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Program Notes for Fall 2014 Family Concert
A MAGIC FIREBIRD!
Sunday, November 9, 2014, 3 p.m.
Christ Episcopal Church, 2627 Atlantic Street, NE, Warren
By Steven Ledbetter
Sunday, November 9, 2014, 3 p.m.
Christ Episcopal Church, 2627 Atlantic Street, NE, Warren
By Steven Ledbetter
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714-1787)
Don Juan's descent into hell from The Stone Guest's Banquet
Gluck was primarily a composer of operas, and he made his name especially through "reforming" the elaborate decorativeness of the Baroque opera of his day (many of which he himself had composed), into plots drawn from classical myth with a grandly simple musical style that, at its best, could allow the word and melody to project the dramatic emotions to listeners with a great feeling of nobility.
The first of these "reform" operas was Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice), which he produced in 1762. Just a year before that he had composed a ballet with a coherent plot, which made it, too, a kind of reform piece. In both the ballet and the later opera, the plot was worked out by the Viennese court poet Cazabigi. The ballet was staged by the choreographer Angiolini. The three of them produced a narrative ballet (that is, one that tells a story in dance) on the story of Don Juan, which had first been told in a Spanish play a century earlier; and only two decades later it was to be turned into one of the greatest operas of all time, Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Gluck's ballet was in some sense a revolutionary work, just like his later "reform" operas, because of the way in which the music supported the ongoing plot, thus giving the work an unusual new degree of artistic unity. As with most versions of the story (including Mozart's), Don Juan is a reprobate who refuses to repent his sins; in the end, he is vigorously dragged down to hell.
Don Juan's descent into hell from The Stone Guest's Banquet
Gluck was primarily a composer of operas, and he made his name especially through "reforming" the elaborate decorativeness of the Baroque opera of his day (many of which he himself had composed), into plots drawn from classical myth with a grandly simple musical style that, at its best, could allow the word and melody to project the dramatic emotions to listeners with a great feeling of nobility.
The first of these "reform" operas was Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice), which he produced in 1762. Just a year before that he had composed a ballet with a coherent plot, which made it, too, a kind of reform piece. In both the ballet and the later opera, the plot was worked out by the Viennese court poet Cazabigi. The ballet was staged by the choreographer Angiolini. The three of them produced a narrative ballet (that is, one that tells a story in dance) on the story of Don Juan, which had first been told in a Spanish play a century earlier; and only two decades later it was to be turned into one of the greatest operas of all time, Mozart's Don Giovanni.
Gluck's ballet was in some sense a revolutionary work, just like his later "reform" operas, because of the way in which the music supported the ongoing plot, thus giving the work an unusual new degree of artistic unity. As with most versions of the story (including Mozart's), Don Juan is a reprobate who refuses to repent his sins; in the end, he is vigorously dragged down to hell.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (1756-1791)
Sinfonia Concertante in E‑flat, K.364 (320d) (1799)
Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began calling himself Wolfgang Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777 (but never Wolfgang Amadeus), was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. Most probably he wrote this work in Salzburg in the summer of 1779; we have no information about its early performance history. In addition to the violin and viola solos, the score calls for two oboes and two horns, plus the orchestral strings, with two sections of violas as well as violins. Duration is about 30 minutes.
In addition to his concertos for solo winds, for solo violin, and for solo piano, Mozart also composed a number of works in the then‑popular medium known as the Sinfonia concertante, essentially a concerto with multiple soloists. Here particularly his powers of melodic invention were essential, for he not only had to distinguish between soloist and orchestra, but also between the two (or more) soloists.
Far and away the greatest of the works in this category is the one that also stands as his finest concerto for stringed instruments, the E‑flat sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. It was the product of Mozart's maturity, and the darker sonority of the viola seems to have inspired him to new expression. His predilection for the viola reveals itself in two ways here. First, he makes the orchestral viola sound more prominent by dividing the section into two parts, giving a mellow richness to the orchestral sonority. Then he helps the solo viola stand out in the texture (where the violin's brighter sonority might threaten to engulf it) by playing a little trick of tuning. The work is composed in the key of E‑flat; stringed instruments are tuned to the notes that are prominent in the sharp keys (G, D, A, etc). But Mozart writes the viola part in D, with a note telling the solo player to tune a half‑step higher than the rest of the orchestra, so that playing as if in the key of D will produce the sounds of E‑flat. This tuning allows the solo viola to get more resonance out of the instrument compared to the solo violin or the orchestral strings, all of which are playing in E‑flat with normal tuning. At the same time, the extra half‑step by which the pitch is raised makes the sound of the viola slightly more penetrating.
This is only one element of Mozart's aural imagination to appear in the piece. From beginning to end the work is filled with wonderful details of scoring and texture. Unlike a piano concerto, where the soloist's arrival brings a sound entirely new to the piece, the two string soloists here emerge out of the texture, only gradually to develop their individuality. But individuals they become, singing to themselves, or with the tiny complement of winds (oboes and horns), or contrasting with the larger body of strings. During the slow movement, the two soloists embark on elaborate embellishments recalling the fioritura of great operatic scenes, filled with passion and pathos. The finale returns to light‑hearted high spirits with the soloists leading the way in virtuosity (showing the other strings, for example, how to turn the 2/4 meter into a figure filled with triplets) to the satisfying conclusion.
Sinfonia Concertante in E‑flat, K.364 (320d) (1799)
Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began calling himself Wolfgang Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777 (but never Wolfgang Amadeus), was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. Most probably he wrote this work in Salzburg in the summer of 1779; we have no information about its early performance history. In addition to the violin and viola solos, the score calls for two oboes and two horns, plus the orchestral strings, with two sections of violas as well as violins. Duration is about 30 minutes.
In addition to his concertos for solo winds, for solo violin, and for solo piano, Mozart also composed a number of works in the then‑popular medium known as the Sinfonia concertante, essentially a concerto with multiple soloists. Here particularly his powers of melodic invention were essential, for he not only had to distinguish between soloist and orchestra, but also between the two (or more) soloists.
Far and away the greatest of the works in this category is the one that also stands as his finest concerto for stringed instruments, the E‑flat sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. It was the product of Mozart's maturity, and the darker sonority of the viola seems to have inspired him to new expression. His predilection for the viola reveals itself in two ways here. First, he makes the orchestral viola sound more prominent by dividing the section into two parts, giving a mellow richness to the orchestral sonority. Then he helps the solo viola stand out in the texture (where the violin's brighter sonority might threaten to engulf it) by playing a little trick of tuning. The work is composed in the key of E‑flat; stringed instruments are tuned to the notes that are prominent in the sharp keys (G, D, A, etc). But Mozart writes the viola part in D, with a note telling the solo player to tune a half‑step higher than the rest of the orchestra, so that playing as if in the key of D will produce the sounds of E‑flat. This tuning allows the solo viola to get more resonance out of the instrument compared to the solo violin or the orchestral strings, all of which are playing in E‑flat with normal tuning. At the same time, the extra half‑step by which the pitch is raised makes the sound of the viola slightly more penetrating.
This is only one element of Mozart's aural imagination to appear in the piece. From beginning to end the work is filled with wonderful details of scoring and texture. Unlike a piano concerto, where the soloist's arrival brings a sound entirely new to the piece, the two string soloists here emerge out of the texture, only gradually to develop their individuality. But individuals they become, singing to themselves, or with the tiny complement of winds (oboes and horns), or contrasting with the larger body of strings. During the slow movement, the two soloists embark on elaborate embellishments recalling the fioritura of great operatic scenes, filled with passion and pathos. The finale returns to light‑hearted high spirits with the soloists leading the way in virtuosity (showing the other strings, for example, how to turn the 2/4 meter into a figure filled with triplets) to the satisfying conclusion.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
The Firebird Suite (1919 version)
Igor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, Russia, on June 17, 1882, and died in New York on April 6, 1971. He began composition of The Firebird in early November 1909 at a "dacha" of the Rimsky‑Korsakov family near St. Petersburg. He completed the score in the city, finishing the actual composition in March and the full score a month later; following some further retouching, the final score bears the date May 18, 1910. Commissioned by Diaghilev as a ballet in two scenes, the work was first performed by the Ballets Russes at the Paris Opéra on June 25, 1910. Stravinsky made suites from the ballet on three separate occasions, the first in 1911 (employing virtually the original huge orchestration), the second in 1919 (for a much smaller orchestra), and the third in 1945 (using the same orchestra as the second but containing more music). The instrumentation for the 1919 version includes two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, xylophone, tambourine, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, harp, piano (with celesta optional), and strings. Duration is about 23 minutes.
The notorious inability of Anatol Liadov to finish his scores in time gave Stravinsky his first big break. In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev needed to find a fast-working composer for a new ballet based on the old Russian legend of the Firebird. Having been impressed by Stravinsky's Fireworks, which he had heard a few months earlier, Diaghilev went to Stravinsky to discuss a possible commission for The Firebird. Though deeply engrossed in his opera The Nightingale, Stravinsky recognized that a commission from Diaghilev with a production in Paris was an opportunity he could not turn down. In fact, he was so enthusiastic that he began sketching the music before the formal commission finally reached him. He composed the large score between November 1909 and March 1910; the final details of the full score were finished by May 18.
The premiere of the lavishly colorful score marked a signal triumph for the Ballets Russes and put the name of Stravinsky on the map. Diaghilev quickly signed him up for more ballets, and in short order he turned out Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, with which he brought on a musical revolution. The original score of Firebird called for an enormous orchestra. Following World War I, in 1919, Stravinsky made a version of his suite from the ballet for a standard-sized symphony orchestra, in order to encourage more performances.
The scenario of The Firebird involves the interaction of human characters with two supernatural figures, the magic Firebird (a sort of good fairy), and the evil sorcerer Kashchei, a green‑taloned ogre who cannot be killed except by destroying his soul, which is preserved in a casket in the form of an egg.
Kashchei has an enchanted garden where he keeps 13 captured princesses, who are allowed out only at night. The young prince Ivan Tsarevich accidentally discovers the garden while pursuing the fabulous firebird. He captures the bird near a tree of magical golden apples. The firebird begs, in dance, to be set free, and the prince finally agrees, but takes one magic feather as a token. The enchanted princesses appear tentatively and shake the apple tree, then use the fallen apples for a game of catch. Ivan Tsarevich interrupts their game, for he has fallen in love with one of them. They dance a stately slow dance. In pursuit of the princesses as they leave, Ivan Tsarevitch enters the palace, where he is captured by the monsters that serve as Kashchei's guards.
Kashchei arrives and threatens to turn the prince into stone, but Ivan Tsarevich waves the feather, summoning the Firebird to his aid. The magic bird sets Kashchei's followers to treading an "infernal dance" of energetic syncopation. This gives the prince the opportunity to find and destroy the egg that contains the ogre's soul. This act released from their spell many knights that had previously been turned to stone. They come back to life (to music with a sweetly descending phrase of folklike character). Knights and princesses all take part in a dance of general happiness (a more energetic version of the same phrase). The Firebird has disappeared, but her music, now rendered more "human" in triadic harmony, sounds in the orchestra as the curtain falls.
Stravinsky distinguished musically between the human and the supernatural elements of the story by using diatonic, often folk‑like, melodies for the human characters and chromatic ideas for the supernatural figures by chromatic ideas (slithery melodies for Kashchei and his realm, shimmering arabesques for the Firebird).
The suite contains the ballet's introduction, with its mood of magical awe. The double basses present a melodic figure (two semitones and a major third) that lies behind all the music of the Firebird. Following a culminating shower of brilliant harmonics on the violins (played with a new technique discovered by Stravinsky for this passage), a muted horn call signals the rise of the curtain on a nocturnal scene in the "Enchanted Garden of Kashchei," which continues the mysterious music of the opening (a chromatic bassoon phrase foreshadows the sorcerer). But when Ivan Tsarevich captures the Firebird, the magical creature appeals to be freed in an extended solo dance; Ivan takes one of its magic feathers before allowing it to depart.
The next episode is the khorovod (a stately slow round dance) of the enchanted princesses, to one of the favorite passages of the score, a melody first introduced by the solo oboe (this is an actual folk song).
The suite then jumps to the moment in which Kashchei begins to turn Ivan into stone, making a series of magic gestures: one -- two -- ... But before he can make the third and final gesture, Ivan Tsarevich remembers the Firebird's feather; he waves it, summoning the Firebird to his aid. Kashchei's followers are enchanted by the magic bird, who sets them dancing to an "infernal dance" of wild syncopation and striking energy. Here is where the original 1911 suite ended, but in 1912 Stravinsky published the Lullaby separately, and it became a popular part of all later suites from the ballet, followed by the original finale with its impressive scene of the petrified warriors returning to life.
There are things in the The Firebird that already foreshadow the revolutionary composer to come: the inventive ear for new and striking sounds, the love of rhythmic irregularities (though there is much less of it here than in Le Sacre!), and the predilection for using ostinatos to build up passages of great excitement. In listening to this familiar score, we may be able to sense afresh the excitement of being on the verge of a revolution.
John Williams (b. 1932)
Suite from The Empire Strikes Back, arr. John Whitney
Many 20th century composers have written significant music for films, including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Milhaud, Honegger, Walton, Vaughan Williams, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson. A number of composers became so thoroughly involved with the form that they are primarily identified as film composers, though many of them -- Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, and John Williams, for example -- have also written many concert works or other non‑film scores.
The composer of a film score must add to his training in music theory, composition, and orchestration a sense of dramatic timing and color, an awareness of many musical styles, and an ability to choose the most appropriate and expressive treatment for a given situation, whether it be light romantic comedy (Gidget Goes to Rome), disaster epic (The Towering Inferno), a taut adventure (Jaws), science fiction (especially Star Wars), historical drama (Schindler's List), or magical fantasy (the Harry Potter films), to consider types represented among John Williams' scores over the last 40 years.
Though he has long since become a Californian who has adopted the calm, easy-going surface that easterners associate with people from the Golden State, John Williams was born a New Yorker. He moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1948, where he attended UCLA and studied composition privately with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He had already showed talent as a pianist and, after Air Force service, he returned to New York to study piano at the Juilliard School with Rosina Lhevinne. He worked as a jazz pianist and also, after returning to Los Angeles, as a pianist and orchestrator in the film studios. But more and more he turned to composing, having already worked (as assistant and orchestrator) with some of the giants of film composition. Most of his early experience was in television, but eventually he concentrated on the feature films for which he produced some of the most famous and beloved music of our time.
Star Wars appeared in 1977, at a time when many films had given up on full-scale original scores because the studios discovered that a simple selection of pop songs strung together on the sound track would cost less, and could be sold separately from the film as a "soundtrack" recording. It came as a shock -- an exciting and delightful shock -- to many young filmgoers to hear the symphonically-conceived score for full orchestra that John Williams created for the space epic, paying homage to his heroes in the field, Herrmann and Korngold.
The Empire Strikes Back was the second element of the original Star Wars trilogy. It is essential to any "middle" number in a dramatic trilogy to develop the plot, also moving toward an ultimate moment of crisis when it seems all may be lost -- so that ticket-buyers will be sure to buy tickets for the final episode to find out what happens. The score of The Empire Strikes Back is dominated by the brutal Imperial March, which makes us wonder whether anything can defeat the imperial power -- especially after Luke Skywalker learns that his arch-enemy, Darth Vader, is his own father and that the man by whose side he has fought so valiantly, Han Solo, has been captured and turned into a frozen state. How can the "good guys" possibly win?
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Robert Lopez (b.1975) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez Selections from Frozen, arr. by Krogstad In the animated Walt Disney film Frozen, based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Snow Queen, the songs created by husband-and-wife team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson Lopez almost instantly soared to the wide popularity of many songs written for Disney classics decades ago. |
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© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com). Used with the author's permission.
Images from Google.com
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