| Romantic Souls Jan 29 & 30, 2011 [buy tickets] |
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Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4 Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most influential composers of the early twentieth century, was the son of a shoe salesman. Although he had violin lessons as a child, he was virtually self-taught as a composer. His early compositions from around the turn of the century were lush, Romantic and tonal, as exemplified in his first string quartet, early songs, the symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande and the string sextet Verklärte Nacht, composed in 1899. He developed a style that continually challenged the limits of tonality and triadic harmony, sharing his work and ideas with his more formally educated friends. But his appeal to the conservative Viennese audiences was always limited. Working in a bank to put bread on the table, he nevertheless was admired and encouraged by the intellectual and musical luminaries of his time, including Gustav Mahler, and gradually established a career as a composition teacher. By 1906, however, Schoenberg had found the constraints of traditional tonality artificial and confining. He developed a compositional language, originally called “atonal,” that precludes tonal relationships, as well as traditional melodic and harmonic progressions that even suggest a tonal center. He spent the next 15 years developing and codifying the new musical language. The result was the twelve-tone system, or serialism – an extension of late Romantic chromaticism – where for each composition all twelve semitones of the octave are used in a predetermined order. The order can be transposed, inverted, written in retrograde or retrograde inversion, but has to be maintained. Encouraged by such composers as Mahler and Richard Strauss – who nevertheless refrained from incorporating his new ideas into their own works – Schoenberg pursued this path but generally remained unappreciated by the general public. Schoenberg’s two most important immediate disciples were Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who together with their mentor formed the Second Viennese School (the “first” having been that of Mozart and Beethoven). In the decades after the Second World War, serialism became the foremost style of composition among Western European and American academic composers but has in the past twenty years given way to a more eclectic mix of styles more pleasing to concert audiences. Composed in 1899, Verklärte Nacht is almost Wagnerian, recalling especially Tristan und Isolde, which stretched the limits of tonality and the sexual morality of the 1860s. The title Verklärte Nacht comes from the title of an 1896 poem by Richard Dehmel (1863-1920) that celebrates new life, both literally and figuratively. Its form – and Schoenberg’s music – is an ABACA structure, which carries within it the classical structure so often found in the Lied, the duality of conflict and resolution. This is not a simple song, however; there are several recurring themes that more or less suggest the major elements in the drama, but there is also a great deal of through-composed music that enhances the ambience without playing any role in the musical architecture. Section A recurs as a refrain in which a narrator describes two people walking, the easy, ambling gait is reflected in the music.  In the B section, a woman informs a man that she is pregnant by another man. The emotional intensity is at its highest in a theme, illustrating both the conflict between desire for motherhood and the self-hatred that led to her sexual promiscuity and her guilt, After they walk further in a heavier variation on A, the man responds with tenderness in C. Schoenberg also includes a theme that can only stand for the transfiguration itself. The human warmth that flows between the man and the woman creates a bond that transfigures the artificial taboos of society to create a unity for the unborn child.Schoenberg, however, did not consider the piece to be true program music. He commented in 1950 that “… it does not illustrate any action or drama, but was restricted to portray nature and express human feelings... in other words, it offers the possibility to be appreciated as 'pure' music.’" Dehmel himself felt the work to be effective as autonomous music, writing to Schoenberg in 1912: "Yesterday evening I heard Transfigured Night, and I would consider it a sin of omission if I did not say a word of thanks to you for your wonderful sextet. I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition, but I soon forgot to do so, I was so enraptured by the music." To which Schoenberg responded that he was "reflecting in music" what Dehmel's poetry had "stirred up" in him. | ||||||||||
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Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33 Tchaikovsky’s formal musical training started relatively late, in 1861, and a year later he was accepted into the first class of the newly opened St. Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. His principal teacher was pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein, whose strong personality instilled in Tchaikovsky compositional discipline: to sketch quickly to the end of a work, then score; work every day, and hold to music as a sacred calling. After graduation, Tchaikovsky was recruited by Nikolay Rubinstein, Anton’s brother, for a post at the new music conservatory in Moscow. But he was not a good teacher, ever dogged by feelings of insecurity. He also resented the time it took away from composing. But Tchaikovsky made some good friends at the Conservatory. Composed in 1876-77, the Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra were inspired by and dedicated to Tchaikovsky’s friend and colleague at the Moscow Conservatory, the German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen. Not being a cellist, the composer suffered from one of his frequent bouts of self-doubt and asked Fitzenhagen for help. Fitzenhagen ended up having a substantial hand in the final form in which the work was published in 1889, making the cello part more virtuosic and idiomatic, and even changing the order of the variations and eliminating one of them. Only in 1940 was Tchaikovsky’s original version published and is now the one usually performed. The term “Rococo” applied to these variations refers not so much to the ornate style, popular in eighteenth-century architecture and design, but to its nineteenth-century meaning: “old-fashioned.” The simple theme is Tchaikovsky’s own and is not particularly characteristic of the Rococo period, nor do the seven variations that follow adhere closely to the theme as was customary in the eighteenth century. The work is a cellist’s showpiece, technically demanding, light-hearted and cheerful, with none of the emotional storm and stress that usually permeates Tchaikovsky’s works. The work begins with a Moderato introduction that hints of the theme to come. Tchaikovsky introduces the theme in the solo cello, and – as was the case since Beethoven created the variation form as more than a increasingly fancy decoration of a theme – uses the variations to create a series of moods and dance rhythms. The variations become increasingly complex, beginning with the old-fashioned embellishment type in Variation I. Tchaikovsky also explores the interaction of the cello with the orchestral instruments, especially the upper woodwinds, who have a little transition theme used throughout the piece, and in the duet with the solo clarinet and solo flute in Variation VI. Variation V, which also features the flute, is a cadenza for the soloist. The combination of the sunny mood coupled with the technical demands and lovely melodies has made the Variations standard fare at cello competitions. | ||||||||||
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Symphony No. 4 in C minor, D. 417, “Tragic” Of all the great classical Viennese composers, Franz Schubert was the only one to have actually been born in Vienna. Yet the city was less accepting of the music of its native son than the music of the outsiders who settled there. In the half century after his death, Schubert’s reputation rested almost exclusively on his wonderful Lieder while the rest of his music was mostly neglected. None of his orchestral music was published during his lifetime, and the first six symphonies had to wait until 1884-85 in the Gesamtausgabe, the first complete edition of his works. Schubert gave the Symphony No. 4 the subtitle “Tragic” as an afterthought. At the time of its composition in 1816, he was a full-time teacher at his father's school. He hated the job, a factor that may explain the mood of the Symphony. At the time, he was also taking composition lessons twice weekly with Antonio Salieri, who had also taught Beethoven upon his arrival in Vienna. Schubert was also attending numerous concerts and operas, doing some private teaching, and socializing with his friends. There is very little biographical material available for this period in the composer’s life that might cast light on the genesis of this Symphony. After all, he had no backstage father like Leopold Mozart to promote him all over Europe. Despite his youth, Schubert was an extremely fluent composer, capable of turning out Lieder in a steady flow. He had composed music for his family’s string quartet, as well as some church music, but his two earliest ambitions were to compose symphonies and opera. Although at the time of composition of his Symphony No. 4 Schubert was clearly familiar with Beethoven’s first eight symphonies, his own early symphonies show little influence of the intimidating master. Rather, their language harks back to Mozart and Haydn, especially the latter. While Beethoven’s symphonies – especially from No. 3 on – were the fruit of a mature composer, Schubert’s first five were youthful, student attempts. Even his Symphony No. 9 “The Great” in C major, was written when he was only 28. Since Schubert and Beethoven died a year apart, they are usually regarded as contemporaries. But by a nasty combination of bad luck and bad habits, Schubert died before he could completely mature as a composer, while Beethoven lived to a reasonable – if uncomfortable – age for his time. Except for the compositions of his final years, the C major Symphony, the final string quartets, the C major String Quintet, Die Winterreise and the last piano sonatas, we have been denied the fruits of Schubert’s maturity and can only guess what he might have become had he, too, lived into his 50s. Symphony No.4 falls into the unusual class of symphonies in minor keys, which, for the time, were quite rare and often suggested a “program” – or at least a tragic affect of some sort. There was no precedent for writing a symphony with four minor movements, Mozart’s 40th being one of the rare examples with three, but Schubert was not far behind with his heavy first and final movements and the anguished middle section of the second movement Andante. The Symphony opens with a lugubrious introduction, which in the hands of Haydn might have been used to set the listener up for a rousing, jolly allegro. But Schubert meant it, as witnessed by the nervous, almost angry opening theme. Of course, during this period, symphonies in minor keys had to have second theme group in the relative major, but Schubert seems only to pay lip service to this convention, maintaining the nervous drive throughout the movement. & The second movement, an expansion of the conventional ABA song form, repeats both A and B sections with new and more poignant harmonies, plus a coda. It opens with a gentle cantabile that almost washes away the tension from the opeing movement. Then Schubert hits us with the B section, a reminder that all is not entirely serene. of particular interest in this movement are the sighing motives Schubert uses throughout, sometimes a descending major second, at others a more plangent minor second.Schubert called his third movement "Menuetto;" it falls more into the style of Haydn with his heavy peasant dances than Mozart's more elegant court dances, but it also suggests the new scherzo that Beethoven had substituted for the dance. Note also the slight ambiguity about where the downbeat is because of the heavy stress on the final beats of the measures. The Trio is clearly also rustic. The Finale returns to the anxiety of the Symphony's opening movement. Written in sonata form, instead of the conventional rondo, it opens with another nervous theme. As in the earlier movement, compelled to end in a major key, Schubert retains the tense mood by lacing his seconadry themes with dark harmonies and the major/minor ambiguity that characterizes so much of his more emotional writing. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 | [buy tickets] | ||||||||||
