Classics from the Romantic Century
The music in this concert was all written in Europe during the nineteenth century. That was, in terms of cultural history, quite a long time ago. Most of the technology that is part of our everyday life came into being after these masterpieces were composed – often many decades afterwards. During the lifetimes of Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Brahms there were no automobiles or airplanes, no electric lights, no radios or television, and not even a dream of cell phones, computers, or the Internet. In terms of factual knowledge, it is likely that the average twelve-year-old in today's advanced nations has learned more information – already – than anyone knew who lived in the nineteenth century or earlier. Yet, somehow, the musical creations of these 'primitive' souls have endured to become part of our modern culture, musical scores that every orchestra worthy of the name looks forward to playing, and regularly. What, then, is the secret? Why are these works so enduring, and why do they continue to be modern despite the fact that they are all well over a hundred years old? Actually, we already know the answer to the question: these musical masterpieces are art. And art is timeless. If you have seen photographs of the 31,000 year old paintings in the Chauvet Cave, France, you will understand deeply how timeless art in truth really is. Aesculus still speaks to us from more than 2000 years ago, just as Michelangelo does from nearly half a millennium. Art is timeless because our human nature is timeless. We are still the same creatures we were in prehistoric and pre-technological times. As we listen to the music from our past we discover we are listening to the expressions of kindred spirits, whose aspirations, concerns, and perceptions have been very much like ours. They can and do speak to us freshly, as if in some sense they were friends who live next door. In today's intimate musical communication over two century boundaries we will not only be thrilled by the beauty and expression of the music, but will be reminded in a powerful way that we human brothers and sisters are indeed all in this life together.
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) Overture to Béatrice et Bénédict (1862)
During the summer of 2001, Don and Liz Batchelor, Linda and I had the good fortune of meeting in Paris for a few days. The highlight of our time there – to me, at least – was going to the huge cemetery on the north side of Montmartre where so many famous writers, artists, musicians, and scholars are buried. It was there we ate French cheese and bread and partook of French wine on a bench directly in front of the tomb of Louis Hector Berlioz . His music and his joie de vivre continue always to sing in my heart, and certainly in the hearts of many who have gotten to know him through his music or treatises on the subject. Berlioz seems to have been innately a romantic. His life was full of passionate affairs with women, and he was known to weep openly at passages from Virgil, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. He was also rare among composers in that he was not an accomplished performer, nor did he begin as a child prodigy. Yet few musicians have had as much influence over their art as did Berlioz. Many musicologists consider that Beethovern's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) (1804) and his Symphonie Fantastique (1830) represent the trend-setting models for future development of the form. Berlioz's compositions seem to have been mostly inspired by the particular woman he was involved with at the moment or some literary work he was deeply enamored of. His favorite writer was undoubtedly Shakespeare. The opera, Béatrice et Bénédict, whose overture begins this concert, was based on Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado about Nothing. The opera's libretto, in French, was written by Berlioz himself.
The opera Béatrice et Bénédict is rarely performed today, and was not performed very much even during the composer's lifetime. Possibly because it was composed while Berlioz was working on his magnum operatic opus, Les Troyens, Béatrice et Bénédict never seemed to come together in the way successful operas do. It is generally regarded as poorly contrived for the stage and with a noticeable lack of continuity from scene to scene. Those criticisms, ironically, cannot be applied to its overture. Berlioz used a half dozen musical selections from the opera and seamlessly worked them into the fabric of the introductory music, creating an organic whole that lies beautifully on the ear and captures the spirit of the opera to follow in ways that were not, in fact, actually realized by the comic score itself. It is a tricky, fast-paced piece with blasts from the brass section – certainly a Berlioz distinctive! – toward the end. This is nine-minute gem of sound balance, a musical short course on France's finest nineteenth century master.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Opus 64)
It is impossible for me to speak objectively about the Mendelssohn Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Many years ago, at the age of nineteen, I knew essentially nothing about classical music, not even the definition of a symphony or concerto. I had never had musical education of any kind and knew only the music on the radio and what my older sister played on her “record player.” But I had begun my college career and started to try to expand my horizons, in music as well as in other endeavors. The university bookstore often had bargains on classical music records, so I ventured to buy my first ones. One of those was a recording of both the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn violin concertos, with Isaac Stern as the soloist. One spring afternoon I listened to the recording for the first time, and had an immediate attraction to both of the great works, but had little idea of what produced the attraction. In the night to follow something unique – never repeated in all my life since – took place: the opening theme of the Mendelssohn Concerto began to arch its way through my brain as I slept, producing a wordless dream that Shakespeare and all his Midsummer elves would have been proud to conjure. Long after this experience I read what the composer had written to his friend Ferdinand David (1810-1873) concerning the concerto. Mendelssohn wrote, “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace.” The unearthly sound of that opening phrase still resonates for me. As it will for you, if you dare let yourself open up to it.
With the composer as conductor, David played the premier of the work in Leipzig in March of 1845, to a wildly enthusiastic audience. Musicologists have said many flattering things about it, including, “As perfect as it can be,” and that it holds “the charm of eternal youth.” The three movements are linked together and are expected to be played without pause. The scoring of the opening movement is called allegro molto appassionato, beginning with a one-measure undulating figure, then the never-to-be forgotten theme, played by the soloist. After an extended, and very romantic, development the clarinets and flutes introduce the second principle theme. Listen, however, for the return of the opening theme in many guises throughout the movement. After the long cadenza, for example, while the violinist sweeps through a series of arpeggios, Mendelssohn slips in that wondrous line again underneath them, using the strings and winds.
It is a long, plaintive note on the bassoon that leads into the second movement, scored simply andante. The soloist again introduces a principal theme, this one a lyrical, singing line that seems perfectly conceived for the violin. Listen for the agitation and contrasting theme that comes later. As this lovely andante comes to an end there is once a more a kind of connecting transition, this bridge played by the soloist. The finale, allegro molto vivace, bursts forth out of the orchestra with answering violin arpeggios. This rondo has a elfin, even impish, quality that reminds us that the composer also wrote the spritely music to A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is another theme announced by a fortissimo orchestra, and the work comes to a joyous conclusion with the violin and orchestra in flights of fancy together over the principle rondo theme.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Symphony No. 1 (Opus 68)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856), nearing the end of his productive life, wrote an article in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik under the heading Neue Bahne, “New Directions,” that was a sensational pronouncement for the times. The date was October 23, 1853. He wrote that a young composer had appeared “who should reveal his mastery, not by gradual development, but should spring like Minerva, fully armed, from the head of Jove. And now he has come, the young creature over whose cradle the Graces and heroes have kept watch. His name is Johannes Brahms.” With such praise and the expectation that he was to become the heir-apparent of the great Beethoven, is it any wonder that Brahms was reluctant to set pen to paper and write a symphony, that musical form for which Beethoven was – and is – considered the unsurpassed master? Brahms once confided to a friend, “You have no conception of how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of giant like him (Beethoven) behind us.” Scholars studying the life of Brahms have concluded that the piece of music we know as Symphony No. 1 was actually completed and ready for about fourteen years before it was actually premiered. Friends, who knew about the score, encouraged him over and over to let it be heard, but not until 1876 was his reluctance finally overcome. Even when he decided to release the symphony, Brahms was worried about how it would be received, and chose to have the premier in the small town of Karlsruhe, saying it was “a little town that holds a good friend, a good conductor, and a good orchestra.” That friend and conductor was Otto Dessoff (1835-1892), who today is best remembered for conducting the premier of his friend's first symphony. And, as Brahms had feared, those first audiences listened to the work with what might be termed respect, but without great admiration or love. Only gradually did this grand masterpiece establish a firm place in the affections of the music-loving public. Now, of course, Brahms Symphony No. 1 is considered one of the supreme achievements in the history of the symphony.
The first movement begins with thirty-seven majestic measures. This introduction, in fact, is one of the most dramatic ever written. Here an inner struggle and tension is established, something which pervades the entire movement. The allegro that follows continues the drama. Even the coda near the movement's end establishes a kind of unsettled repose. The second movement is very poetic in feeling, with many lovely moments. Near its end there is an especially wonderful duet for French horn and solo violin. The third movement is a graceful allegretto featuring a simply expressed folk-like tune. The middle section of the movement is somewhat more stern, but the opening mood returns and the conclusion is calm. Brahms had the sense, here, to prepare us for the last and most important movement of the symphony. Even as he introduces the finale there is an air of mystery. Listen for the song of the horn through a string tremolo against sustained chords in the trombones. Then, like the sun breaking from behind clouds, comes the brilliant, broad melody that is one of the glories of all symphonic music. The movement is full of drama, best heard rather than described, but listen especially for the triumphant trumpet sound of the chorale melody near the end. And the end, well, it comes in a blaze of glory, a jubilant and heroic outburst that is certain to thrill hearers and performers alike.
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