A musical nonet is a work scored for nine instrumentalists or singers. The form came into its own primarily in the early Romantic period, when relatively large chamber groups were becoming increasingly fashionable, especially in Vienna. This happened partly because putting together larger chamber groups was easier than gathering the dozens of musicians required for a full-sized orchestra. In addition, larger chamber groups created a richer sound than smaller ones.
Music for large wind bands or string ensembles used in outdoor entertainments predated nonets, but it was the Austrian composer Ludwig Spohr (1784–1859) who focused attention on the nonet form with his Nonet in F Major, Op. 31. This work, composed in 1813, was scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Spohr’s compositional expertise and the fresh, new sonic palette his nonet displayed created an instant standard for this emerging genre, and many composers throughout Europe were inspired to create nonets of their own for many years to come.
Among those so inspired was the young British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), who wrote his own nonet (though with a slight change in instrumentation) in 1894 while still a student at the Royal Music College in London. This work, Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet in F minor, Op. 2, is the first work you will hear in our concert.
Three decades later, in 1924, Spohr’s nonet inspired a group of nine musicians in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) to create their own musical group, called The Czech Nonet, that was originally devoted specifically to performing pieces of the genre.
The Czech Nonet is still going strong and over the years it has been responsible for the commission of many new nonets, including the other two works in our concert. One of these works, the Nonet, Op. 147 by the Czech composer Josef Foerster (1859–1951), was written in 1924 for the The Czech Nonet’s inaugural concert. The other work, the Nonet No. 2, H 374 by another Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), was written in 1959. It was one of the last pieces this great 20th century composer would write.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
(Born in Holborn [London], England in 1875; died in Croydon [London], England in 1912)
Nonet in F minor, “Gradus ad Parnassum,” Op. 2
1. Allegro moderato — Tranquillo
2. Andante con moto — Più lento
3. Scherzo: Allegro — Trio — Scherzo da capo
4. Finale: Allegro vivace — Tranquillo — Più presto
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an outstanding English composer and conductor, whose list of compositions is long and impressive for his short career. Of particular social importance at the time, too, was Coleridge-Taylor’s racial heritage. His father, Daniel Taylor, who was from Sierra Leone, studied medicine in London where he met Coleridge-Taylor’s mother, Alice Martin. Around the time Samuel was conceived, however, Daniel was forbidden from practicing medicine in England, and he had little choice but to return to Sierra Leone to practice there. Alice chose to stay in London with their son and named him in honor of England’s great poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inverting the order of his surnames. Precociously talented in music, Samuel was enrolled in the Royal College of Music in London. His career soon began to blossom immensely, especially in America. But at age 37, just when his career and racial heritage were providing a beacon of hope for people of color in the Western world, he succumbed to pneumonia.
During his student years at the Royal College, the 18-year-old Coleridge-Taylor busily wrote music, creating three particularly fine chamber pieces: his Piano Quintet, Op. 1, a trio for strings and piano (not published in his lifetime), and his Nonet, Op. 2. Across the top of his nonet, the young composer wrote “Gradus ad Parnassum” (“A Step Toward Parnassus”) — likely a playful reference to Carl Czerny’s ubiquitous piano study book entitled Nouveau Gradus ad Parnassum (1854). Coleridge-Taylor’s nonet shows that the young Royal College student had already scaled Parnassus with his powers of melodic invention and the magnificent sound palette he created. He scored the work for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano (instead of Ludwig Spohr’s flute). The addition of the piano provided near-orchestral power and color.
The first theme of the first movement, Allegro moderato (moderately slow), showcases Coleridge-Taylor’s talents with melody. After one introductory bar, the clarinet sings one of Coleridge-Taylor’s most lyrical inventions, romantic and wistful. Underneath, the piano plays rich chords on the offbeats while the viola and cello create a quietly propulsive, skipping rhythm, giving the clarinet’s wistfulness a sense of insistence. When the clarinet finishes this first iteration, the theme opens up in sonic splendor as the rest of the nonet instruments, especially the piano, embellish on the theme. About a minute later, a second theme, bright and optimistic, is introduced first by the piano. These two themes and this skipping rhythm then populate the rest of the movement, but most lovely is Coleridge-Taylor’s inventiveness with different instrumental pairings, creating rich and exquisite hues.
The second movement, Andante con moto (slowly but with motion), begins with a short, dark introduction from the piano, played in octaves, and rumbling mysteriously in the low registers. Except for a brief reminder of this cautionary phrase at about four and a half minutes, the Andante unfurls with increasing beauty and inner joy. Notice how the skipping rhythm from the first movement dances effervescently throughout this movement as well.
The third movement, Scherzo, was singled out for praise when the Nonet had its premiere in 1894: “The scherzo is unquestionably the most striking movement, and few would guess it to be the work of one still a student,” one reviewer wrote. And indeed, this movement is a joyful ride of exuberance and great craft. The first section, Allegro, is simmering with gusto, capering between instrumental sections, featuring the winds, or pizzicato strings, or the piano, all skipping around each other excitedly. The middle section, Trio, starting at about two and a half minutes, follows this frolicking with tender rhapsodizing.
The last movement, Allegro vivace (fast and lively), is filled with joie de vivre. Coleridge-Taylor treats this finale as a nonstop tour de force of technical brilliance for all the instruments, with the pianist taking on an especially virtuosic role. The main theme, heard immediately, is youthfully strong, lyrical, and playful, and the lyricism never lets up. The ending section, Più presto (yet faster), begins with a pizzicato run by the viola, cello, and double bass, and then the entire nonet dashes to an invigorating end.
Josef Bohuslav Foerster
(Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] in 1859; died in Nový Vestec, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] in 1951)
Nonet: Variations on Two Themes, Op. 147
1. Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Andante con moto
4. Molto moderato
5. Allegro appassionato
6. Scherzoso e fantastico — Allegro ma non troppo
7. Andante con moto
8. Allegro moderato, ma molto appassionato
Josef Bohuslav Foerster was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a family of artists. His grandfather, father, and paternal uncle were all respected composers, and his brother became a well-known muralist. The young Foerster studied music at the Prague Conservatory, finishing with a degree in composition, and then set out on a triple career as teacher, composer, and music critic. From 1893, Foerster made his living mainly as a critic and professor, first in Hamburg, Germany, then in Vienna, Austria, and eventually returning to teach at the Prague Conservatory in 1918. All the while, Foerster composed operas, symphonies, and dozens of chamber works.
In 1924, nine students of the Prague Conservatory founded the now famous (and still in existence) ensemble called The Czech Nonet. For their opening concert, they scheduled a performance of Spohr’s famous nonet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, and also commissioned Foerster to write a new nonet for them, scored for the same instruments. Foerster happily obliged and the 1924 premiere in Vienna met with great praise. One critic gushed: “The atmosphere of Bohemia’s forests and meadows makes itself felt in this composition.… We are receiving the spirit of Dvořák from Foerster’s hands.”
Foerster’s nonet is indeed reminiscent of Dvorak’s gifts for pastoral lyricism, but it is deeply infused with Foerster’s own brand of more modern lyricism that incorporates a thoughtful dissonance, with notes that are allowed to fall out of the key as well as frequent key changes. Nonetheless, his nonet exudes a feeling of country calm and luster. Especially delightful is Foerster’s expert handling of the nine players: Each is treated with virtuosity and poeticism, and when all nine combine, they blaze with radiant colors.
The beginning movement, Allegro, presents the two themes that weave throughout the nonet. The first theme begins, cleverly, not with the theme itself but with an accompaniment in the winds that sounds rather comically as if they are waltzing with a limp. Then the bassoon enters to sing the first theme, which is at first galumphing but also lyrical and happy-go-lucky. The second theme appears less than a minute later, beginning with the oboe and then moving to the violin: It evokes a pastoral dreaminess, tinged with a hint of melancholy. The movement then expands on these two themes, ending quietly on plucked strings.
The second movement, Andante con moto (slow but with motion), begins with a solo viola and a variation that is filled with longing and vulnerability. After a pause, the opening viola strain repeats. Then, without any pause (attaca), the third movement, also marked Andante con moto, begins and becomes a graceful waltz with moments of brisk drama.
The fourth movement, Molto moderato (very moderately paced), starts with urgent, dramatic gestures and dissonance, but soon leads to a slower section, marked “dolcissimo, molto espressivo, ma tranquillo” (sweetly, very expressively, but tranquil), which features one of the nonet’s most lyrical violin solos. Again, without a pause (attaca), the fifth movement, Allegro appasionata (fast and with passion), begins. It opens with eight of the nine musicians playing a series of rapid-fire short notes in unison, moving into moments of fanciful rhapsodizing before it settles into its closing section of warmth and calm.
The sixth movement, Scherzoso e fantástico (playfully and fantastical), starts quietly with a hint of sinister intent but quickly turns into an engagingly insistent march that’s dappled with a certain songfulness. Different meters will appear throughout this movement — at one point, the four-beat march will be squeezed into three beats per measure. A surprise return of part of the second theme appears, and then the Scherzo ends with a few ebullient final bars.
The seventh movement, another Andante con moto, begins with a radiant clarinet solo singing languidly and peacefully. The pastoral second theme returns in full, and then the movement ends with the utmost vulnerability, marked to be played “dolente e patetico” (sorrowfully and movingly).
The final movement, Allegro moderato, ma molto appassionato (moderately fast and with much passion), begins with a surging energy but which soon pacifies. Following this initial surge and retreat, this movement becomes a recap of musical moments from the previous movements, with brief solos for everyone that then blend into longer full-ensemble passages. After a grand silence, the instruments race off with blistering speed, ending with great and joyous energy.
Bohuslav Jan Martinů
(Born in Polička, Czechoslovakia, [now Czech Republic] in 1890; died in Liestal, Switzerland in 1959)
Nonet No. 2, H 374
1. Poco allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegretto
Though never formally completing a music degree, the Czech composer Bohuslav Jan Martinů had an extraordinarily expansive approach to learning music, beginning with his lifelong love of Czech folk music. His musical explorations brought him to Paris in the early 1920’s where he discovered Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassicism (music adhering to structures and logic, that emulated the tenets of classicism and used sparser means than huge orchestral forces). This deeply informed his composing style for many years. But his musical genius was always devising new ways to express itself, and by the end of his life one could only truly define Martinů’s style as uniquely his own: Rhapsodic, often informed by his homeland’s folksongs and dance, clever, neoclassically inclined, rhythmically active, and always ingeniously inventive.
During World War II, Martinů took refuge in the United States. After the war, he yearned to return to his Czech home but the communist regime there made that goal unrealistic. By 1959 he was living in Switzerland and kept in close contact with his friends and colleagues in Prague. That year, The Czech Nonet commissioned Martinů for a new work for the ensemble’s 35th anniversary concert. He chose to write for them his Nonet No. 2 (also scored for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, like Foerster’s nonet). It would turn out to be one of his last completed compositions: He had been battling stomach cancer and died one month after the concert. Despite Martinů’s health challenges, his Nonet No. 2 is one of his most joyful works. It is often filled with the feeling of Czech folksong and dance, and with a kaleidoscope of colors and effervescent jubilance.
The first movement, Poco allegro (rather fast), is a festival of 10 separate themes, all packed into a short five minutes of music. The opening immediately portrays a sense of dance and glee as the clarinet begins a short little up-and-down-motive. This motive is then echoed in the strings at a faster pace, and within seconds, the entire nonet is burbling with excited iterations of the motive as solos from every instrument pop into the fabric with brief intensity. All of this excited tumbling culminates in a wonderfully regal horn solo at about two minutes. The movement then returns to and reworks the opening music and ends with happy bravura.
The second movement, Andante (at a walking pace), is a moment of stunning invention and noble beauty — perhaps one of the loveliest things that Martinů created. It begins with a cello solo in which the upper strings add quiet atmospheric zephyrs. Shortly, the strings branch into polyphonic wanderings (every instrument plays its own melody) that coalesce harmonically. It’s Martinů’s bewitching night music, filled with the sounds of every mysterious and beautiful thing at midnight. Particularly lovely is a passage, at about three and a half minutes, in which the flute and clarinet play together quietly and lyrically, and then the music becomes increasingly rhapsodic as more instruments join in. The bassoon, at last, brings this rhapsodic night music to rest, settling lower and lower into a soft chord with the full ensemble.
The final movement, Allegretto (not very fast), begins with bouncy and unpredictably happy chaos. The meter changes frequently, moving in and out of five beats per bar, and yet Martinů somehow balances all this restlessness with a sense of folkdance and jolliness. At about two minutes, the music calms and the flute and then the oboe, introduce a hymn-like tune. From here until the end, the feelings of folkdance and hymn take turns, each demanding ever more virtuosity from the players, until at last, the hymn-like tune closes the work with the horn heralding the ending bars with warm majesty.
Music as a counterpart to visual scenes, as is common in films, precedes cinema itself. Famously, for example, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (1808) intentionally evoked scenes of nature and the feelings nature elicits.
But composers were mixing the senses long before that. The French Baroque composer Marin Marais (1656–1728) often wrote music intended to portray specific images and sensations. One striking example is his 1725 work entitled The Bladder-Stone Surgery, which detailed exactly that medical procedure (the score includes notations such as “The patient is bound with silken cords” and “He screameth”)!
More familiarly (and surely more pleasingly), Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) at about the same time gave an exquisite musical expression of the seasonal changes of the year in his group of four violin concerti titled Four Seasons. Here, in a tour de force of Baroque complexity, each concerto is accompanied by a sonnet divided into three verses that correspond to that concerto’s three movements. Each sonnet narrates incidents and emotions appropriate to the season at hand (such as spring birdsong, the buzzing of insects in the summer, the barking of hunting dogs in the autumn, and the howling cold winds of winter), and these incidents and emotions can be heard approximated in the music.
The Romantic Era, of course, brought musical representation of natural phenomena even more to the fore. Perhaps no one was more devoted to the creation of emotion-meets-image-meets-musical-sequence than Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and his extraordinary operas.
But to come together in their most potent combination, it almost seems as though music, emotions, and images had been waiting for the advent of cinema. From almost the very beginning of commercial moving pictures in 1895, music accompanied the visuals on the screen. But because film technology at first could only record images, this music was originally provided by live musicians—typically a pianist or a small instrumental ensemble. Later, the art-house organ and its many sound effects became hugely popular in movie houses, and the organists would improvise as they went along, playing beloved pieces of music, both popular and classical, to adorn and exaggerate the sentiments of each film’s story.
By the early years of the 20th century, the movies had become so wildly popular that great composers began to write musical scores specifically for them. The first famous composer to do this was Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) for a 1908 film called The Assassination of the Duke of Guise. Saint-Saëns’s craftsmanship in treating this film’s music as a piece of art unto itself, yet intrinsically linking the music to the action, characters, and emotions of the storyline, changed everything in cinema. In the ensuing decades, directors and composers would come together to make some of the greatest collaborations in all of art: Think of Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky, 1938); Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann (Psycho, 1960); and Steven Spielberg and John Williams (Jaws, 1975).
In addition to new music written specifically for films, Classical music on its own terms was also taken out of its concert hall context and used, to significant effect, in many movie soundtracks. Think especially of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and its use of Richard Strauss’s opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra.
In this concert, you will hear both original film music (by Max Richter and Howard Shore) as well as classical blockbusters (from Schubert, Barber, Beethoven, and Dvořák) that were “repurposed” to magically enhance different films.
In short, music and movies seem to have been meant for each other, regardless of the origins of the music itself. As an anonymous film critic once said:
When watching a film, the director or actor may put the tear in your eye, but it takes music to make it spill upon your cheek.
Franz Schubert
(Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1797; died in Vienna, Austria in 1828)
String Quartet No. 8 in B-flat major, D. 112 (published posthumously as Op. 168)
III. Menuetto — Allegro
The exceptional music of Franz Schubert can be heard in dozens of films, always giving added meaning — and an additional layer of excellence — to the scenes involved.Tapping into Schubert’s genius in this way, Greta Gerwig employed no fewer than five of his dance pieces in her superb 2019 remake of the classic film and novel, Little Women. One of these dance pieces is the Dance Minuet movement from an early string quartet, No. 8 in B-flat major, written in 1814.
Schubert’s later string quartets, such as Nos. 13, 14, and 15 from 1824 and 1826, were often laden with pathos. But his earlier string quartets, including No. 8, are instead filled with light, charm, and wit. (This is not incidental: Schubert wrote these early quartets for his family to play privately at their home, with himself on the viola and his father and two brothers rounding out the family’s string quartet ensemble.)
No. 8’s very lyrical third movement, the Menuetto (the Italian version of minuet), unabashedly embraces Schubert’s lifelong love for the dance forms that were so popular in Vienna in his day, and it is absolutely danceable. The first section begins with the upper violin lilting along with a pleasantly elegant and singable melody. But notice how Schubert (the family violist) gives the viola an especially prominent part — and how this allows for the two violins to dally alongside in their own wonderful duets.
The Trio section (middle section, beginning roughly at about two and a half minutes) is a delicate surprise. As the violins play a new and gentler melody in longer notes, the viola and soon the cello pizzicato their way through the harmonies, as though tenderly tiptoeing up behind one’s beloved. The music from the first section returns for one last round of the dance, and the Menuetto ends with a smiling grace.
Samuel Barber
(Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1910; died in New York City, New York, in 1981)
String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11
II. Molto adagio
Barber wrote his only string quartet in 1936. The first and third movements are dissonant and angular but the middle movement, molto adagio, is a piece of astoundingly sonorous beauty. These contrasting approaches to composing would define Barber’s unique career: He was equally masterful at pushing harmonic boundaries and in creating some of the most lush and lyrical melodies in the 20th century.
Immediately after finishing the string quartet, Barber arranged its middle-movement Adagio as a separate piece for string orchestra and entitled it Adagio for Strings. Knowing that it was, as he said, “a knockout,” Barber sent it to the conductor Arturo Toscanini, who gave the piece its premiere in 1938. From that premiere, the Adagio’s popularity and importance in American culture has never waned. It soon became regarded as America’s semiofficial music for mourning, and it was performed often after tragic moments in American history. In 1945, it was played during the announcement of Franklin Roosevelt’s death; in 1963, it was performed to an empty hall at the Kennedy Center after the assassination of John F. Kennedy; and in 2001, it was heard prominently after the World Trade Center bombing on 9/11. The Adagio’s emergence into cinema began, most notably, in 1980 with David Lynch’s classic film, The Elephant Man. But the music’s huge popularity was forever cemented when Oliver Stone used it as the main theme for his 1986 Vietnam antiwar film, Platoon.
Adagio for Strings is at once contemplative and melancholic, and thus it is well suited to its use in films and memorial events. Nonetheless, as beautiful as this work is in its string orchestra arrangement, the Molto adagio middle movement from the original string quartet version captures an uncanny intimacy. The main theme, first played by the upper violin, is lyrical and pensive, as though lost in a circle of memories, which slowly moves upward by steps. Underneath, long chords create a darkly hued atmosphere which shifts unhurriedly. The theme’s steplike motion eventually gives way to quiet, wide melodic leaps, but rather than jangling the psyche, they murmur sentiments of hope. The music builds to an intense climax at about five and a half minutes, which is answered by a long silence. The music then recedes by ingeniously recreating the feeling of several profound sighs, and then, of quietude. The music of the beginning returns to end the work, but now, with a feeling of almost impossible tenderness, whispering of a fragile sense of promise.
Ludwig van Beethoven
(Born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1827)
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
III. Heiliger Dankgesang (“Song of Thanksgiving “) Molto adagio
Beethoven has been a factor in films from the earliest days of cinema, perhaps beginning with a now lost French silent biopic called Beethoven produced around 1913. Since then, he and his music have figured in over 1,200 movies, television shows, and documentaries. One of the most memorable examples may well be Walt Disney’s 1940 animated film, Fantasia, which featured Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”).
The Beethoven music in our concert, the Molto adagio movement to his String Quartet No. 15, was used powerfully in director Joe Wright’s 2009 movie about a homeless cellist, The Soloist.
Quartet No. 15 is one of Beethoven’s late quartets, created very near the end of his life. Beethoven used these quartets to explore new musical territory and innovative ways to convey very deep emotions. No. 15 was written in 1825 while Beethoven was battling a gravely serious gastrointestinal illness. He survived this dance with death and captured his gratitude, and the sheer joy of coming back into health, in No. 15’s third movement, Molto adagio (very slow).
Beethoven subtitled this movement Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart (“Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode”). This movement is the centerpiece of the whole quartet, and its beautiful opening chorale is transcendent. Cast in the modal-sounding key F Lydian, this chorale is slow, somber, and vulnerable — Beethoven’s musical expression of humble thanks. Following this chorale is a quicker section, marked to be played “with renewed strength,” that is frisky and joyful. The somber chorale and its joyful counterpart alternate twice, but while the chorale’s return becomes increasingly introspective and eloquent, its quicker counterpart almost flits with dancelike ebullience: Especially jubilant is the passage at about eight minutes, with runs and embellishments twirling between the quartet’s players. The chorale returns one final time to end the movement, now deeply lyrical and intense and marked to be played “with the most intimate emotions.” It strengthens into a climax, and then retreats into quiet gratitude, like a prayer.
Antonin Dvořák
(Born near Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), in 1841; died in Prague
in 1904)
String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96, B. 179, “American”
II. Lento
The music of the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák has been accompanying movies almost since the birth of the industry, beginning in 1929 with a remarkable film, called Hallelujah, that featured an all-Black cast. Indeed, his music has been so popular in cinema that it has been used in over 100 films just since the 1996 film, Kolja, which used the Dvořák music featured in our concert: the Lento movement from his String Quartet No 12. (Incidentally, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women uses another movement from this string quartet.)
No. 12 was written in 1893 while Dvořák was serving as director of the newly created National Conservatory of Music in New York City. In the summer of that year, he took a break from the frenetic New York scene to spend time in the quiet of the countryside with a diaspora of Czech immigrants in Spillville, Iowa. Within two weeks he composed his now hugely popular String Quartet No. 12, later nicknamed the “American” quartet. One of the most beloved string quartets in the repertoire, this one is beautiful and robust; folksy, yet sophisticated. Every movement shines with gorgeous melodies, but especially magical is its second movement, Lento (very slowly).
The Lento opens with the viola and second violin repeating a gentle, undulating ostinato while the cello quietly plucks below. Overtop of this sound bed, the violin enters with a song that is lyrically breathtaking and deeply melancholic — something like a slow spiritual mixed with a Czech folksong. The movement seems to search for answers to this sorrowfulness with mild climaxes and light drama. But overall, the song continues to sing, attracting ever-changing gorgeous harmonies, melting like sunsets. At about three and a half minutes, the two violins begin a dialogue that develops into one of the most beautiful moments in the entire quartet. The Lento eventually ends with the cello taking up the sad song and ending with a last, lonesome, and fading chord that uncannily evokes a feeling of uncertainty.
Max Richter
(Born in Hamelin, West Germany, on March 22, 1966)
On the Nature of Daylight (Arr. for string quartet by Alice Hong)
German-born pianist and composer Max Richter was raised in England. He studied music at the University of Edinburgh and then the Royal Academy of Music (London), finally studying composition with the modernist Luciano Berio (1925–2003). His style evolved to include post-minimalism (minimalist-like), ambient, and contemporary (modern) classical music making, creating a tonally rewarding and thoughtfully crafted mix. He has written, performed and produced 14 solo classical music albums since 2002 and has kept immensely busy with arranging, performing, and composing for stage, opera, ballet, and almost 60 films.
On the Nature of Daylight (performed in our concert in its string quartet arrangement) first appeared as a solo track on Richter’s 2004 album titled The Blue Notebooks, which was conceived as a protest album against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Most of the album’s musical tracks have voice-over readings from Franz Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1917–1919) and the writings of Czesław Miłosz. With On the Nature of Daylight, however, there were no voices, just strings and electronics. Richter described his conception of the piece:
What I wanted to try and do was … create something which had a sense of luminosity and brightness, but made from the darkest possible materials.
On theNature of Daylight soon became extremely popular for its lyrical reflectiveness and deep sense of sadness. The piece has found its way into several films since its album release, most memorably in Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 sci-fi film Arrival.
Like Barber’s Adagio, Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight feels as though it connects profound sadness with the stirrings of hope. In its string quartet arrangement, the work begins with three members of the quartet playing slow and lush chords, repeating four-bar phrases almost continually, very much like a Baroque chaconne. The harmonic progression is ruminative and unhurried, basking in an inner glow. At almost two minutes, the first violin then begins to gently rhapsodize in a minimalist style (a melody or phrase that repeats continuously but with gradual modifications). The second violin soon joins with its own rhapsodizing, sonically drifting high above the rest of the quartet. The music continues in this ruminative way until about five and a half minutes, when the cello finally comes to rest on a single note. And like gravity, the cello’s sound-space pulls in the rest of the quartet, slowing their rustling, until — at last — all motion concludes with a long-held chord fading into silence.
Howard Shore
(Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,on October 18, 1946)
The Breaking of the Fellowship (from the final scene of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001, arr. for String Quartet by Alex Philip-Yates)
The Canadian-born musician Howard Shore grew up learning how to play multiple instruments, and he began playing in several bands at age 13. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and from there, his career began to blossom, first as a jazz-fusion musician and then as a composer for musicals and films.
Shore’s first success in film scoring was in 1979 with the thriller The Brood, and since then he’s had a very distinguished career with over 80 film scores. His greatest fame has been won for his music for Peter Jackson’s 2001–2003 film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, based on the fantasy books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Shore won his first Oscar for Best Original Score for his music to the first installment of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). The music in the closing scenes, in particular (referred to as The Breaking of the Fellowship), has become extremely popular because of its great and lyrical theme. In the movie, Irish pop singer Enya sings words to this theme during the closing section of the film. This poignant music has been arranged many times for many kinds of ensembles; in our concert, we hear the string quartet arrangement.
The full quartet introduces the work with several long chords that are the basic harmonies of the main theme, and they conjure a somber and epic feeling — like an epilogue to a great adventure. The theme emerges briefly in the more rhythmically active violin but then recedes. The music then wanders through intertwining but independent parts from the quartet players, representing the group of friend-warriors (the Fellowship) each breaking out on his own journey. These independent parts, however, set the stage for the first full appearance of the main theme, also known as the song “In Dreams,” at about two minutes. This theme sounds like an old and wistful English folk tune mixed with an air of the valiant — part folk song, part anthem. The music then does what the characters do, it goes a-wandering, through key changes and sets of lush chords, with snippets of the folk tune appearing like memories, and all the while stacking up in emotion. The final section, beginning a little before eight minutes, becomes increasingly heroic, rising with hope, with the understanding that the Fellowship shall one day reunite.
(Born in Menlo Park, California, in 1897; died near Woodstock, New York, in 1965)
Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10
For Oboe and Strings
Henry Cowell was one of the first modernist American-born composers, and his ideas and works spread their wings far across the musical landscape. Among his students, supporters, and devotees were Arnold Schoenberg, Burt Bacharach, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and the ultramodernist John Cage (who steadfastly proclaimed Cowell as “the open sesame for new music in America”).
Born near San Francisco, Cowell was raised primarily by his mother and was largely educated at home and self-taught in music. Even at a young age, Cowell was being noticed as a musical genius, and in his late teens he studied music composition briefly with Charles Seeger (father of the famous Seeger family of folk singers) at the University of California, Berkeley, and equally briefly at the Julliard School of Music in New York.
But an academic approach did not suit the free-thinking Cowell. Instead, the young composer began a lifelong musical exploration, blending folk song and tonality with extended techniques for the piano. These techniques included nonconformist, creative ways of making music, such as playing tone clusters (chords that comprise at least three adjacent tones in a scale) with fists or forearms, hitting whatever notes they contact, and plucking strings inside the body of the piano. Some of his ultramodernist musical concerts erupted in riots.
Cowell wrote books about his ideas and methods, taught at several music schools, and influenced many classical American music composers of the 20th century. He was also a prolific composer, writing almost 1,000 works. But in the second half of his life, he became less aggressively avant-garde and looked increasingly toward tradition and tonality. Such was the case with the set of 18 works he called “Hymns and Fuguing Tunes,” composed between 1944 and 1964.
The Hymn and Fuguing Tune featured in our concert, No. 10, was completed in 1955. Cowell said the piece draws on the music “of Southern Revival meetings in which popular minstrel show rhythms were turned to religious purposes…. The tunes of course are my own.” All 18 of Cowell’s Hymns and Fuguing Tunes are gorgeous works, but No. 10 is perhaps the most popular, blending a folksong style with church hymns, yet wrapped in sophisticated compositional craft.
Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 has two parts, a hymn part and a fugue part. In the hymn part, which comes first, the strings open with a lyrical hymnlike song, a singable melody laden with a folk-like feel and with tinges of Renaissance-sounding ornamentation. The solo oboist takes over from the strings, and for about four minutes, the music feels as though it is eternally blossoming. An explicit cadence (the equivalent of a musical “period”) never seems to arrive; instead, the first strain of the hymn part continuously evolves, from strings to oboe, to other soloists in the string orchestra, and back around, like an infinity loop. Some lovely chromaticism intensifies this sense of continual unfolding until, at last, the hymn part comes to its peaceful ending.
After a brief pause, the second part of the work, the fuguing tune part, begins. Before we describe it, we should note that fuguing tunes are not like fugues by Bach but rather a song genre that came to America from England in the middle of the 18th century and became extremely popular. Originally, these were sacred choral works arranged for a four-part chorus and based on Protestant hymns. They followed a pattern of first introducing a tune in all four parts, and then proceeding in a kind of canon form with the theme being sung in staggered entrances and afterward being sounded simultaneously by the various voices of the chorus or instruments — as in the children’s song, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
In the fuguing tune part of Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10, the oboe starts things off with a brief melody that is liltingly light on its feet and harmonious. As expected in this genre, various sections of the strings then take up the tune in canon sequence. But soon Cowell begins to play with the norms: A second short melody — a rippling run of notes — is introduced by the oboe, and the fuguing tune then increasingly becomes more of a rhapsodic fantasy of swirling voices playing counterpoint to each other in all sorts of instrumental and melodic combinations. This part of the work radiates with the intensity of the interactions between the oboist and various sections of the orchestra, yet always retains a light touch. At about two and a half minutes, the tempo pulls back for dramatic effect and all the instruments begin to pull together to end, at last, with three glowing, unison chords.
Franz Joseph Haydn
(Born in Rohrau, Austria in 1732; died in Vienna, Austria in 1809)
Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb:1
1. Moderato
2. Adagio
3. Finale — Allegro molto
For almost 200 years, the world thought there was only one Haydn cello concerto to be played, the lovely Concerto No. 2 in D major. Haydn’s own catalogs of his works mentioned a previous cello concerto, written in C major, but that work seemed to have been lost. Then in 1961, a fortuitous knocking-over-of-old-dusty-stuff at the Prague National Museum by a museum archivist named Oldřich Pulkert uncovered a manuscript of the C major concerto. Music historian H.C. Robbins Landon described this event as “the single greatest musicological discovery since the Second World War.”
The manuscript that was found in Prague was signed by the C major concerto’s original soloist, Joseph Weigl. Weigl was a friend of Haydn’s and one of the musicians in Haydn’s first orchestra at the estate of his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, of Hungary. The C major concerto was composed between 1761 and 1765 and written specifically for Weigl. (This was something Haydn did; he kept good musicians in his employ by rewarding them with juicy concertos to play). Judging by the virtuosic writing of the concerto’s cello passages, Weigl was indeed a superb cellist.
Haydn’s rediscovered Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major had its 20th-century premiere on May 19,1962, when Czech virtuoso Miloš Sádlo performed it with the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. Sádlo and Mackerras also made the first recording. The concerto has been beloved ever since.
This wonderful work is surely one of the loveliest things that Haydn wrote, filled with a freshness that makes each of its three movements a delight. It is among Haydn’s most inventive works, and it achieves that magical concerto balance of showing off the capabilities of the solo instrument and its performer, even as it brims with musicality, lyricism and surprises for the entire ensemble.
The first movement, Moderato (at a medium speed), is full of charm and beautiful melody. After the stately yet sunny introduction of the theme by the orchestra, the soloist jumps in happily, highlighting the luxuriance of the cello’s chocolatey low range, the richness of playing multiple strings (chords), and the cello’s musical agility. What’s most enjoyable about this movement is Haydn’s long, vocal-like lines for the soloist in a movement that truly sings throughout, reminding us that Haydn first became famous in the Esterházy Estate as an opera composer.
The middle movement, Adagio (slowly), offers the concerto’s most tender musical moments. Like the previous movement, it’s filled with lyricism, but here Haydn explores the cello’s middle and upper registers in ways that evoke the human voice. The movement begins with an introductory theme, played by the orchestral strings, that features several brief, downwardly rustling figures that create the effect of falling leaves. Then the cello enters, beginning very softly, playing a long, single note growing in gentle intensity, then continuing with the rustling figures previously played by the orchestra. In this dialogue, it feels as if we’re overhearing a love song of intimate beauty.
The third movement, Allegro molto (very fast), is brisk and bright and bouncy. It features virtuosic displays for the soloist, but all these runs and wicked-fast technical challenges create very listenable, lyrical lines. Notice, too, that throughout this movement Haydn revisits the motives from the earlier movements: the growling low notes and chords, as well as the upper-register playing. The most wonderful reprise happens when the cello first enters, at about one minute, returning with that growing-glowing note from the beginning of the previous Adagio movement but now transformed into a quicker, brilliant blaze of light. This movement’s pace is breakneck to the very end, and as the final notes are bowed, it is undeniable that this masterly concerto is indeed one of the greatest (and luckiest) musical discoveries of the 20th century.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1791)
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto — Allegretto — Trio
4. Allegro assai
In the summer of 1788, Mozart’s life was overwhelmed by tragedy. Having recently suffered several professional failures, Mozart’s debts had accrued beyond control, and this only doubled his grief over his infant daughter’s unexpected death earlier that spring. Yet almost miraculously, despite the weight of these events, Mozart wrote three astounding symphonies, numbered 39, 40, and 41, over a mere nine weeks hoping to perform them in some upcoming subscription concerts. These three symphonies would be his final symphonic works, and although each is an undisputed masterpiece, No. 40 in G minor has retained a special place in his oeuvre for its profoundly emotional nature. It is one of only two symphonies out of the 41 he wrote that he set in a minor key. He reserved this key for significant expressivity, and given this great symphony’s uncanny beauty, pathos, and angst, it surely seems that this work reflects the emotional trials he was undergoing when he wrote it.
The first movement, Molto allegro (very fast), is evocative, continually suggesting an anguish that is delivered with a searing lyrical beauty. The movement begins with a quietly undulating rhythm in the lower strings, a pulsing that almost never abates. In just several quick beats, the violins then enter above that agitation with one of Mozart’s most memorable themes. This theme first lifts upward with a sense of questioning and then tumbles down in small rhythmic segments as if in indignation — conveying a feeling of inner turmoil. Immediately thereafter, a small motive surges angrily from the basses with two longish, descending notes and infiltrates everything in the movement, stoking a sense of unrest. The movement agitates and questions and surges to its final bars.
The second movement, Andante (slowly, at a walking pace), begins with the strings presenting a gently throbbing theme that seems to slowly unfold with a glowing grace. Yet there is an unmistakable fragility lurking underneath in the way that Mozart fragments the theme among the string sections, beginning with violas, then the cellos and basses, and so on. This feeling of vulnerability becomes poignantly present at about three and a half minutes, when a flitting little rhythm in the winds continuously descends, like falling tears, through several sequences of richly dark harmonies from the strings. The last bars conclude quietly.
The first part of the third movement, Menuetto — Allegretto (minuet dance, not too fast), begins with the full orchestra playing a strident, defiant-sounding theme that is almost sarcastically ill-suited for a dance like a minuet. The theme migrates into a series of repetitions, being cast about between the instruments and colliding with each other, creating a startlingly dramatic effect. The second part of the movement, Menuetto — Trio, is much more delicately dance-like, and features a delightful spotlight on the oboes and horns. The movement ends with a return of the opening section’s forcefulness.
The finale, Allegro assai (very fast), is rife with a dark and relentless energy. The opening theme begins with the violins punching out a series of ascending notes and finishes with the full orchestra playing a hyper-oscillating rhythm. Despite the uncanny tunefulness of this theme, the feeling is anxious and insistent. A brief second theme, featuring a sweet duet between the clarinet and bassoon, is much more relaxed and lyrical, but nonetheless, this finale is more overtly concerned with power and propulsion, and the symphony’s last eight bars are almost wild with excitement.
https://www.friendswv.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FOM_2024-25_Nov-23.jpg10801080Jen Rolstonhttps://www.friendswv.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/FOM_logo_340x156-300x138.jpgJen Rolston2024-10-22 11:21:292024-10-22 11:21:29Radiance and Fire – November 2 & 3, 2024
Working with NoNets – March 29 & 30, 2025
Program NotesA musical nonet is a work scored for nine instrumentalists or singers. The form came into its own primarily in the early Romantic period, when relatively large chamber groups were becoming increasingly fashionable, especially in Vienna. This happened partly because putting together larger chamber groups was easier than gathering the dozens of musicians required for a full-sized orchestra. In addition, larger chamber groups created a richer sound than smaller ones.
Music for large wind bands or string ensembles used in outdoor entertainments predated nonets, but it was the Austrian composer Ludwig Spohr (1784–1859) who focused attention on the nonet form with his Nonet in F Major, Op. 31. This work, composed in 1813, was scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Spohr’s compositional expertise and the fresh, new sonic palette his nonet displayed created an instant standard for this emerging genre, and many composers throughout Europe were inspired to create nonets of their own for many years to come.
Among those so inspired was the young British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), who wrote his own nonet (though with a slight change in instrumentation) in 1894 while still a student at the Royal Music College in London. This work, Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet in F minor, Op. 2, is the first work you will hear in our concert.
Three decades later, in 1924, Spohr’s nonet inspired a group of nine musicians in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) to create their own musical group, called The Czech Nonet, that was originally devoted specifically to performing pieces of the genre.
The Czech Nonet is still going strong and over the years it has been responsible for the commission of many new nonets, including the other two works in our concert. One of these works, the Nonet, Op. 147 by the Czech composer Josef Foerster (1859–1951), was written in 1924 for the The Czech Nonet’s inaugural concert. The other work, the Nonet No. 2, H 374 by another Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), was written in 1959. It was one of the last pieces this great 20th century composer would write.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
(Born in Holborn [London], England in 1875; died in Croydon [London], England in 1912)
Nonet in F minor, “Gradus ad Parnassum,” Op. 2
1. Allegro moderato — Tranquillo
2. Andante con moto — Più lento
3. Scherzo: Allegro — Trio — Scherzo da capo
4. Finale: Allegro vivace — Tranquillo — Più presto
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an outstanding English composer and conductor, whose list of compositions is long and impressive for his short career. Of particular social importance at the time, too, was Coleridge-Taylor’s racial heritage. His father, Daniel Taylor, who was from Sierra Leone, studied medicine in London where he met Coleridge-Taylor’s mother, Alice Martin. Around the time Samuel was conceived, however, Daniel was forbidden from practicing medicine in England, and he had little choice but to return to Sierra Leone to practice there. Alice chose to stay in London with their son and named him in honor of England’s great poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inverting the order of his surnames. Precociously talented in music, Samuel was enrolled in the Royal College of Music in London. His career soon began to blossom immensely, especially in America. But at age 37, just when his career and racial heritage were providing a beacon of hope for people of color in the Western world, he succumbed to pneumonia.
During his student years at the Royal College, the 18-year-old Coleridge-Taylor busily wrote music, creating three particularly fine chamber pieces: his Piano Quintet, Op. 1, a trio for strings and piano (not published in his lifetime), and his Nonet, Op. 2. Across the top of his nonet, the young composer wrote “Gradus ad Parnassum” (“A Step Toward Parnassus”) — likely a playful reference to Carl Czerny’s ubiquitous piano study book entitled Nouveau Gradus ad Parnassum (1854). Coleridge-Taylor’s nonet shows that the young Royal College student had already scaled Parnassus with his powers of melodic invention and the magnificent sound palette he created. He scored the work for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano (instead of Ludwig Spohr’s flute). The addition of the piano provided near-orchestral power and color.
The first theme of the first movement, Allegro moderato (moderately slow), showcases Coleridge-Taylor’s talents with melody. After one introductory bar, the clarinet sings one of Coleridge-Taylor’s most lyrical inventions, romantic and wistful. Underneath, the piano plays rich chords on the offbeats while the viola and cello create a quietly propulsive, skipping rhythm, giving the clarinet’s wistfulness a sense of insistence. When the clarinet finishes this first iteration, the theme opens up in sonic splendor as the rest of the nonet instruments, especially the piano, embellish on the theme. About a minute later, a second theme, bright and optimistic, is introduced first by the piano. These two themes and this skipping rhythm then populate the rest of the movement, but most lovely is Coleridge-Taylor’s inventiveness with different instrumental pairings, creating rich and exquisite hues.
The second movement, Andante con moto (slowly but with motion), begins with a short, dark introduction from the piano, played in octaves, and rumbling mysteriously in the low registers. Except for a brief reminder of this cautionary phrase at about four and a half minutes, the Andante unfurls with increasing beauty and inner joy. Notice how the skipping rhythm from the first movement dances effervescently throughout this movement as well.
The third movement, Scherzo, was singled out for praise when the Nonet had its premiere in 1894: “The scherzo is unquestionably the most striking movement, and few would guess it to be the work of one still a student,” one reviewer wrote. And indeed, this movement is a joyful ride of exuberance and great craft. The first section, Allegro, is simmering with gusto, capering between instrumental sections, featuring the winds, or pizzicato strings, or the piano, all skipping around each other excitedly. The middle section, Trio, starting at about two and a half minutes, follows this frolicking with tender rhapsodizing.
The last movement, Allegro vivace (fast and lively), is filled with joie de vivre. Coleridge-Taylor treats this finale as a nonstop tour de force of technical brilliance for all the instruments, with the pianist taking on an especially virtuosic role. The main theme, heard immediately, is youthfully strong, lyrical, and playful, and the lyricism never lets up. The ending section, Più presto (yet faster), begins with a pizzicato run by the viola, cello, and double bass, and then the entire nonet dashes to an invigorating end.
Josef Bohuslav Foerster
(Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] in 1859; died in Nový Vestec, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] in 1951)
Nonet: Variations on Two Themes, Op. 147
1. Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Andante con moto
4. Molto moderato
5. Allegro appassionato
6. Scherzoso e fantastico — Allegro ma non troppo
7. Andante con moto
8. Allegro moderato, ma molto appassionato
Josef Bohuslav Foerster was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a family of artists. His grandfather, father, and paternal uncle were all respected composers, and his brother became a well-known muralist. The young Foerster studied music at the Prague Conservatory, finishing with a degree in composition, and then set out on a triple career as teacher, composer, and music critic. From 1893, Foerster made his living mainly as a critic and professor, first in Hamburg, Germany, then in Vienna, Austria, and eventually returning to teach at the Prague Conservatory in 1918. All the while, Foerster composed operas, symphonies, and dozens of chamber works.
In 1924, nine students of the Prague Conservatory founded the now famous (and still in existence) ensemble called The Czech Nonet. For their opening concert, they scheduled a performance of Spohr’s famous nonet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, and also commissioned Foerster to write a new nonet for them, scored for the same instruments. Foerster happily obliged and the 1924 premiere in Vienna met with great praise. One critic gushed: “The atmosphere of Bohemia’s forests and meadows makes itself felt in this composition.… We are receiving the spirit of Dvořák from Foerster’s hands.”
Foerster’s nonet is indeed reminiscent of Dvorak’s gifts for pastoral lyricism, but it is deeply infused with Foerster’s own brand of more modern lyricism that incorporates a thoughtful dissonance, with notes that are allowed to fall out of the key as well as frequent key changes. Nonetheless, his nonet exudes a feeling of country calm and luster. Especially delightful is Foerster’s expert handling of the nine players: Each is treated with virtuosity and poeticism, and when all nine combine, they blaze with radiant colors.
The beginning movement, Allegro, presents the two themes that weave throughout the nonet. The first theme begins, cleverly, not with the theme itself but with an accompaniment in the winds that sounds rather comically as if they are waltzing with a limp. Then the bassoon enters to sing the first theme, which is at first galumphing but also lyrical and happy-go-lucky. The second theme appears less than a minute later, beginning with the oboe and then moving to the violin: It evokes a pastoral dreaminess, tinged with a hint of melancholy. The movement then expands on these two themes, ending quietly on plucked strings.
The second movement, Andante con moto (slow but with motion), begins with a solo viola and a variation that is filled with longing and vulnerability. After a pause, the opening viola strain repeats. Then, without any pause (attaca), the third movement, also marked Andante con moto, begins and becomes a graceful waltz with moments of brisk drama.
The fourth movement, Molto moderato (very moderately paced), starts with urgent, dramatic gestures and dissonance, but soon leads to a slower section, marked “dolcissimo, molto espressivo, ma tranquillo” (sweetly, very expressively, but tranquil), which features one of the nonet’s most lyrical violin solos. Again, without a pause (attaca), the fifth movement, Allegro appasionata (fast and with passion), begins. It opens with eight of the nine musicians playing a series of rapid-fire short notes in unison, moving into moments of fanciful rhapsodizing before it settles into its closing section of warmth and calm.
The sixth movement, Scherzoso e fantástico (playfully and fantastical), starts quietly with a hint of sinister intent but quickly turns into an engagingly insistent march that’s dappled with a certain songfulness. Different meters will appear throughout this movement — at one point, the four-beat march will be squeezed into three beats per measure. A surprise return of part of the second theme appears, and then the Scherzo ends with a few ebullient final bars.
The seventh movement, another Andante con moto, begins with a radiant clarinet solo singing languidly and peacefully. The pastoral second theme returns in full, and then the movement ends with the utmost vulnerability, marked to be played “dolente e patetico” (sorrowfully and movingly).
The final movement, Allegro moderato, ma molto appassionato (moderately fast and with much passion), begins with a surging energy but which soon pacifies. Following this initial surge and retreat, this movement becomes a recap of musical moments from the previous movements, with brief solos for everyone that then blend into longer full-ensemble passages. After a grand silence, the instruments race off with blistering speed, ending with great and joyous energy.
Bohuslav Jan Martinů
(Born in Polička, Czechoslovakia, [now Czech Republic] in 1890; died in Liestal, Switzerland in 1959)
Nonet No. 2, H 374
1. Poco allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegretto
Though never formally completing a music degree, the Czech composer Bohuslav Jan Martinů had an extraordinarily expansive approach to learning music, beginning with his lifelong love of Czech folk music. His musical explorations brought him to Paris in the early 1920’s where he discovered Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassicism (music adhering to structures and logic, that emulated the tenets of classicism and used sparser means than huge orchestral forces). This deeply informed his composing style for many years. But his musical genius was always devising new ways to express itself, and by the end of his life one could only truly define Martinů’s style as uniquely his own: Rhapsodic, often informed by his homeland’s folksongs and dance, clever, neoclassically inclined, rhythmically active, and always ingeniously inventive.
During World War II, Martinů took refuge in the United States. After the war, he yearned to return to his Czech home but the communist regime there made that goal unrealistic. By 1959 he was living in Switzerland and kept in close contact with his friends and colleagues in Prague. That year, The Czech Nonet commissioned Martinů for a new work for the ensemble’s 35th anniversary concert. He chose to write for them his Nonet No. 2 (also scored for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, like Foerster’s nonet). It would turn out to be one of his last completed compositions: He had been battling stomach cancer and died one month after the concert. Despite Martinů’s health challenges, his Nonet No. 2 is one of his most joyful works. It is often filled with the feeling of Czech folksong and dance, and with a kaleidoscope of colors and effervescent jubilance.
The first movement, Poco allegro (rather fast), is a festival of 10 separate themes, all packed into a short five minutes of music. The opening immediately portrays a sense of dance and glee as the clarinet begins a short little up-and-down-motive. This motive is then echoed in the strings at a faster pace, and within seconds, the entire nonet is burbling with excited iterations of the motive as solos from every instrument pop into the fabric with brief intensity. All of this excited tumbling culminates in a wonderfully regal horn solo at about two minutes. The movement then returns to and reworks the opening music and ends with happy bravura.
The second movement, Andante (at a walking pace), is a moment of stunning invention and noble beauty — perhaps one of the loveliest things that Martinů created. It begins with a cello solo in which the upper strings add quiet atmospheric zephyrs. Shortly, the strings branch into polyphonic wanderings (every instrument plays its own melody) that coalesce harmonically. It’s Martinů’s bewitching night music, filled with the sounds of every mysterious and beautiful thing at midnight. Particularly lovely is a passage, at about three and a half minutes, in which the flute and clarinet play together quietly and lyrically, and then the music becomes increasingly rhapsodic as more instruments join in. The bassoon, at last, brings this rhapsodic night music to rest, settling lower and lower into a soft chord with the full ensemble.
The final movement, Allegretto (not very fast), begins with bouncy and unpredictably happy chaos. The meter changes frequently, moving in and out of five beats per bar, and yet Martinů somehow balances all this restlessness with a sense of folkdance and jolliness. At about two minutes, the music calms and the flute and then the oboe, introduce a hymn-like tune. From here until the end, the feelings of folkdance and hymn take turns, each demanding ever more virtuosity from the players, until at last, the hymn-like tune closes the work with the horn heralding the ending bars with warm majesty.
© Max Derrickson
Matinee Magic – January 26, 2025
Program NotesSome thoughts about music and the movies
Music as a counterpart to visual scenes, as is common in films, precedes cinema itself. Famously, for example, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (1808) intentionally evoked scenes of nature and the feelings nature elicits.
But composers were mixing the senses long before that. The French Baroque composer Marin Marais (1656–1728) often wrote music intended to portray specific images and sensations. One striking example is his 1725 work entitled The Bladder-Stone Surgery, which detailed exactly that medical procedure (the score includes notations such as “The patient is bound with silken cords” and “He screameth”)!
More familiarly (and surely more pleasingly), Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) at about the same time gave an exquisite musical expression of the seasonal changes of the year in his group of four violin concerti titled Four Seasons. Here, in a tour de force of Baroque complexity, each concerto is accompanied by a sonnet divided into three verses that correspond to that concerto’s three movements. Each sonnet narrates incidents and emotions appropriate to the season at hand (such as spring birdsong, the buzzing of insects in the summer, the barking of hunting dogs in the autumn, and the howling cold winds of winter), and these incidents and emotions can be heard approximated in the music.
The Romantic Era, of course, brought musical representation of natural phenomena even more to the fore. Perhaps no one was more devoted to the creation of emotion-meets-image-meets-musical-sequence than Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and his extraordinary operas.
But to come together in their most potent combination, it almost seems as though music, emotions, and images had been waiting for the advent of cinema. From almost the very beginning of commercial moving pictures in 1895, music accompanied the visuals on the screen. But because film technology at first could only record images, this music was originally provided by live musicians—typically a pianist or a small instrumental ensemble. Later, the art-house organ and its many sound effects became hugely popular in movie houses, and the organists would improvise as they went along, playing beloved pieces of music, both popular and classical, to adorn and exaggerate the sentiments of each film’s story.
By the early years of the 20th century, the movies had become so wildly popular that great composers began to write musical scores specifically for them. The first famous composer to do this was Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) for a 1908 film called The Assassination of the Duke of Guise. Saint-Saëns’s craftsmanship in treating this film’s music as a piece of art unto itself, yet intrinsically linking the music to the action, characters, and emotions of the storyline, changed everything in cinema. In the ensuing decades, directors and composers would come together to make some of the greatest collaborations in all of art: Think of Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev (Alexander Nevsky, 1938); Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann (Psycho, 1960); and Steven Spielberg and John Williams (Jaws, 1975).
In addition to new music written specifically for films, Classical music on its own terms was also taken out of its concert hall context and used, to significant effect, in many movie soundtracks. Think especially of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and its use of Richard Strauss’s opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra.
In this concert, you will hear both original film music (by Max Richter and Howard Shore) as well as classical blockbusters (from Schubert, Barber, Beethoven, and Dvořák) that were “repurposed” to magically enhance different films.
In short, music and movies seem to have been meant for each other, regardless of the origins of the music itself. As an anonymous film critic once said:
When watching a film, the director or actor may put the tear in your eye, but it takes music to make it spill upon your cheek.
Franz Schubert
(Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1797; died in Vienna, Austria in 1828)
String Quartet No. 8 in B-flat major, D. 112 (published posthumously as Op. 168)
III. Menuetto — Allegro
The exceptional music of Franz Schubert can be heard in dozens of films, always giving added meaning — and an additional layer of excellence — to the scenes involved. Tapping into Schubert’s genius in this way, Greta Gerwig employed no fewer than five of his dance pieces in her superb 2019 remake of the classic film and novel, Little Women. One of these dance pieces is the Dance Minuet movement from an early string quartet, No. 8 in B-flat major, written in 1814.
Schubert’s later string quartets, such as Nos. 13, 14, and 15 from 1824 and 1826, were often laden with pathos. But his earlier string quartets, including No. 8, are instead filled with light, charm, and wit. (This is not incidental: Schubert wrote these early quartets for his family to play privately at their home, with himself on the viola and his father and two brothers rounding out the family’s string quartet ensemble.)
No. 8’s very lyrical third movement, the Menuetto (the Italian version of minuet), unabashedly embraces Schubert’s lifelong love for the dance forms that were so popular in Vienna in his day, and it is absolutely danceable. The first section begins with the upper violin lilting along with a pleasantly elegant and singable melody. But notice how Schubert (the family violist) gives the viola an especially prominent part — and how this allows for the two violins to dally alongside in their own wonderful duets.
The Trio section (middle section, beginning roughly at about two and a half minutes) is a delicate surprise. As the violins play a new and gentler melody in longer notes, the viola and soon the cello pizzicato their way through the harmonies, as though tenderly tiptoeing up behind one’s beloved. The music from the first section returns for one last round of the dance, and the Menuetto ends with a smiling grace.
Samuel Barber
(Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1910; died in New York City, New York, in 1981)
String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11
II. Molto adagio
Barber wrote his only string quartet in 1936. The first and third movements are dissonant and angular but the middle movement, molto adagio, is a piece of astoundingly sonorous beauty. These contrasting approaches to composing would define Barber’s unique career: He was equally masterful at pushing harmonic boundaries and in creating some of the most lush and lyrical melodies in the 20th century.
Immediately after finishing the string quartet, Barber arranged its middle-movement Adagio as a separate piece for string orchestra and entitled it Adagio for Strings. Knowing that it was, as he said, “a knockout,” Barber sent it to the conductor Arturo Toscanini, who gave the piece its premiere in 1938. From that premiere, the Adagio’s popularity and importance in American culture has never waned. It soon became regarded as America’s semiofficial music for mourning, and it was performed often after tragic moments in American history. In 1945, it was played during the announcement of Franklin Roosevelt’s death; in 1963, it was performed to an empty hall at the Kennedy Center after the assassination of John F. Kennedy; and in 2001, it was heard prominently after the World Trade Center bombing on 9/11. The Adagio’s emergence into cinema began, most notably, in 1980 with David Lynch’s classic film, The Elephant Man. But the music’s huge popularity was forever cemented when Oliver Stone used it as the main theme for his 1986 Vietnam antiwar film, Platoon.
Adagio for Strings is at once contemplative and melancholic, and thus it is well suited to its use in films and memorial events. Nonetheless, as beautiful as this work is in its string orchestra arrangement, the Molto adagio middle movement from the original string quartet version captures an uncanny intimacy. The main theme, first played by the upper violin, is lyrical and pensive, as though lost in a circle of memories, which slowly moves upward by steps. Underneath, long chords create a darkly hued atmosphere which shifts unhurriedly. The theme’s steplike motion eventually gives way to quiet, wide melodic leaps, but rather than jangling the psyche, they murmur sentiments of hope. The music builds to an intense climax at about five and a half minutes, which is answered by a long silence. The music then recedes by ingeniously recreating the feeling of several profound sighs, and then, of quietude. The music of the beginning returns to end the work, but now, with a feeling of almost impossible tenderness, whispering of a fragile sense of promise.
Ludwig van Beethoven
(Born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1827)
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
III. Heiliger Dankgesang (“Song of Thanksgiving “) Molto adagio
Beethoven has been a factor in films from the earliest days of cinema, perhaps beginning with a now lost French silent biopic called Beethoven produced around 1913. Since then, he and his music have figured in over 1,200 movies, television shows, and documentaries. One of the most memorable examples may well be Walt Disney’s 1940 animated film, Fantasia, which featured Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”).
The Beethoven music in our concert, the Molto adagio movement to his String Quartet No. 15, was used powerfully in director Joe Wright’s 2009 movie about a homeless cellist, The Soloist.
Quartet No. 15 is one of Beethoven’s late quartets, created very near the end of his life. Beethoven used these quartets to explore new musical territory and innovative ways to convey very deep emotions. No. 15 was written in 1825 while Beethoven was battling a gravely serious gastrointestinal illness. He survived this dance with death and captured his gratitude, and the sheer joy of coming back into health, in No. 15’s third movement, Molto adagio (very slow).
Beethoven subtitled this movement Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart (“Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode”). This movement is the centerpiece of the whole quartet, and its beautiful opening chorale is transcendent. Cast in the modal-sounding key F Lydian, this chorale is slow, somber, and vulnerable — Beethoven’s musical expression of humble thanks. Following this chorale is a quicker section, marked to be played “with renewed strength,” that is frisky and joyful. The somber chorale and its joyful counterpart alternate twice, but while the chorale’s return becomes increasingly introspective and eloquent, its quicker counterpart almost flits with dancelike ebullience: Especially jubilant is the passage at about eight minutes, with runs and embellishments twirling between the quartet’s players. The chorale returns one final time to end the movement, now deeply lyrical and intense and marked to be played “with the most intimate emotions.” It strengthens into a climax, and then retreats into quiet gratitude, like a prayer.
Antonin Dvořák
(Born near Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), in 1841; died in Prague
in 1904)
String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96, B. 179, “American”
II. Lento
The music of the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák has been accompanying movies almost since the birth of the industry, beginning in 1929 with a remarkable film, called Hallelujah, that featured an all-Black cast. Indeed, his music has been so popular in cinema that it has been used in over 100 films just since the 1996 film, Kolja, which used the Dvořák music featured in our concert: the Lento movement from his String Quartet No 12. (Incidentally, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women uses another movement from this string quartet.)
No. 12 was written in 1893 while Dvořák was serving as director of the newly created National Conservatory of Music in New York City. In the summer of that year, he took a break from the frenetic New York scene to spend time in the quiet of the countryside with a diaspora of Czech immigrants in Spillville, Iowa. Within two weeks he composed his now hugely popular String Quartet No. 12, later nicknamed the “American” quartet. One of the most beloved string quartets in the repertoire, this one is beautiful and robust; folksy, yet sophisticated. Every movement shines with gorgeous melodies, but especially magical is its second movement, Lento (very slowly).
The Lento opens with the viola and second violin repeating a gentle, undulating ostinato while the cello quietly plucks below. Overtop of this sound bed, the violin enters with a song that is lyrically breathtaking and deeply melancholic — something like a slow spiritual mixed with a Czech folksong. The movement seems to search for answers to this sorrowfulness with mild climaxes and light drama. But overall, the song continues to sing, attracting ever-changing gorgeous harmonies, melting like sunsets. At about three and a half minutes, the two violins begin a dialogue that develops into one of the most beautiful moments in the entire quartet. The Lento eventually ends with the cello taking up the sad song and ending with a last, lonesome, and fading chord that uncannily evokes a feeling of uncertainty.
Max Richter
(Born in Hamelin, West Germany, on March 22, 1966)
On the Nature of Daylight (Arr. for string quartet by Alice Hong)
German-born pianist and composer Max Richter was raised in England. He studied music at the University of Edinburgh and then the Royal Academy of Music (London), finally studying composition with the modernist Luciano Berio (1925–2003). His style evolved to include post-minimalism (minimalist-like), ambient, and contemporary (modern) classical music making, creating a tonally rewarding and thoughtfully crafted mix. He has written, performed and produced 14 solo classical music albums since 2002 and has kept immensely busy with arranging, performing, and composing for stage, opera, ballet, and almost 60 films.
On the Nature of Daylight (performed in our concert in its string quartet arrangement) first appeared as a solo track on Richter’s 2004 album titled The Blue Notebooks, which was conceived as a protest album against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Most of the album’s musical tracks have voice-over readings from Franz Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1917–1919) and the writings of Czesław Miłosz. With On the Nature of Daylight, however, there were no voices, just strings and electronics. Richter described his conception of the piece:
What I wanted to try and do was … create something which had a sense of luminosity and brightness, but made from the darkest possible materials.
On the Nature of Daylight soon became extremely popular for its lyrical reflectiveness and deep sense of sadness. The piece has found its way into several films since its album release, most memorably in Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 sci-fi film Arrival.
Like Barber’s Adagio, Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight feels as though it connects profound sadness with the stirrings of hope. In its string quartet arrangement, the work begins with three members of the quartet playing slow and lush chords, repeating four-bar phrases almost continually, very much like a Baroque chaconne. The harmonic progression is ruminative and unhurried, basking in an inner glow. At almost two minutes, the first violin then begins to gently rhapsodize in a minimalist style (a melody or phrase that repeats continuously but with gradual modifications). The second violin soon joins with its own rhapsodizing, sonically drifting high above the rest of the quartet. The music continues in this ruminative way until about five and a half minutes, when the cello finally comes to rest on a single note. And like gravity, the cello’s sound-space pulls in the rest of the quartet, slowing their rustling, until — at last — all motion concludes with a long-held chord fading into silence.
Howard Shore
(Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,on October 18, 1946)
The Breaking of the Fellowship (from the final scene of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 2001, arr. for String Quartet by Alex Philip-Yates)
The Canadian-born musician Howard Shore grew up learning how to play multiple instruments, and he began playing in several bands at age 13. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and from there, his career began to blossom, first as a jazz-fusion musician and then as a composer for musicals and films.
Shore’s first success in film scoring was in 1979 with the thriller The Brood, and since then he’s had a very distinguished career with over 80 film scores. His greatest fame has been won for his music for Peter Jackson’s 2001–2003 film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, based on the fantasy books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Shore won his first Oscar for Best Original Score for his music to the first installment of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). The music in the closing scenes, in particular (referred to as The Breaking of the Fellowship), has become extremely popular because of its great and lyrical theme. In the movie, Irish pop singer Enya sings words to this theme during the closing section of the film. This poignant music has been arranged many times for many kinds of ensembles; in our concert, we hear the string quartet arrangement.
The full quartet introduces the work with several long chords that are the basic harmonies of the main theme, and they conjure a somber and epic feeling — like an epilogue to a great adventure. The theme emerges briefly in the more rhythmically active violin but then recedes. The music then wanders through intertwining but independent parts from the quartet players, representing the group of friend-warriors (the Fellowship) each breaking out on his own journey. These independent parts, however, set the stage for the first full appearance of the main theme, also known as the song “In Dreams,” at about two minutes. This theme sounds like an old and wistful English folk tune mixed with an air of the valiant — part folk song, part anthem. The music then does what the characters do, it goes a-wandering, through key changes and sets of lush chords, with snippets of the folk tune appearing like memories, and all the while stacking up in emotion. The final section, beginning a little before eight minutes, becomes increasingly heroic, rising with hope, with the understanding that the Fellowship shall one day reunite.
© Max Derrickson
Radiance and Fire – November 2 & 3, 2024
Program Notes(Born in Menlo Park, California, in 1897; died near Woodstock, New York, in 1965)
Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10
For Oboe and Strings
Henry Cowell was one of the first modernist American-born composers, and his ideas and works spread their wings far across the musical landscape. Among his students, supporters, and devotees were Arnold Schoenberg, Burt Bacharach, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and the ultramodernist John Cage (who steadfastly proclaimed Cowell as “the open sesame for new music in America”).
Born near San Francisco, Cowell was raised primarily by his mother and was largely educated at home and self-taught in music. Even at a young age, Cowell was being noticed as a musical genius, and in his late teens he studied music composition briefly with Charles Seeger (father of the famous Seeger family of folk singers) at the University of California, Berkeley, and equally briefly at the Julliard School of Music in New York.
But an academic approach did not suit the free-thinking Cowell. Instead, the young composer began a lifelong musical exploration, blending folk song and tonality with extended techniques for the piano. These techniques included nonconformist, creative ways of making music, such as playing tone clusters (chords that comprise at least three adjacent tones in a scale) with fists or forearms, hitting whatever notes they contact, and plucking strings inside the body of the piano. Some of his ultramodernist musical concerts erupted in riots.
Cowell wrote books about his ideas and methods, taught at several music schools, and influenced many classical American music composers of the 20th century. He was also a prolific composer, writing almost 1,000 works. But in the second half of his life, he became less aggressively avant-garde and looked increasingly toward tradition and tonality. Such was the case with the set of 18 works he called “Hymns and Fuguing Tunes,” composed between 1944 and 1964.
The Hymn and Fuguing Tune featured in our concert, No. 10, was completed in 1955. Cowell said the piece draws on the music “of Southern Revival meetings in which popular minstrel show rhythms were turned to religious purposes…. The tunes of course are my own.” All 18 of Cowell’s Hymns and Fuguing Tunes are gorgeous works, but No. 10 is perhaps the most popular, blending a folksong style with church hymns, yet wrapped in sophisticated compositional craft.
Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 has two parts, a hymn part and a fugue part. In the hymn part, which comes first, the strings open with a lyrical hymnlike song, a singable melody laden with a folk-like feel and with tinges of Renaissance-sounding ornamentation. The solo oboist takes over from the strings, and for about four minutes, the music feels as though it is eternally blossoming. An explicit cadence (the equivalent of a musical “period”) never seems to arrive; instead, the first strain of the hymn part continuously evolves, from strings to oboe, to other soloists in the string orchestra, and back around, like an infinity loop. Some lovely chromaticism intensifies this sense of continual unfolding until, at last, the hymn part comes to its peaceful ending.
After a brief pause, the second part of the work, the fuguing tune part, begins. Before we describe it, we should note that fuguing tunes are not like fugues by Bach but rather a song genre that came to America from England in the middle of the 18th century and became extremely popular. Originally, these were sacred choral works arranged for a four-part chorus and based on Protestant hymns. They followed a pattern of first introducing a tune in all four parts, and then proceeding in a kind of canon form with the theme being sung in staggered entrances and afterward being sounded simultaneously by the various voices of the chorus or instruments — as in the children’s song, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
In the fuguing tune part of Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10, the oboe starts things off with a brief melody that is liltingly light on its feet and harmonious. As expected in this genre, various sections of the strings then take up the tune in canon sequence. But soon Cowell begins to play with the norms: A second short melody — a rippling run of notes — is introduced by the oboe, and the fuguing tune then increasingly becomes more of a rhapsodic fantasy of swirling voices playing counterpoint to each other in all sorts of instrumental and melodic combinations. This part of the work radiates with the intensity of the interactions between the oboist and various sections of the orchestra, yet always retains a light touch. At about two and a half minutes, the tempo pulls back for dramatic effect and all the instruments begin to pull together to end, at last, with three glowing, unison chords.
Franz Joseph Haydn
(Born in Rohrau, Austria in 1732; died in Vienna, Austria in 1809)
Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb:1
1. Moderato
2. Adagio
3. Finale — Allegro molto
For almost 200 years, the world thought there was only one Haydn cello concerto to be played, the lovely Concerto No. 2 in D major. Haydn’s own catalogs of his works mentioned a previous cello concerto, written in C major, but that work seemed to have been lost. Then in 1961, a fortuitous knocking-over-of-old-dusty-stuff at the Prague National Museum by a museum archivist named Oldřich Pulkert uncovered a manuscript of the C major concerto. Music historian H.C. Robbins Landon described this event as “the single greatest musicological discovery since the Second World War.”
The manuscript that was found in Prague was signed by the C major concerto’s original soloist, Joseph Weigl. Weigl was a friend of Haydn’s and one of the musicians in Haydn’s first orchestra at the estate of his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, of Hungary. The C major concerto was composed between 1761 and 1765 and written specifically for Weigl. (This was something Haydn did; he kept good musicians in his employ by rewarding them with juicy concertos to play). Judging by the virtuosic writing of the concerto’s cello passages, Weigl was indeed a superb cellist.
Haydn’s rediscovered Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major had its 20th-century premiere on May 19,1962, when Czech virtuoso Miloš Sádlo performed it with the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. Sádlo and Mackerras also made the first recording. The concerto has been beloved ever since.
This wonderful work is surely one of the loveliest things that Haydn wrote, filled with a freshness that makes each of its three movements a delight. It is among Haydn’s most inventive works, and it achieves that magical concerto balance of showing off the capabilities of the solo instrument and its performer, even as it brims with musicality, lyricism and surprises for the entire ensemble.
The first movement, Moderato (at a medium speed), is full of charm and beautiful melody. After the stately yet sunny introduction of the theme by the orchestra, the soloist jumps in happily, highlighting the luxuriance of the cello’s chocolatey low range, the richness of playing multiple strings (chords), and the cello’s musical agility. What’s most enjoyable about this movement is Haydn’s long, vocal-like lines for the soloist in a movement that truly sings throughout, reminding us that Haydn first became famous in the Esterházy Estate as an opera composer.
The middle movement, Adagio (slowly), offers the concerto’s most tender musical moments. Like the previous movement, it’s filled with lyricism, but here Haydn explores the cello’s middle and upper registers in ways that evoke the human voice. The movement begins with an introductory theme, played by the orchestral strings, that features several brief, downwardly rustling figures that create the effect of falling leaves. Then the cello enters, beginning very softly, playing a long, single note growing in gentle intensity, then continuing with the rustling figures previously played by the orchestra. In this dialogue, it feels as if we’re overhearing a love song of intimate beauty.
The third movement, Allegro molto (very fast), is brisk and bright and bouncy. It features virtuosic displays for the soloist, but all these runs and wicked-fast technical challenges create very listenable, lyrical lines. Notice, too, that throughout this movement Haydn revisits the motives from the earlier movements: the growling low notes and chords, as well as the upper-register playing. The most wonderful reprise happens when the cello first enters, at about one minute, returning with that growing-glowing note from the beginning of the previous Adagio movement but now transformed into a quicker, brilliant blaze of light. This movement’s pace is breakneck to the very end, and as the final notes are bowed, it is undeniable that this masterly concerto is indeed one of the greatest (and luckiest) musical discoveries of the 20th century.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1791)
Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550
1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto — Allegretto — Trio
4. Allegro assai
In the summer of 1788, Mozart’s life was overwhelmed by tragedy. Having recently suffered several professional failures, Mozart’s debts had accrued beyond control, and this only doubled his grief over his infant daughter’s unexpected death earlier that spring. Yet almost miraculously, despite the weight of these events, Mozart wrote three astounding symphonies, numbered 39, 40, and 41, over a mere nine weeks hoping to perform them in some upcoming subscription concerts. These three symphonies would be his final symphonic works, and although each is an undisputed masterpiece, No. 40 in G minor has retained a special place in his oeuvre for its profoundly emotional nature. It is one of only two symphonies out of the 41 he wrote that he set in a minor key. He reserved this key for significant expressivity, and given this great symphony’s uncanny beauty, pathos, and angst, it surely seems that this work reflects the emotional trials he was undergoing when he wrote it.
The first movement, Molto allegro (very fast), is evocative, continually suggesting an anguish that is delivered with a searing lyrical beauty. The movement begins with a quietly undulating rhythm in the lower strings, a pulsing that almost never abates. In just several quick beats, the violins then enter above that agitation with one of Mozart’s most memorable themes. This theme first lifts upward with a sense of questioning and then tumbles down in small rhythmic segments as if in indignation — conveying a feeling of inner turmoil. Immediately thereafter, a small motive surges angrily from the basses with two longish, descending notes and infiltrates everything in the movement, stoking a sense of unrest. The movement agitates and questions and surges to its final bars.
The second movement, Andante (slowly, at a walking pace), begins with the strings presenting a gently throbbing theme that seems to slowly unfold with a glowing grace. Yet there is an unmistakable fragility lurking underneath in the way that Mozart fragments the theme among the string sections, beginning with violas, then the cellos and basses, and so on. This feeling of vulnerability becomes poignantly present at about three and a half minutes, when a flitting little rhythm in the winds continuously descends, like falling tears, through several sequences of richly dark harmonies from the strings. The last bars conclude quietly.
The first part of the third movement, Menuetto — Allegretto (minuet dance, not too fast), begins with the full orchestra playing a strident, defiant-sounding theme that is almost sarcastically ill-suited for a dance like a minuet. The theme migrates into a series of repetitions, being cast about between the instruments and colliding with each other, creating a startlingly dramatic effect. The second part of the movement, Menuetto — Trio, is much more delicately dance-like, and features a delightful spotlight on the oboes and horns. The movement ends with a return of the opening section’s forcefulness.
The finale, Allegro assai (very fast), is rife with a dark and relentless energy. The opening theme begins with the violins punching out a series of ascending notes and finishes with the full orchestra playing a hyper-oscillating rhythm. Despite the uncanny tunefulness of this theme, the feeling is anxious and insistent. A brief second theme, featuring a sweet duet between the clarinet and bassoon, is much more relaxed and lyrical, but nonetheless, this finale is more overtly concerned with power and propulsion, and the symphony’s last eight bars are almost wild with excitement.
© Max Derrickson.