March 3 Program Notes
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Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Le Tombeau de CouperinI. Prelude: Vif
II. Forlane: Allegretto
III. Menuet: Allegro moderato
IV. Rigaudon: Assez vifAlthough Maurice Ravel’s frail health exempted him from service in World War I, he was determined to join the war effort anyway. In 1914, at age 39, he enlisted, and served as a driver. The carnage he witnessed affected him deeply.
"I don’t believe I will ever experience a more profound and stranger emotion than this sort of mute terror," he wrote.
His health declined while in the service–he was operated on for dysentery in 1916–and he returned from the war just in time to see his mother die.
These blows left him despondent, and he was unable to resume composing for several years. The one work he completed during this time was a piano suite, Le Tombeau de Couperin, which he had begun in July, 1914, before he entered the war.
As testimony to the personal toll the war took on him, Ravel dedicated each of the six movements to a friend who had been killed in action.
One of the dedicatees was Joseph de Marliave, whose wife, Marguerite Long, performed the premiere of the piano suite in Paris, on April 11, 1919. Long could hardly stand the emotion of playing a work dedicated to her late husband, and after the premiere, she stopped playing entirely for two years. Ravel refused to give the score to anyone else until she could play again.
He did, however, assent to transcribing the work. After the premiere, Rolf de Mare’s Swedish Ballet approached Ravel with the idea of a ballet based on Le Tombeau, and Ravel selected four of the pieces to orchestrate. The orchestration was completed in June, 1919, and premiered on February 28, 1920.
The work itself is elegiac in tone, ostensibly to the memory of the celebrated harpsichordist Francois Couperin. A "tombeau" (or "tombstone") was a musical form popular in Couperin’s day, in which composers of the past were memorialized. So, on the surface, the work is a memorial wreath set by a modern composer on a revered predecessor. Ravel was careful not to align himself too closely with Couperin as he composed, however. He considered the work "a general tribute to 18th century French music."
Taking Ravel’s own experiences into consideration, however, one must also imagine he was writing a general tribute to his fallen compatriots and his mother as well.
Although a lament, the work does emulate the graceful, courtly quality of Couperin’s world. It is a Baroque dance suite in the ancient manner, consisting of several traditional dance forms, albeit with Ravel’s unique harmonic and melodic language.
The prelude begins in a swift stream of sixteenth notes, a gently flowing melody over subtly shifting harmonies, evoking the atmosphere of a Baroque keyboard work in a 20th century vocabulary.
The forlane follows, an old Italian dance form said to be popular with Venetian gondoliers who would dance in pairs using arm movements that suggested rowing. Both Bach and Rameau used this form on occasion. The theme is lilting, though bittersweet, jig-like, but subdued.
The menuet is a model of hushed delicacy, understatement, sobriety, elegance. The opening section is dominated by the woodwinds, joined by the strings in the middle section. The final movement, rigaudon, is a 17th century French sailor’s dance, thought to be Provençal in origin. A rapid, running, vibrant opening gives way to a lyrical section, before returning to its brilliancy at the close.
Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Orchestra, Op. 35I. Allegro moderato
II. Lento
III. Moderato
IV. Allegro con brioIf you happened to step into the Bright Reel Theater in Leningrad during 1923, you might have had the chance to hear a young man destined to become one of the century’s greatest composers playing background music for the movies.
Dimitri Shostakovich was in hard financial straits during this time–his father had died the previous year–so the brilliantly gifted 17-year-old student at the Leningrad Conservatory supplemented his family’s income by accompanying silent films at the local cinema.
He loathed the job, and was cheated by his employer, but the work may have influenced him as he composed his first piano concerto in 1933. In David Denby’s words, the concerto offers "the melodramatic extremes, the alarums and excursions, the violent chases and rescues so characteristic of silent movies."
Though assuredly a piano concerto, one might also consider the work a concerto for piano and strings with an extended trumpet obbligato. The trumpet plays a crucial role from the onset, providing a broad range of textures and emotions.
The piece opens with piano and trumpet playing a brief, charming, humorous phrase, before launching into the first theme. This simple melody grows in intensity, taking numerous harmonic and rhythmic detours. A vivace passage precedes the staccato second theme handled by the violins, with the trumpet energetically joining in the fray. At the conclusion, the forces are reduced once again to the two soloists in an eloquent duet.
The second movement, modal in approach, offers a sonorous, grave main theme before the piano enters. A quicker tempo, with the piano building tension with scales and octaves, leads to a fortissimo climax before matters diminish. The trumpet once again enters, softly playing the main theme as the movement concludes on a sustained chord.
A short intermezzo follows, featuring two piano cadenzas (with and without orchestral accompaniment), before the final movement. Here, the spirit of parody, of in-jokes (note a quick allusion to Carmen), of the circus, takes over. Hilarious, madcap, rollicking–a high spirited close eloquently synthesizing the "high" elements of serious composition with the "low" elements of the melodramas he had accompanied a decade earlier.
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11Samuel Barber was not only a child prodigy (playing piano at six, composing at seven, accepted at the Curtis Institute at 14), but he was unique among contemporary composers in that he never had to make a living doing anything else.
The Adagio for Strings began life in 1936 as a movement for string quartet. That same year, the Pro Arte String Quartet gave the work its premiere in that incarnation. He orchestrated the work soon after, and in the 1960s, he wrote a version for chorus on the text of the Agnus Dei. The version for string orchestra received its premiere on November 5, 1938, with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony
In temperament, Barber favored tonalism; he was a neo-romanticist who relied on traditional theory to manifest his individual voice. This work, for example, makes extensive use of the Phrygian church mode throughout, and thus, is evocative of both 19th century romanticism and 15th century modalism
Marked "molto adagio espr. cantando," the work is in B-flat minor. From a simple lyric phrase, given at first by the violins, the work grows in intensity, featuring frequent meter changes and rich sonorous harmonies.
The melody steps up gradually, with subtle changes in successive phrasing until it builds to a powerful, dramatic climax, before retreating into a soft denouement.
Barber dedicated the work "To my aunt and uncle, Louise and Sidney Homer."
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425 ("Linz")I. Adagio. Allegro spiritoso.
II. Poco adagio
III. Menuetto. Trio. Menuetto.
IV. PrestoWhen Wolfgang Mozart married Constanze Weber on July 16, 1782, tensions between him and his father Leopold were exacerbated. Leopold thought Constanze to be intellectually and socially inferior, and he reluctantly gave his approval (notice of which came a day after the wedding).
Mozart and Constanze had settled in Vienna, his family lived in Salzburg, and a year after the wedding, Mozart’s family had still not met his wife. A visit was inevitable, although Mozart had no end of reasons to postpone it–the weather, concerts and lessons he had to give, Constanze’s pregnancy, even a fear of arrest for having left the service of Salzburg’s Archbishop without permission.
As the couple approached their anniversary, they left their newborn son in the care of a home for infants and set out for Salzburg. The visit was cordial, if cold, and after three months, Mozart and Constanze began the trip back to Vienna.
On the way, the couple stopped at Linz, where the father-in-law of one of Mozart’s pupils, Count Thun, had invited him to stay and give a concert. Mozart wrote to his father on October 31, 1783: "When we arrived at the gates of Linz, a servant was there waiting to conduct us to the old Count Thun’s where we are still living. I can’t tell you how they overwhelm us with kindness in this house. On November 4, I am going to give a concert in the theater, and since I haven’t a single symphony with me, I am up to my ears writing away at a new one, which must be finished by then."
Once again, we have evidence of the extraordinary gifts of the composer, who wrote the whole symphony and copied out the orchestral parts in only five days. It was completed a day before the performance, and, given that rehearsals were a luxury at the time, one may speculate that the work was sight-read at its first performance.
At the time, Mozart had been studying several of Joseph Haydn’s symphonies. Thus, the "Linz" symphony has several Haydnesque touches, notably the slow introduction before the main allegro in the first movement. This is the earliest symphony in which Mozart uses this technique.
This is a lively, boisterous work, full of fire and moments of melancholy. The first movement begins majestically, in solemn, portentous tones, before a sudden transition to a pessimistic theme of sliding chromatic scales. This leads into the bouncy allegro proper.
The somber second movement, in the gentle rocking rhythms of the siciliano, offers a luminous melody with a trace of sadness. The third movement, a minuet, is a heavy-footed peasant dance–a far cry from the courtly world, with bold rhythms and tempo. The presto finale is a festive outburst from the whole orchestra, rushing figures in the violins, abrupt changes in dynamic levels, and a joyously affirmative close.