Program Notes (VI)

Here follows the last of my series of program notes for Georgia Sinfonia concerts, and, I think, the one of which I am proudest.  This was for a program of three serenades:

What is a Serenade?

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary offers two definitions: “1) a complimentary vocal or instrumental performance, especially one given outdoors at night for a woman being courted, or a work so performed; 2) an instrumental composition in several movements, written for a small ensemble, and midway between the suite and the symphony in style.”  The first definition refers to a function; the second to a form.  The earliest written serenades (dating from the 1600s) were functional; however, by Mozart’s time, the term referred equally to the function and the form.  The following quote from the Wiener Theater-Almanach of 1794 provides the following vivid description of how serenades were performed and used:

"On fine summer nights, you may come upon serenades in the streets at all hours.  They are not, as in Italy, a mere matter of a singer and a guitar.  Here serenades are not used for declarations of love, for which the Viennese have better opportunities.  Such night music may be given to a trio or a quartet of wind instruments and works of some extent may be played."

These “works of some extent” were often written on commission from a noble patron for a festive occasion, and featured a light, entertaining compositional style, containing as many as ten movements, many of them minuets and marches.  And the scoring ranged from the trios and quartets mentioned by our Viennese correspondent to full orchestras.

By the nineteenth century, the functional definition of the serenade had largely given way to the formal.  Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Elgar, Richard Strauss and others wrote works they called serenades - implying a pattern with one or more movements more organized and developed than those in a suite, but with musical content less weighty than in a symphony.  In our own time, we have had serenades from composers as diverse as Stravinsky (for piano solo), Schoenberg (for 2 clarinets, string trio, guitar and mandolin), Vaughan Williams (for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra, on words of Shakespeare) and Britten (for tenor, horn and strings).  Clearly, a serenade is whatever its composer makes it - but the common thread seems to be a certain calm associated with the evening, whence came its name, from the Latin "serenus" - serene.

On our program we present three Serenades, one for strings alone, one for winds alone, and one combining the two.


TCHAIKOVSKY: Serenade for strings in C major, Opus 48

Tchaikovsky composed his only Serenade in the autumn of 1880, at Kamenka, his sister Sasha’s estate in the Ukraine.  An exceptionally hypersensitive man (even by the standards of most musicians!), Tchaikovsky had only three years previously suffered a complete nervous breakdown, as a result of a disastrous marriage to a woman he couldn’t love but who threatened suicide if he didn’t marry her.  Emotionally ravaged, he sought relief in writing works of a lighter nature than his symphonies.  During this period he produced his four orchestral suites, his “Capriccio Italien,” and possibly his most popular (and notorious) work, the “1812 Overture,” written at exactly the same time as the Serenade.  Writing in October 1880 to his friend and patron, the widow Nadejda von Meck, Tchaikovsky described his latest compositions thus: “You can imagine that my Muse has been very generous when I tell you that I have written two works very rapidly: a Festival Overture for the Exhibition and a Serenade in four movements for string orchestra.  The Overture will be very noisy.  I wrote it without much warmth of enthusiasm; therefore it has no great artistic value.  The Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from an inward impulse; I felt it and venture to hope that it is not without the qualities of a work of art.”  And indeed it stands as perhaps Tchaikovsky’s finest work written between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies.

The first movement (entitled “Piece in the form of a Sonatina” in reference to its omitting the development section of the usual exposition-development-recapitulation sequence of the sonata form) frames, within a slow, solemn opening and closing, a bubbling fast section which is an homage to Mozart, his favorite composer; again writing to Madame von Meck, he admitted that “it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model.”  The second movement is the popular “Waltz” that is often played as a separate piece out of context.  The third movement is a rare example of an elegy in a major key; and the finale - which also features a slow introduction, based on a Russian folksong - brings back at its close the opening of the entire Serenade, only to accelerate the tempo and convert it back into the fast main theme of the finale!


MOZART: Serenade in C minor, K. 388

Mozart left about a dozen serenades, most of them orchestral; however, there are two for strings alone (including the most famous work in the genre, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”) and three for winds.  He also left at least 20 works in the related form of the divertimento (a genre whose primary difference from the serenade seems to be its function, the one being indoor background music, the other being outdoor).  Again, the divertimenti feature a variety of performing ensembles; some are orchestral, some for strings only; at least eight are for winds.  But whereas Mozart’s wind divertimenti are light, pleasant, tuneful pieces which admirably fulfill their purpose as dinner music, the three wind serenades (K. 361 for 13 winds, and K. 375 and K. 388 for wind octet) are something else altogether - works of real substance whose expressive variety and instrumental range are without parallel in wind music.  In particular, the last of them, K. 388, can be regarded as a masterpiece on the same level as any other of his mature chamber pieces.  It is a commentary on its quality that Mozart himself arranged it five or six years later for string quintet (K. 406), the first of five masterpieces in that form.  It has been suggested, by Donald Mitchell in “The Mozart Companion,” that Mozart’s reason for doing so was a desire to “stress his own evaluation of the work - even to leave it in a less ‘occasional’ form” (since serenades, by and large, were seen by musicians and the public as ephemeral music, of no more importance than the latest popular hit today).

All we know of the circumstances of its composition is contained in a letter Mozart wrote to his father on July 27, 1782, from Vienna: he “had to compose a Nacht Musique [night music] quickly, one for woodwinds alone...”  Presumably it was written on commission; if so, one can only wonder at its intended recipients’ reaction to it, for it is surely the most serious, the darkest, most dramatic work ever to be penned in the genre of the serenade.  Mozart seldom used minor keys in his “serious” compositions (only two out of 41 symphonies, two out of 27 piano concertos, and two out of 23 quartets, for example, boast minor keys), so to do so in a serenade is a startling innovation.  Even the minuet is rather grim-sounding, an effect intensified by the use of such learned contrapuntal devices as the canon (round) - the opening tune in the oboes is repeated note-for-note by the bassoons; later, in the Trio for oboes and bassoons alone, the second oboe answers the first with the same tune upside-down, and the bassoons do likewise!  The last movement is a theme with eight variations, a form employed frequently by Mozart to end large-scale works, especially those in a minor key - the Piano Concerto in C minor (K. 491) and the Quartet in D minor (K. 421) are other great examples.  The seriousness of the Serenade is finally dispelled in the last variation, in C major.


BRAHMS: Serenade No. 2 in A major, Op. 16

In 1857, the 24-year-old Johannes Brahms accepted his first official position as a musician, at the court of Detmold, 40 miles southwest of Hanover.  For three years, for the last three months of each year he was Detmold Court Pianist, conductor of the local choral society, and piano teacher for the music-loving Princess Frederika.  His salary for three months could support his modest lifestyle for a whole year; thus he had plenty of time for composing.  Best of all, the court had a good orchestra which Brahms had many opportunities to conduct; therefore he gained invaluable practical knowledge working with, and writing for, an orchestra.  The two Serenades for orchestra were the direct result of this experience.  Written, respecitvely, in 1858 and 1859, they are Brahms’ first purely orchestral works - only his First Piano Concerto, finished in 1857, preceded them.

This was perhaps the happiest time in Brahms’ life, and the two Serenades reflect this.  Both works exhibit a bucolic charm, an unbuttoned freshness which Brahms would never quite recapture in his orchestral music.  He would not call them symphonies, despite their symphonic proportions, for this very reason - he felt that symphonic music ought to be sober and monumental.  (Brahms was to be forty before he dared write his first symphony.)  The First Serenade, in D major, is the more expansive of the two, in six movements, scored for full orchestra.  The Second, in contrast, is more introverted, has greater depth and intimacy - though Brahms compensates in the second movement with one of his most vivacious scherzos.  Perhaps the more restrained quality is caused by the dark scoring, in which violins are omitted from the orchestra.  Neither are there trumpets or drums - only pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns, plus violas, cellos and basses.  The majority of the melodic material is given to the winds, and the effect is as if we are hearing a woodwind ensemble to which the lower strings have, almost unaccountably, been added.

The first performance of the Second Serenade was given in Brahms’ native Hamburg, with the composer conducting, on February 10, 1860 - one month before the first performance of the First Serenade (in Hanover, conducted by Brahms’ friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim).  Two years later, the first performance of a Brahms orchestral work was given anywhere outside of the northern German cities Brahms was personally associated with, in, of all places, New York City!  Carl Bergmann conducted the New York Philharmonic (America’s oldest professional orchestra, then all of 20 years old) in this same Second Serenade, on February 1, 1862 - in a country entering its second year of civil war.

Program Notes (V)

The next installment of my program notes series.  For this one, a chamber music concert in 1999, I had to rework an earlier program note I had written for a Handel concerto grosso.

Handel: Concerto Grosso in G major, Op. 6, No. 1

The concerto grosso was one of several archetypal Baroque instrumental forms.  Originated in Italy during the seventeenth century, and perfected by Arcangelo Corelli, the supreme example of the form is Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos.  Originally the word “concerto” merely indicated a type of composition where a voice would sing “in concert” with a bass instrument for accompaniment, in contrast to most earlier types of vocal composition, which were unaccompanied by instruments.  Eventually this idea was applied to strictly instrumental compositions, with the voice replaced by a treble instrument.  When more treble instruments were added, it became a “concerto grosso” (literally, “large concerto”).  In Corelli’s scheme, a concerto grosso had four movements, in the pattern slow-fast-slow-fast.

There are two sets of concerti grossi (which, typically, were published in sets of six or twelve) bearing Handel’s name: the six of Opus 3, and the twelve of Opus 6, in addition to several independent ones.  Of the two sets, the Opus 6 concertos are far better known, being on a somewhat grander scale, and closer to traditional Italian models, scored for strings only.  Most of them were also newly-composed for the purpose.  It was an accepted practice of the time for a composer to reuse music conceived in another medium, and a few of the Opus 6 concertos do indeed borrow from earlier compositions.  The Opus 3 set, however, consists entirely of borrowings; moreover, they were compiled and arranged not by Handel himself but by his publisher, John Walsh, and rather clumsily done.  The Opus 6 set was Handel’s answer; he apparently wished to have an authentic set of his concertos before the public.  The first of the series, in G major, does not follow the traditional Corellian scheme outlined above; it is in five movements, only one of which is slow.  It is a fittingly vigorous introduction to a splendid set of works, which, collectively, contain some of Handel’s finest instrumental writing.

Mozart: String Quartet in G major, K. 156

Few composers can have had such a cosmopolitan upbringing as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  From the time his phenomenal gifts were discovered as a boy of seven, through his teenage years, he toured all of Western Europe with his family, entertaining kings, queens, princes and even a Pope.  He visited Italy no less than three times while in his teens.  The first journey was lengthy, and designed, like all his prior trips, to showcase his talents; but the second and third trips were shorter, and designed to fulfill specific commisions - for operas, in Milan.  For his father and manager, Leopold Mozart, knew that time was running out; his son wasn’t going to stay a child prodigy forever, and parading him thus would soon cease to be lucrative.  On the other hand, to establish him as a major operatic composer might (and indeed, did, for a while) pay dividends.

So in the fall of 1772 we find the sixteen-year-old Mozart in Milan with his father, writing his opera “Lucia Silla” for the carnival season of 1773.  But “to while away the time,” as Leopold put it in a letter back home, on the journey itself, Mozart wrote his first set of six string quartets.  (Not his first actual quartet, however; he wrote a single one, K. 80, in 1770.)  That he planned them as a set is evident in their sequence of keys - D major, G major, C major, F major, B-Flat major, and E-Flat major, each successive quartet’s key a fifth lower - and in the fast-slow-fast three-movement pattern used for each quartet.  Two of the quartets (including the second one, performed here) finish with a minuet.  Mozart took as his models the quartets of Giovanni Battista Sammartini, the most esteemed composer in Milan at the time.  The works do not aim for the depth and profundity characteristic of the later quartets of Mozart and Haydn; they aim to entertain, and do so admirably.

Debussy: "Golliwog's Cakewalk"

In 1908, Claude Debussy published his suite for piano, “Children’s Corner,” inspired by and dedicated to his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Chouchou, “with fond apologies from her father for what follows.”  The suite’s title, and the titles of its individual movements, are in English, possibly representing a tip of the hat to the English governess from whom Debussy’s tiny daughter was picking up English mannerisms!  The last piece of the set is the famous “Golliwog’s Cake-Walk.”

The music doesn’t require much explanation - it’s a delightful romp influenced by the rhythms of ragtime, which was just being discovered in Europe at the time - but perhaps the title does.  Golliwogs were fashionable children’s toys, the Beanie Babies of their time, originating as an African-American doll in the highly successful children’s stories of the American-born illustrator Florence Upton.  Chouchou owned a Golliwog, and in the piece one can imagine the Debussy daughter’s doll stumbling to the strains of the American dance - the cakewalk, another name for ragtime.

Kreisler: "Schön Rosmarin" and "Tambourin Chinois"

Fritz Kreisler was possibly the most beloved violinist of the earlier half of this century - in an age that encompassed the careers of many legendary violinists, from Eugène Ysaÿe to Heifetz and the young Yehudi Menuhin.  He pioneered in the use of vibrato as a constant coloring, giving an unparalleled sweetness to the tone (most violinists before Kreisler used vibrato only sparingly).  He was the first “celebrity” instrumentalist to record extensively; beginning in 1910, he cut hundreds of discs, bringing the elegance and charm of his performances into living rooms across the world.  His discography (all of which is currently available on CD) includes concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Paganini, which have long been highly prized by collectors; and he was the first to record the complete Beethoven violin sonatas, in the 1930s.

All this largess notwithstanding, Kreisler is best remembered today (as he was best loved in his own time) for the many short salon pieces which he wrote to enhance his repertoire (for recording as well as concerts, since they fit nicely within the four-minute time limitation of a 78-rpm record!) - such as “Liebesleid” (Love’s Sorrow), “Liebesfreud” (Love’s Joy), and “Caprice viennois” - pieces which perfectly capture the essence of his native Vienna, with its laid-back easy grace.  Many of them feature lilting waltz rhythms, including “Schön Rosmarin” (Fair Rosemary), performed here.  And “Tambourin Chinois” might be described as an Oriental trinket seen in a Viennese shop-window.

Program Notes (IV)

The next installment of my program notes series (for a concert of works for strings only):

Mendelssohn: Sinfonia No. 8 in D major

Felix Mendelssohn, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart before him, was a musically precocious child.  Unlike Mozart, he had the good fortune to be born into a wealthy family who was able to nurture his gifts at a steady, appropriate rate of speed (Leopold Mozart, by contrast, shamelessly exploited his son, amassing through him a great deal of wealth).  Beginning at the age of eleven, Mendelssohn began to write copious amounts of music, from songs and piano pieces to chamber and orchestral works - which his proud parents would give a hearing by hosting musicales in their spacious Berlin home, inviting prominent people and musicians.  Sometimes a small orchestra would be engaged for Felix to conduct, although he was so small he had to stand on a stool to be seen.  These experiences offered the boy a unique opportunity for practical experimentation; few composers have had the chance of trying out so young the actual sound of their music.  By the time he was sixteen (when he wrote his Octet for Strings, Op. 20, his first certifiable masterpiece, and one of his finest works altogether), he had developed a fully mature style.

Among the works that Mendelssohn wrote for the home musicales is a series of Sinfonias, or symphonies, for string orchestra - thirteen in all, dating from 1821 to 1823, which taken as a whole demonstrate perhaps better than any other genre Mendelssohn’s musical development.  The first six symphonies are short and rather simple, based on Classical models, but beginning with No. 7 the works increase in scope and depth.  No. 8, performed here, was written in November 1822 (just three months short of the composer’s fourteenth birthday), after the return of the Mendelssohn family from a trip to Switzerland.  Mendelssohn evidently thought well enough of this symphony that he later added wind parts to it, thus producing his first fully orchestral work.



Elgar: Serenade in E minor, Op. 20

Sir Edward Elgar is generally considered the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell, who died over two hundred years before Elgar began producing the works upon which his reputation rests.  Among these are the “Enigma” Variations, the first great British orchestral work; the two symphonies, likewise the first great British symphonies; and “The Dream of Gerontius,” considered the finest oratorio written by an Englishman.

He was also a late bloomer.  The son of a piano tuner in Worceter, by age thirty he had achieved a strictly local reputation as a freelance musician - violinist, organist, teacher, conductor, but not as a composer; most of his attempts to write large-scale works foundered.  Then in 1889 occured the most significant event in his creative life - his marriage to Alice Roberts, who had come to him for piano lessons three years before.  Her support seemed to foster creative abilities that could not function without it; it is significant that his last large-scale work, the Cello Concerto, was written just before her death - fourteen years before his own.

The Serenade for Strings was written in 1892 (and published the next year - the first Elgar full score in print); after its completion, Elgar noted in a page of his diary, “Braut [his pet name for his wife] helped a great deal to make these little tunes.”  The “little tunes” form a charming three-movement suite, redolent of the English countryside Elgar loved.  It begins with a gently rocking rhythm in the violas that pervades much of the first movement, which then returns at the very end of the Serenade.



Vivaldi: Concerto in B minor, Op. 3, No. 10

Antonio Vivaldi is unquestionably the most original and influential Italian composer of his generation, especially in the field of the concerto, a genre to which he contributed over 500 items.  Yet he is sometimes uncharitably dismissed as the composer who wrote the same concerto 500 times over!  This dismissal surely is based on the idea that someone who wrote so much music couldn’t be any good, rather than acquaintance with the music itself.  Yes, the works are variable in quality (as with any composer), but the finest of them possess a freshness of invention, a deftness of scoring, and a rhythmic vitality second to none.  Some of them also contain descriptive titles or programmatic elements, unusual in orchestral music of the Baroque (for example, the famous “Four Seasons” set of violin concertos).

Vivaldi published eight sets of concertos himself.  The first such, possibly the most influential music publication of the first half of the 18th century, was his set of twelve concertos, Opus 3, collectively entitled “L’Estro Armonico” (Harmonic Inspiration).  Bach knew them, and transcribed several of them for harpsichord or organ solo; they served as models for his own violin and harpsichord concertos.  The set consists of four concertos for one violin and strings, four for two violins and four for four violins.  No. 10 of the set is the best-known of the ones for four violins, and was transcribed, most ingeniously, by Bach for four harpsichords and strings!  Particularly effective is a passage in the second, slow movement, where each of the four solo violins arpeggiates the same chord, but in a different pattern.



Britten: Simple Symphony for strings, Op. 4

The story of Benjamin Britten’s “Simple Symphony” is best told in the composer’s own words, as excerpted from a liner note to a 1956 recording by the Decca Record Co., Ltd.:

“Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy.  He was called Britten mi., his initials were E.B., his age was nine, and his locker number was seventeen.  He was quite an ordinary little boy...  But there was one curious thing about this boy: he wrote music.  He wrote lots of it, reams and reams of it.  I don’t really know when he had time to do it.  In those days, long ago, prep school boys didn’t have much free time; the day started with early work at 7:30, and ended with prayers at 8 [p.m.] - and the hours in between were fully organized.  Still there were odd moments in bed, there were half holidays and Sundays too, and somehow these reams and reams got written.  And they are still lying in an old cupboard to this day - String Quartets (six of them), twelve piano sonatas; dozens of songs; sonatas for violin, sonatas for viola and cello too; suites, waltzes, rondos, fantasies, variations; a tone-poem 'Chaos and Cosmos'...all the opus numbers from 1 to 100 were filled (and catalogued) by the time Britten mi. was fourteen.

“Of course they aren’t very good, these works; inspiration didn’t always run very high, and the workmanship wasn’t always academically sound...besides, for the sake of neatness, every piece had to end precisely at the bottom of the right-hand page, which doesn’t always lead to a satisfactory conclusion.  No, I’m afraid they aren’t very great; but when Benjamin Britten, a proud young composer of twenty (who’d already had a work broadcast) came along and looked in this cupboard, he found some of them not too uninteresting; and so, rescoring them for strings, changing bits here and there, and making them more fit for general consumption, he turned them into a 'Simple Symphony,' and here it is.”

Program Notes (III)

Here's the next installment of my program-note writing:

Fauré: Masques et Bergamasques - Suite, Op. 112

Gabriel Fauré could almost be considered the French Schubert.  As Schubert was the greatest German composer of songs, so was Fauré the greatest French; indeed, both would be considered immortals had they written nothing else.  Both also left us wonderful piano and chamber music.  Both posessed prodigious melodic invention, and both were quite daring in their use of harmony.  Both also tended to shy away from orchestral writing.  Schubert’s purely orchestral output, the symphonies, while masterly, quantitatively represent a tiny fraction of his total life’s work.  Fauré, likewise, left little for the orchestra, and he withdrew much of what he did write (including two symphonies and a violin concerto).  Nevertheless, his orchestral writing has substance; his symphonic masterpiece is perhaps the suite he drew from incidental music for Maeterlinck’s "Pelléas et Mélisande."

His last orchestral work, the suite "Masques et Bergamasques," has its origin in a theater piece with the same title, assembled for performance at Monte Carlo in April 1919 from various earlier compositions, both vocal and instrumental, some already in print.  The published suite contains four pieces, all of them otherwise unpublished at the time.  Of these, the Ouverture and Menuet use thematic material from much earlier pieces, while the Gavotte is lifted almost verbatim from the first of the withdrawn symphonies.  Only the Pastorale is original, Fauré’s final farewell to the orchestra.

The original program for "Masques et Bergamasques" is as follows:

“The characters Harlequin, Gilles and Colombine, whose task is usually to amuse the aristocratic audience, take their turn at being spectators at a ‘fête galante’ on the island of Cythera.  The lords and ladies who as a rule applaud their efforts now unwittingly provide them with entertainment by their coquettish behavior.”



Debussy: Petite Suite

Claude Debussy is generally regarded as one of the great innovators in musical history; his mature works are remarkably independent of traditional norms in form, harmony and coloring.  Among musicians, his name has become virtually synonymous with Impressionism – despite the fact that Debussy disliked the term; he felt it was misused (as undoubtedly it was).  His music, like the works of the Impressionist painters and poets, expresses Romantic ideals (such as emphasis on mood and atmosphere) through modern-sounding means.  Thus, Impressionism can be seen as a blend of Romanticism and modernism.

That the Romanticism came first is evident in the Petite Suite, one of the earliest works of Debussy that is still in general circulation.  Originally written as a piano duet, it was first performed in March 1889 by the 26-year old composer with his future publisher, Jacques Durand.  It achieved great popularity, which continues unabated to this day, in the 1907 orchestration by Henri Busser, a friend of Debussy and himself a highly regarded composer and conductor (he held a conducting post at the Paris Opera from 1905 to 1939).  There is little evidence of the mature Debussy style, but it is nevertheless a work of great charm which shows, through its tunefulness and the individuality of its melodies, what a successful composer of light music he could have become, if he had not been called on a different path.  And one can see glimmerings of Debussy’s future preoccupations: in the first of its four movements, "En bateau" (Sailing), we see the beginnings of a fascination with the sonic depiction of water, which was to haunt Debussy all his life – reaching its fullest fruition in the orchestral suite "La Mer."



Ravel: Introduction and Allegro

Despite its origins in the days of antiquity, the harp did not come into its own as an orchestral instrument until the 19th century.  In 1810, a French piano builder, Sebasten Erard, patented the modern pedal harp.  Unlike earlier harps, it was capable of playing in all the keys, and thus the way was paved for its exploitation within the orchestra – a process begun by another Frenchman, Hector Berlioz, that master of orchestration, with his "Symphonie fantastique" of 1830.

Maurice Ravel had an intuitive understanding of the harp’s potential.  Himself a master orchestrator (the usually-heard version of Moussorgsky’s "Pictures at an Exhibition," originally for piano solo, is Ravel’s orchestration), he used the harp effectively in every one of his orchestral scores.  But his most famous work featuring the instrument is the Introduction and Allegro, written in 1905 for the harpist Micheline Kahn.  Scored originally for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet, it has been regarded as a miniature harp concerto in one movement, brilliantly written for the harp and requiring a virtuoso technique, complete with a solo cadenza towards the close.  It is frequently performed thus, with an expanded string section.  However, there is a skillfully achieved balance between the harp and the ensemble, with equal sharing of melodies (often the harp plays an accompanying role) more characteristic of chamber music.  Which is it – concerto or chamber work?  The truth is, it straddles both worlds.  In keeping with this idea, we present a performance in which certain portions are played by solo strings, and others by the full ensemble.

It is interesting to note that, in the first commercial recording of the work (in 1923, for Columbia, featuring the harpist Gwendolyn Mason, and now available on CD), this dichotomy was reinforced by the work being called “Septet” on the label, yet it also featured a conductor – Ravel himself!



Gounod: Symphony No. 1 in D Major

It is the fate of many composers to be remembered for only a handful of pieces.  Charles Gounod, though greatly popular and influential in his day, is no exception.  Ever torn between the church and the theater (as a young man he studied for the priesthood), he wrote copiously in both sacred and secular vocal styles; yet we have, in the active repertory, only the “Ave Maria” (based on Bach’s first Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier) and “O Divine Redeemer” on the one hand, and the operas "Faust" and "Roméo et Juliette" on the other.

Gounod, in common with many French composers of his generation, wrote little purely instrumental music; French public musical life during the 19th century revolved almost exclusively around the opera, and concert music was not a commercially viable proposition.  The only instrumental piece of Gounod that is remembered is the “Funeral March of a Marionette” (used by Alfred Hitchcock for many years as the theme for his TV series).  Yet he also wrote two symphonies, three string quartets and a delightful Petite Symphonie for double wind quintet.  These works show modest but unfailing skill in the handling of unpretentious material in traditional forms.

The First Symphony was written in the last months of 1854, as an antidote to the depression that Gounod had lately suffered over the failure of his latest opera, "La nonne sanglate."  After disappointment of the theater it seems to have been a relief for him to write music that had no other aim than his own satisfaction.  As with Bizet’s youthful symphony written the next year, influences of Haydn and early Beethoven are abundant; the Andante has a slyly contrived little fugue and, after a slow introduction, the Finale is of Mendelssohnian vivacity. The work was much appreciated by its first hearers in 1855, and Gounod was encouraged by its welcome to write a successor, his Second Symphony in E-Flat, the following year.

Program Notes (II)

Continuing my series of program note writing, above is shown the second Georgia Sinfonia concert for which I provided these.  Michael Kurth, who since 1994 has been a member of the Atlanta Symphony bass section, wrote his own program note for his piece, which I do not feel authorized to reproduce here, but here
are my notes for the other three works on the program:



Handel: Concerto Grosso in D minor, Op. 3, No. 5

The concerto grosso was the most highly developed of Baroque orchestral forms.  Originated in Italy during the seventeenth century, and perfected by Arcangelo Corelli, the supreme example of the form is Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos.  It is based on the principle of contrast - alternating the use of a large group of instruments, the concerto grosso (literally, “large ensemble”), with a smaller group, the concertino.  The later Classical concerto, pitting a solo instrument against the orchestra, was the logical successor to the concerto grosso.

There are two sets of concerti grossi (which, typically, were published in sets of six or twelve) bearing Handel’s name: the six of Opus 3, and the twelve of Opus 6, in addition to several independent ones.  Of the two sets, the Opus 6 concertos are far better known, being on a somewhat grander scale, and closer to traditional Italian models, scored for strings only.  Most of them were also newly-composed for the purpose.  It was an accepted practice of the time for a composer to reuse music conceived in another medium, and a few of the Opus 6 concertos do indeed borrow from earlier compositions.  The Opus 3 set, however, consists entirely of borrowings; moreover, they were compiled and arranged not by Handel himself but by his publisher, John Walsh (though with Handel’s approval).  It is a testament to Handel’s genius that the freshness of his invention shines through Walsh’s sometimes clumsy handling of the scores.

The Opus 3 concertos came to be known as the “Oboe Concertos” because the scoring adds oboes and bassoons to the strings of the Italian concerto grosso.  The fifth of them is atypical of the concerto grosso form, having no solo passages.  It is closer in style to an overture; in fact, the first movement was lifted verbatim from the overture to Handel’s second Chandos Anthem, “In the Lord I Put My Trust.”   Many years later, Sir Edward Elgar made a transcription of this overture for full symphony orchestra.



Holst: Brook Green Suite, for string orchestra

The name of Gustav Holst is so inextricably associated in the public’s mind with that of his most famous composition, the orchestral suite The Planets, that both the man and his many other accomplishments have become overshadowed.  A person of wide-ranging interests, from Eastern philosophy and astrology (the impetus behind The Planets) to English folk song (in which his friend, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, undertook pioneering research), Holst believed passionately in music as a form of human communication.  This belief led him to greatly enrich the repertoire of music for amateurs, both vocal and instrumental.  Imogen Holst, the composer’s daughter, has said that “it is characteristic of my father that the pieces he wrote for amateurs should sound equally at home when played by learners in a school-room as by professionals in a concert hall.”

Holst found his calling as a schoolteacher; from 1905 until his death he was the music director at St. Paul’s Girls’ School in Brook Green, London.  For the string orchestra at this school, he wrote the St. Paul’s Suite in 1913, and its lesser-known companion, the Brook Green Suite, in 1933.  Imogen Holst (herself a St. Paul’s alumnus) has described the latter work thus: “The short Prelude is founded on the descending scale of C major.  In the slow Air the flowing lines of melody are a link between the language of English folk song and the enharmonic counterpoint of my father’s last works.  The Dance, a cheerful jig, borrows a puppet show’s tune that he once heard during a holiday in Sicily.”

(I should credit my source here for Imogen Holst's comments, as I did not on the original program note: they come from the liner note to the Lyrita LP of her conducting the English Chamber Orchestra in this and four other of her father's works, SRCS 34).



Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C, K. 551, “Jupiter”

Mozart’s last three, and finest, symphonies - No. 39 in E-Flat, K. 543, No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and No. 41 in C, K. 551 - were all written during the summer of 1788, as were two piano trios, a piano sonata, and a violin sonata!  The reason for this burst of productivity seems, surmises Maynard Solomon in his wonderful recent (1995) biography of the composer, to stem from Mozart’s pressing financial needs.  From 1782 to 1786 his income came largely from a series of subscription concerts he gave, performing his own piano concertos (he wrote no less than fifteen during this period), then he turned his hand to opera with The Marriage of Figaro in 1786 and Don Giovanni in 1787.  But these operatic ventures, while reasonably successful in their own right, did not bring the commissions for more operas as he had hoped.  So in the summer of 1788 he scheduled a series of subscription concerts, about which little is known, since no documentary evidence about them has survived.  But it seems likely that the new symphonies, and perhaps the trios, were intended for them.  It is also known that Mozart tentatively planned a London tour which did not materialize; perhaps, like Haydn a few years later, he hoped to capitalize on the popularity of his symphonies there.

London, in fact, was the origin of the nickname “Jupiter” given to the Symphony in C, K. 551; apparently the sobriquet was coined by Haydn’s sponsor, the violinist and conductor Johann Peter Salomon, and the nickname appeared on British concert programs from 1819 on.  Certainly the pomp and circumstance reflected in the first movement, with its use of martial rhythms, trumpets and drums, evoke images of nobility, even of Olympian grandeur.  Truly awe-inspiring is the finale, in which five separate themes can be discerned, all brought together and sounded simultaneously during the amazing fugue that forms the final coda.

Program Notes (I)

Back in 1998-99, I was active in a local chamber orchestra, the Georgia Sinfonia, as a writer of program notes for concerts (and, when the repertoire required it, as continuo harpsichordist).  I have decided to perpetuate my program-note writing by means of this blog, an idea given to me by Satyr when he told me some time ago how he enjoys my writing about music and musicians no less than my record transfers.  I hope the rest of you will agree.  Here is the first Georgia Sinfonia program for which I wrote notes:

And below are reprinted the program notes themselves:


Brahms: Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, for clarinet and strings

Johannes Brahms, although an indisputable master of orchestration, never felt truly comfortable writing for instruments other than his own, the piano.  In maturity, even while writing the four symphonies which became, and remain, the finest since Beethoven’s, he never quite gave the same importance to instrumental color as to harmony, counterpoint, or form.  Nor, with his rather prudish, severe North German temperament, did he revel in the sensuality of sheer sound as did, say, Tchaikovsky.  That is, until he heard Richard Mühlfeld, clarinettist with the Meiningen Orchestra (which Brahms conducted regularly), play the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in March 1891.  Captivated by the darkly singing quality of the instrument in Mühlfeld’s hands, he befriended the clarinettist, nicknaming him “Fräulein Klarinette” - Miss Clarinet - suggesting unequivocally that Brahms had found an inspiration from the instrument that matched in intensity those previously given to him by the women in his life.

His last four chamber works would feature the clarinet.  First came the Clarinet Trio (clarinet, cello and piano), then what he called “a far greater folly,” the Quintet for clarinet and strings, both written in the summer of 1891.  Three years later came the two sonatas for clarinet and piano.  The Quintet, in fact, turned out to be Brahms’ last work involving more than two performers; after it, there were only the piano pieces of Opp. 116-119, the clarinet sonatas, the Four Serious Songs, and the chorale preludes for organ of Op. 122.  Thus the Quintet can be seen as Brahms’ swan song among his large-scale works.  In his splendid recent (1997) biography of the composer, Jan Swafford states that “the music so clearly looks back on lost love with a distillation of Brahmsian yearning...its beginning a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal melancholy over the whole piece.”  It is formally loosely modelled on Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet; both works have as a concluding movement a theme and variations.


Weber: Adagio and Rondo, for 2 clarinets, 2 horns and 2 bassoons

Among the instrumental works of Carl Maria von Weber, a conspicuous place is given to music for wind instruments.  There are concertos for clarinet, bassoon and horn, in addition to a series of pieces for wind ensembles.  Most of the latter were composed for Prince Carl Friedrich of Löwenstein-Wertheim, an enthusiast for wind ensemble music whom Weber met while he was in the employ of the Duke of Württemberg, from 1806 to 1810.  This ensemble music is relatively little known (it is not listed in Otto Jahn’s thematic catalog of Weber’s works), having been published only beginning in 1970, after languishing in the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris for over a century.

The Adagio in E-Flat is dated July 6, 1808; the Rondo in B-Flat was written earlier, completed June 24 of the same year.  One might be forgiven for assuming that it might have formed two movements of a larger work in B-Flat, but in fact the two-part slow-fast formation was a favorite with Weber.  He used it for several other works, including the well-known "Andante and Hungarian Rondo" for viola and orchestra (later rewritten for bassoon).

Beethoven: Sextet in E-Flat for winds, Op. 71

Although bearing the opus number 71 (and therefore, standing between the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies in Beethoven’s catalog of works published), the Sextet in E-Flat for winds in an early work, dating from 1796, thirteen years before its publication.  Beethoven offered it to his publisher with an apology, saying that it “was composed in one night - All that one can really say about it is that it was written by a composer who had produced a few better works, yet for some, works of this type are the best.”  The work was certainly not written in such a short time.  Beethoven’s comment represents the tetchy annoyance of a composer towards his public, which preferred “easy” works like his Septet for strings and winds, Op. 20 (a piece he came to hate, as passionately as Rachmaninoff came to hate his C-sharp minor Prelude) to what he rightly considered his more significant utterances such as the symphonies, concertos and string quartets.  This same annoyance caused him to belittle so beloved, yet so innovative a work as the “Moonlight” Sonata: “upon my word, I have written better ones...”

Beethoven produced a fair amount of wind ensemble music in his early years (other examples are the Octet for winds, Op. 103, and the Quintet for piano and winds, Op. 16), but virtually abandoned the medium after about 1800.  Despite their light character, the works are important in Beethoven’s output, for they surely helped the young composer develop his treatment of wind instruments in the symphonies.  They also allowed him to polish his handling of large-scale forms, in music that was traditionally not considered “serious” (despite Mozart’s masterly serenades for wind instruments) before tackling them in the more serious genres of string quartet and symphony.