Program Notes

ERIK SATIE

born: May 17, 1866 in Honfleur, France died: July 1, 1925 in Paris, France

Parade (1917)

premiere: May 18, 1917 in Paris

In the summer of 1909, Sergei Diaghilev’s spectacular Ballets Russes burst upon the Parisian artistic scene. The Ballets Russes staged the premieres of such works as Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird (1910), Pétrouchka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, and Claude Debussy’s Jeux (1913). Diaghilev’s brilliant and controversial productions inspired audience and critical reaction that ranged from sheer adulation to violent rebellion. The most famous Ballets Russes scandal occurred at the May 29, 1913 Théâtre des Champs-Elysées premiere of Stravinsky’s pathbreaking The Rite of Spring

Another notorious Ballets Russes premiere took place at on May 18, 1917. On that date Erik Satie’s ballet Parade had its first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Commissioned by the Ballets Russes, Parade was a collaboration between many of the most brilliant artists of the day. The ballet’s plot, by Jean Cocteau, relates the tale of a group of circus performers who offer an outdoor preview of the show, in an attempt to lure customers into the tent. The audience believes it has seen the actual show, and departs. Léonide Massine choreographed Parade. Pablo Picasso designed the costumes and sets, which included the opening red curtain, portraying the performers lounging backstage.

Audiences of the time expected ballet to offer an escape from the unpleasant realities of daily life. But Cocteau’s plot made quotidian matters the focus of Parade. Picasso’s cubist costumes, and Satie’s score, a brilliant mélange of classical and popular elements (including numerous exotic percussion instruments added at Cocteau’s insistence), magnified the audience’s disorientation. Guillaume Apollinaire authored the program notes for the premiere of Parade. He described Parade as “une sorte de surréalisme” (“a kind of surrealism”). This was approximately three years before the start of the controversial Surrealism movement. Many were no more prepared for it in 1917 than they were in 1920.

The Théâtre du Châtelet audience voiced its displeasure during and after the performance. Cocteau quipped: “I have heard the cries of a bayonet charge in Flanders, but it was nothing compared to what happened that night at the Châtelet.” Critic Jean Poueigh congratulated Satie after the premiere. But in his review of the premiere, Poueigh dismissed Parade as “an outrage on French taste”, and Satie “for his lack of wit, skill, and inventiveness.” Satie responded with a series of insulting communications to Poueigh. The most famous (and printable) of Satie’s invective is: “Monsieur and dear friend—you are an ass, and an unmusical one! Signed, Erik Satie”. Because Satie’s messages were in the form of postcards that could be read by anyone handling the mail, Poueigh sued the composer for defamation. Satie was fined, and sentenced to a week in prison, which was later suspended.

Detail from a reproduction of Picasso’s original “Red Curtain” from Parade.

Picasso’s Cubist-inspired costumes were constructed from solid cardboard, restricting the dancers’ movements and influencing the choreography.

These photographs of costumes designed by Pablo Picasso are in the public domain in the United States because it was first published before 1923, in Maurice Raynal, Picasso, 2.

IGOR STRAVINSKY

born: June 17, 1882 in Lomonosov, Russia died: April 6, 1971 in New York City

Suite from Pulcinella (1922, rev. 1947)

premiere: May 15, 1920 in Paris

In the second decade of the 20th century, Igor Stravinsky rose to international prominence with a trilogy of ballets the young Russian composer wrote for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes — The Firebird (1910), Pétrouchka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). Each succeeding ballet was marked by increased rhythmic complexity and dissonance. In fact, the often barbaric music of The Rite of Spring so shocked some of those in attendance at the May 29, 1913 premiere, fistfights broke out in the Paris Champs-Elysées Theater.

Stravinsky’s first collaboration with Diaghilev after World War I once again created a stir, but for a quite different reason. In the spring of 1919, Diaghilev suggested Stravinsky consider writing music for a ballet concerning the amorous escapades of the fictional harlequin, Pulcinella. The music would be based upon works by the 18 th -century Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736), whose music Stravinsky “liked and admired immensely.”

The premiere of Pulcinella took place at the Opéra on May 15, 1920. As with Satie’s Parade, Léonide Massine served as choreographer, and Pablo Picasso designed the scenery and costumes. Massine also danced the title role. Ernest Ansermet conducted the performance, which, according to Stravinsky, “ended in a real success.” A few years later, Stravinsky created a Pulcinella concert suite, featuring music from the ballet. The premiere of the Suite from Pulcinella took place on December 22, 1922, with Pierre Monteux (who also led the first performances of Pétrouchka and The Rite of Spring) conducting the Boston Symphony.

Stravinsky’s Pulcinella — both in its complete ballet and concert suite versions — continues to engage audiences with its lyric charm, infectious energy, and piquant orchestral sonorities. Subsequent discoveries that much of the music attributed to Pergolesi was actually written by other composers have, of course, done nothing to diminish Stravinsky’s achievement.

Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite comprises eight brief movements:

I. Sinfonia (Ouverture). Allegro moderato

II. Serenata. Larghetto

III. (a) Scherzino, (b) Allegro, (c) Andantino

IV. Tarantella

V. Toccata. Allegro

VI. Gavotta; Allegro moderato (Variazione 1a: Allegretto, Variazione 2a: Allegro più tosto moderato)

VII. Vivo

a) Minuetto. Molto moderato, (b) Finale. Allegro assai

Jean Cocteau, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Picasso’s wife Olga in Antibes, 1926.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

baptized: December 17, 1770 in Bonn, Germany died: March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 2 in D Major

Opus 36 (1802)

premiere: April 5, 1803 in Vienna

By the start of the 19 th century, Ludwig van Beethoven had firmly established himself as one of Vienna’s most important pianists and composers. But during that same period, Beethoven began to experience the hearing loss that would plague the composer for the remainder of his life.

It is not surprising that Beethoven spent much time contemplating the meaning of his existence. One of the products of this soul-searching process was the document known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” written in October of 1802. Addressed to his two brothers, the Testament was found among Beethoven’s papers after the composer’s death in 1827. In the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” Beethoven confessed: “I was on the point of putting an end to my life — only art it was that withheld me, and it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce…”

Around the same time Beethoven penned the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” he put the finishing touches on a work begun the previous year, the Symphony No. 2. The D-Major Symphony received its premiere on April 5, 1803 at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wien.

In 1801, Beethoven announced to his friend, Wenzel Krumpholz: “I am only a little satisfied with my previous works. From today on I will take a new path.” Musical historians usually designate the 1803 “Eroica”, Opus 55, as the commencement of Beethoven “new path” — at least in terms of symphonic composition. It is interesting, then, to read the following critique of the premiere of the Second Symphony, published in the Vienna Zeitung für die Elegante Welt on April 16, 1803: “the first (Symphony) is essentially of more value than the second, because it is developed with an unforced lightness, while in the second the striving for the new and astonishing is more apparent.” The following May, that same paper characterized the Symphony No. 2 as “a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.”

Upon closer inspection, it is not difficult to find the elements of the Symphony No. 2 that so troubled the critics. It is true that the Symphony is not cast in the epic mode that made the “Eroica” such an epochal work. On the other hand, the D-Major Symphony offers frequent and compelling employment of dynamic contrasts, dissonance, and brilliant thematic manipulation. All of these elements point the way to the revolutionary style so indelibly associated with Beethoven. That Beethoven was able to write such vibrant, masterful (and indeed, high-spirited) music while in the grips of a shattering personal crisis, testifies to the spirit of a man who once vowed: “I will seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.”

The Symphony No. 2 is in four movements. In the first, an extended and dramatic slow-tempo introduction (Adagio molto) resolves to the vibrant, high-spirited principal Allegro con brio. The second movement (Larghetto) exudes gracious lyricism, contrasting with agitated moments in the central episode. The third-movement Scherzo (Allegro) is based upon a three-note motif, bandied about by the orchestra in vibrant dialogue, featuring abrupt juxtapositions of loud and soft dynamics. High spirits prevail in the finale (Allegro molto), capped by the raucous closing bars.