Autumn 2011
Berlioz: ``Roman Carnival'' Overture
Louis-Hector Berlioz, 1803-1869. Overture, ``The Roman
Carnival'', Op. 9. Completed 1843, first performance February 3,
1844, in Paris. Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2
clarinets, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones,
cymbals, 2 snare drums, triangle, tympani, and strings.
In 1830, after several years of trying, Hector Berlioz finally won the
Prix de Rome, a prestigious competition that encouraged the
development of music by supplying young composers with a stipend and
the opportunity to study abroad (although it also quite consistently
discouraged innovation due to the conservatism of its judges, who were
often mediocre composers in their own right). As a condition of the
prize, Berlioz was required to travel to Italy for a year. At first
he resisted the trip, complaining of poor health, but eventually he
relented and quickly learned to love the country and its people. This
affection inspired a number of works, including the well-known
Harold in Italy and, in 1838, the semi-serious opera Benvenuto
Cellini.
As is all too often the case, the premiere of the opera was
disastrous. The orchestra, despite having had nineteen rehearsals,
could not master the difficulties of the new music, the conductor (one
François-Antoine Habeneck) ignored Berlioz's instructions, and the
singers detested their parts. After only three performances the tenor
withdrew, prompting the management of the Paris Opera to cancel the
remainder of the engagement.
Like any good father, Berlioz never abandoned his creation, and half a
decade later he decided to recoup at least some of his losses by
converting a bit of the music into a brief orchestral overture. He
chose one theme from a love duet and a second from a lively carnival
scene in the second act; it is from the latter that the overture
received its name.
The combination is a pleasing one, and one surely would have thought
that his arrangement was assured of success. But one more roadblock
stood in his way: there was only one rehearsal prior to the first
performance, and the wind players were called away to National Guard
duties that morning. Undeterred, Berlioz assured them that they would
survive the overture's difficulties: ``You are all excellent players.
Watch my stick as often as you can, count your rests carefully, and
everything will be all right.'' He was correct; according to Sir
Charles Hallé's account, ``... his beat was so decisive, his
indication of all nuances so clear and so unmistakable, that... no
uninitiated person could guess at the absence of a rehearsal.
The final satisfaction for the oft-maligned composer came after the
overture was repeated to satisfy the audience's demands. As he left
the stage, Berlioz passed Habeneck, who had heard about the
difficulties and had come in hopes of seeing a disaster. Referring to
the carnival scene in the opera, which Habeneck had always taken too
slowly, Berlioz commented simply, ``That's how it goes.'' There was
no reply.
Smetana: Vltava
Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)
Vltava
Czech nationalism was a
sentiment borne more on hope than experience in the 19th century. The
country then known as Bohemia was a province of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, and it would not emerge with any autonomy until the creation of
Czechoslovakia in the wake of the First World War: true independence had
to wait until the Czech republic disconnected itself from Slovakia in
the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the last
century.
So music was one of the few areas that offered any
palpable outlet for patriotic expression, and Smetana, as the leading
Czech composer of his day, found himself at the head of a movement, and
his music emulated as the basis for a Czech school of composition. The
cycle of six tone poems called Má Vlast [My Homeland] that he composed
between 1872 and 1879 represent a self-conscious attempt to encapsulate
the essence of Bohemia in music.
The original title of the
cycle was the more demonstrative Vlast; the later addition of the
pronoun perhaps suggests an unease with the idea of being a spokesman
for the nationalist cause at a time when he was the subject of
increasing hostility from critics. The project must also have taken on a
great personal significance as the composition of the first part,
Vyšehrad, coincided with the sudden loss of Smetana's hearing. For a
composer this was serious enough, but the deafness itself was a symptom
of undiagnosed syphilis, which would eventually kill him. Má Vlast
therefore represents a remarkable fusion of the political and the
personal.
Vltava is the second part of the cycle. It depicts the
flow of the eponymous river from its source in the Šumava Mountains to
Prague and beyond. On the way it passes a hunting party and a village
wedding, and sprites dance on its moonlit waters before the current
builds as the river reaches the St. John rapids, then flows broadly
through Prague, past Vyšehrad Castle and disappears into the distance
where it will flow into the Elba.
Symphony No. 1 in C Minor Opus 68
Brahms (1833-1897)
Despite the encouragement from his friends,
Robert and Clara Schumann, to write a symphony, Brahms' first
suffered a long gestation. The material for his first attempt
derived from a two piano sonata, finally evolving as his first
piano Concerto in D minor of 1858.
The tragic early death of Robert Schumann in
1856 had a profound effect on Brahms, and it was not until October
1876 that he was able to play a piano version of this new work to
his life long friend and critic Clara, who immediately expressed
disappointment as it "lacked melody". It is significant that before
the early rehearsals it is known that Brahms shortened the two
middle movements: the first performance took place in Karlsruhe on
the 4 November 1876.
Vienna, Brahms' adopted city since 1868, heard
it for the first time five weeks later, conducted by the Composer.
Clara Schumann still reserved her judgement. The first English
performance took place at Cambridge in March 1877 under the
direction of Brahms' friend and violin virtuoso, Joseph
Joachim.
Within the next ten years Brahms completed and
published his other three symphonies, after which he wrote no more
for the orchestra.
1st Movement Un Poco Sostenuto -
Allegro
The movement opens with a time
signature of 6/8 and over a persistent note C intoned by the
timpani and double basses, with the strings launching into a
chromatically rising theme and the woodwind tending to pull in the
opposite direction. This striving, heart searching motif which will
be heard more concisely in the ensuing Allegro, becomes the
germinal motif, not only of this movement, but also of the second
and third.
A second subject (theme), full of pathos with
its falling diminished fifth interval is introduced by the oboe, to
which the upward striving harmony heard in the introductory bars
forms a bass.
There is a change of ambience when the French
horns gently pursue a new theme, replacing the diminished interval
with a perfect fourth. This sense of well being is rudely disturbed
by the violas' jagged descent of three notes, and a feeling of
impending struggle brings the exposition to a close.
The development section is stormy; troubled with
moments of bleakness, but when the music breaks into the
recapitulation of the early allegro it becomes imbued with a
confident persistent drive until a mellowing Coda brings the
movement to a close.
2nd Movement Andante
Sostenuto
Although set in the brighter key
of E major, and in 3/4 time, nevertheless this whole movement is
imbued with an emotional pathos and rich colouring, especially
where minor harmonies merge within the themes.
The opening string theme is one of repose, and
the second theme, given to the oboe, is derived from the first
movement's opening sostenuto which leads to a lush melody from the
violins to a quaver, semi-quaver accompaniment. Following the
violins' upward sweep, oboe and clarinet become prominent to a
syncopated accompaniment. As the movement reaches its climax the
reprise of the first theme is given to oboe and clarinet,
underpinned by a triplet cello figure, out of which grows a gentle
lyrical French horn solo which presages a solo horn and solo violin
duet version of the movement's second (oboe) theme.
Although the full orchestra becomes engaged
until the very last pianissimo note of the movement the solo violin
can be heard, weaving its way in and out of the gentle
harmonies.
3rd Movement Poco Allegretto E
Grazioso
There is a gracious conciseness
about this movement which opens with the clarinet singing a melodic
"folksy" theme of ten bars duration, the second five bars being an
inversion of the first. A second theme occupies flutes, clarinets
and bassoon in dotted quaver thirds accompanied by sustained French
horn chords and arpeggio strings. Out of this rhythmically more
vital passage the first violins emerge with a reprise of the first
theme and then it is the turn of the woodwind to reprise the second
theme now with an enhanced accompaniment.
The key has now modulated from A flat to B flat
for the middle section in 6/8, which falls into two distinct parts.
The opening section is the shorter of the two, and is a
conversation between the woodwind in octaves and thirds and the
strings. The second section involves the full orchestra (the
timpani is silent throughout this movement and the trombones have
yet to get involved). Interplay is developed throughout the
orchestral forces until the movement's climax, after which it is
customary to repeat the second section.
For the movement's third section, which has
modulated back into A flat and is a synthesis of what has gone
before, the clarinet takes on the movement's gentle close.
4th Movement Allegro non troppo
ma con brio
Brahms has laid this last
movement out on a grand scale which is reflected in its length. It
is as long as the previous movements combined, and it exudes its
own peculiar dramatic grandeur.
Opening in C minor, the descending four notes
heard in the bassoons and lower strings and the ominous timpani
roll portends much; then from out of the twelfth bar the strings
presage in the minor the great theme of the forthcoming
Allegro.
The adagio continues with sweeping
demi-semiquaver passages like rising zephyrs interspersed with
chordal emphasis from the rest of the orchestra, until the
trombones at long last make their presence felt, albeit with the
gentlest of sustained chords against sombre woodwind and tremeloing
strings. The high flutes interject with a little 2 bar + 2 bar
figure which is taken up by the French horn and which it will use
to greater effect later. This introduction finally settles, not on
a tonic chord, but modulates directly into the C major allegro
where the violins stride into the movement's first principal theme.
It is this theme that critics and commentators have claimed to have
an affinity with Beethoven's "Hymn of Joy" from his ninth symphony,
an affinity which Brahms did not exactly deny.
At the animato, the violins introduce the second
theme which is played over the lower strings intoning the
movement's opening descending four notes. Syncopation, rising and
falling semiquaver passages encompass the rhythmic drive, and
modulation brings this, the exposition, to its close in E
major.
The movement's development now proceeds with the
strings and bassoons restatement of the first theme, which is now
marked largemente. The pair of flutes make their contribution, and
the development continues at great length wherein fleeting glimpses
of the second theme can be discerned and also variance of the
first, and all reach a full orchestral climax after a silent first
beat of a bar. Out of the following sustained chord the French horn
reiterates the motif first heard in the movement's early
andante.
So the movement's music has come full circle. As
it becomes more animated, the second theme is given pride of place
in the strings, until the brass take hold of the proceedings with a
great chorale, the trombones intone a diminished version of the
movement's great first theme. As the brass lose their hold, a brisk
and yet noble Coda in C major brings this mighty symphony to its
close.
These are notes for Forthcoming concets in Dursley and at Tewkebury Abbey Easter 2011
Gustav Holst (1874–1934)
The Planets, Op. 32 (1914–17)
1. Mars, the Bringer of War
2. Venus, the Bringer of Peace
3. Mercury, the Winged Messenger
4. Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
5. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
6. Uranus, the Magician
7. Neptune, the Mystic
Gustav Holst began composing his symphonic suite The Planets in
mid-1914, starting with ‘Mars’, which he completed just before the outbreak of
the First World War in August. ‘Venus’ and ‘Jupiter’ were written in the same
year, and ‘Saturn’, ‘Uranus’ and ‘Neptune’ in 1915; ‘Mercury’ came last, and
Holst did not complete the instrumentation until 1917, even though some of his
friends and pupils acted as amanuenses in preparing the very large full score
for the biggest orchestra he had ever used. In 1918 he was appointed Musical
Organiser for the YMCA in the Near East, based at Salonika in Northern Greece –
and as a farewell present his friend and fellow-composer Henry Balfour Gardiner
paid for a private performance of The Planets to be given at the
Queen’s Hall before an invited audience, by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra
conducted by the young Adrian Boult. Boult gave the first public performance
the following year. The piece has never looked back.
Over 90 years after that private performance, The Planets remains
by far Holst’s most popular work. Indeed, its popularity came to distress him
during his lifetime. Doubtless in his later years, in works such as The
Hymn of Jesus, Egdon Heath and the Choral Fantasia, he
achieved things that were more profound, more perfectly realised in structure,
and even more deeply personal in their expression. But The Planets is
the first fully effective statement of his maturity; its conception has a
boldness, excitement and epic sweep that remain immediately impressive after a
hundred hearings; and, however uneven it may be, it enshrines some of
Holst’s most characteristic musical utterances in highly memorable forms.
The unevenness has, in any case, been overstressed by critics (following the
lead of Holst’s daughter Imogen, the severest of them all). Viewed simply as a
display of orchestral mastery on the largest scale, the work would have been a tour
de force for any English composer working in 1914. It is one of the 20th
century’s great colouristic showpieces (though far more than just that); and it
is easy to forget, through over-familiarity, what an original contribution
Holst was making to the orchestral literature. Though a Russian and French
heritage is generally apparent in the handling of the instruments, and though
there are hints too of Stravinsky and of Schoenberg’s Op. 16 Orchestral
Pieces (which Holst had recently heard), the cumulative sound is like
that of no other work, as the material is like that of no other composer. And
both sound and material are made wonderfully appropriate to their subject
matter.
In her biography of her father, Imogen Holst quotes him as writing to a
friend:
As a rule I only study things
that suggest music to me. That’s why I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the
character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying
astrology fairly closely. It’s a pity we make such a fuss about these things.
On one side there is nothing but abuse and ridicule, with the natural result
that when one is brought face to face with overwhelming proofs there is a
danger of going to the other extreme. Whereas, of course, everything in this
world – writing a letter for instance – is just one big miracle. Or rather, the
universe itself is one.
Despite this clear indication of his interest, most commentators on Holst
have tended to minimise the importance of astrology and the esoteric – both in
his own thinking and in The Planets in particular. However, research
by Raymond Head has revealed the extent of Holst’s involvement with these
subjects, and his significant connection with the noted astrologer Alan Leo
(1860–1917), whose book The Art of Synthesis (1912), discussing the
character of each of the seven planets (not including Earth) in a separate
chapter, may well have coloured Holst’s conception of his orchestral suite.
Leo’s chapter-headings are similar to the titles Holst gives his movements, and
they actually coincide with ‘Neptune, the Mystic’, while ‘Mercury, the Winged
Messenger’ is to be found in Leo’s earlier volume, How to Judge a Nativity,
which Holst also possessed.
Head also points out that the order in which Holst introduces the seven
planets is according neither to their relative distance from the Sun nor from
the Earth, but in a clear astrological pattern ‘symbolising the unfolding
experience of life from youth to old age’. The suite is thus inspired by the
prime astrological concept of planetary influences, by which each planet
possesses its own distinct elemental character, disseminated through the
heavens by its rays (and thus influencing the horoscopes of every human
being). Holst essentially offers a series of character-portraits of the planets
(and also to some extent of the classical gods from which they take their
names), an idea that gives clear focus and function to every movement of his
vast symphonic suite.
‘Mars’, the astonishing opening movement, seems like an apocalyptic
pre-vision of the European conflict that was brewing throughout the summer of
1914. With its merciless rhythmic ostinato for timpani, harps and col legno strings,
howling chromatic melodic spans for trombones and tubas, and rampant tenor tuba
and trumpet fanfares, it remains the classic musical statement of the horrors
of mechanised warfare – before that term was ever coined. It’s an astonishing
demonstration of the orchestral mastery towards which Holst had been groping
for many years – but which here bursts out in full panoply.
‘Venus’, by contrast, is cool emotional assuagement, with an
uncharacteristic tinge of romance entrusted to solo violin. Flutes, celesta,
harps and strings – whose vibrant sonorities bring the movement to an end –
also supply the most characteristic timbres of ‘Mercury’. This is the
archetypal example of Holst’s protean, quicksilver scherzos, quick as an arrow,
insubstantial as air, bracingly bitonal.
Perhaps more conventional in effect but always stirring in performance, the
galumphing cross-rhythms, carnival merriment and great big tune of ‘Jupiter’
make it a scherzo of another sort, with a different world’s worldliness, and a
broader humour entirely.
To pass from its triumphal coda to the aching coldness of ‘Saturn’, one of
Holst’s most personal, slow, haunted utterances, is a salutary shock, comfort
giving way to the comfortless in its insistent brazen bells.
‘Uranus’ – third, last and most sheerly fantastic of the work’s scherzos –
is a brilliant, sardonic evocation of ‘the God of Bewildering Untruth’ (in
Malcolm Sargent’s phrase). Beginning with a peremptory brass invocation on the
notes G, E flat, A, B (all good magicians need a personal sigil or magical mark
– turn these notes into German nomenclature, and you get the only ‘musical’
letters in the name GuStAv H.), the movement develops into a wild dance of
alchemical athleticism that ends with a glimpse of real, dumbfounding marvels
out in the cosmic beyond.
It is to these purely metaphysical regions that ‘Neptune’ finally beckons
us, in the suite’s most rarefied music. Marked pianissimo throughout,
and scored with exquisite refinement, its soft, disembodied harmonies and
distant, wordless women’s chorus evoke a release from the confines of space and
time. In the ‘endless’, and certainly cadence-less, alternations of the final
two chords, we seem to be contemplating the mysteries of eternity …
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Romeo and Juliet
In 1869 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was an up-and-coming composer and a
professor of music at the Moscow Conservatory. Just 28 years old, he had produced
a number of piano works, songs, a symphony (No. 1 in G minor, 1866), and an
opera (The Voyevoda, 1867–8). But he had not yet created anything that
could be called a great success by either critical or popular acclamation.
Tchaikovsky had recently met Mily Balakirev, a self-taught composer who led
a circle of amateur composers promoting Russian musical traditions. Balakirev
was the least successful of the lot, yet he had an eye for talent and a head
full of ideas, and attempted to direct all in his circle in matters of
composition. Tchaikovsky had just finished an orchestral work titled Fatum (Fate)
and ventured to dedicate it to Balakirev, who conducted the first St.
Petersburg performance. The piece did not meet with success, and the older
composer wrote a detailed letter to Tchaikovsky explaining why the work failed:
"It's not properly gestated … the seams and unmatched stitching are
everywhere conspicuous."
Tchaikovsky weathered the criticism, recognizing that Balakirev was correct:
Fatum suffered from a lack of focus. The two continued to correspond,
and in August Balakirev arrived in Moscow and suggested a project with a
built-in focus, an orchestral piece based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
In proposing this topic, Balakirev likely knew that Tchaikovsky had just
emerged from what would be his only infatuation with a member of the opposite
sex, a Belgian soprano named Désirée Artôt with whom he had discussed marriage,
but who had recently married a Spanish baritone. Tchaikovsky's deeper emotional
struggle, however, was with his homosexuality. Indeed, his brother and
biographer Modest once suggested that the composer's emotional inspiration for Romeo
and Juliet was his unrequited feeling for an old friend from his school
days, Vladimir Gerard.
Whatever encouraged Tchaikovsky to tackle the theme, he did so sincerely but
couldn't make headway. "I'm beginning to fear that my muse has flown
off," he wrote Balakirev. The latter happily wrote back with
organizational suggestions (start with music representing Friar Laurence,
interrupt with the clatter of the warring families, then portray the young
lovers), opinions on which keys to use for each theme, and even a sketch for
the music for "sword clashes." Tchaikovsky followed this advice and
finished his first draft, forwarding the main themes to Balakirev.
Balakirev responded by pronouncing the Friar Laurence theme thoroughly
unsuitable (more like Haydn than church music), another only half-finished —
but praising the love theme: "I play it often, and I want very much to
kiss you for it."
Tchaikovsky finished the work, and his friend and promoter Nikolay
Rubinstein premiered it on March 16, 1870. The result was not encouraging,
though critic Vladimir Stasov also praised the love song. Tchaikovsky began
rewriting the piece, taking Balakirev's criticisms as his guide. He replaced
the original introduction with a "chorale" theme as suggested by his
mentor and reworked sections depicting the feuding families. The new version
was published in 1870 and first performed in February 1872. Balakirev still
quibbled that the ending was not powerful enough, but as his own musical
fortunes were declining, his influence faded from Tchaikovsky's life. Yet in
1880, ten years after his first reworking of the piece, Tchaikovsky rewrote the
ending, finally giving the piece a conclusion that Balakirev could endorse.
The work opens with a quiet chorale of clarinets and bassoons in a
pseudo-liturgical theme. The strings enter with some foreboding but then join
the woodwinds with a series of prayer-like, calm chords, accented by fluid
glissandos from the harp. A first interruption, with trembling timpani, seems to
subside into the peaceful theme, but not for long. A single chord passed back
and forth between strings and woodwinds grows into the agitated theme of the
warring Capulets and Montagues. Whirling woodwinds are echoed by swirling
strings, punctuated by onslaughts of percussion.
The action suddenly slows, the key dropping from B-minor to D-flat (as
suggested by Balakirev) to the accompaniment of tolling horns. The English horn
sounds the opening bars of the famous love theme. The strings enter with a
lush, hovering melody over which the flute and oboe eventually soar with the
love theme once again, signaling the development section.
The recapitulation proceeds conventionally, with the
themes brought back with more intensity. But the love theme breaks into
fragments and is overwhelmed by the feuding subject in a climax capped by the
roll of timpani. A muted death knell sounds and the wind chorale plays quietly,
perhaps signifying the friar's sad reflection on the horror the warring
families have wrought. The love theme is heard a last time over dark, chromatic
bass before ending in four bars of abrupt chords, fiercely proclaiming the
tragedy of the lovers' deaths.
These are notes for our forthcoming concert at St Catherines Church in Gloucester on November 19th 2010
MODEST MUSSORGSKY / ORCH. BY RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
A Night on a Bare Mountain
Work composed: 1867; revised 1886
World premiere: October 15, 1886, in St. Petersburg, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov conducting
The tone poem by Modest Mussorgsky known alternatively as St. John’s Night on the Bare Mountain or A Night on Bald Mountain has a long and confusing history. In 1858, when he was only 19, the composer drew up plans for an opera to be called St. John’s Eve. Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, this related the Russian legend of a witches’ Sabbath, believed to occur on a barren mountaintop each year on St. John’s Night, near the summer solstice. Mussorgsky, who often had difficulty giving concrete form to his inspirations, characteristically failed to carry out this operatic project. Two years later he reported that he was setting a different libretto, entitled The Witch, but that opera also did not progress very far. Part of what the composer did complete used music he had sketched for yet another opera, Salammbo.
Ironically, it was in a purely orchestral work that Mussorgsky finally found the proper vehicle for his dramatic fantasy of a witches’ Sabbath. In 1866, he informed his friend and mentor, the composer Mily Balakirev, that he was writing a tone poem evoking the subject. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, another composer in the Balakirev circle, recalled that at this time Mussorgsky was scoring the music for solo piano and orchestra, in the manner of Liszt’s famous Totentanz. But the work Mussorgsky at last completed in 1867 called for orchestra without piano.
Mussorgsky was pleased with his effort. Unfortunately, his musical friends were not. Put off by the work’s wildness, bold orchestration, and audacious harmonies (“I shall be told to take a Conservatory class for these,” Mussorgsky predicted), Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov delivered crushing critiques. Mussorgsky consequently withdrew the piece and never heard it performed. Years later, he made two attempts to salvage some of what he had written. In 1872 he adapted parts of the score for an aborted ballet project. And near the end of his life he reworked portions of it as a dream scene in his unfinished opera Sorochintsy Fair.
After the composer’s death, Rimsky-Korsakov took it upon himself to put Mussorgsky’s somewhat chaotic musical legacy in order, completing several unfinished compositions and revising others. Among the works to which he turned his attention was the witches’ Sabbath music in its several versions. Satisfied with none of these, Rimsky-Korsakov fashioned from their musical materials a new piece. This is the work popularly known as A Night on Bald Mountain. Although Mussorgsky’s original music was published in 1968, the Rimsky-Korsakov version is strongly established in the orchestral literature, and it is this that we hear now.
Mussorgsky stated that “the form and character of my work are Russian and original. Its tone is hot-blooded and disorderly.” Along with its colorful orchestration and powerful harmonies, that “hot-blooded and disorderly” tone renders a hair-raising portrayal of the witches’ revel and remains the source of the score’s appeal.
Suite For Orchestra – Goodbye to all that
Note by the composer Michael Gryspeerdt
This exercise in musical nostalgia was composed during the summer of 1973. Of the 7 movements, the inner 5 are more or less affectionate mementos of the kind of music I enjoyed as aboy during the second world war.
1. The Prologue starts in a wide awake fashion but after a while falls into a reverie. The passage of time is suggested.
2. The main theme of Sentimental Song was originally as piece for violin and piano composed when I was 16. I have orchestrated it and added a middle section to include it in this suite.
3. A Tango
4. A Comic Song. It has inbuilt applause at the end
5. The Summer Song is subtitled Le Tombeau de Delius, being an essay in that composers lighter style. I fell in love with Delius’ music at the age of 15 and still have the greatest affection for it.
6. The Patriotic Marches were part of the war effort. This, my only contribution to the Genre, is called Crown, Wheel and Pinion. The crownwheel and pinion are parts of a car, but to my ears the words have an agreeable patriotic ring.
7. The Epilogue continues the reverie of the Prologue awhile before awakening once more to the here and now. The entertainment ends quietly after a last backward glance at ‘all that’.
Anton Bruckner
Symphony no 4 in Eb ‘the Romantic’
1. Allegro molto moderato.
2. Andante.
3. Scherzo.
4. Finale.
The Fourth of Bruckner's symphonies was first produced in Vienna in 1881 and was performed for the first time in America by the Theodore Thomas Orchestral in Chicago, January 22, 1897. Like all of this composer's symphonies, it is so elaborately constructed and full of musical complications that it is only possible to present a bare sketch here. The first movement opens with a passage in the horns accompanied by the strings, which, several times repeated, prepares the way for the introduction of the first and second principal subjects, both of which present two themes. These, with their working up and the treatment of subsidiary ideas, constitute the learned structure of the movement which closes with a return to the horn passage of the opening.
The Andante is impressive and sombre in character, opening with a funeral march with characteristic refrains, followed by a melody for violas with string pizzicato accompaniment. After the development of this melody the march theme is restated most impressively and the movement closes with drum taps as the second theme dies away.
The Scherzo is a hunting movement, built up on two lively and graceful themes, after which is a country dance which furnishes the material for the trio. The movement closes with a repetition of the hunting scene music.
The Finale, Wagner fashion, introduces all the principal ideas of the other three movements, which are worked up and combined with the utmost skill. It is in reality a résumé of the whole symphony. Old forms are restated, and new forms growing out of them are presented. The workmanship is solid and the learning of the composer is everywhere apparent.