22 minute read
Program Notes
CHARLES GREENWELL
George Frideric Handel
Born February 23, 1685, in Halle, Germany Died April 14, 1759, in London, England
Messiah (1741)
Scored for 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, timpani, continuo, strings, SATB soloists, and chorus. (Approx. 120 minutes.)
The oratorio, one of the great Baroque vocal forms, came from the religious playwith-music of the Counter-Reformation and took its name from the Italian word for a place of worship. The first oratorios were actually sacred operas, and were produced as such. Then, around the middle of the 17th century, the oratorio gradually did away with theatrical trappings and developed its own personality as a large-scale work for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, usually— but not always—based on a biblical story. These new productions were usually performed in a church or hall without scenery, costumes, or acting, and what action there was developed with the use of a narrator and a series of recitatives, arias, duets, trios, and choruses, with the role of the chorus being quite prominent. Typical of this form are the oratorios of Handel, probably the finest composer of this popular vocal form. Handel came from the middle class and went on to make his career in England, where the middle class first achieved its strength. As he turned from standard opera to oratorio, he became part of an enormous social change, and in so doing, became one of the founders of a new culture and a creator of our modern mass public. He had very keen instincts and was able to understand the needs of his adopted country, and he produced oratorios that were steeped in the settings of the Old Testament, making them perfectly suited to the tastes of England’s middle class. He achieved this in part by making the chorus—in other words, the people—the center of the drama. Like Bach and other great Baroque masters, Handel’s rhythms were strong and unswerving, and he favored the direct language of diatonic harmony as opposed to Bach’s more ingenious idiom, which at times became highly chromatic. Handel’s melodies unfold in great majestic arches and reveal a depth of feeling that sets him apart from most of his contemporaries. Having grown up in the theatrical world, he was able to make use of tone color for a variety of moods and dramatic expression.
Handel first came to England when he was 25, and already celebrated throughout Europe as an outstanding composer of Italian-style opera. His main reason for going to England was to repeat his successes as an opera composer, and he was able to achieve this—for a time. After 25 years of triumphs in this realm, two forces did him in: the inevitable changes in public taste and the rivalries and jealousies that have always been a part of theatrical life. As a result, his final season of opera in London in 1741 was such a disaster that he began to think seriously about returning to Germany. Fate intervened, however, when Charles Jennens, his English literary collaborator, seriously worried about losing this supremely gifted composer, gave Handel the libretto of a new oratorio called simply Messiah. Jennens hoped it would inspire the man to new heights, and specifically designed the work to be presented during Holy Week, when theaters would be closed, thus assuring a full house for some kind of benefit performance. Jennens was correct: Handel thought the new libretto was inspired and could be used as part of a new venture that had come his way. He had recently been invited to Dublin to give a series of oratorio concerts and realized immediately that Messiah, performed as a benefit concert for charity, would be the perfect way to conclude the season. Handel began work on the new score in late August 1741, and in a phenomenal burst of virtually nonstop energy, finished the entire score, orchestration and all, in the amazing space of just 24 days! He set out for Ireland in early November and arrived in Dublin on November 18. The trip across the water proved to be a revitalizing experience, and in spite of the hard work that the new oratorio season would require, it was almost like a holiday, away from the financial, artistic, and personal problems that he had been dealing with in London. In addition, when he came to Dublin, he was greeted with the kind of adulation that had greeted his arrival in London some 30 years previously, and once again he was idolized, fussed over, feted wherever he went, and in general, treated like some kind of royalty. The music-loving people of Ireland had in Dublin several musical societies that were unusual in that they were all organized for charitable purposes. This was largely due to the terrible social conditions in the country, compared with the poor people of London and the inmates of its prisons and hospitals who were relatively well off. The citizens of Dublin, appalled by the miserable conditions in their prisons and hospitals, wanted to do everything they could to alleviate this wretched state of affairs, and so they raised money for humanitarian purposes by sponsoring public concerts. There was then a new Music Hall in the city that was built on order from the Charitable Music Society and their guiding light, a wealthy and influential music publisher named William Neale. He was also the secretary of Dublin’s Charities Commission, and he not only had a commanding position in all that was to follow, but in all likelihood had a hand in the invitation that brought Handel to Dublin and resulted in the production of Messiah.
On March 27, 1742, the Dublin Journal printed an announcement for a new benefit concert, stating that it would take place at the Music Hall on April 12, at which time would be performed “… Mr. Handel’s new Grand Oratorio, called Messiah, in which the Gentlemen of the Choirs of both Cathedrals will assist, with some concertos on the Organ by Mr. Handel.” As it turned out, the concert did not take place until April 13, but there was a public rehearsal on April 9, about which the Journal had written: “Yesterday Mr. Handel’s new Grand Sacred Oratorio called Messiah was rehearsed … and was performed so well that it gave universal satisfaction to all present; and was allowed by the greatest Judges to be the finest Composition of Musick that was ever heard ...” In that article and again on the day of the performance there were requests to the audience that ladies come without hoops in their dresses and that gentlemen come without their swords, so that the greatest number of people could be squeezed into the hall. At the formal premiere, this resulted in an audience of 700 pressed into a space designed to hold 600, but nobody seems to have been upset in the slightest. The premiere was an unqualified triumph, and the press notices outdid themselves in praising the work and its performance, with particular praise being given to the fact that everyone performed gratis, thereby helping to raise over 400 pounds for the advertised charities. Because of its great success, Handel was asked to repeat the work at his last Dublin concert, and so began the career of one of the most popular, beloved, and frequently performed works in the whole history of music.
Messiah was given its first performance in London in March of 1743, but it was not at all the great success it had been in Dublin. It is possible that Handel anticipated certain objections to the work, as he advertised it as “a New Sacred Oratorio” without mentioning its title, but he was certainly unprepared for the hostility it received in some quarters. There were many who were greatly upset that the Scriptures formed the basis for what was presented as secular entertainment and were very vocal in objecting to its having been presented in a theatre with several famous singers as soloists. Even librettist Jennens, after hearing the work for the first time, said that he was dissatisfied with what he called “some weak parts” in the score. As a result of this, Messiah was rarely performed in London in the mid–1740s, while at the same time it was being performed regularly in Dublin. In 1749, things made a dramatic turnaround, and once again the prime force was a connection with charity. Handel had always been known as a kind and generous man, and at the time he had become interested in the recently created Foundling Hospital for young orphans and children in dire need. In May of 1749, he proposed a concert for the hospital’s benefit, and ultimately was appointed a governor of the establishment. On May 27, the concert was given in the newly built chapel, and it was a great success. The hospital received a considerable sum of money from the concert, and that sum was further increased by a very generous gift from the King. The following year, Handel put together a new season of oratorio, and Messiah played a prominent role. It was given at the Foundling Hospital on May 1, 1750, and the chapel was so packed with eager listeners that the work had to be repeated on May 15. These were successes on the scale of the Dublin premiere, and marked the beginning of the oratorio’s great popularity in London and elsewhere.
In the years to come, Handel made it a tradition to include Messiah in his oratorio seasons during Lent, and also performed it every year at the Foundling Hospital. (Incidentally, although the Foundation still exists and thrives in London, the chapel in which Handel played, and to which he left a score and parts to Messiah in his will in order that the performances might continue, was declared unsafe and demolished in 1926. It was the last remaining building in London in which he had promoted concerts.) He continued to conduct performances of Messiah right up until his death, and in fact in March of 1759 gave three performances at Covent Garden. The annual Foundling Hospital performance was scheduled for May 3, but before the rehearsals could begin Handel was taken seriously ill. After a week of steady deterioration, he finally succumbed on April 14, 1759—the day after Good Friday. He had asked to be given a private burial in Westminster Abbey, but because he was so famous and beloved a figure, he was accorded a very public ceremony on the occasion of his internment on April 20. Of all the memorial statues in the Abbey, his is one of the most striking and memorable: In his right hand is a sheet of music containing the opening bars of the great aria from Messiah, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” After the first London performance, Handel said to a friend, “My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better.” He clearly intended the oratorio to mean something special to his audiences because it meant something special to him. At a Messiah performance in 1759 on the occasion of his 74th birthday, Handel responded to the very enthusiastic applause by saying, “Not from me—but from Heaven—comes all.” ●
DAVID B. LEVY
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Overture to Much Ado About Nothing (1918–1919)
Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, percussion, harp, harmonium, piano, 2 violins, viola, and cello. (Approx. 5 minutes.)
Austrian-American composer, pianist, and conductor, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brno, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), on May 29, 1897, and died in Hollywood, California, on November 29, 1957. The son of a prominent music critic, Korngold demonstrated a keen talent at a very early age and produced a popular ballet, Der Schneeman (The Snowman), when he was only 11. His Piano Sonata No. 2, composed when he was 13, was toured widely by the Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel, who was famous for his interpretations of the piano sonatas of Beethoven. This work impressed some of the greatest musical talents of Europe, including Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini, Jean Sibelius, Bruno Walter, and Gustav Mahler. While still in Europe, Korngold achieved continued success as the composer of a wide variety of works, most of all in the world of opera. By the 1920s, his operas were more widely performed than those of any other living composer from the Germanspeaking world, including Strauss. In 1934, sensing the growing threat of the Third Reich in Germany, Max Reinhardt invited Korngold to come to Hollywood to work on film scores. His first success was the soundtrack for the filmization of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (starring a very young Mickey Rooney). He went on to win Academy Awards for his music for films, including Captain Blood, The Seahawk, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and King’s Row. Like his fellow émigré Max Steiner, the composer of the soundtracks of King Kong and Gone With the Wind, Korngold treated his film scores as symphonic poems.
His Overture and Incidental Music for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing was composed in Vienna in 1918–1919, receiving its first performance in 1920.
The name Erich Wolfgang Korngold ought to be more familiar to concert audiences than it is. In recent years, however, his musical accomplishments and compositions have been receiving increased attention, and deservedly so. Historians and lovers of the golden years of Hollywood, however, know Korngold for having created, along with Max Steiner, a distinctive voice for epic swashbuckling films, many of which were vehicles for Errol Flynn. Korngold’s youthful experience in the world of music for the stage, however, remains less well-known. Among his success was the Overture and Incidental Music for William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing, which was first performed in Vienna in 1920. The incidental music was subsequently published as a stand-alone suite. The Overture, scored for large orchestra (including harmonium—a small organ), successfully captures the high spirits of Shakespeare’s witty play. ●
CHARLES GREENWELL
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 (1878)
Scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (Approx. 40 minutes.) No discussion of this glorious work can take place without mentioning Brahms’s great friend and colleague, the Hungarian violinist, composer, and conductor Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), for whom the concerto was written. He was perhaps the greatest violinist of the 19th century, an extraordinary child prodigy whose formal debut at age eight was hailed as the coming of a second Paganini, and whose name became, throughout the 60-plus years of his career, a byword for nobility and truth in his art. He was also a fine composer, an excellent conductor, a revered teacher, and the leader of the most highly esteemed string quartet of his day. Among other things, Joachim wanted to find a way to make the orchestra and soloist entirely equal in a violin concerto, with a score that would demonstrate the full mastery of the orchestra just as the violin part would display the full virtuosity of the soloist. He attempted to reach this goal with his own Violin Concerto in d minor (called the “Hungarian” concerto), but his ability to write for the orchestra simply did not match his ability to write for the violin. It was not until Brahms composed his Violin Concerto that Joachim’s goal was finally reached. There were two Hungarian-born violinists from whom Brahms absorbed the Hungarian strain found in many of his works, among them the present concerto: Joachim was one, the other was Eduard Remenyi, with whom Brahms toured as a pianist before he met Joachim. That meeting took place in 1853, and Joachim was so
impressed with Brahms’s compositions and musicianship that, some 50 years later, he said that “never in the course of my artist’s life had I been more completely overwhelmed.” He recognized a real kindred spirit in Brahms, and introduced him to both Schumann and Liszt, after which the two embarked on an extended series of concert tours throughout Europe, which, among other things, helped to establish a very close personal and professional relationship. Brahms was a superb pianist but knew little about the violin, and it was on these tours that he became familiar with violin repertoire and technique, as well as Joachim’s desire to reinvent the violin concerto. Brahms was fascinated by this, but did nothing about it for 25 years, as the two friends purposely developed their respective careers in such a way as to not create any rivalry. Furthermore, it is known that Brahms did not even make an attempt to write a violin concerto until it was clear that Joachim had stopped composing.
The first mention of a concerto occurred in a letter from Brahms in August 1878 when he was spending the summer on a beautiful lake in southern Austria, a region, he once said, where the melodies were so abundant that care had to be taken not to step on them. The two men met at the lake toward the end of that month, and correspondence continued between them for some time. As he was composing the concerto, Brahms received from Joachim a good deal of technical advice, but sources differ as to whether Brahms accepted most of the violinist’s suggestions or whether he simply showed the score to Joachim out of courtesy and was not much influenced by those suggestions. What seems certain is that the new concerto was created in very broad dimensions in the footsteps of the Beethoven concerto. It must be remembered that Joachim gave the London premiere of the Beethoven in 1844, with Mendelssohn conducting, when he was just shy of his 13th birthday, and by the time he met Brahms some nine years later, virtually every prominent violinist was playing the Beethoven. Following the new concerto’s completion, plans were made for a tryout with the Berlin Conservatory Orchestra in the fall of 1878, for Joachim to compose a cadenza, and for the premiere to take place with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on New Year’s Day in 1879. It was in this same hall that, some 20 years previously, Brahms’s First Piano Concerto had met with a disastrous reception, and as a result he had not written any kind of a concerto since. At the premiere the audience seemed unmoved by the first movement, began to warm up to the second movement, and then responded enthusiastically to the finale. Joachim’s playing was universally admired, as was his cadenza, and when the work was premiered in Vienna two weeks later, Brahms reported that Joachim had “… played the cadenza so magnificently that the people clapped right into my coda!” One way in which Joachim definitely influenced the work was in its construction: originally there were to have been four movements, but the scherzo was taken out, and the material was later reworked to become the second movement of the Second Piano Concerto. Even though Brahms had input from Joachim and others, his musical imagination far exceeded the existing conventions for a violin concerto. Curiously, both Brahms and Tchaikovsky wrote their violin concertos in the same year, and both works changed expectations of how a violin should sound in an orchestral setting. In spite of Brahms’s solid prestige at the time and Joachim’s passionate sponsorship, the new concerto took a long time to establish itself, but now is rightly considered to be one of the greatest of all violin concertos. Joachim had wanted the violin and the orchestra to be on an equal footing, but in a very real sense Brahms made the violin the rhythmic force driving the orchestra forward, particularly in the outer movements, and also exploited the high register of the instrument in a lyrical way that was unprecedented. The slow movement contains one of the most beautiful melodies that Brahms ever created, but it was the reason the great Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate refused to play the concerto, saying, “I don’t deny that it is very good music, but do you think I could stand, violin in hand, and listen to the oboe play the only good tune in the whole work?” Then there is the rollicking, boisterous finale, which in the principal section of the rondo was a heartfelt tribute from Brahms to Joachim’s Hungarian roots. However, just as Joachim never returned to Hungary or sympathized with its nationalist causes, other themes intervene that are definitely not Hungarian in character. Finally, the concerto ends in a most unusual way by having the music change meter not once but twice, then slows down almost to a standstill until three powerful chords bring the work to its magnificent conclusion. ●
DAVID B. LEVY
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (1877)
Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. (Approx. 45 min.)
Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833, in Hamburg and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. One of the dominant composers of the late-nineteenth century, Brahms greatly enriched the repertory for piano, organ, chamber music, chorus, and orchestra. His Symphony No. 2 was composed in 1877 and was first performed in Vienna on December 30 of that year under the direction of Hans Richter.
Brahms, after considerable trepidation, completed his Symphony No. 1 in 1876. Ever conscious of Beethoven’s long shadow, Brahms delayed writing a symphony until he felt that his craft was equal to the challenge. His Symphony No. 1 stands, so to speak, toe to toe with his great predecessor. One needn’t search far for Beethovenian influences, especially those stemming from the titan’s imposing minor-key masterpieces, the Fifth and Ninth.
Once Brahms had overcome his anxiety of Beethovenian influence, he did not wait long to write another symphony. He penned his Symphony No. 2 during the summer of 1877, with most of the work on it taking place in the idyllic Carinthian resort town of Pörtschach, near the Wörthersee. Its first performance took place in Vienna on December 30 with the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Hans Richter. The composer, in one of his whimsies of self-deprecation, apologized for the small scale of the work. Such protestations, of course, were totally unnecessary, as the work’s proportions certainly have been found to be large enough for most serious music lovers. Its good humor and geniality, however, do set the Symphony No. 2 apart from its three sisters, making it the most easily approachable of the four. The Vienna critics certainly found it to be so, with the audience demanding a repeat of the third movement. Everyone who knew Brahms recognized that the work could only have been conceived amidst the beauties of nature, as opposed to the relative squalor of the city. It is a work filled with sunshine, but one that is often tinged with typically Brahmsian melancholic nostalgia.
The opening Allegro non troppo is one of the most tightly structured movements in the symphonic repertory. Most of its material is derived from a three-note motive—D, C#, D—first heard in the cellos and basses in the opening measure. Much of the other thematic material used throughout the movement is derived from the arpeggiated figure sounded in the following two measures. In point of fact, these two primary ideas permeate not only the first movement, but, in subtle ways, the entirety of the work. The lyrical theme that dominates the second key area (f# minor/A Major) surely reflects Brahms’s indebtedness to Franz Schubert. This tune, sung by the violas and cellos, comes straight from the world of Schubert’s two-cello String Quintet, D. 956. The point of highest drama in this first movement occurs in the development section, when the three-note motive is subjected to strenuous overlapping counterpoint, resulting in some momentary glancing dissonances in the trombones. The recapitulation is crowned with a nostalgic coda, toward the end of which Brahms makes clear reference to one of his own songs: “Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze!” (“Love Is So Lovely in Spring!”), Op. 71, No. 1. All drama subsides as the movement comes to a wistful conclusion.
Rich harmonies, dark sonorities, and a cantabile cello line set an expansive mood for the second movement, Adagio non troppo. Its structure is a three-part design, the contrasting middle section changing from 4/4 meter to 12/8 (L’istesso tempo, ma grazioso). This shift adumbrates the seventh variation (also grazioso) from Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Op. 56a (1873). The third movement is in five brief parts, which on the surface would qualify it as a rondo (ABACA), but the second and fourth sections are variants of the first part, implying that a theme and variation form also is at work here. It begins Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino) with a gentle 3/4 meter oboe tune that is punctuated with gentle grace notes and a shift from major to minor modality. Soon a Presto ma non assai, 2/4, begins lightly in the strings—a reminder that this movement is, after all, a scherzo and not a minuet. The original tempo and oboe tune return, but with new touches in its orchestration. The fourth section, Presto ma non assai, 3/8, is the most explosive part of the movement, but it eventually yields to the original tempo. Brahms offers some harmonic surprises toward the end, but nothing in this gentle movement could possibly offend even the most sensitive ear.
Fun is not a word that one usually associates with Brahms, but how else could one characterize the joyous finale? Donald Francis Tovey (Essays in Musical Analysis, vol. 1) calls this movement the “great-grandson” of Haydn’s Symphony No.104 (also in D Major). He may well have considered it to be the “grandson” of Beethoven’s Second Symphony, it, too, cast in the same key). Even the movement’s most lyrical episodes fail to escape the infectious good spirits of its opening theme, played at first sotto voce by the strings alone. The explosive good humor will not be suppressed for long, however, and the full orchestra soon bursts forth with great vigor.
A clue to the success of this symphony is the fact that it never draws attention to its highly complex design. Performers and listeners alike should be grateful that Brahms, commonly known for his serious mien, could for once at least, enjoy a broad smile. And so should we. ●
