Leipzig. In 1843, he was appointed head of the violin department of the new Leipzig Conservatory. Among his pupils were Joachim (briefly), Wilhelmj, and Wasielewski. But his pedagogical influence reached beyond his studio, as he brought out editions of studies by Kreutzer, Rode, and Paganini, and prepared the first practical edition of Bach’s unaccompanied violin works. His edition of Corelli’s “La Folia” Sonata is still sometimes used, and he is well remembered as the violinist for whom Mendelssohn wrote his Violin Concerto.

The Concertino for Trombone was composed in 1837, for the multi-virtuoso Carl Traugott Queisser. It proved to be a favorite among David’s original works, and was performed at a memorial concert for David following his death. The work is cast in the typical concertino shape: three sections, the first and last of which are the exposition and recapitulation of a sonata form, with a contrasting quasi-movement in place of a development. The double exposition of the concerto is problematic in the more compact concertino; David cleverly begins quietly, with lyrical material that we later recognize as the “second” theme, thus providing for an orchestral opening and a grand entrance by the soloist. The contrasting “movement” is in this case a funeral march, following which the themes of the first section are recapitulated as expected.

Symphony No. 1, op. 10 Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitry Shostakovich 1906-75) learned the piano from his mother, a professional, at age nine. He entered the Petrograd Conservatory in 1919, but had to play the piano in cinemas to augment the family income, as his father had died. He completed a diploma in piano in 1923, and another in composition, under Maximilian Steynberg, two years later. His first symphony was composed as a graduation piece, and was highly acclaimed at its premiere in 1926. Within two years it had been played in Berlin and Philadelphia. In the meantime, Shostakovich had earned an honorable mention as a pianist at the Chopin Competition of 1927.

Shostakovich eventually composed fifteen symphonies, matched by a series of fifteen string quartets, not to mention an enormous amount of music for other media, including opera and film scores, ballets, choral music, other chamber music, and, of course, the piano. Having come of age in revolutionary times, Shotakovich felt that citizenship carried moral duties, with which he was constantly striving to balance his calling as a musician and artist. His struggles with the Party apparachniks during the Stalin years are well known, especially the uproar over his opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. Through it all, he earned among his peers a reputation for honesty and integrity.

The First Symphony is cast in the usual four movements, with the slow movement third rather than second. The first movement, in F minor, is in a modified sonata form, with an introduction. The themes are distinguished not merely by character, but by tempo and meter as well: the waltz-like second theme contrasts strikingly with the march-like first theme. The second movement, in A minor, is, in essence, a scherzo. But it is not a speeded-up minuet, as it is in duple meter. Again, contrast is achieved via slower, quieter material, in triple meter. The third movement, in D-flat major, is filled with a grand lyricism that is nevertheless distinctly twentieth-century in character. The finale, which returns us to F minor (and ends in F major), is cast in a modified sonata form, with an introduction. A triumphant second theme contrast with the nervously busy first theme; both are developed extensively. Two sections in a much slower tempo add an air of mystery, and provide for radical transformations of both themes. And whereas the first three movements all ended quietly, the return of the second theme, in F major, leads to a brilliant coda, ending the movement and the symphony fortissimo.

The musical language is tonal throughout, but decidedly twentieth-century in its treatment of dissonance. The relationship of tonalities is also modern: the keys of the four movements outline an augmented triad, creating a hidden layer of instability. The orchestration accentuates the pungent harmonies and dissonances, not least by the inclusion of the piano as an orchestral instrument.

Those interested in Shostakovich will want to read:
Solomon Volkov, ed., trans. Antonina W. Bouis, Testimony: The Memoirs of Shostakovich (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).

Symphony No. 40 in G Minor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life and career (1756-91), from child prodigy to supreme artist dead at age 35, are now so familiar that little if any retelling is needed. The sheer volume of output in his short life would be astounding even if it were of mediocre quality; that his vast œuvre is so consistently of surpassing quality as well, is truly a miracle. Furthermore, Mozart’s interests ran the entire gamut of musical genres: from dances to symphonies, from simple songs to large-scale Masses and operas.

Mozart composed his last three symphonies (nos. 39-41) in the summer of 1788. It has been commonly reported that, unlike nearly all of his other work, these symphonies were composed for their own sake only, and not for any particular purpose. Part of this lore even holds that they were not performed in Mozart’s lifetime. But recent scholarship has uncovered considerable evidence that Mozart arranged for performances of these works in different times and places, and made revisions (especially to the wind parts) to accommodate the different ensembles involved.

Symphony No. 40 is cast in the usual four movements, each of which is in an expected form. The outer movements are in sonata form, with extensive developments, and the second movement is in an expanded binary structure, approaching sonata form. The third movement is a minuet with trio; the minuet and trio are each in the expected binary form. But this symphony is famous for the extraordinary nature of its content rather than the regularity of its structure. The character is on the whole quite dark. The first movement begins in hushed agitation; the first theme enters with an appoggiatura motive that only adds to the unease. The more cheerful second theme, introduced in the relative major, is thoroughly transformed when it is recapitulated in the tonic minor. The development section features the appoggiatura motive, in combinations of unprepared dissonances so striking as to earn them a citation in Arnold Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre of 1911. Even the slow movement, which is in e-flat major, is introspective, and contains some anguished moments. The minuet is thoroughly uncomfortable: one should be able to dance, if only mentally, to a dance movement, and the irregular phrasing frequently leaves the listener on the wrong foot, as it were. The trio heightens the effect by providing a relative model of symmetrical phrasing, which is undone by the minuet’s return. The finale begins with a “Mannheim rocket” (an ascending arpeggio figure), conventional enough except for the reversed dynamics: a soft question receives a loud answer. Compared to the opening of the “Jupiter” symphony, for example, this seems out of character to the point of being impolite. As in the first movement, the lyrical second theme appears first in the relative major, with a noticeable change of character when it is restated in the tonic minor. The development section opens with a remarkable series of notes, stated in bare octaves. All twelve notes of the chromatic scale are used in a space of nineteen notes. The passage features the interval of the diminished seventh, and has the effect of calling one’s sense of tonality into question. The first theme developed thoroughly, using sequence and imitation. A series of modulations eventually leads to c-sharp minor—the tonality most distant from the home key of g minor. The movement ends with a coda so perfunctory as to seem brusque.

Sinfonia concertante, op. 41 Franz Danzi

Franz Ignaz Danzi (1763-1826) was born into a musical family in Mannheim, where his father had settled after leaving Italy. The elder Danzi was a cellist in the famous Mannheim court orchestra under Johann Stamitz, and it was from him that Franz first learned the cello, piano, and voice. His older brother was a violinist and his sister a soprano and composer. Franz himself played in the Mannheim orchestra from age 15, and studied further at the Mannheim School of Music directed by Abbé Vogler. His first compositions were for the new National Theater in Mannheim; he wrote incidental music at least as early as 1782. He moved to Munich in 1783, where, in 1788, he had a pronounced success with his comic opera Die Mitternachtsstunde (The Midnight Hour). He married in 1790, and toured widely for several years with his wife, who was a soprano. After 1798 he accepted a series of Kapellmeister positions, at Munich, Stuttgart, and Karlsruhe. In Stuttgart he developed a close relationship with Carl Maria von Weber. He composed a great deal for the theater, including operas of all varieties, and also choral music, songs, and orchestral music. He is remembered now, however, largely for his chamber music, particularly that for woodwind quintet, a medium of which he was an early exponent.

The Sinfonia concertante, op. 41, one of several concerti Danzi wrote for multiple soloists, dates from about 1814, during the composer’s years in Karlsruhe. It is in the three movements usual with the classical concerto. The first is in sonata form, with double exposition. As is often the case with works for multiple soloists, there is no cadenza. There is, however, plenty of brilliant passage work for the flute and clarinet alike. The Larghetto is a cantabile duet for the solists, accompanied by a reduced orchestra. The finale is a polonaise in rondo form, a type used also by other composers of the period for concerto finales—the last movements of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Weber’s Horn concerto come to mind. This one is a seven-part rondo (ABACABA); the B material is in the dominant key the first time, and in the tonic the second. The C material takes us to the relative minor. There are connecting passages as well, including an orchestral ritornello. But it is the soloists who shine, carrying most of the thematic material, along with some showy, virtuosic displays.

Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome) arr. Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is now remembered almost exclusively for his three orchestral showpieces The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals—but he had other musical bents as well, as the present offering illustrates. After completing studies at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna (1891-1901), Respighi was active for some years both as a string player and pianist. He visited Russia twice in the years 1900-03, studying orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov. Musicology was then in its formative years, and old music was being revived, at least in a scholarly way. Respighi began to take an interest in neglected Italian music of the relatively remote past. In 1913 he settled in Rome, as professor of composition at the Liceo (later Conservatorio) di Santa Cecilia, of which he later served also as director.

Before about 1910, Respighi’s music shows much influence by his teachers and models; later, he began introducing archaic musical elements into his music. His three suites of free arrangements of 16th and 17th Century lute pieces, all titled Ancient Airs and Dances (Antiche Danze ed Arie), represent the logical conclusion of this line of thought. Pines of Rome, though not overtly incorporating such elements, nevertheless benefits from the composer’s work with them. The musical language is tonal, but with modal tinges and characteristically twentieth-century treatments of dissonance. Respighi composed Pines of Rome in 1924. For the American premiere in 1926 he wrote to the New York Philharmonic program annotator, “While in his preceding work, The Fountains of Rome, the composer sought to reproduce by means of tone an impression of Nature, in The Pines of Rome he uses Nature as a point of departure, in order to recall memories and vision. The century-old trees which so characteristically dominate the Roman landscape become witnesses to the principal events in Roman life.” The four movements are described in a preface to the score as follows:

I. The Pines of the Villa Borghese. Children play in the pine groves . . . the dance round in circles, they play at soldiers, marching and fighting, they are wrought up by the own cries like swallows at evening . . . suddenly the scene changes, and II. Pines near a Catacomb. we see shades of the pine-trees fringing the entrance to a catacomb. From the depth rises the sound of mournful psalm-singing, floating through the air like a solemn hymn, and gradually and mysteriously dispersing. III. The Pines of the Janiculum. A quiver runs through the air: the pine-trees of the Janiculum [one of the fabled seven hills of Rome] stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of a full moon. A nightingale is singing. IV. The Pines of the Appian Way. Misty dawn on the Appian Way: solitary pine-trees guarding the magic landscape; the muffled, ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps . . . a fantastic vision of bygone glories: trumpets sound and, in the brilliance of the newly-risen sun, a consular army bursts forth . . . mounting in triumph to the Capitol.

As in the earlier Fountains, Respighi’s orchestration is brilliant and imaginative. Among the many special effects, one might note that some of the celli are required to tune their lowest string down a half step at the end of the third movement, and retune it to normal pitch during the fourth. The score also calls for a gramophone (now replaced by a tape deck), to play the bird songs at the end of the third movement.

Aaron Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man

Born in New York City to immigrant parents, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) first learned the piano from an older sister. He progressed quickly, studying piano with Leopold Wolfsohn, Victor Wittgenstein and Clarence Adler. He studied harmony, counterpoint, and form with Rubin Goldmark, and soon began composing. He spent the years 1920-24 in France at the American Conservatory at Fountainbleu, studying composition under Nadia Boulanger. He returned to Europe several times during the 1920's, hearing music of the leading composers of the era.

His compositions of these early years show a wide range of influences, from Debussy to Jazz, increasingly incorporated into a unique, personal style. Serge Koussevitzky was an important early interpreter and champion of Copland's orchestral music. In the 1930's, Copland began to pursue a more consciously American musical idiom. Though he never pursued an academic career, Copland became very active as a lecturer, and taught at Harvard when Walter Piston was on leave. He wrote a number of articles and two books, What to Listen for in Music and Our New Music (second edition title, The New Music, 1900-1960). His lecture series given as Norton Professor of Poetics as Harvard (1951) was published afterward as Music and Imagination. Not content to rest on his laurels, Copland explored many of the newer musical ideas, including serialism, in the 1950's and '60's.

Fanfare for the Common Man was composed in late 1942 (soon after A Lincoln Portrait), as part of a series of patriotic fanfares commissioned by Eugene Goosens for the Cincinnati Orchestra's 1942-43 season. It was premiered in the spring of 1943. Copland had considered several other titles, all of which related to the then raging Second World War. Copland made his final choice to recognize that it is the common fold who did most and suffered most in that conflict. The work stands apart from the other fanf ares in the commissioned series, and indeed from practically all other fanfares, in its avoidance of clichés. Though built from short motives, it is comparatively lyrical. The intervals of the fourth and fifth are featured, among the more ordinary triad outlines. The thetic (down-beat) rhythmic idea heard in the percussion at the outset reverses the more stereotypical arsic (up-beat) fanfare rhythm, creating a more solemn atmosphere.

A complete and authoritative biography of Copland has recently appeared: Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Man, the Music (New York: Henry Holt, 1999).

Joan Tower - For the Uncommon Woman

Though born in New Rochelle, New York (in 1938), Joan Tower spent her childhood in South America, returning to the US in her mid-teens. She attended Bennington College and Columbia University, eventually earning a DMA in 1978. She studied primarily with Otto Luening and Chou Wen-Chung, but her teachers also included Darius Milhaud, Charles Wuorinen, and Wallingford Riegger. In 1969, Tower founded and became the principal pianist for the Da Capo Chamber Players in New York. Between 1974 and 1980, she received three Composer Scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a MacDowell Colony fellowship, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She has been commissioned by the Koussevitsky Fund and the Naumberg Fund, and was composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony form 1985-87. She has served on the faculty at Bard College since 1972.

Tower's earlier work was intensely serial, but since 1974 has become more lyrical, and is often inspired by images. She has acknowledged the influence of Beethoven and Stravinsky on her compositional approach. Her Piano Concerto (1985) is sub-titled "Homage to Beethoven," and an orchestral work from 1980 is entitled Petroushkates. Among her many works are five for various small brass ensembles (some with percussion) entitled Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, the first of which was premiered in Houston in 1987. The present offering, for large orchestra (which is not called a "fanfare") dates from 1992. Though the harmonic language is thoroughly modern (and rather dissonant), the work indeed shows Stravinskian qualities in it rhythmic treatment, and a Beethovenian concern for motivic aspects. The general hustle and bustle of the piece creates a festive air, accentuated by vivid orchestral colors.

J. Todd Frazier - Revelation through Imagination a prayer of renewal for the new age

A native Houstonian, Todd Frazier studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Samuel Adler and at the Juliard School with David Diamond. Following some additional post-graduate work at Juliard, he returned to Houston to direct the annual American Festival for the Arts program. Recent works include his Second Symphony, "Buffalo Altar," which was commissioned by the Eastman School, and a Guitar Concerto, "Brazos de Dios." Both will be premiered this May on a concert of the Society for the Performing Arts, the former with actor Barry Corbin as narrator, and the latter with Houston guitarist Susan McDonald.

The present offering is the third movement of Frazier's First Symphony (the last movement of which is in progress). It was composed in summer, 1999, for this concert, and reflects the composer's attitude towards the new millennium: it is reflective and meditative. The language is neo-tonal; tone color plays a primary role, with blocks of sound being treated as "sonic objects." Contrary dynamic shading causes these sonic objects to grow out of or fade into each other, creating an effect of movement in acoustical space. The slow tempo and changing meters give a sense of timelessness that is intrinsic to the movement's character.

Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, op. 55

Beethoven's biography is so familiar as to need little retelling. Born in Bonn in 1770, he settled in Vienna in 1792, remaining there until his death in 1827. Recognized as a prodigy, he developed a more powerful style of piano playing than Mozart had cultivated. As a composer, however, he was a comparatively late bloomer, and did not produce anything of lasting importance until he was in his mid-twenties. And, by age twenty-eight, he noticed a progressive hearing loss; his increasing deafness isolated him from musical currents and fads of the day, and forced him to pursue his own path, directed exclusively by his personal muse.

Unlike his predecessors Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven tended to express intensely personal matters through his music. In this, he heralded the Romantic era. His eighth Piano Sonata (Sonate Pathétique), composed in 1798, is generally felt to be an expression of his anguish in the initial stages of his deafness. The Eroica symphony, completed in the summer of 1804 but not premiered until the following spring, expresses a more optimistic view of life. As is well known, Beethoven had originally planned to dedicate the work to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he saw as a liberator of the downtrodden masses. But when Napoleon declared himself Emperor, Beethoven destroyed the original title page, giving the work a new title: Sinfonia eroica ("heroic symphony" in Italian).

Beethoven's first two symphonies were already on a par with the largest symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. Even so, the first hearers of the Eroica could hardly have been prepared for the sheer monumentality of the work. The first movement runs to nearly 700 measures; The principal themes are given expansive presentations in the exposition, and then treated to exhaustive working-out in the development. Beethoven even introduces a new theme in theme in the development, which is restated in the very substantial coda.

The second movement is a funeral march. Beethoven had previously written a "Funeral March for a Dead Hero" as the second movement of his Piano Sonata in A-Flat, op. 26. But whereas the earlier march is gloomy, with repeated notes in dotted rhythms, this one is more lyrical, solemn rather than brooding, altogether noble. The trio changes from C minor to C major, building to a grand climax before returning to the first theme. The return is not simply a restatement, however; Beethoven completely reworks the material as a double fugue, and concludes with an extended coda.

The Scherzo is also of unusual proportions, though cast in the expected form. The Scherzo proper is a binary structure, though the second strain is unusually long and complex. The Trio features the unusual grouping of three horns. Beethoven covers his seams by writing a transitional passage leading to the return of the Scherzo, which is slightly reworked. The coda, for a change, is compact.

The finale is a set of variations; in this, it foreshadows the Ninth Symphony. Beethoven chose for his theme a rather unprepossessing contredanse, which he had used several times before. It appeared in an early set of German dances, and was recycled in his only ballet (Prometheus). And he had already written a set of variations for piano (op. 35). But for the Eroica, he broke with the traditional pattern of theme-and-variations, which Jan LaRue has described as a "musical link sausage," by incorporating free and fugal episodes. The result is a more continuous and cohesive structure. After a brief introduction, Beethoven begins by presenting not the theme itself, but its bass line only; to this he adds first two and then three contrapuntal lines. The result is that the full theme appears as Variation III! A fugal treatment follows after a transition, and then Variation V, which begins in the very remote key of B minor. The next variation transforms the theme into a march (in G minor); this is followed by another fugal section. After a free development section, the theme returns a slower tempo; it is given two variations, but the theme's repeats are written out and themselves varied, so that we get four variations in the time of two. A coda follows, ending the movement and the symphony with a brilliant flourish.

Among the many biographies and studies of Beethoven, one that might especially interest the non-specialist is Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (New York: Schirmer Books, 1998).

"Russian Easter" Overture      Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Russian music was divided in the later Nineteenth Century between the internationalists, among whom Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky were the most prominent, and the Nationalists, chief among whom were the "Mighty Five": Cui, Borodin, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), though the youngest of the group, had the most lasting influence, not only through his compositions and his book on orchestration, but also through his students (who included Ippolitov-Ivanov, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev). Although he had studied the piano as a youngster, he had an otherwise limited musical background, and indeed at first pursued a career as a naval officer. He composed in his spare time, and, despite his lack of real credentials, he was appointed professor of composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1871, resigning his naval commission in 1873. He worked hard to make good his deficiencies, even enrolling in Tchaikovsky's counterpoint class (he said it was the hardest work he ever did), and making himself a consummate orchestrator. He is remembered for his operas (more in Russia than elsewhere), and for orchestral music such as his Russian Easter Overture, Capriccio espagnol, and Sheherazade.

Rimsky-Korsakov composed Russian Easter during the summer of 1888, the same period during which he also completed Sheherazade. According to remarks in his is autobiography, he drew on childhood memories (having grown up near an Orthodox monastery). He also was aware that the popular celebration mixes the sacred and the profane: "the overture contains reminiscences of the ancient prophesy, the Gospel story and a general picture of an Easter service with its 'pagan merry-making.' Do not the flowing beards of the priests and sextons in their white surplices and vestments, singing in Allegro Vivo tempo...take one's imagination back to pagan times? And what about all those Easter eggs, loaves and burning candles....It was this legendary and pagan side of the festival, this transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious rejoicing of Easter Sunday, that I wanted to represent in my overture." The composer went so far as to attach to the published score a program, which consists mainly of excerpts from the Orthodox liturgy for Easter (which is based of course on the Scriptural accounts familiar in all branches of Christianity). The program concludes with additions by Rimsky-Korsakov: "'Resurrexit' ["He is risen"] sang the choirs of angels in heaven to the sound of the trumpets of the archangels and to the noise of the wings of the seraphim. 'Resurrexit' sang the preists in the temples in the midst of clouds of incense and of the light of innumerable candles and the sound of triumphant bells."

Broadly speaking, the overture consists of a slow introduction (which features quintuple meter) and an allegro, in sonata form. But this simple outline is much obscured by sub-sections of contrasting tempo and character, and by insertions of cadenzas for various soloists. In particular, the imitation of a priestly chant by the trombone, supported by a choir of low strings, reminds us of the programmatic nature of the work. And as such, there is relatively little in the way of development; the composer was primarily interested in painting a picture for us. Indeed, so much of the work's effect depends on orchestral color that many of the harmonic effects (with their modal tinges) are would now seem banal, were it not for Rimsky-Korsakov's splendid orchestration.

Lieutenant Kijé Suite      Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) showed great musical talent as a child. After studying piano with his mother, he continued with Reinhold Glière before entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age thirteen. His composition teachers there included Rimsky -Korsakov and Tcherepnin; he also won first prize in piano before graduating. He was fond of keen dissonances and biting sarcasm, and even his earliest compositions raised eyebrows. In 1918 he fled the revolutionary turmoil, reaching the United States via Japan. Among the music composed in the U.S. was his opera The Love for Three Oranges. He spent the years 1920-33 in mainly in Paris, and during this time wrote mostly instrumental music, including symphonies, two of his ten piano sonatas, chamber music, and ballets. During the next two or three years he made several exploratory visits to the Soviet Union, and eventually resettled there in 1936. He was generally treated well by the authorities, and managed to avoid the difficulties in which his younger contemporary, Dmitri Shostakovich, often found himself. Even so, the Central Committee of the Communist Party denounced his music in 1948 (along with that of Shostakovich and Khatchaturian, et. al.). The music composed after his return to his homeland includes his last piano sonatas, the ballet Romeo and Juliet, the oratorio Aleksandr Nevsky, and Peter and the Wolf.

Lieutenant Kijé was Prokofiev's first Soviet commission. The film maker Feinzimmer, based in Leningrad, approached Prokofiev in the summer of 1933, to write incidental music to accompany a film about a soldier who never was. The story, in brief, is as follows: The Tsar mistakenly 'notices' a Lieutenant Kijé on a roll sheet. There is no such person, but none of the other officers is willing to tell the Tsar that he is in error. But the Tsar takes an interest in this figment of his imagination, and the staff scramble to invent details of Kijé's life in answer to the Tsar's inquiries. When His Majesty becomes so interested that he wishes to meet the Lieutenant, however, the game is up, and the conspirators must regretfully report that Kijé has met an untimely but honorable death, and has been duly buried. It is, of course, "The Emperor's New Clothes," but without the revelation at the end. Making fun of the vanquished Tsar must have seemed appropriate at the time, but, in light of the power that Stalin wielded (and the purges of 1937 and after), the irony seems rather grim. In any case, the project appealed to Prokofiev's sense of humor, and he composed the music in a few months time. The films was never realized, but Prokofiev simply extracted the present suite from the score; it has become one of his most-performed and best-liked works.

In light of the story, the movements require little explanation. Troïka refers, in this case, to a particularly Russian sort of sleigh drawn by three horses abreast-that is, the movement is a sleigh ride. At Kijé's burial, we hear bit of the previous movements bass in review, as if in a eulogy, ending fittingly with the music that heralded his birth. The musical materials are throughout typically Prokofievian: clear though often changing tonalities; triadic harmonies, frequently with added notes; and the characteristic dissonances. The orchestration is also colorful, featuring solos for several instruments (from piccolo to double bass, and including a saxophone), military fanfares in the brass, much percussion, and such special effects as the balalaika imitations in the strings in the Troïka.

Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, op. 56 (Scottish)      Felix Mendelssohn

Born into a well-to-do family, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-48) enjoyed the advantages of a sound education and frequent exposure to fine arts and music. As the Mendelssohn household in Berlin often sponsored musical soirées, young Felix hear much music as a child, an participated as pianist in adolescence. Talented also in the visual arts, he chose a career in music, studying composition with Karl Friedrich Zelter. (Nearly forgotten today, Zelter was then well known, and a leader in Berlin's musical life; it is said that Goethe preferred Zelter's setting of his poems to Beethoven's.) The young Mendelssohn was a fine pianist, and began composing before entering his teens. His best early works are the Sinfonias, mostly for string orchestra, and the overture to A Mid-Summer Night's Dream, which he composed at age seventeen. In 1829, at his parents' behest, he undertook an extensive concert tour, on one leg of which he made the first of ten visits to England, where he was well received and was to become very popular. He also traveled to Scotland, and the place left an indelible impression on him. His Fingal's Cave (Hebrides) Overture is one souvenir of this trip, and the first sketches for the Third Symphony date from this period also.

But Mendelssohn was not to return to his sketches and finish the Scottish Symphony for a dozen years. He was a very busy young man: he toured Europe as a pianist (his Fourth, "Italian" Symphony followed a visit there in 1832) and in 1835 he began his tenure as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. This association proved an enormous success for all parties. Mendelssohn raised the standard of orchestral performance, and introduced the mixture of older and newer works that has been a feature of symphonic programming ever since. Associated with Leipzig for most of his adult life, Mendelssohn was to found the Leipzig Conservatory and serve as its first director. He was also vital in rediscovering and reviving the music of another adopted Leipziger-J. S. Bach. He married in 1837, and his growing family-eventually five children-must also have made demands on his time.

By the time he returned to the Scottish sketches, during a less-than-satisfying stint in the Academy of the Arts for King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, Mendelssohn had matured as a composer. (The numbering of Mendelssohn's symphonies reflects the order of their publication; the Third was actually the last of the five to be completed.) This symphony does not paint the Scottish landscape, but rather communicates the character of the country and its people as Mendelssohn had perceived them.

The work is cast in the usual four movements, but, as in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Scherzo is placed second rather than third, and the slow movement therefore is third. The four movements are played without pause, and Mendelssohn uses various devices to meld them together without sacrificing their separate characters and identities. The Allegro un poco agitato of the first movement is in a straight-forward sonata form, with two restless but lyrical themes, each in a minor key. This is framed by an Andante con moto that serves as an introduction and returns (abridged) to act both as an epilogue to the first movement and as a bridge to the second. The scherzo, the most obviously Scottish of the four movements, represents the dance in the symphonic cycle, but is not a descendant of the triple-metered minuet. Instead, Mendelssohn gives us a lively, duple-meter piece that recalls the Highland Fling or a Scottish reel. The movement is not in the traditional ternary form (Scherzo-Trio-Scherzo), but in a modified sort of sonata form. The third movement is lyrical and somewhat introverted, with some dark, quasi-funeral march episodes. The final movement, Allegro vivacissimo, follows immediately, changing the mood abruptly. It is interesting that in additional notes Mendelssohn left but did not include in the published score, he further characterized this movement as "Allegro Guerriero" (warlike allegro)-the same marking Max Bruch later chose for the final movement of his Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra. This movement is also in sonata form, with a first theme in a minor, and a contrasting theme in C major (which is transformed to the minor mode in the recapitulation). But this movement is not the finale; for that purpose Mendelssohn provides an epilogue, Allegro maestoso assai, which recalls the 6/8 meter of the first movement but is thematically independent. This epilogue is a highly unusual, perhaps unique formal twist in symphonic music; perhaps it represents the patina imparted by the passage of time to Mendelssohn's memories of Scotland. At any rate, it introduces a new idea, in A Major, which is skillfully built to a rich, warm conclusion-a coda not to the fourth movement alone, but to the Symphony as a whole.