UMS Concert Program, May 5, 6, 7, 8, 1949: The Fifty-sixth Annual May Festival -- Glenn D. Mcgeoch

Concert: SIXTH
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

THE FIFTY-SIXTH ANNUAL
MAY FESTIVAL
NINETEEN HUNDRED FORTY-NINE
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Official Program of the Fifty-Sixth Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
May 5, 6, 7, 8, 1949 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Published by The University Musical Society, Ann Arbor
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Charles A. Sink, A.B., M.Ed., LL.D......President
Alexander G. Ruthven, Ph.D., LL.D., Sc.D. . Vice-President
Shirley W. Smith, A.M., LL.D........Secretary
Oscar A. Eberbach, A.B...........Treasurer
Roscoe O. Bonisteel, LL.B. . . . Assistant Secretary-Treasurer
James R. Breakey, Jr., A.B., A.M., LL.B.
Harley A. Haynes, M.D.
James Inglis
Thor Johnson, M.Mus., Mus.D.
E. Blythe Stason, A.B., B.S., J.D.
Henry F. Vaughan, M.S., Dr. P.H.
Merlin Wiley, A.B., LL.B.
ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF
Charles A. Sink, President Mary K. Farkas, Secretary to the President Deanne Smith, Bookkeeper and Cashier Gail W. Rector, Assistant to the President Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor
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THE FIFTY-SIXTH ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
CONDUCTORS
Eugene Ormandy, Orchestral Conductor Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Orchestral Conductor Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Marguerite Hood, Youth Chorus Conductor
SOLOISTS
Pia Tassinari...............Soprano
Shirley Russell............. Soprano
Gladys Swarthout..........Mezzo-Soprano
Tann Williams.............Contralto
Set Svanholm...............Tenor
Harold Haugh...............Tenor
Martial Singher.............Baritone
Erica Morini..............Violinist
Gregor Piatigorsky..........Violoncellist
Benno Moiseiwitsch.............Pianist
ORGANIZATIONS
The Philadelphia Orchestra
The University Choral Union
The Festival Youth Chorus
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Notices and Acknowledgments
The University Musical Society desires to express appreciation to Thor Johnson and Lester McCoy, and to the members of the Choral Union for their effective services; to Miss Marguerite Hood and her able associates for their valuable services in preparation of the Festival Youth Chorus; to the several members of the staff for their efficient assistance 5 and to the teachers, in the various schools from which the young people have been drawn, for their co-operation.
The Author of the annotations hereby expresses his deep obligation to Lloyd Biggie for his aid in collecting materials; and to Donald Engle, annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra, for his co-operation.
The Steinway is the official concert piano of the University Musical Society and of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Concerts will begin on time and doors will be closed during numbers.
CONCERT ENDOWMENT FUND
The University Musical Society is a nonprofit corporation devoted to educational purposes. During its existence its concerts have been maintained through the sale of tickets of admission. The prices have been kept as low as possible to cover the expense of production. Obviously, the problem is becoming increasingly difficult. The Society has confidence that there are those who would like to contribute to a Concert Endowment Fund, to ensure continuance of the high quality of the concerts. All contributions will be utilized in maintaining the ideals of the Society by providing the best possible programs.
The United States Department of Internal Revenue has ruled that gifts or bequests made to the Society are deductible for income and estate tax purposes.
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FIRST MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Thursday Evening, May 5, at 8130
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Soloist SET SVANHOLM, Tenor
PROGRAM
COMPOSITIONS OF RICHARD WAGNER
Prelude to Parsijal
"In fernem Land" from Lohengrin Rome Narrative from Tannh'duser
Set Svanholm
Excerpts from Das Rheingold
Alberich's Invocation of the Nibelungs and Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla
INTERMISSION
Siegfried's Funeral Music from Gotterd'dmmerung
Siegmund's Monologue from Die Walkilre "Winterstiirme wichen dem Wonnemond" from Die Walkilre Forging Song, "Nothung! Nothung! Neidliches Schwert!" from Siegfried
Mr. Svanholm
Excerpts from Die Meistersinger von Nilrnberg
Prelude to Act III Dance of the Apprentices Entrance of the Mastersingers
? Victor records
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SECOND MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 6, at 8130
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Conductor
Soloists
SHIRLEY RUSSELL, Soprano MARTIAL SINGHER, Baritone
BENNO MOISEIWITSCH, Pianist
PROGRAM
Requiem, Op. 45...............Brahms
Blessed Are They That Mourn
Behold, All Flesh Is as the Grass
How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place
Ye Now Are Sorrowful
Here on Earth We Have No Continuing Place
University Choral Union and Soloists
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, for Piano and Orchestra . Beethoven
Allegro con brio Largo
Allegro
Benno Moiseiwitsch
Mr. Moiseiwitsch uses the Baldwin fiano.
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THIRD MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 7, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ALEXANDER HILSBERG, Conductor
THE FESTIVAL YOUTH CHORUS MARGUERITE HOOD, Conductor
Soloist ERICA MORINI, Violinist
PROGRAM Overture to The Bartered Bride.......... . Smetana
Lieder Cycle
Orchestrated by DOROTHY James
English translations by Marguerite Hood
The Gardener.....................Wolf
Beautiful Flowers..................Schumann
Wandering....................SCHUBERT
Cradle Song....................Schubert
The Little Owl...................Schumann
The Evening Star..................Schumann
The Lost Hen (sung in German)..............Brahms
Flying Birds.....................BRAHMS
The Lotus Flower..................Schumann
Enchanting Bells from The Magic Flute......:.....Mozart
The Wasted Serenade..................Brahms
Festival Youth Chorus
Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K. 550) ......... Mozart
Allegro moderate Andante
Menuetto, trio
Finale: allegro assai
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 2 in D minor, for Violin and Orchestra . . . Wieniawski Allegro moderato
Romanza: andante non troppo
Allegro moderato (a la zingara)
Erica Morini
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FOURTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Evening, May 7, at 8130
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Soloist GLADYS SWARTHOUT, Mezzo-Sofrano
PROGRAM Theme and Variations in G minor for Orchestra, Op. 43 . Schonberg
"Ah, spietato" from Amadigi............ Handel
"Art Thou Troubled" from Rodelinda........ Handel
"Per lui che adoro" from Ultaliana in Algeri....... Rossini
Gladys Swarthout
Symphony, Mathis der Maler........... Hindemith
Concert of the Angels
The Entombment of Christ
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
INTERMISSION
Recitative, "E se un giorno tornasse".........Respighi
Songs of the Auvergne............Canteloube
Bailero
Malurous qu'o uno fenno
Brezairola
El Vito..................Obradors
Miss Swarthout
Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier..........Strauss
Victor records
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FIFTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 8, at 2 =30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Conductor
Soloists
SHIRLEY RUSSELL, Sofrano HAROLD HAUGH, Tenor
TANN WILLIAMS, Contralto MARTIAL SINGHER, Baritone GREGOR PIATIGORSKY, Violoncellist
PROGRAM Overture to the Ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus . . . Beethoven
Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, for Violoncello and Orchestra . Dvorak
Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Finale: allegro moderato
Gregor Piatigorsky
INTERMISSION
ChorosNo. 10, "Rasga o coragao".........Villa-Lobos
University Choral Union
Gloria in Excelsis (world premiere)......Llywelyn Gomer
Gloria in excelsis Deo Qui tollis
Laudamus Te Quoniam
Domine Fili Cum Sancto Spiritu
University Choral Union and Soloists Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist
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SIXTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 8, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Soloist PIA TASSINARI, Sofrano
PROGRAM
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11.............Barber
"Deh vieni, non tardar" from Nozze di Figaro......Mozart
"O del mio dolce ardor" from Paride ed Elena.......Gluck
"Stizzoso, o mio stizzoso" from La Serva fadrona .... Pergolesi
Pia Tassinari intermission
"L'Altra notte in fondo al mare" from Mefistofele......Borro
"Io son l'umile ancella" from Adriana Lecouvreur......Cilea
Miss Tassinari
?Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36...... . Tchaikovsky
Andante sostenutOi moderate con anima Andantino in modo di canzone Scherzo: pizzicato ostinato
Finale: allegro con fuoco
Columbia records [IO]
ANNOTATIONS
BY GLENN D. McGEOCH
FIRST CONCERT
Thursday Evening, May 5
Program of the Compositions of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner was born May 22, 1813, in Leipzig; died February 13, 1883, in Venice.
Hear my creed: Music can never and in no possible alliance cease to be the highest, the redeeming art. It is of nature that what all the other arts but hint at, through her and in her becomes the most indubitable of certainties--the most direct and definite of truths.
--Wagner.
In Nazi Germany, Wagner's ideas, like a hundred aspects of German history during the last century and a half, were perverted to evil ends. Hitler's diabolical genius seized upon them for a purpose never intended, nor even dreamed of by their creator, and interpreted them as the embodiment of a political philosophy of force and Teutonic superiority. In his hands they became a postulation of both aristocratic racialism and plebeian socialism.
Program notes are not the medium for discussions of this nature; but it will not be amiss in our time, when violent prejudices still may crystalize, to emphasize the true and moving spirit of humanity that is to be found in Wagner's art--a spirit that must not be overshadowed or lost by the superimposition of false doctrines of power, brute force, and hate. Wagner's art is still accepted, and reverently attended to, by the civilized world, as one of the most profound and searching expressions of the deepest sources of the human spirit. For Wagner, racial and national-socialist goals were to be achieved through art and music and the invisible Volk-soul--not by means of any material institutions or through coercion.
In the words of the great contemporary German humanitarian, Thomas Mann, Wagner's aim was:
To purify art and hold it sacred for the sake of a corrupt society. . . . He was all for catharsis and purification and dreamed of consecrating society by means of aesthetic elevation and cleansing it from its greed for gold, luxury, and all unloveliness .... it is thoroughly inadmissible to ascribe to Wagner's nationalistic attitudes and speeches, the meaning they would have today. That would be to falsify and misuse them, to besmirch their romantic purity.
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The national idea, when Wagner introduced it as a familiar and workable theme into his works--that is to say, before it was realized--was in its historically legitimate heroic epoch. It had its good, living and genuine period; it was poetry and intellect-a future value. But when the basses thunder out at the stalls the verse about the "German Sword," or that kernel and finale of the "Meistersinger": "Though Holy Roman Empire sink to dust, There still survives our sacred German art," in order to arouse an ulterior patriotic emotion--that is demagogy. It is precisely these lines .... that attest the intellectuality of Wagner's nationalism and its remoteness from the political sphere; they betray a complete anarchistic indifference to the state, so long as the spiritually German, the "Deutsche Kunst" survives.
The synthetic and constructive power of Wagner's mind enabled him to assimilate the varied tendencies of his period to such a degree that he became the apotheosis of romanticism in music. Awakened by experience in a world teeming with new literary, political, and philosophical ideas, he created not only a new school of music--as lesser minds than his had done--but a school of thought. He sensed Beethoven's passionate striving for new spheres of emotional experience, and in a music that was glamorous, unfettered, and incandescent he entered a world of strange ecstasies, to which music had never before had wings to soar.
Not since Bach has a composer so overwhelmingly dominated his period, so completely overtopped his contemporaries and followers with a sovereignty of imagination and potency of expression. But Bach and Wagner share little else, actually, aesthetically or spiritually. Wagner's life, unlike that of Bach, was thrilling, superbly vital, and theatrical. Bach died in obscurity while Wagner lived to see every one of his major works performed on the stages of the world. He died with universal recognition and the realization that in the short space of his life he had changed the whole current of the tonal art--that his mind and will had influenced the entire music of his age. While Bach worked oblivious of posterity, creating a music that was transcendent, impersonal and detached, Wagner, sustained by a prophetic vision and the knowledge that he was writing for distant generations, produced a music that was movingly sensuous and excitingly emotional. The interplay between experience and creation, between reality and imagination, was so close in him that at times it gave to his music a self consciousness and an oppressing excessiveness of personal feeling; every work he created emanated directly and unmistakably from his personality.
In J933 fifty years after the death of Wagner, Olin Downes wrote: "So far in the history of music, Wagner has only background. There is no foreground to indicate his position relative to the present and future. There can be no scales
Thomas Mann, Freud, Goethe and Wagner (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1933). [Hi
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in which to weigh him until another composer, as great as he, and with an equal sweep of vision comes before us. In the meantime we remain in the shadow of a colossus. As no other person in the world of music, Wagner bestrode his age and he dominates ours."
For this reason the world of music has never made its peace with him. This is to be expected, for few composers in the world's history have flung in its face such challenges--some still unanswered. Today Wagner is as great and paradoxical a problem as he was a little less than a century ago. One of the foremost evidences that he still sticks in our flesh is the fact that, as the years pass and one undeterminative creative period follows another, the vehemence with which he is attacked increases. He has been for several decades the target for critics who make the mistake of identifying his outdated theories with his works, and for creative artists who still look at him not only as a threat, but as a symbol of everything they have learned to despise in the age he epitomizes--excessive emotionalism, vulgarity of overstatement, and unashamed exploitation of private feeling.
It is true that Wagner inherited and transmitted to posterity the contagion of his era. He was marked beyond question by the same giantism of thought that developed in the growing Germany of the century, when conditions favored the growth of a Teutonic philosophy that indulged in transcendental flights of thought. He was driven by a form of nineteenth century megalomania to create grandiose works of formidible proportions, and compelled to write tomes of cumbrous prose to make his purpose apparent to posterity. In these verbal explanations he overwrote himself as he overcomposed, for he lived in a period that expected overstatement.
Unfortunately these incredibly illogical, unoriginal and albeit dangerous and misleading writings have in our day reacted as a boomerang upon Wagner's art. They have usurped the place of significance in the minds of literary men, philosophers, musicians, and laymen alike until it has been generally assumed that his scores were conditioned by his theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wagner himself, even before he began work on The Ring, realized the impotence of his theoretical meanderings. In a letter to Theodor Uhlig in May, 1853, we read: "Only to this degree can I look back upon my literary career of the past years with any sense of consolation--but I feel that through them, I myself, have come to a clear realization of the issues involved within my own mind." Seen in proper relation to his achievements in creation, they served him merely to effect an intellectual catharsis; they purged his mind of all the artistic, moral, and ethical impurities which indeed were those of his age, and left him free to compose, unhampered by all the turgid intellectuality of his system.
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Reduced to its simplist statement, Wagner's theory of the music drama merely demanded that opera, which in his day had become a vehicle for the display of vocal virtuosity, be restored to dramatic sanity, that subjects for operatic treatment should be selected which would suggest the largest amount of lyrical and emotional matter in the drama, that music should be created in accordance with the general mood of the scene or episode, and that the libretto should so far as possible approximate the spoken play except in emotional scenes, where music should supercede. This is sound operatic aesthetics in any period, and has been a guiding principle in every reform movement in the history of opera.
In his eagerness to restore dramatic significance to the opera of his day, Wagner quite typically overstated his central theme. "The error in the art genre of opera," he wrote in O-pera and Drama (1850), "consists herein; that a means of expression (music) has been made the end, while the end of expression (drama) has been made the means." It was his conscious aim, he said, to restore the drama to its rightful place as the central core of opera. "For one thing there is that all the three united arts must will, in order to be free, and that one thing is the drama; the reaching of the drama's aim must be their common goal."
This theory of opera is not tenable. Had Wagner really believed it, and composed by it, we would not be listening tonight to a complete program of his music in the concert hall. The self-contained completeness of his music makes it perfectly adaptable to the concert hall. Quite the contrary to Wagner's intention to make music the "means" of expression and not the "end," we find in his great operas the subordination of drama to music carried to the furthest extreme. It is as a musician and not as a dramatist that Wagner retains and will always retain his hold upon mankind. He was great as an opera librettist only insofar as he saw instinctively as a musician the kind of plot or poetry necessary for the structure of his music, and was able to provide it. Genuine faultless poetry needs no musician, but when Wagner's music needed a poetic idea, it was often overbearing and cruel, depriving the poetry of its true expressiveness. As he matured, Wagner the musician gave more and more imperative orders to Wagner the dramatist to shape his material in a form that would best afford the freest course to music. Always his dramatic material was selected and distributed in such a way that from The Flying Dutchman to his final work Parstfal he continued to ensure music its rightful place as the dominating art in opera.
To penetrate the true greatness of Wagner, then, we must forget him as a dramatist, poet, and philosopher, and approach him first, last, and always as a
William Ashton Ellis, trans., "Art Works of the Future," Wagner's Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1892-99), I.
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musician. The essence of Wagner's reform was not that he approximated the opera to drama. Far from this, he actually widened the gap between them by-approximating the opera to the symphony. Nature had endowed him with the same symphonic gift she had bestowed upon Beethoven and Brahms; and he used this gift to deepen and enrich, in true romantic style, the musical significance of the lyric drama. Into the opera of his day, which was a loosely joined tissue of isolated musical numbers, he wove an organic symphonic texture. By incorporating the symphony into the music drama he gave to the drama a musical structure and intensity. Tristan and Isolde, for instance, is a case of drama becoming almost entirely music.
Wagner found the highest manifestation of his musical ideal for the lyric drama through the use of short melodic phrases or themes that were charged with a variety of emotional color. These he made the foundation of his musical structure. These phrases, known as "leit-motives," were combined, developed, and built up as a substratum to the text and were presented generally in the orchestra, which now has a vastly greater potency and resource of expression than in former opera. The voice delivered the text in a musical declamation, a kind of endless melody of intensified expressiveness, varying in its melodic factor according to the nature of the mood to be expounded. These two elements, melodic declamation in the voice and this vast endless symphonic stream are inseparably connected and built into each other's substance.
The use of the "leit-motive" sprang from the same desire, so characteristic of romanticism, to impart profoundity and "meaning" to music What is often misunderstood is its function in opera. These themes or phrases of themes are often thought of as dramatic material, representing ideas, concepts, objects, and characters in the drama. No place in all his writings does Wagner refer to them as such. To him they were used as a musical means, helping him to unify his gigantic scores by supplying a device of thematic derivation, development, and fragmentation, familiar since Beethoven in the construction of the symphony, but hitherto unknown in such a complete development in opera. His music, setting aside many of the old patterns that depended upon abitrary and preconceived
This tendency at first coincided with the appearance of the motto theme in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. A musical thought, in the form of a musical figure, bearing within itself some mysterious and hitherto unexplained meaning or idea, became characteristic of Beethoven, and from it sprang the method of development created by his genius. With increasing force this idea projected itself in the I'idee fixe of Berlioz's Fantastique Symfhonie and in the "unknown song whose initial solemn note is tolled by death" theme of Liszt's "Les Preludes." These nineteenth century attempts to circumvent the infinite expressiveness of music with verbally expressed meanings were all evidences of its desire to bridge the gulf between music and speech.
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formulas of balance and recurrence of phrase, flowed on in one seemingly continuous stream, the leit-motives threading and spreading throughout the score, alternating and intertwining with each other. Wagner's music dramas are thus colossal symphonies for orchestra, with stage accessories.
Instead of curtailing and limiting music and its function in opera, Wagner increased immeasurably its expressive power and increasingly extended its boundaries. In his writings he tried to intellectualize the music of his period-but he ended in the paradoxical position of having greatly increased its emotional significance. From the man who held the opinion of his period that music should be the servant of poetry and drama, who maintained that "reaching the dramas' aim should be the common goal of all the arts," from the theorist who held that music was not to be regarded as the object of the lyric theater, the following seldom if ever quoted passages will come as something of a shock--no less a revelation.
In an off-the-record conversation with Herman Ritter during a rehearsal at Bayreuth, Wagner said, "Altogether too much is talked and written about me. One single stroke of the bow is of more significance than all the usual gabble. I need an audience of people who know nothing at all about my art ideals--not those who make propaganda. The types of people that serve me best are those who do not even know that notes are written on a five-line staff."
While working on Tannh'duser in 1844, he wrote the following letter to Karl Gaillard: "Before I go on to write verses, or plot or scene, I am already intoxicated by the musical aroma of my subject. I have every note, every characteristic motive [leit-motive] in my head, so when the versification is complete and the scenes arranged the opera is practically finished for me."
In his essay, "A Pilgrimage to Beethoven" (1840), he wrote, "To let men sing, one must give them words. Yet who can frame in words that poesy which needs must form the basis of such a union of all the elements The poet must necessarily limp behind, for words are organs of speech far too weak for such a task."
It is therefore no paradox to say that although Wagner was irresistibly impelled to express himself in the form of opera, he was by nature a symphonic composer. Thus it is not strange that the musician who was consciously trying to appear before the world as a dramatist should ultimately triumph through the domination and greatness of his music.
"I have recently said quite enough about the nature of music," he wrote in "A Communication to my Friends" in 1851, "I will refer to it simply as the
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good angel which preserved me as an artist, nay, which really first made me an artist, when my inner feeling commenced to revolt."
Prelude to Parsifal
Parsifal, the last product of Wagner's long creative activity, is different in many ways from his previous works, and from any other lyric drama. In substance and style, and in its general effect upon the stage, it is unique. Wagner's designation of it as a "Buhnenweihfestsfiel" or "stage consecrating festival drama" is highly significant. He regards the stage here not merely as a medium for diversion and entertainment, but for experiences that stand apart from those of ordinary life and bring us into close contact with, and lift us to a realm of profound spiritual mood. This grand and elevated aesthetic conception builds upon foundations of mystical, religious, and ethical ideas and incidents, and the music that accompanies this noble dramatic structure shows differences in style and manner, as well as in general quality of inspiration. There is in the music of Parsifal none of the passion and sensuous longing or ecstatic ardor of Tristan und Isolde. It is not the music of Siegfried revealing the impervious buoyancy of the hero untouched by fear, nor is there that Olympian grandeur and heroic splendor one rinds in Gotterd'dmtnerung.
The music of Parsifal, being essential to the character of the text, is prevailingly deliberate and slow in pace to accompany the leisurely unfolding of the story. Now rich and glowing in mystical harmonies, stately and solemn in its rhythm, the music weds itself to those sections of the text that have to do with the castle of the knights of the Holy Grail. But when we are in the magic garden of the magician, Klingsor, during the temptation of Parsifal by Kundry, the music becomes exciting and colorful. Wagner was never surpassed for brilliancy, glow, insinuating rhythm, iridescent harmony, and enticing melody, and as the text here demands such qualities as these, there is an exhibition of rich and intricate music crescendoing in splendor and magnificence. During the Communion scene, by the same token, the music is charged with a mystical poignancy that transcends all earthly associations, and at the end of the work, when the Grail sheds its benefaction on the holy knighthood, the music becomes seraphic, and we are at one with the worshiping company of knights before the revelation of immortal beauty.
From the host of medieval legends concerning the Holy Grail, Wagner found in the version of the old German minnesinger, Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom he had introduced as a character in his earlier opera Tannh'duser, those elements that best suited his dramatic purpose. This poetic and mystic legend inspired Wagner at the age of sixty-eight to write some of the most sublime music of his long career.
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The Holy Grail was the sacred chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, and in which were caught the last drops of His blood as He hung on the cross. According to Wagner's version, both the Grail and the sacred spear with which the Roman soldier, Longinus, pierced the side of Christ as He hung upon the cross, were entrusted by angels to the keeping of Titurel, son of the King of Cappadocia who built the sanctuary for them on Montsalvat in Galicia, Spain, where they were guarded by a body of knights of unimpeachable honor, whose lives were devoted to its service. Once a year a dove descended from heaven to renew the sacred power of the Grail and to resuscitate the knights, as it did Joseph of Armathaea, lying in prison for twenty-four years.
Among those who desired to become knights of the Grail was Klingsor, whose evil heart and dark passions excluded him from the holy company. Unable to guard the holy relics, he determined by means of magic to win them for his own possession. By means of sorcery, he created a magic garden and peopled it with women of enchanting and sensuous beauty to lure the knights from their holy mission.
Titurel, growing too old to carry out his duties, was succeeded by his son, Amfortas, who, straying too near Klingsor's realm, fell a victim of the seductions of Kundry, a female prototype of the wandering Jew, who, having mocked at Christ as He hung on the Cross, was vainly wandering the earth to look upon His face again. Wagner's Kundry is a complex character, now seeking expiation in zealous service to the Knights of the Grail, and again, under the magic power of Klingsor, a witch-woman, who lures them to their destruction. While in the magic garden, in the embraces of Kundry, Klingsor wrested from Amfortas the sacred spear and with it administered a grievous wound that would not heal, although Amfortas was kept alive through the sustaining power of the Grail. No one had been successful in winning back the spear from Klingsor, but it had been prophesied that one day there would come to Montsalvat, "a guileless fool," pure and unspoiled, who would become wise through compassion, and who would resist temptation and evil and finally recover the sacred spear, and with it heal Amfortas' wounds. It is with the appearance of Parsifal that Wagner's music-drama begins.
The following analysis of the Prelude to Parsifal is based upon that by Maurice Kufferath:
Without preparation the composition opens with a broad melodic phrase, played at first without accompaniment by the violins and woodwind instruments in unison. It is
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this melody that is sung later in the great religious scene of the first act during the mystic celebration of the Eucharist:
Take my blood, take my body
In remembrance of our love.
To a soft accompaniment of arpeggios for the strings, the same theme is repeated four times in succession, given alternately to the trumpet and the oboes in unison, and the strings supported by the woodwind, now above and now below the arpeggios of the harps and violins. Without any other transition than a series of broken chords the trombones and trumpets set forth the second theme, which may be called the Grail motive, because it is used throughout the entire work to characterize the worship of the holy relic. It is a very short theme, which subsequently reappears in almost every scene, some, times alone, sometimes joined to other themes, sometimes modified in its rhythm, but always preserving its characteristic harmonies. The ascending progression of sixths that forms the end of the motive is found in the form of the Amen of the Saxon liturgy, and it is still in use today in the principal church at Dresden. Through a singular coincidence Mendelssohn used this same theme in his "Reformation" symphony. The Grail motive is repeated twice; then, without transition, appears the third theme--the Faith motive. Here, too, is a well-defined melody of six measures, its opening figure being repeated every two measures with changing harmonies, and a conclusion in the last measure. The brass instruments give it out first in two different repetitions, like a categoric affirmation. The melody is then developed.
The strings take up the Grail motive; then the Faith motive reappears four times in succession in different keys, first by the flutes and horns, then by the strings, the third time by the brasses (ff and in 9--4 time), with a prolongation of certain notes to a tremolo accompaniment of the strings; the fourth time, softly, from woodwind instruments. A roll of drums on A--flat is accompanied by a tremolo in the double basses, giving the contra F. This transition leads back to the Eucharist motive in the woodwinds, and afterward in the violoncellos. This time the motive is not completed. Wagner stops at the third measure, and takes a new subject, which is repeated several times with increasing poignancy. A fourth theme then appears, drawn also from the Eucharist motive. The Prelude reaches its climax just as this fourth subject, which applies at once to the sufferings of our Saviour and to those of Amfortas, sounds from the whole orchestra. Like the Prelude to Lohengrin the introduction to Parsifal is developed by successive degrees until it reaches a maximum of expression, thereafter to diminish imperceptibly to a -pianissimo. Thus the synthesis of the whole drama has been clearly exposed. That which remains is merely a peroration, a logical, necessary conclusion, brought about by the ideas associated with the different themes.
"In fernem Land" from Lohengrin
When Wagner composed Lohengrin in 1874, he entered a new realm of expression. So new was this world that his contemporaries greeted it with terrific
? Maurice Kuffereth, The Parsifal of Richard Wagner (Paris: Fischbacher, 1890).
[21]
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antagonism, and Wagner, as its creator, was vilified with a fury and persistence that seems incredible today. Ignorance, chauvinism, race hatred, pedantry, and philistinism united to form an opposition such as no other man has ever been confronted with outside of religion or politics. The "gentlemen of the press" greeted him as "The Bavarian Buffoon," "Vandal of Art," "Murderer of Melody," "The Marat of Music." But the writings of the leading contemporary critics will bear witness to their prejudice in hearing a "new" music for the first time. How mercilessly and yet how glibly they damned themselves with the stroke of their own pens! Thus they wrote in 1850:
"The music of 'Lohengrin' is a disagreeable precipitate of nebulous theories-a frosty sense and soul congealing tone whining. It is an abyss of ennui. . . . Nine-tenths of the score contains miserable utterly inane phrases. The whole instrumentation breathes of an impure atmosphere." "Every sentiment for what is noble and dignified in art protests against such an insult to the very essence of music." . . . "The music of 'Lohengrin' is blubbering baby talk." . . . "Its music is formlessness reduced to a system, the work of an anti-melodious fanatic."
Lohengrin is a finer grained, more sensitive work than Tannh'duser. Free from the banalities that marked his earlier works, it is today considered one of his most lyrical and rapturously melodic scores. Lohengrin's narrative is from Act III, Scene I.
Lohengrin is the son of Parsifal, lord of Monsalvat and keeper of the Holy Grail. His mission is to bring succor to the distressed, but his magic power vanishes if the secret of his origin is known. Elsa of Brabant, wrongly accused by Telramund of the murder of her brother, is saved by the appearance of Lohengrin who takes her as his wife, bidding her never to ask him who he is or whence he came. Ortrud, wife of Telramund plants the seed of mistrust in Elsa who finally demands that Lohengrin reveal himself. Before the King and the assembled throng, Lohengrin begins his narrative:
In distant land, by ways remote and hidden, There stands a mount that men call Monsalvat; It holds a shrine, to the profane forbidden; More precious there is nought on earth than that, And thron'd in light it holds a cup immortal, That who so sees from earthly sin is cleans'd.
'Twas borne by angels thro' the heav'nly portal,
Its coming hath a holy reign commenc'd. Once every year a dove from Heav'n descendeth,
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To strengthen it anew for works of grace; 'Tis called the Grail, the pow'r of Heav'n attendeth
The faithful knights who guard that sacred place. He whom the Grail to be its servant chooses
Is armed henceforth by high invincible might; All evil craft its power before him loses,
The spirits of darkness where he dwells take flight. Nor will he lose the awful charm it blendeth,
Although he should be called to distant lands, When the high cause of virtue he defendeth;
While he's unknown, its spell he still commands.
If known to man, he must depart and flee,
Now mark, craft or disguise my soul disdaineth,
The Grail sent me to right yon lady's name: My father, Parsifal, gloriously reigneth,
His knight am I, and Lohengrin my name!
Rome Narrative from Tannhauser
"Into this work," wrote Wagner, "I precipitated myself with my whole soul, and with such consuming ardor that, the nearer I approached its end, the more I was haunted with the notion that perhaps a sudden death would prevent me from bringing it to completion; so that when the last note was written I experienced a feeling of joyful elation, as if I had escaped a mortal danger." But Wagner gave even further testimony to the flame of enthusiasm which burned within his soul when Tannhauser was in process of creation. "This opera," he wrote, "must be good, or else I never shall be able to do anything that is good. It acted upon me like real magic; whenever and wherever I took up the work I was all aglow and trembling with excitement. After the various long interruptions from labor, the first breath always transported me back into the fragrant atmosphere that had intoxicated me at its first conception."
Tannhauser, who has been lured by Venus to spend a year in her domain in the Hoerselberg, has traveled to Rome to seek forgiveness from the Pope. The "Rome Narrative" is from the end of Act III, when Tannhauser, worn and weary, and returning unforgiven for his sins, relates to Wolfram, his friend, the difficulties of his pilgrimage and expresses his despair at being refused absolution by the Pope:
With such devotion in my heart, as pilgrim Has never felt, I sought the way to Rome. N A heavenly angel, alas, had overcome
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The hardened pride of the defiant sinner!
For her sake I myself did humble,
For her sweet sake my feet have bled;
With true repentance I would sweeten
The tears which she for me has shed! Too light appeared to me the works of penance The most sin-burdened pilgrim underwent:-If his foot trod the soft grass of meadows, I sought the prickly thorns and stones for mine; And whilst he quenched his thirst with cooling water, I pantingly inhaled the heated air; When piously to Heaven he offered -prayers, I shed my blood, to invoke the grace of God; And whilst the pilgrims at the hospice rested I stretched my weary limbs midst snow and ice. Blindfolded wandered I through Italy's fields, Lest their grand beauty should delight my eyes; For I was bent on penitence and contrition To sweeten my pure angel's holy tears! Thus I reached Rome at last, the Holy City. And knelt in prayer before the sacred shrines; At day-break chimes of bells rang from the spires, And heavenly choirs with music filled the air. And shouts went up from many thousand voices, For grace and mercy these sweet sounds proclaimed. Then I beheld him whom they call God's viceroy, And all the people knelt in dust before him. To thousands gave he grace and bid them rise And seek their homes absolved from every sin,-Then I approached, my head bowed to the ground And with loud lamentations pleaded guilty Of carnal lust which held my heart enthralled, Desires which penitence had not yet cooled; With wildest grief I conjured him to grant me Redemption from the sin which held me captive.
And he whom thus I begged then said;
"If thou such wicked lust has felt,
Enkindled by hells firebrand,
If thou in Venus' Mount has dwelt,
Alas, forever thou art damned
And as this staff within my hand
Will nevermore be fresh and green,
Redemption from hell's fiery brand
Thou nevermore may'st hope, I ween!
FIRST CONCERT
Then I sank down as if annihilated
And lost my consciousness.--When I awoke
The shades of night had settled on the place,
And from afar I heard sweet songs of joy-Alas, I was disgusted with these songs!
Away, away from these false songs of promise
Which, cold as ice, went through my shivering heart,
I felt myself drawn quickly by wild horror.-I longed to go again where bliss and rest
I fully once enjoyed on her warm breast!
Behold me, Venus, now returning,
Lured by thy sweet and magic night;
To enjoy, with ardent longing burning,
Thy charms, forever fresh and bright!
Excerpts from Das Rheingold
Wagner reached the very peak of his artistic maturity in The Ring Here he towered to the sublime and reached one of the summits of human inspiration. Nothing else in music evidences such a tremendous sweep of imagination, such a completely comprehensive conception, so unparalleled an integration of divergent elements, and such an overwhelming richness of effect. In the words of Lawrence Gilman:
There is no such example of sustained and vitalized creative thinking as The Ring in music or in any other art. This vast projection of the creative vision and the proponent will; this four-part epic in drama and in tones whose progress unfolds a cosmic parable of nature and destiny and gods and demigods and men; which begins in the ancient river's depths and ends in the flaming heavens that consume Valhalla's deities and bring the promise of a new day of enlightened generosity and reconciliatory love--this was a work without precedent or patterns. No one before had dreamed of creating a dramatic symphony lasting fourteen hours, organized and integrated and coherent. Only a fanatically daring brain and imagination, only a lunatic or genius, could have projected such a thing; only a superman could have accomplished it.f
The following descriptions are also by Lawrence Gilman:
alberich's invocation of the nibelungs This excerpt is taken from Scene Four of Das Rheingold, in which Alberich, trapped
The composition of the four Ring dramas extends over a period of about twenty years. The words were printed in entirety in 1853; music sketches of Siegfried (the first one written) were begun in 1854, and the whole series finished in 1874. Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger were written during this period.
jLawrence Gilman, Wagner's Of eras (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937).
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by Loge and Wotan in the caverns of Nibelheim and brought to the surface by his captors, is forced by them to yield up his precious hoard--the treasure amassed by him in the depths of the earth--as ransom for his release. By a talismanic command, he summons his wretched slaves from the depths, and presently the throng of little smoke-grimed, terror-stricken Nibelungs swarm up the cleft laden with treasure and pile it up before their infuriated master, now bound, helpless, and humiliated, but raving like a manacled madman.
The scene is an open space on the mountain height, at first shrouded in pale mist. The malevolent gnome, bound and raging, lies at the feet of his captors, abusing them violently in response to their unmerciful taunts. To win release from his fetters, Loge tells him he must pay a ransom. This ransom, Wotan announces, can be nothing less than the hoard--Alberich's shining gold. The dwarf consents, reflecting that if he contrives to retain the magic Ring, he can soon and easily make up the loss of the Treasure. "Loosen my hand to summon it here!" he cries. Loge unties the rope from his right hand; Alberich puts the Ring to his lips and secretly murmurs a command. As the orchestra plays the motive of the Rising Hoard (the octaves that ascend heavily and groaningly in the bass), accompanied by the hammering triplet rhythms of the Smithy motive, the throng of grimy and trembling Nibelungs ascend from the cleft, laden with the treasure, and pile it in a glittering heap before their master and his captors. As they finish their task, Alberich orders them back to their burrows; and, as he kisses his Ring and stretches it out commandingly, threateningly, the Nibelungs rush in terror to the cleft, "as if he had struck them a blow," and quickly disappear into the depths, while the music rises to a climax of baleful power and intensity on the menacing theme that Wolzogen calls Alberich's Shout of Mastery or Despotic Cry of Triumph.
ENTRANCE OF THE GODS INTO VALHALLA
This is the Finale of Das Rheingold. Fafner has just slain his brother Fasolt in a quarrel over the Ring. The gods stand horror-struck at this visible sign of the instant operation of Alberich's curse. The world is wrapped in gloom. Donner, the Storm God, unable to endure the pervading depression, decides to clear the atmosphere. He springs to a rocky height, and "calls the clouds as a shepherd calls his flock," swinging his hammer as he utters his mighty shouts, while the mists gather and hide him from view. We hear his great theme in the orchestra thundered out by the brass; there is a swift and overwhelming crescendo, as if all the storms in the universe were coming to a head; the lightning flames and the heavens split. Then suddenly the air clears: from the feet of Donner and Froh, as they stand on the summit, a rainbow bridge of dazzling radiance stretches across the valley to the opposite height, where Valhalla, the troublous castle of the gods, is revealed in all its splendor as it gleams in the rays of the setting sun, while the sublime Valhalla theme sounds with tranquil majesty from the brass under an iridescent accompaniment of strings and harps. As the gods start to walk over the rainbow bridge (all but the cynic Loge, who remains behind, muttering sour comments), the melancholy song of the Rhine-maidens, lamenting their ravished gold, is borne upward from the valley.
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Siegfried's funeral music
In the second scene of Act III, Siegfried, resting in the woods with the assembled huntsmen--Gunther and Hagen and the vassals--relates to them the tale of his life and adventures. As his narrative approaches its end, Hagen interrupts the hero to press upon him a horn of wine in which he has mixed a magic brew that will remove from Siegfried's mind the cloud that has obscured his memory of Briinnhilde. Siegfried resumes his marvelous tale, describing with gusto his pursuit of the guiding Forest-Bird, his finding of Briinnhilde on the flame-girded mountain-top, and his waking of the enchanted sleeper by his kiss. As he reaches this exultant climax, two ravens fly up from a bush, and Hagen asks him, "Canst read the speech of these ravens, too" As Siegfried turns to look after them, Hagen thrusts his spear into the hero's back. Siegfried attempts to crush Hagen with his shield, but his strength leaves him, and he falls backward, like the crashing to earth of some towering forest tree. The vassals, who have tried vainly to restrain Hagen, ask in horror what this deed is that he has done; and Gunther echoes their question. "Vengeance for a broken oath!" answers Hagen, as he turns callously away and strides out of sight. Then the stricken hero, supported by two of the vassals, raises himself slightly, opens his eyes, and sings his last greeting to Brunnhilde.
Siegfried sinks back and dies; and for a few moments the stricken vassals and warriors gathered about him in the darkening woods stand speechless beside the silent figure stretched on its great war-shield. Then, at a gesture from Gunther, the vassals lift the shield with its incredible burden upon their shoulders and bear it in solemn procession over the heights, hidden at last by the mists that rise from the river, while the mightiest death-song ever chanted for a son of earth ascends from the instrumental choir.
This is no music of mortal lamentation. It is rather a paean, a tonal glorification. "There is grief for the hero's passing, and there is awe at the catastrophe. But the grief is mixed with thoughts of the high estate into which the chosen one has entered, and the awe is turned to exultation. For a Valkyr will kiss away his wounds, and Wotan will make place for him at his board among the warriors."
Excerpts from Die Walkiire
These excerpts from Die Walkiire are taken from the end of Act I. Siegmund, a warrior in flight, takes refuge one stormy night in the house of Hunding, one of his enemies, whose wife Sieglinde arouses his interest and love. Hunding is bound by the laws of hospitality not to harm his guest until the morrow, when he threatens to meet him in combat. Siegmund, weaponless, is left to spend the night in a spacious hall erected around the trunk of a giant ash tree. He meditates upon his fate, and a promise made by his father Wiilse to provide him with a weapon in time of need. At this moment the fire on the hearth flickers up and a ray of light falls on the hilt of a sword plunged into the trunk of the ash tree. He fails to see the sword but ponders on the meaning of the gleam of light, and as the glowing embers fade, he thinks again of Sieglinde:
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
A sword---so promised my father-I'd find in my hour of need.
Weaponless am I,
My host a foe.
By his wrath fore-doomed,
Here I now lie,
A woman came,
Witching and pure;
And ravishing anguish
Burns my heart;
But she for whom I now long,
Who has cast about me her spell,
Is held in thrall by the man
Who scorns--me, all unarmed,-Walse! Walse!
Where is thy sword
The strong, good sword
That in fight went flashing
Burst from my sorrowful breast
The frenzy my heart had hid!
What glistens there
What flames and gleams
See--a light streams
From the ashen stem:
So bright it dazzles
Eyes that were blind-Laughs with light at my look!
In the glorious glow
My heart takes fire!
It is the glance
That woman so fair
Left behind her
To burn in the tree,
When from the hall she stole.
Night and its darkness
Hung on my lids:
But her beaming eyes
Gladdened my gloom.
Warmed me and won back the light.
Sweet the sunshine
Now seems to me.
Its ravishing radiance
Enwrapped me around-Till 'mid the mountains it died
And once more, ere it went,
Came tonight the glad gleam,
And the old, old ashen stem,
Grew brighter and gleamed as gold.
The flush has faded-The light grows dim-Night and darkness
Weigh on my eyelids.
Deep in my bosom only
Gleameth in secret a flame.
Sieglinde, who has now re-entered the room, promises to guide Siegmund to "a goodly weapon, a glorious prize to win." Suddenly, the great door at the back of the room springs open, and Sieglinde starts back in fright. Siegmund, drawing her tenderly into his arms, tells her that no one but the Spring has entered. The intoxicating beauty of the moonlit woods prevades the room, and Siegmund sings a passionate song of love, apostrophizing the spring night:
siegmund's love song, "wintersturme"
Winter's storming's stilled By the love-lit May; In tender Beauty Beameth the Spring. On balmy breezes,
Light and Lovely, Weaving wonders, See, he sways; O'er wood and meadow Softly breathing,
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Wide he opens
His laughing eyes:
And happy birds are singing
Songs he taught,
Sweetest perfumes
Scent his train.
As he warns them, lo, the branches
Break into blossom;
Bud and bough
Submit to his sway.
In beauty's armor dight.
He witches the world.
Winter and storm vainly
Had said him nay:-And even the surly portals
Obey his will, with the mortals
They fain would have barred
From--rapture and day.
To greet his sister,
Fast he has fared-'Twas Love that longed for the spring.
In both our bosoms
Buried, lay Love;
But now she laughs in the light.
The bride who was sister
Is freed by the brother;
And shattered now
Lie barriers and chains,
Joyous greeting
Their lips exchange;
For Love has wed with the Spring.
Forging Song from Siegfried
Siegfried, the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde, has been brought up in the forest by the dwarf Mime, who intends to recover, with his aid, the Nibelung hoard and the Ring. But as Siegfried has broken every sword Mime could forge, the latter is at a loss where to find a suitable weapon. Siegfried finally learns that at the death of his mother, Mime had been entrusted with the pieces of "Nothung," Siegmund's sword. Unable to weld together the pieces, Mime gives them to Siegfried who accomplishes this task without difficulty.
The scene shows the opening of a natural cavern. Against the back wall stands a large forge, and a great bellows. A large anvil and other smith's implements are at hand. Siegfried takes the pieces of the sword, fixes them in a vise, and files them to dust. This he puts into a melting pot, which he sets on the fire, and while he keeps up the heat with the bellows, he sings the first forging song, full of glee in the consciousness of his youth and of his ability to make himself a worthy weapon. Thus he begins:
Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword! To shreds I've shattered thy shining blade, the pot shall melt the shivers. Hoho! Hohei! Wild in the woodlands waved a tree, which I in the forest felled: the branches now, how bravely they flame! They spring in the air with scattering sparks and smelt me the steely shreds. Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword! In thine own sweat thou swimmest now--I soon shall call thee my sword. (Pours steel into a mold and plunges it into water; it hisses) Hoho! Hohei! Forge me, my hammer, a noble sword. Hoho! Hohei! Once blood did tinge thy pallid
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
blue, cold rang out thy laugh. Wrathful sparks thou dost sputter on me who conquered thy pride! Heiaho! Heiaho! Heiahohohohoho!
Excerpts from Act III, Die Meistersinger: Prelude, Dance of the Apprentices, Entrance of the Mastersingers.
To the opera-going public, particularly in Germany, Wagner's single comedy, Die Meistersinger, is the most beloved of all his works. The gaiety and charming tunefulness of the score, the intermingling of humor, satire, and romance in the text, are reasons enough for its universal popularity.
As a reconstruction of the social life in the quaint medieval city of Nuremberg, its truthfulness and vividness are beyond all praise. In its harmless satire, aimed in kindly humor at the manners, vices, and follies of the "tradesmen-musicians" and their attempts to keep the spirit of minstrelsy alive by dint of pedantic formulas, the plot is worthy to stand beside the best comedies of the world. Certainly it has no equal in operatic literature.
To orient ourselves properly, it is necessary that we become acquainted with the events which have transpired in the comedy-drama prior to the contest of the Mastersinger's Guild in St. Catherine's Church, Nuremberg. One June 23, 1561, toward evening, a young Franconian knight, Walther von Stolzing, arrives on horseback, and after securing proper accommodations the young man enters the church of St. Catherine, where, listening to the close of the service, he discovers a beautiful young woman, Eva Pogner, the daughter of the Burger-meister, with whom he promptly falls in love--as he, perforce, must, being a Wagner hero. She also responds to the call of duty by reciprocating his feelings. He learns that she is not betrothed, whereupon he determines to win her hand in the only manner possible--by winning in the contest which on the morrow is to determine who shall be her husband--and incidentally accept the entire possessions of her father as her dowry. To do this he must become a Mastersinger. He takes advantage of a meeting (a tryout) which takes place in one of the transepts immediately after service. He fails most ingloriously, although Hans Sachs, the greatest singer of them all, sees in his song something novel in spirit and form, and entirely admirable (end of Act I). The only eligible contestant is one Sixtus Beckmesser, the city clerk, an old bachelor of the type that does not die but dries up and is blown away. Inasmuch as Beckmesser has already reached a stage where it was wisdom on his part to avoid a very strong gale, Eva had looked forward with hope that the young man would triumph instead of scoring a failure. But his failure cannot postpone the great festival set for the next afternoon when the
The date given is determined by internal evidence contained in the drama. [30]
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prize contest will take place on a green just outside the city wall. That evening Walther dreamed a wonderful song, which Sachs transcribed (in Act II).
Act III, from which these excerpts are taken, is in two scenes. Before we are taken into Hans Sachs' house in the first scene, the orchestra creates in the Prelude an atmosphere of quiet brooding and profound melancholy (Excerpt I). Through the music we share the sorrowful meditation of Hans Sachs as he thinks upon the foibles and follies of mankind. Then, in Wagner's own words:
.... as from out of the distance, the horns intone the solemn song wherein Hans Sachs greeted Luther and the Reformation, the song which had won the cobbler-poet such wide popularity. After the very first strophe the strings again take the single phrases of the cobbler-song, very softly and slowly, as though the man were turning his gaze from his handiwork, heavenward, lost in tender musings. Then, with increased sonority, the horns pursue the master's hymn, the one with which Sachs, in the last scene of the act, is greeted by the populace of Nuremberg. Next appears the string's first motive, with grandiose expression of the anguish of a deeply stirred soul; calm and allayed, it attains the utmost serenity of a blest and peaceful resignation.
In Scene II the place is decorated for a holiday, there is an imposing platform with chairs and benches on it for the Mastersingers and judges in the contest of song. Crowds of holiday-makers are on the spot already, and more keep arriving. The various Guilds-shoemakers, tailors, and bakers---enter with their respective insignia. Apprentices and young girls dance together to a lilting measure as gay as their fluttering ribbons (Excerpt II). Frivolities stop short with the entrance of the Guilds and Masters (Excerpt III). They assemble on a terrace, then march in imposing procession to their places by the stand, one waving the banner of the Mastersinger's Guild on which is pictured King David and his harp. . . .
Pogner advances with Eva, who is attended by richly dressed and adorned maidens. When Eva and her attendants have taken the flower-strewn place of honor and all the rest are in their places--masters on the benches, the journeymen standing behind them--the apprentices advance in orderly array and turn seriously to the people.
After the solemn, festive procession Sachs advances, and the throng which has gathered rises to greet him. The contest is thus begun; and, after attempts by several candidates, Walther sings the song of which he dreamed, and wins the prize.
SECOND CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 6 Requiem................Brahms
Johannes Brahms was born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, in Vienna.
The differences that actually exist between the art of Brahms and that of Wagner are slight indeed. Criticism in the past has been too insistent in symbolizing each of these masters as the epitome of conflicting forces in the music of their age. It has identified their aesthetic theories and the conflicts that raged around them with their art and has come to the false conclusion that no two artists reveal a greater disparity of style, expression, and technique. In actual life they did stand apart. The Wagner enthusiasts regarded Brahms as a musical antipode, and Wagner took this attitude so seriously that he wrote some of the most malicious things about Brahms that he ever wrote about any contemporary.
But to us today, Wagner and Brahms no longer seem irreconcilable in spite of all differences in their inclinations, dispositions, and quality; rather, they complement each other. They shared a common fatherland and artistic ancestry; their conflict was one of temperament only, If Brahms seems to lack the sensuous quality so marked in Wagner, it is in this, and this alone, that the real difference lies.
In truth, both Wagner and Brahms are products of the same artistic soil, nurtured by the same forces that conditioned the standards and norms of art in their period. Both shared in a lofty purpose and noble intention. Brahm's Requiem, the C-minor Symphony, the Alto Rhapsody, the Song of Destiny, and particularly the great tragic songs, all speak in the somber and serious accents of Wagner. Both sought the expression of the sublime in their art, and each in his own way tried to strengthen the flaccid spirit of his time by sounding a note of courage and hopefulness. They both lived in a poverty-stricken and soul-sick period, when anarchy seemed to have destroyed culture, an age which was distinctly unfavorable to genuinely great art--unfavorable because of its pretentiousness and exclusiveness, its crass materialism, its hidebound worship of the conventional. With it came disillusionment, weariness, and an indifference to beauty. The showy exterior did not hide the inner barrenness of its culture.
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Wagner and Brahms, opposed in verbal theory, stand together strong in the face of opposing forces, disillusioned beyond doubt with the state of the world, but not defeated by it.
It is no accident then that the real Brahms seems to us to be the pessimistic Brahms of his great tragic songs and the quiet resignation of the slow movements of his symphonies. Here is to be found an expression of the true spirit of the age in which he lived. But by the exercise of a clear intelligence, he tempered an excessively emotional nature, and thereby dispersed the vapors of mere sentimentalism. Unlike Tchaikovsky and other "heroes of the age," Brahms, like Beethoven, was essentially of a healthy mind, and with a spirit strong and virile, he met the challenge of his age and was in his art triumphant. In a period turbid with morbid emotionalism, he stood abreast with such spirits as Carlyle and Browning to oppose the unhealthy tendencies of his period. Although he suffered disillusionment no less than Wagner, his was another kind of tragedy, the tragedy of a musician born out of his time. In fact, he suffered more than Wagner from the changes in taste and perception that inevitably come with the passing of time. But his particular disillusionment did not affect the power and sureness of his artistic impulse. With grief he saw the ideals of Beethoven dissolve in a welter of cheap emotionalism; he saw the classic dignity of his art degraded by an infiltration of tawdry programmatic effects and innocuous imitation, and witnessed, finally, its complete subjugation to poetry and the dramatic play. But all of this he opposed with his own grand style, profoundly moving, noble, and dignified. With a sweep and thrust he forced music out upon her mighty pinions to soar once more. What Matthew Arnold wrote of Milton's verse might well have been written of Brahms's music: "The fullness of thought, imagination, and knowledge makes it what it is" and the mighty power of his music lies "in the refining and elevation wrought in us by the high and rare excellence of the grand style." If the "grand style" referred to "can only be spiritually ascertained," then certainly here in the Requiem is an imposing manifestation of its existence.
Fuller Maitland, in his admirable book on Brahms, made reference to the parallelism between the composer and Robert Browning.f The association is a happy one. There is something similar in their artistic outlook and method of expression, for Brahms, like Browning, often disclaimed the nice selection and employment of a style in itself merely beautiful. As an artist, none the less, he chose to create, in every case, a style fitly proportioned to the design, finding in that dramatic relation of style and motive a more vital beauty and a broader
See program notes on Tchaikovsky, page 86.
f Fuller Maitland, Brahms (London: Methuen & Co., 1911).
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sweep of feeling. This epic conception often lifted Brahms to the brink of the sublime. He lived in his creative life upon the "cold white peaks." No master ever displayed a more inexorable self-discipline, or held in higher respect his art. For Brahms was a master of masters, always painstaking in the devotion he put into his work, and undaunted in his search for perfection. "The excellence he sought dwelt among rocks hardly accessible, and he had to almost wear his heart out to reach her." The Brahms of the Requiem is the man, in Milton's magnificent phrase, "of devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."
Whether the Requiem was inspired by Brahms's sorrow and need for comfort after the tragic death of his benefactor and friend, Robert Schumann, or whether it was written as a memorial to the composer's mother, has not been definitely settled. Frau Schumann is quoted as having said, "We all think he wrote it in her memory, though he has never expressly said so." Herr Kalbeck argues strenuously that it was suggested by the tragedy of Schumann's death. Doubtless both incidents led the composer to meditate upon death and upon sorrow and its consolation. The composition of the work occupied Brahms chiefly for five years. During this early Viennese period he was not negligent of other fields, having composed the Handel and Paganini variations, the two quartets for piano and strings, the Magelone Song Cycle, and many other vocal works.
"Never has a nobler monument been raised by filial love," was the way Joachim characterized the Requiem in his address on the occasion of the Brahms Memorial Festival held at Meiningen in October, 1899. The death of his mother in 1865 and the completion of the work in 1868 lent strength to the belief that much of the text was selected and the music written to it with her memory in the mind of the composer. Perhaps the marvelously beautiful funeral march in the second division of the work had its inspiration in this source.
In the published score the Requiem contains seven divisions. On this occasion the third and the seventh are omitted, due to considerations of the time limits of the concert program. The work was first heard at one of the concerts of the Gesellschaft in Vienna, December 1, 1867. The first three numbers only were sung on that occasion. On Good Friday of the next year it was given under the direction of the composer in the Cathedral of Bremen, at which time all of the work was complete except No. 5 (the soprano solo with chorus) which was not added until after the second performance at Bremen. The first performance of the entire work in its completed form took place in Leipzig in the Gewandhaus in February, 1869.
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Brahms selected his own text with great care, and although many critics have professed to trace a lack of unity in the work, a reading of the scriptural passages suffices to demonstrate that they exhibit a continuity which the composer developed in his music as well as in the text. The blessing pronounced by Christ on those who mourn, and the blessing of the Holy Spirit on the departed faithful, entered in the Revelation of St. John, make the beginning and end of the scheme similar in conception. Moreover, the same musical theme is used at the end of both the first and last choruses. Nor should one lose trace of the fact that although this great work is called a requiem, there is no hint of prayer being offered on behalf of the dead, but that throughout the work there recurs the underlying theme that "sorrow shall be turned to joy" which not only gives textual unity, but directs the musical expression to the complete fulfillment of this thought.
The Requiem is not merely a collection of technical or spiritual subtleties, otherwise it would long ago have lost its power over mankind. It is the grandeur of its conception, its deep sincerity, the truthfulness of its religious ideals, and the profound spirit of devotion that gives the real structural and spiritual unity it possesses. The standard of vocal writing, both for soloists and the chorus, is of the highest. The maturity and power of the orchestration, the contrapuntal imagination, and the ingenuity of thematic development are comparable to anything found in the great symphonies. But these considerations, important as they are, become dwarfed in the profound and indelible impression the work produces on all thoughtful people.
Analysis Blessed Are They That Mourn.......Chorus and Orchestra
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall have comfort.
--Matthew 5:4.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
Shall doubtless return with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
--Psalms 126:5-6.
The first section, which is a consolation for those who mourn (for they shall have comfort), sets the mood for the entire work. The absence of first and second violins, and the more somber and full-toned expression of the lower strings seems eminently fitting as a color for the melodies and harmonies of the first division.
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Against this dark background the limpid simplicity and clarity of the voices creates a noble serenity.
Behold, All Flesh Is as the Grass............Chorus
Behold, all flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness of man is as the flower of grass: for lo, the grass withereth and the flower thereof decayeth. Albeit the Lord's word endureth forever. . . .
--I Peter 1:24-25.
Be patient therefor, brethren, until the coming of Christ. See how the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receives the early rain and the latter rain. So be ye patient. . . .
--James 5:7--8.
The redeemed of the Lord shall return again and come rejoicing unto Zion: joy everlasting shall be upon their heads; joy and gladness shall be their portion; and tears and sighing shall flee from them.
--Isaiah 35:10.
The second section, with tempo indication un modo marcia, contains the "Death March of the World" broken in upon by the hopeful cry, "Now therefore be patient, O my brethren, unto the coming of Christ." The march continues and seems to end hopelessly ("The flowers decayeth"). Suddenly and with tremendous force, the text, "Albeit the Lord's world endureth forever," is affirmed and the added phrase, "The redeemed of the Lord shall return again and come rejoicing unto Zion," inspires a musical setting which marvelously balances the joyous major mode against the somber mode of the first half of this number. The grave beauty created by the sudden change from the minor ghostliness of the funeral march to the bright major of the middle section with its comforting, patient, and tender music accompanying the text, "See how the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth," makes the return of the "Death Dance" even more oppressive. Against a funereal saraband in the orchestra, the counterpoint of macabre voices creates an uncanny and forbidding tone that recalls the grisly and grotesque impression of the "Dance of Death" woodcut of Albrecht Diirer. Brahms again emphasizes the central theme of the work, and dwells upon the phrase, "Joy everlasting," in a coda of unusual beauty, the final notes of the chorus vanishing without definitely ending, as if a vista into infinity were opened.
How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place..........Chorus
How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
For my soul, it longeth, yea, fainteth, for the courts of the Lord;
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My soul and body crieth out, yea, for the living God. Blest are they that dwell within Thy house; They praise Thy name evermore!
--Psalms 84:1-4.
The fourth division, "How lovely is Thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts," shows Brahms in one of his melodious and opulently harmonic moods. The text, "It longeth, yet fainteth, for the courts of the Lord," is almost literally translated into a miniature drama. The treatment of the words "living God" deserves especial attention, as it is one of the subtle beauties on which the composer must have expended his utmost skill; those few measures are some of the purest inspiration in the whole work, they are so simply expressed and yet so perfectly balanced. The number closes with a strong affirmative treatment of the words "They praise Thy name forevermore."
This whole section is permeated by an atmosphere of peaceful happiness. The dead are in God's hands, and for them are only calm, celestial joys.
Ye Now Are Sorrowful ...........Sop-ano and Chorus
Ye that now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold Me, and your heart shall be joyful and your joy no man taketh from you.
--John 16:22.
Yea, I will comfort you as one whom his own mother comforteth.
--Isaiah 66:13.
This part of the Requiem was added after the Bremen performance, and the death of Brahms's stepmother, to whom he was devoted. This is her monument. The infinite tenderness and yearning of the music welled up from an artist whose adoration for his mother had a profound influence over the whole course of his life. Here Brahms expresses the soaring spirit of the departed in the high, sustained notes of the soprano solo; occasionally the chorus in a chorale-chant interject, "as one whom his own mother comforteth." To the text "Ye shall again behold me," are set the same notes that appear as the opening figure of the accompaniment and are echoed in notes of double the length in the choral "Yea, I will comfort you."
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Here on Earth We Have No Continuing Place . . . Baritone and Chorus
Here on earth we have no continuing place, howbeit, we seek one to come.
--Hebrews, 13:14.
Lo, I unfold unto you a mystery. We shall not all flee when He cometh but we shall all be changed, in moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed. . . . Then, what of old was written, the same shall be brought to pass. For death shall be swallowed in victory. Grave, where is thy triumph Death, where is thy sting
--I Corinthians, 15:51--55.
Worthy art Thou to be praised, Lord of honor and might, for Thou have earth and heaven created and for Thy good pleasure all things have their being and were created.
--Revelations, 4:11.
In this section of the Requiem the greatest climax of the work is reached. The chorus begins, "Here on earth we have no continuing place," and although in a somewhat forlorn mood, the faint hopes kindled heretofore are confirmed in the words of the baritone solo, "Lo, I unfold unto you a mystery," and lead through continuously mounting mystical harmonies to the words, "At the sound of the trumpets the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall all be changed." As death is swallowed up in victory so the climax of the ascendant faith is expressed in the fugal ending, "Worthy art Thou to be praised." Musically speaking, this is one of the most intense and uplifting creations in the whole range of music and is the real conclusion of the work. (The seventh section and nominal conclusion is omitted in this performance.)
To the heart of a troubled world, the Brahms Requiem can give consolation and hope in the ultimate fulfillment of its deepest desire that all "sorrow shall be turned to joy."
Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37.......Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, December 16, 1770; he died in Vienna, March 26, 1827.
It is difficult to decide whether the man creates the age or the age the man, but in the case of Beethoven each is true to some extent. Certainly, as far as music is concerned, he created the age of Romanticism to such a degree that the new
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movement which began in the nineteenth century could be called "Beethovenism" as well. On the other hand, there is no more decided proof to be found in music history of the fact that the age produces the man than the case of Beethoven. Certainly in his life and in his works, he is the embodiment of his period. Born at the end of the eighteenth century, he witnessed, during the formative period of his life, the drastic changes that were occurring throughout central Europe; changes which affected not only the political but the intellectual and artistic life of the world as well. The French Revolution announced the breaking up of an old civilization and the dawn of a new social regime. Twice during the most productive period of Beethoven's career, Vienna was occupied by the armies of Napoleon. The spirit that caused the Revolution and brought the armies of Napoleon into existence, is the very root of Beethoven's music. The ideas which dethroned kings, swept away landmarks of an older society, changed the whole attitude of the individual toward religion, the state, and tradition ultimately gave birth to the inventive genius of the nineteenth century, which brought such things as railroads, reform bills, trade unions, and electricity. The same spirit animated the poetic thought of Goethe, Schiller, Wordsworth, and Byron, and it infused itself into the music of Beethoven, from the creation of the "Appassionata" sonata to the "Choral" ninth symphony.
During this period of chaos and turmoil, Beethoven stood like a colossus, bridging with his mighty grasp the two centuries in which he lived. In his one person he embodied the ideas of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, became the sage and prophet of his period, and the center of the classic and romantic spirit.
These two elements were mutually helpful in making him the outstanding representative of each. His romantic tendencies helped him to infuse Promethean fire into the old, worn-out forms, and to endow them with new passion. His respect for classic forms made him the greatest of the early Romanticists, for it aided him in tempering the fantastic excesses and extremes of his radical contemporaries. Thus, this harmonious embodiment of opposing forces, controlled by an architectonic intelligence that molded and fused them together into one passionate, creative impulse, resulted in the production of epoch-making masterpieces, built upon firm foundations, but emancipated from all confining elements of tradition, and set free to discover new regions of unimagined beauty.
Beethoven always approached a new form with caution, leaning heavily at first upon traditions established by his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart. Whatever the form--the symphony, the sonata, the quartet, or the concerto--he entered the untried field with deliberation. Once he found himself the master, he
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subjected the form to merciless scrutiny and went about deliberately to free it from the fetters of the past that were binding it.
His piano compositions were always in the vanguard of his maturing style. Whenever the piano was the medium he showed greater originality and freedom from the restrictions of tradition. Prior to the year 1800, he had composed eleven piano sonatas, among them the "Pathetique" (C minor, Op. 31), a corner stone for nineteenth century romantic piano music. Isolated movements from the others began to show feverish exploration, such as that detected in the slow movement of Op. 10, No. 3, one of the most powerful utterances to be found in his early music.
Although the third piano concerto comes from the same period as the first and second concertos, it shows considerable advance over these conservative works, disclosing a more conscious liberation of creative energy. The occasional heroic gesture, such as the abrupt commanding opening subject of the first movement and the broad phrasing and luxurious solemnity of the largo, mark this work as the most mature and highly developed of all the compositions which Beethoven brought to fruition in the first year of the new century. It is richer in tonal texture than the first symphony, and only isolated movements of the Op. 18 quartets, such as the slow movement of No. 1 and the first movement of No. 4, are in any way comparable to it in emotional fervor. In grandeur of conception, the third piano concerto is an imposing landmark on the way to the epoch-making "Eroica" symphony, composed four years later, again proving that through the medium of the piano Beethoven first released the vast innovating force that was to recondition every musical form it touched.
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Saturday Afternoon, May 7
Overture to The Bartered Bride........ Smetana
Friedrich Smetana was born in Leitomischl, Bohemia, March 2, 1824; died in Prague, May 12, 1884.
Smetana's position in his own country is unique among musicians. Neither Chopin nor Grieg have quite the same powerful national significance. His works are permeated with the spirit of national life in its widest sense. By his determined optimism and farsightedness, he made his art a wonderful stimulus to a rebirth of national feeling. Through his music, Smetana made himself a national hero. He revealed through it a stimulating optimism and made his people aware of their great spirit. Art can never live merely by pessimism, skepticism, and sadness. For that reason mankind has always considered its special benefaction to be artists who have been able to infuse human souls with gladness, and life with joy. In this respect the nineteenth century never saw a greater genius than Smetana. Since Mozart's time there has not been a composer who, with refinement and alluring freshness, could delight the world with such warm, frank, and genial art as Smetana. His life, unfortunately, gave to him few of the gifts he bestowed upon his countrymen and upon all humanity. Rivaling Mozart as a child prodigy, his early youth gave promise of a brilliant and happy future. But in later years his life was full of tragic experiences. At the age of fifty, he, like Beethoven, became totally deaf. He bore this blow with patient courage, but his health began to fail. Depression settled deeply in his soul, and soon he disclosed symptoms of mental collapse. Attacked now by hideous delusions, his memory gave way, and he died in an asylum for the insane at Prague, in utter eclipse of mind. And on the shores of the mighty Moldau, which he immortalized in his music, he lies buried.
The gay and sparkling music of The Bartered, Bride, however, reflects nothing of the deep tragedy that coursed through Smetana's life. The melodic charm, the vivacious and sprightly tempo, and the infectious rhythm of this
The Moldau, a symphonic poem (written between 1874. and 1879), belongs to a cycle of symphonic works, under the general title of Ma Vlast (My Country), which, founded on national subjects, have served to carry his fame farther afield than any other examples of his art.
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delightful music have made it in recent years one of the most popular overtures on current programs.
LIEDER CYCLE
Translated from the German by Marguerite V. Hood and orchestrated by Dorothy James
The Gardener ............Hugo Wolf
Poem by Eduard Morike
A-riding so swiftly on steed white as snow,
The beautiful Princess down garden path will go.
Down pathway a-riding so proud and so bold,
With the sand that I scatter it glistens like gold.
The plumes on your hood dancing up dancing down,
O, waft me a feather to keep as mine own.
And would you accept then a sweet blossom from me
Take thousands, yea thousands, they all are for thee!
Take thousands, dear lady, they all are for thee!
Beautiful Flowers, Op. 43, No. 3 .... Robert Schumann
Poem by Reinick
I went abroad a-walking
So early in the day,
The little flow'rs were showing off
Their beauty on the way.
Who would dare to pluck these blossoms
So beautiful and bright
I stooped for yet a closer view
Of this delightful sight.
The butterflies and beedes,
The busy honey bees,
The songs they sang together
Sped on the morning breeze.
They played and joked and fluttered,
And kissed the little flow'rs,
And kept the field in motion .
Through all the sunny hours.
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Ah, butterflies and beetles!
And honey bees, you too!
For the joyous, happy songs you sang
My thanks I send to you. . . .
Thanks to you. ...
Wandering, Op. 25, No. 1 from "The Fair Maid
of the Mill"..........Franz Schubert
Poem by Muller.
To wander is the miller's joy, to wander; A lazy miller he must be Who never wished the world to see! To wander, to wander!
The rushing water ever roams, the water; It never rests by night or day, But wanders ever far away, The water, the water.
The busy mill wheel ever turns, the mill wheel;
It loves not to be standing still,
But turns all day with right good will!
The mill wheel, the mill wheel.
Cradle Song, Op. 98, No. 2.......Franz Schubert
Poem attributed to M. Claudius
Slumber, slumber, tender little baby, Mother o'er thy cradle watch will keep. Calm and peaceful may you slumber, Baby, darling, gently, sweetly sleep.
Slumber, slumber, evening shadows falling, Close around thee is thy mother's arm. Dreams so tender, fondest wishes; All will shield thee, Dearest babe, from harm.
The Little Owl, Op. 79, No. 10 from
"Lieder Album for the Young" . . . Robert Schumann
Poem from "The Youth's Magic Horn," a collection of German popular poems by Arnim and Brentano. This poem was arranged for use in the song by Clara Schumann.
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A lonely little owlet,
Where can I fly and hide
I sit at night and sing here,
And folks are terrified.
They do not like my friendly "Whoo"
To softly hoot is all I do!
Poor little owl am I.
My feathered friends are soaring
Afar in forest deep;
There all the birds are singing,
But I can only weep.
I love the birds that sing and sail,
But best I love th.e nightingale!
Poor little owl am I.
The children do not love me!
Why do they think I'm bad
The way they drive me from them
So I can't hoot is sad.
What fun is there for any owl
If he can never hoot or howl
Poor little owl am I.
The Evening Star, Op. 79, No. 1 from
"Lieder Album for the Young" . . . Robert Schumann
Oh, beautiful star So high and so bright, My heart fills with joy When I see you at night.
Your eye beaming there Is looking at me; It glistens and sparkles, 'Tis lovely to see.
Your soft light sends dreams And rest from a-far. Would I could be like you, Oh, beautiful star.
The Lost Hen, No. 3 from "Volks-Kinderlieder," Johannes Brahms
Composed for the children of Clara and Robert Schumann Sung in German (South German dialect)
Ach, mein Hennlein, bi, bi, bi! Meld du di!
Ach, mein Hennlein, bi, bi, bi! Saht ihr nit mein Hennlein laufen Mocht mir gleich die Haar ausraufen Ach, mein Hennlein, bi, bi, bi!
Was wird da die Mutter sagen
Sie wird mich zum Tor 'naus jagen!
Ach, mein Hennlein, bi, bi, bi!
Geh die Gasse auf und nieder, Finde grad mein Hennlein wieder! Ach, mein Hennlein, bi, bi, bi!
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Ah, my little hen, bi, bi, bi!
Come to me!
Ah, my little hen, bi, bi, bi!
Have you seen her anywhere around
I'll just tear my hair until she's found!
Ah, my little hen, bi, bi, bi!
When my mother learns about it, She'll be angry, I don't doubt it! Ah, my little hen, bi, bi, bi!
I am searching up and down the lane. Ah, just now I find my little hen again! Ah, my little hen, bi, bi, bi!
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Flying Birds, Op. 52, No. 13 from "Liebeslieder," Johannes Brahms
As through air the birds do fly, Do fly through the air, When they seek a nest, So a heart, a heart desires Loving peace and rest.
The Lotus Flower, Op. 25, No. 7 .... Robert Schumann
Poem by Heine
The lotus flow'r doth languish,
Under the sun's bright light;
And with her head low bended,
She dreamily waits for the night.
The moon, he is her lover,
He wakes her with soft embrace;
She welcomes him and unveileth
Her snow-white, flow'ring face.
She blooms and glows and brightens,
And gazes mutely on high;
She weeps and she sighs and she trembles,
For love and the sorrows of love,
For love and the sorrows of love.
Enchanting Bells from The Magic Flute.....Mozart
That chiming, enchanting, that chiming so rare, La, ra, la, la, la, la, ra, la, la, la, la, ra, la. . . I ne'er heard such magic as floats on the air! La, ra, la, la, la, la, ra, la, la, la, la, ra, la. . .
The Wasted Serenade, Op. 84, No. 4 ... Johannes Brahms
Folk song from the lower Rhine
He: Ah, good evening, my darling, good
evening, my dear, Ah, good evening, my dear! I come to sing to you, Invite me in, pray do, Open now your door! Open now, open now, open now, my
dear.
She: My door is fast bolted, You cannot come in, My mother turned this key, And she would angry be, 'Tis too late to call, Yes, indeed, yes, indeed, She would angry be!
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He: The night is so cold, So icy the wind! My heart is freezing now, My love will die I vow, If you will not hear! Open now, open now, open now, my dear!
She: When love can cool fast, Ah, then let it go! Now run on home to bed, Far too much has been said! So goodnight, my friend, So, goodnight, so goodnight, So goodnight, my friend!
Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K. 550).....Mozart
I could not love, except where Death was mingling his with Beauty's breath . . .
--E.A. Poe
During the summer of 1788, three years before his untimely death, Mozart was in dire mental distress. Ignored as a composer by musicians, slighted by his Emperor, Joseph II, without the security of a patron, and with his beloved Constanze ill and his finances at their lowest ebb, Mozart turned to his trusted, faithful friend and brother Mason, Michael Puchberg, for help. In a letter to him, dated June 27, 1788, we learn of Mozart's unhappy situation:
Dearest, Most Beloved Friend!
I have been expecting to go to town myself one of these days and to be able to thank you in person for the kindness you have shown me. But now I should not even have the courage to appear before you, as I am obliged to tell you frankly that it is impossible for me to pay back so soon the money you have lent me and that I must beg you to be patient with me! I am very much distressed that your circumstances at the moment prevent you from assisting me as much as I could wish, for my position is so serious that I am unavoidably obliged to raise money somehow. But, good God, in whom can I confide In no one but you, my best friend! If you would only be so kind as to get the money for me through some other channel! I shall willingly pay the interest and whoever lends it to me will, I believe, have sufficient security in my character and my income. I am only too grieved to be in such an extremity; but that is the very reason why I should like a fairly substantial sum for a somewhat longer ¦period, I mean, in order to be able to prevent a recurrence of this state of affairs. If you, my most worthy brother, do not help me in this predicament, I shall lose my honour and my credit, which of all things I wish to preserve. I rely entirely on your genuine friendship and brotherly love and confidently expect that you will stand by me
The Emperor appointed Mozart later to the post of Court Composer, left vacant by Gluck, at the extremely low salary of 800 florin a year (Gluck had received 2000). He had to write nothing better than court dances on commission. "Too much for what I do, too little for what I could do," Mozart is supposed to have written on one of his tax returns.
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in word and deed. If my wish is fulfilled, I can breathe freely again, because I shall then be able to put my affairs in order and keef them so. Do come and see me. I am always at home. During the ten days since I have come to live here I have done more work than in two months in my former quarters, and if such black thoughts did not come to me so often, thoughts which I banish by a tremendous effort, things would be even better, for my rooms are pleasant, comfortable, and cheap. I shall not detain you any longer with my drivel but shall stop talking--and hope.
One day before the date of this letter, Mozart completed the E-flat Symphony (K. 543), the first of his three last and greatest symphonies. Within less than two months he finished the other two, the G minor (K. 550) on June 25, which he wrote in the short span of ten days; and the C major (Jufiter), on August 10. From then on, music surged from him with increasing momentum until death finally stayed his hand. The actual circumstances of their creation are unknown, and the chances are he never conducted, or even heard them performed.
Here is a story dear to the heart of the romantic sentimentalist who, unable to identify success with romance, takes perverse satisfaction from the thought that the true artist is always misunderstood and unappreciated by his age. Thus it was quite natural for a tradition to grow up around the G-minor Symphony in particular, as "Mozart's Pathetique." Nicholas von Nisson, the husband of Mozart's widow, and his first biographer, wrote of the work, "It is the expression of a moving and restless passion, a struggle, a combat against a powerful penetrating agitation." Fetis, writing in La Revue musicale for May 11 of the same year (1828), referred to "the invention which flames" in this symphony, to the "accents of passion" and the "melancholy color that dominates."! And to Mozart's later and greatest biographer, Jahn, the work was "full of pain and lamentation" where "sorrow rises in a continuous climax to wild merriment, as if to stifle care" and where the "soft plaint of the opening theme" grows into "a piercing cry of anguish."$
It is difficult for us today with a century of Romanticism and its "soaring flight in grief' behind us, to hear in Mozart's reserved style, "relentless passion" or "a piercing cry of anguish." Against the defiant and epic struggles of
The Letters of Mozart and his Family, ed. Anderson (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1938), III, 1363.
fVon Nisson, Biogra-phie W. A. Mozart (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1828). X Otto Jahn, Life of Mozart, trans, by Pauline D. Townsend (London: Novello Ewer & Co., 1882).
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Beethoven, the overwrought intensity of Wagner, and the depressing melancholy or hysterical outbursts of self-pity in Tchaikovsky, the music of Mozart's G minor appeals to us rather as reflective, or wistful expression, perhaps; or as it did to Berlioz, as "grace, delicacy, melodic charm and finesse of workmanship." We are apt to miss "the melancholy color that dominates," and "the pain and lamentation" that so impressed those of another century.
If we listen to the G-minor Symphony, however, not in terms of the nineteenth century, but in comparison with other symphonies of the eighteenth century, or hear it in relation to Mozart's E-flat major and C major of the same period, it is not difficult to imagine how intense it must have seemed to listeners of 179O; for in matters of formal sequence, modulation, and instrumental writing, it offered a radical departure in emotional expression. The opening theme of the first movement for instance, with its falling semitone figure (the "soft plaint" of Jahn) accompanied by the dark hues of the divided viols, the descending chromatic melodic line supported by chromatic harmonies and the persisting chromatic nature of the second theme, must have had a peculiarly haunting effect upon an age that listened diatonically. How sharp and abrupt must have seemed the arbitrary chords in remote keys and the quick shifts and contrasts of key levels to ears accustomed to smooth transitions and prepared modulations. The sound of the horns pitched in different keys, B-flat and G, and treated as separate and individual instruments, thus doubling the normal number of horn notes, must have added a unique kind of sonority to an age that used its brass merely to support the harmony. And how tempestuous must the minuet have seemed, with its complex polyphonic writing and sharp dissonances.
But whether this symphony is "tragic," "melancholy," "full of restless passion," or merely "grace, delicacy, and melodic charm" is all quite incidental to the eternal values, in terms of the beauty it possesses. The "passion," and "anguish," after all, is in the ears of the listener, not in the music; for patterns of sound arouse, they do not contain emotions within them. This emotional quality varies with the individual or changes with the ages. But the value of Mozart's music is quite beyond that which any individual or period chooses to give to it. "Under the form of beauty" it leads us rather "to the comprehension of the whole universe," and there its true meaning is eternal and changeless.
Mozart used no trumpets or tympani in this symphony, and in the original version, did without clarinets. Later he rewrote the oboe parts and gave some of them to the clarinet.
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THIRD CONCERT Second Concerto for Violin, in D minor, Op. 22 . . Wieniawski
Henri Wieniawski was born July 10, 1835, in Lubin, Poland; died March 31, 1880, in Moscow.
At the age of eleven, Henri Wieniawski was already a famous violin virtuoso, touring Poland and Russia with sensational success. At twenty-five he was violinist to the Czar of Russia, remaining in St. Petersburg for twelve years. In 1872, when he was thirty-seven, he made an extended tour of America with Anton Rubenstein. Two years later he became successor to Vieuxtemps as first professor of violin at the Brussels Conservatoire. In 1880 he was dying, penniless and forsaken, in Moscow. The generous Madame von Meek, benefactress of Tchaikovsky, came to his aid. In a letter dated March 22, 1880, only nine days before Wieniawski's death, Tchaikovsky wrote to Madame von Meek in appreciation of the sympathy and charity which she had extended to the dying man: "Your benevolence to poor dying Henri Wieniawski touches me deeply ... I pity him greatly. In him we shall lose an incomparable violinist and a gifted composer. In this respect I think Wieniawski very talented. . . . The beautiful 'Legende' and parts of the D-minor Concerto show a true creative gift."
This is one of the few expressions of opinion given by a distinguished contemporary musician upon Wieniawski as a composer. We cannot doubt the sincerity of Tchaikovsky's sympathy for him as an unfortunate fellow musician, or his respect for him as a performing artist; his reference to him as a composer, however, is guarded. The truth is that Wieniawski has survived as a composer in the annals of music history more as a matter of chronology than merit. As one of the most eminent violin virtuosi of his day, however, Wieniawski's position in history is assured. He astonished and delighted his audiences with a performing style that was a unique combination of audacious technical exploitation and profound musicality. He excelled and won great respect as a performer of chamber music as well.
The growth of the importance of the virtuoso performer in the nineteenth century created a demand for compositions which would provide impressive symphonic backgrounds for the display of solo pyrotechnics. Concertos with featured soloists became the indispensable part of every symphonic program. In Paganini and Liszt, the violin and the piano reached the extreme limits of their technical capacities. Both as composers for, and performers on their respective instruments, these artists set the norms for their period. Along with them, dozens of other virtuoso-performer-composers sprang up, many of whom have
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justly descended into oblivion. A few, however, have survived--among the violinists--Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Sarasate, Joachim (largely for his cadenzas), and Wieniawski--names kept alive today by infrequent performances of their works. As compared with the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, their products were trivial show pieces with little justification for survival.
These incidental composers, however, did perform a definite service to music. They so codified standards of instrumental technique on such a high and exacting level of perfection that no concerto composer since their time has worked in total ignorance of their efforts.
In spite of the fact that, as Tchaikovsky noted: "farts of the D-minor Concerto show a true creative gift," it seems regrettable in our day, when such outstanding composers as Berg, Bartok, Hindemith, Prokofieff, and Walton have so enriched and vitalized the literature in this field, that we must resuscitate a work which is slipping, unnoticed and unlamented, into the limbo of forgotten things.
Among the eminent composers who were equally famous as performing artists on the piano were Weber, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, and Rubenstein.
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Saturday Evening, May 7
Theme and Variations for Orchestra, Op. 43 . . . Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was born September 13, 1874 in Vienna. A revolution is merely an evolution rendered apparent.
----M. DE LA LAURENCIE.
So conflicting have been the opinions of musicians and critics concerning the validity of Arnold Schoenberg's "new" system of composition and so violently antagonistic have been the reactions to his music, that it is frustrating to attempt, in a paragraph or two, either to explain the one or justify the other. Hostile personal criticism, however, be it of musicians, critics, or laymen, has not affected the universal acceptance of Schoenberg as one of the most remarkable musical minds and original creative geniuses of our time. Music has produced few such innovators; seldom such challengers to tradition and convention.
It is unfortunate, in this century of fast developments and vigorous activity in creative music, that Ann Arbor audiences have had to wait until 1949 to hear a composer who has continued to excite, astonish, and infuriate the world for more than four decades.f Even the work on tonight's program must be considered a minor or incidental one as compared with his epoch-making Gurre-Lieder for soli, chorus, and orchestra; Pierrot Lunaire (three cycles of seven poems, each by Albert Giraud); the melodrama, Erwartung; the music drama, Die gluckliche Hand; many of his numerous chamber works or his most recent cantata "A Survivor of Warsaw" (1947).
In the following pages are reproduced three short essays on Schoenberg, his art, and his position in the world's music today. The first is by Schoenberg himself; the second and third are articles which appeared in the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune, by Noel Straus and Virgil Thomson, respectively, both written September 10, 1944, in commemoration of Schoenberg's seventieth birthday.
For technical aspects of the "twelve tone" system see Richard Hill, "Schonberg-'s Tone-rows and the Tonal System of the Future," Musical Quarterly, XXII (1936), 14.-37.
fin 1926 his Verklarte Nacht Op. 4, a highly romantic and conventional work, was performed on a May Festival program.
[51]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM Merle Armitage quotes Schoenberg as follows:
If a composer does not write from the heart, he simply cannot produce good music. I have never had a theory in my life. I get a musical idea for a composition. I try to develop a certain logical and beautiful conception, and I try to clothe it in a type of music which exudes from me naturally and inevitably. I do not consciously create a tonal or a polytonal or a polyplanal music. I write what I feel in my heart--and what finally comes on paper is what first coursed through every fibre of my body. It is for this reason I cannot tell anyone what the style of my next composition will be. For its style will be whatever I feel when I develop and elaborate my ideas.
I offer incontestable proof of the fact that in following the twelve-tone scale, a composer is neither less nor more bound, hindered nor made independent. He may be as cold-hearted and unmoved as an engineer, or, as laymen imagine, may conceive in sweet dreams--in inspiration.
What can be constructed with these twelve tones depends on one's inventive faculty. The basic tones will not invent for you. Expression is limited only by the composer's creativeness and his personality. He may be original or moving, with old or modern methods. Finally, success depends only on whether we are touched, excited, made happy, enthusiastic ... or not.
The tempest raised about my music does not rest upon my ideas, but exists because of the dissonances. Dissonances are but consonances which appear later among the overtones.
There are relatively few persons who are able to understand music, merely from the purely musical point of view. The assumption that a musical piece must awaken images of some description or other, and that if it does not it has not been understood or is worthless, is as generally held as only the false and banal can be. On no other art is a similar demand made; one is satisfied with the effects of their substance, whereby, to be sure, the material of the represented object of itself meets the limited comprehensive grasp of the middle-class mentality half-way. Since music, as such, lacks a directly recognizable material, some seek pure formal beauty in its effects; others, poetic proceedings.
There is no such distinction as old and modern music, but only good music and bad. All music, insofar as it is the product of a truly creative mind, is new. Bach is just as new today as he ever was--a continual revelation. Truly good things are new. I warn you of the dangers lurking in the die-hard reaction against romanticism. The old romanticism is dead, long live the new! The composer of today without some trace of romanticism in his heart must be lacking in something fundamentally human. On the other hand, music consists essentially of ideas. Beethoven called himself a 'brain proprietor.' It is no use to rail at new music because it contains too many ideas. Music without ideas
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is unthinkable, and people who are not willing to use their brains to understand music which cannot be fully grasped at the first hearing are simply lazy-minded. Every true work of art to be understood has to be thought about; otherwise it has not inherent life. Style in music arises spontaneously out of the exigencies of form; it cannot be decreed. The solution of a problem in style is an end in itself. Therefore art remains for art's sake.
Beauty is intangible; for it is only present when one whose intuitive power is strong enough to produce it creates something by virtue of this intuitive power, and he creates something new everytime he exercises that power. Beauty is the result of intuition; when the one ceases to be, the other ceases also. The other form of beauty that one can have, which consists of fixed rules and fixed forms, is merely the yearning of one who is unproductive. For the artist this is of secondary importance, as indeed is every accomplishment, since the artist is content with aspiration, whereas the mediocre must have beauty. And yet the artist attains beauty without willing it, for he is only striving after truthfulness.
VIRGIL THOMSON ON SCHOENBERG
On September 13 Arnold Schoenberg, the dean of the modernists, will be seventy years old. And yet his music for all of its author's love of traditional sonorous materials and all the charm of late nineteenth-century Vienna that envelops its expression, is still the modernest modern music that exists. No other Western music sounds so strange, so consistently different from the music of the immediately preceding centuries. And none, save that of Erik Satie, has proved so tough a nut for the public to crack. Only the early "Verklaerte Nacht" has attained to currency in our concerts. The rest remains to this day musicians' music.
Musicians do not always know what they think of Schoenberg's music, but they often like to listen to it. And they invariably respect it. Whether one likes it or not is, indeed, rather a foolish question to raise in the fact of its monumental logic. To share or to reject the sentiments that it expresses seems, somehow, a minor consideration compared with following the amplitude of the reasoning that underlies their exposition. As in much of modern philosophical writing, the conclusions reached are not the meat of the matter; it is the methods by which these are arrived at.
This preponderance of methodology over objective is what gives to Schoenberg's work, in fact, its irreducible modernity. It is the orientation, also, that permits us to qualify it as, in the good sense of the word, academic. For it is a model of procedure. And if the consistency of the procedure seems often closer to the composer's mind than the expressive aim, that fact allows us to describe the work further as academic in an unfavorable sense. It means that the emotional nourishment in the music is not quite
?Merle Armitage, Schoenberg (New York: G. Schirmer, 1937).
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worth the trouble it takes to extract it. This is a legitimate and not uncommon layman's opinion. But if one admits, as I think one is obliged to do with regard to Schoenberg, that the vigor and thoroughness of the procedure are, in very fact, the music's chief objective, then no musician can deny that it presents a very high degree of musical interest.
This is not to say that Schoenberg's music is without feeling expressed. Quite to the contrary, it positively drips with emotivity. But still the approach is, in both senses of the word, academic. Emotions are examined rather than declared. As in the workings of his distinguished fellow citizen, Dr. Sigmund Freud, though the subject matter is touching, even lurid, the author's detachment about it is complete. Sentiments are considered as case histories meriting extended analysis rather than as pretexts for personal poetry or subjects for showmanship. "Die Glueckliche Hand," "Die Gurre-Lieder" and "Pierrot Lunaire," as well as the string sextet, "Verklaerte Nacht" have deeply sentimental subjects; but their treatment is always by detailed exposition, never by sermonizing. Pierrot's little feelings, therefore, though they seem enormous and are unquestionably fascinating when studied through the Schoenberg microscope for forty-five minutes of concert time, often appear in retrospect as less interesting than the mechanism by which they were viewed.
The designing and perfecting of this mechanism, rather than the creation of unique works, would seem to have been the guiding preoccupation of Schoenberg's career; certainly it is the chief source of his enormous prestige among musicians. The works themselves, charming as they are and frequently impressive, are never quite as fascinating when considered separately, as they are when viewed as comments on a method of composition or as illustrations of its expressive possibilities. They are all secondary to a theory; they do not lead independent lives. The theory, however, leads a very independent life. It is taught and practiced all over the world. It is the lingua jranca of contemporary modernism. It is even used expertly by composers who have never heard any of the works by Schoenberg, by Webern, and by Alban Berg that constitute its major literature.
If that major literature is wholly Viennese by birth and its sentimental preoccupations largely Germanic, the syntax of its expression embodies also both the strongest and the weakest elements of the German musical tradition. Its strong element is its simplification of tonal relations; its weak element is its chaotic rhythm. The apparent complexity of the whole literature and the certain obscurity of much of it is due, in the present writer's opinion, to the lack of a rhythmic organization comparable in comprehensiveness and in simplicity to the tonal one.
It is probably the insufficiencies of Schoenberg's own rhythmic theory that prevent his music from crystalizing into great hard beautiful indissoluble works. Instrumentally they are delicious. Tonally they are the most exciting, the most original, the most modern-sounding music there is. What limits their intelligibility, hamstrings their expressive power, makes them often literally halt in their tracks is the naive organization
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of their pulses, taps and quantities. Until a rhythmic syntax comparable in sophistication to Schoenberg's tonal one shall have been added to this, his whole method of composition, for all the high intellection and sheer musical genius that went into its making, will probably remain a fecund but insupportable heresy, a strict counterpoint valuable to pedagogy but stiff, opaque, unmalleable and inexpressive for free composition.
There is no satisfactory name for the thing Schoenberg has made. The twelve-tone technique, though its commonest denomination, does not cover all of it. But he has made a thing, a new thing, a thing to be used and to be improved. Its novelty in 1944 is still fresh; and that means it has strength, not merely charm. Its usage by composers of all nations means that it is no instrument of local or limited applicability. Such limitations as it has are due, I believe, to the fact that it is not yet a complete system. So far as it goes it is admirable; and it can go far, as the operas of Alban Berg show. It is to the highest credit of Schoenberg as a creator that his method of creation should be so valuable a thing as to merit still, even to require, the collaboration of those who shall come after him.
NOEL STRAUS ON SCHOENBERG
Arnold Schoenberg, who celebrates his seventieth birthday next Wednesday, reaches the proverbial three-score and ten never more fully possessed of the attributes that have made him one of the most dynamic and important contributors to the musical progress of the time. At his age, and with his high reputation, he might easily be pardoned were he content to rest on his laurels. But quite to the contrary, the eminent Austrian composer, who has made his home in this country for the last decade, remains as active as ever, having been enthusiastically engaged of late in the completion of new works.
Undaunted by violent opposition, Schoenberg has fought unrelentingly for the right of the creative musician to throw off the shackles of outworn conventions. His road as pioneer has been no easy one to tread. But neither contumely nor the lpneliness of the spirit, that is the inevitable lot of those who open up new paths in any field of endeavor, has shaken in the slightest his determined stand for the musical principles he has advocated with such uncommon courage, conviction and consistency.
It was as an ultra-romanticist under the spell of Wagner that, just at the turn of the century, Schoenberg wrote the twelve songs and the famous string sextet, Verklaerte Nacht, which were the earliest of his works to reach publication. In these compositions and still more in the works that followed in rapid succession from the Gurre-Lieder and Pelleas et Melisande to the First string quartet and the Chamber symphony in E, there is as yet no definite break with the accepted tenets of tonality, though more and more this tendency becomes marked.
New York. Herald Tribune, September 1 o, 1944.
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But with the finale of the Second string quartet of 1907 and the Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 11, of the next year, the composer finally reaches the goal for which he had been aiming. He abandons the concept of tonality and instead habitually uses the twelve-tone system in which every degree of the scale is of equal importance.
From now on he becomes the banner-bearer of "atonality," its chief and most notable exponent. He writes his most admired songs, the George set, in this idiom, and follows them up with one of his finest achievements, Pierrot Lutuiire, of 1912.
There was a long gap from the time this masterpiece appeared until 1924, when the long silence was broken with the epoch-making Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23, Piano Suite, Op. 26, written in compliance with the new regulations adhered to in all of his later works.
This revolutionary type of formal structure, known as the twelve-tone technic, which Schoenberg himself devised in answer to his needs, consists primarily in the use of a "basic series," comprised of all or most of the tones of the twelve-tone scale with none repeated. The tones may be placed in order and at any intervals desired, and from this series all of the themes are derived. Regular recourse to the contrapuntal devices of inversion, reversal (crab) and others, are essential features of the polyphonic structure, and symmetrical patterning is banned.
At first the limitations imposed may strike one as artificial and cramping. But the whole process was necessitated by the twelve-tone scale, and as Schoenberg employs this technic its wide possibilities for self-expression become increasingly evident.
Indeed, there are surprises in store for those who believe the twelve-tone technic is hidebound and inelastic. For in the composer's last two works, the "Ode to Napoleon," Op. 42, completed in 1942, that simplest of chords, the triad, a harmony hitherto unasso-ciated with that technic, appears for the first time in his twelve-tone creations and the composition closes with a cadence in E-flat major, facts another writer has stated in a recent article. Furthermore, the other of these two new works, the "Theme and Variations for Orchestra," Op. 43, finished in October, last year, bears a definite key signature, being in G minor.
Before jumping to any conclusions concerning these unexpected features, it should be kept in mind that Schoenberg has never called his music "atonal," a word coined in a derogatory sense by one of his critics. He has, in fact, definitely maintained that none of his works are really at variance with the principles taught by the old masters, and that ultimately it will be their music which will prove how right his path has been. This path, as he long ago foretold, would doubtless lead him to a return to tonality, but with expanded regulations.
Since the two new compositions may mean that Schoenberg has arrived at that point in his quest where he feels free to employ triads and tonality in this manner, they
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acquire extra interest, and a few details, at least, about these provocative scores should be mentioned.
"The Ode to Napoleon," for reciting voice, piano, and string orchestra, which will receive its world premiere in this city November 23, 24, and 26, by the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, under Artur Rodzinski, is a setting of the poem of the same title written by Byron the day after Napoleon's abdication. The music is dramatic, and many of its measures are of a programmatic nature. The score is definitely in the twelve-tone technic, but often becomes homophonic in texture. Space forbids detailed account of this provocative score. But just a few words may be said concerning its use of the triad.
That the triads in the "Ode" stem from the interval of the third at the start of the introduction, and that it was chosen because it outlined the same interval in the motive used at the word "victory" in the text, is evident. Triads form a most vital element in the music, moreover, since they are used in their purest form for several measures at the climactic moment in the final stanza, starting with the words, "Yes, one," etc., where Washington is lauded as the ideal conqueror, and they obviously symbolize him and his type of victory.
Strikingly different from this work is the "Theme and Variations for Orchestra," scheduled for its first New York performance by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra this season. It was written first as the "Variations for Band" of last year, and has not been presented as yet in either version.
The composition is replete with fascinating color, in contrast to the "Ode," which depends more on line and dynamics for its effects. Unlike that work, it is essentially lyric and introspective. There is nostalgia in this music, reflected in many of the score's changing moods. The theme is a brief march in simple "song form," naive on the surface, but a little miracle of subtlety in its structural and harmonic aspects. It leads to seven variations and a finale.
These tonal variants adhere closely to the architectural design of the theme and are fashioned from fragments of it. Despite the tonality, the brief figures are subjected to all of the contrapuntal devices of the twelve-tone technic. One of the variations is a dreamy, languid waltz, another a fugato, and the last a chorale prelude, while the finale brings the whole to a triumphant climax of elaborate polyphony. The score is more involved and contrapuntal than the "Ode," but simple compared to the majority of Schoenberg's other works.
Schoenberg already displayed extraordinary imaginative powers, absolute clarity of patterning, rich rhythmic invention, and strong individuality in his earliest works. All of his music exhibits his lofty ideals and unquestioned sincerity. His influence on other composers has been responsible for many new practices. His chamber symphony, for instance, was the original source from which emanated the resultant trend of present The work on tonight's program.
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day composers to write for small ensembles. His expressionistic music of later days with its avoidance of sensuous sound has had its effect on the works of many other musical creators, as have its purely functional intentions.
How untiringly Schoenberg devotes himself to his art may be gleaned from the fact that besides continuing his instruction in Los Angeles, since his recent resignation from the University of Southern California, he is busily occupied on his huge oratorio, "Totentanz der Prinzipien," and is putting the finishing touches on a book on composition and a manual of counterpoint, volumes which should prove as much prized as his celebrated "Harmonielehre."
Schoenberg, whose genius was recognized at once by Mahler and Zemlinsky, has written in every musical category. A born teacher, he has numbered among his pupils such composers as Berg, von Webern, and Wellesz. He is the author of valuable theoretical works, has proved himself a splendid conductor, and also has disclosed marked talents for painting. A great personality, as well as one of the leading figures of his epoch, he has inspired the love of his disciples and the profound respect of the whole musical world.
Theme and Variations for Orchestra, Op. 43 was completed in October, 1943. The theme is in G minor, and the variations follow traditional tonalities. This information in itself is neither startling nor significant except as it relates to Schoenberg--for in only one instance since 1907 has he used a key signature, and that occurred in an insignificant suite for string orchestra for amateurs, written in 1934. The following paragraph relating to the Variations was written by Schoenberg:
There are seven variations on an original theme, approximately in march character, and a finale. In general, the variations proceed in the traditional manner, using motival and harmonic features of the theme, thus producing new themes of contrasting character and mood. In the first two variations the tempo increases considerably. Variation III is an adagio of a more songful character. Variation IV is a stylized waltz. Variation V, molto moderate cantabile, is a canon in inversion. Variation VI is very fast (alia breve) and violent in character, while the texture is contrapuntal. Variation VII approaches the style of a chorale prelude. The finale, as usual in classical music, adds a number of ideas, which vary only part of the theme. The treatment is mostly contrapuntal, and the aim toward a final climax is predominant.
New York Times, September io, 1944. [58]
FOURTH CONCERT "Ah spietato!" from Amadigi de Gaul ...... Handel
Georg Friedrich Handel was born at Halle, February 23, 1685; died in London, April 14, 1759.
From the beginning of his career, Handel was the "People's Composer." No doubt this was because of the cosmopolitan training he received in Germany, Italy, and England, and to the fact that he chose opera as his medium -in the eighteenth century the most popular and spectacular form of musical entertainment. But there was also something inherent in his music that could account for the position he gained in the hearts of the public in his day; his expression was direct and simple, with no ostentatious display for its own sake. His music had little of the introspective quality that was characteristic of his greater but less popular contemporary, Bach; and it was this nonsubjective quality that made his style irresistible in its appeal to the masses.
Handel, known to the public today largely as the composer of Messiah and frequently performed suites such as the Water Music, was to his generation the outstanding composer of Italian opera in Europe--as famous and admired in Italy itself as in his native Germany or in England, the land of his adoption. Although many of his forty operas are obsolete and only occasionally one reaches performance today, arias of rare beauty such as those on tonight's program have survived on the concert stage, giving us some idea of the wealth of vocal literature that still lies buried in his scores.
Amadigi de Gaul, an opera in three acts, was first performed at the Hay-market in London on May 25, 1715. The success of the opera was tremendous, the audiences calling persistently for encores. Before the next performance the management was forced to issue the following notice: "Where as by the frequent calling for songs again, the operas have been too tedious. Therefore the singers are forbidden to sing any song above once; and it is hoped nobody will call for 'em, or take it ill when not obeyed."
Records of the time show that the opera had nineteen performances between 1715 and 1717. The staging was considered remarkable for the day in that it featured a real playing fountain on the stage--an item of considerable commercial value, for it was an attraction such as this, and not Handel's music only, that lured the prosaic Whig society into the opera house. Amadigi was the first opera Handel produced after the arrival in London of his Hanoverian patron to become King George I of England.
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The slight text of the aria "Ah spietato" is, as in most of the operas of the period, a mere framework for a beautiful vocal melody.
Ah, cruel one
Are you not moved
By the constant affection
That makes me languish for yon!
"Art thou troubled" from Rodelinda.......Handel
Rodelinda was first performed on February 13, 1725, and revived May 15, 1731. It was written when Handel was struggling to maintain the fortunes of the Royal Academy, of which he was the harassed director. It was in this opera that his famous Italian singer, Cuzzoni, whom he had previously brought over from Italy, provided a sensation by appearing in a brown satin dress trimmed with silver instead of the traditional garb of the tragic heroine in opera--black velvet. It was this event, perhaps as much as the music of Handel, that provided the novelty of the operatic season and helped to uphold the languishing exchequer of the opera house.
Art thou troubled
Music will calm thee,
Art thou weary
Rest shall be thine.
Music, source of all gladness,
Heals thy sadness
At her shrine,
Music, ever divine
Music, calleth with voice divine.
When the welcome spring is smiling All the earth with flow'rs beguiling After winter's dreary reign Sweetest music doth attend Her heav'nly harmonies doth lend Her chanting praises in her train.
?The so-called "Handel Renaissance" movement in Germany was started in 1920 with a revival of Rodelinda at Gottingen.
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"Per lui che adoro" from Ultdiana in Algeri . ... . Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, February 29, 1792; died in Pass, November 13,1868.
Much of Rossini's work was incredibly hasty in execution and shallow in artistic purpose. Thus its great popularity with a thoughtless public tended to turn operatic art back into the mere sensationalism of the traditional seventeenth and early eighteenth century Neapolitan style at its worst, and directly away from the dignified reform ideas of Gluck and the dramatic veracity of Mozart.
Rossini's art and career present many contradictory elements. He had tremendous native verve and vivacity, coupled with obvious gifts of melody and movement in his expression. He greatly extended the range of operatic technique, both on the side of lyric ornamentation and in enriching the orchestral texture of his accompaniments. His critics, in fact, often charged him with imitating the Germans, and smothering his concerted pieces and choruses by the overwhelming weight of his orchestra.
Although Rossini did display a sparkling genius, a raciness of humor, a daring in discarding conventions, and an invention in construction that reminds one of Mozart at times, his appreciation for the higher values of the music drama was slight, if indeed he was capable of understanding them at all. The charm of lyricism for its own sake, the unblushing attempt to captivate audiences by unexpected effects, the typical Italian love for delectability of melody, for brilliant embellishment, for momentum and dash--these were his dominating artistic impulses.
The first performance of L'ltaliana in Algeri took place May 22, 1813. It was an immediate success with the public who had learned to expect from the youth of twenty-one fresh and gay music that sparkled with wit and humor. "When Rossini wrote 'L'ltaliana in Algeri' he was in the flame of his genius and his youth," wrote Stendahl. "He had no fear of repeating himself, he was not trying to compose strong music; he was living in that amiable Venetian country, the gayest in Italy and perhaps in the world. . . . The result of the Venetian character is that people want above all in music agreeable songs, light rather than passionate. They were served to their heart's desire in 'L'ltaliana in Algeri'; never has a public enjoyed a spectacle more harmonious with its character, and of all the operas that have ever existed this is the one destined to please the Venetians most."
?Stendhal, Vie de Rossini (Paris, 1824.); translated into English (London, 1824.).
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Of the plot, which suggests Mozart's Entjithrung aus dem Serail, Toye has written:
This story of an Italian lady (Isabella) who in company with an ineffective admirer (Taddeo) sets forth to rescue her lover (Lindoro) and then, fortunately wrecked on the shores of the very country where he is held prisoner, makes a fool of both Taddeo and Mustafa, the Bey of Algeria, is frank farce. But it is very good farce, abounding in funny situations, wily strategems and ridiculous expedients.
The aria "Per lui che adoro" is sung by Isabella in Act II. Thinking of her lover Lindoro, and of the trick she is to play upon Mustafa, who has been paying her unwelcome attentions, she sings:
Mother of love, make me more beautiful for him whom I treasure and adore. Give me all graces, jewels and splendor to please him. And you, my dear Turk, are already done for. One little trick and you are caught.
Symphony, Mathis der Maler........Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was born in Hanan, Germany, in 1895.
Prior to the advent of Paul Hindemith, German music seemed indecisive as to what course it was to follow. After Wagner and Brahms, some composers seemed intent upon perpetuating the principles of their glorious art, failing to see that these principles grew out of and were associated with an era that was past. Wagner and Brahms had brought German Romanticism and its concept of music as the "soul expression" of the individual to a complete fruition. After a century of personal and private musical expression and one in which music was called upon to paint pictures, comment upon "programs," and abet the drama and ballet, it had lost its inherent dignity. Its intrinsic principles had gone into decay and its superficial powers had been exalted and enthroned in their place. A return to some kind of a classic conception of form, simplicity, and the absolute was inevitable. When music began to exaggerate Romanticism and to force the continuance of a spirit that had already passed out of art, the reaction set in. Composers like Mahler, Bruckner, and Richard Strauss illustrate a final attempt to administer artificial respiration to the dying Romanticism of the nineteenth century. These post-Romanticists were not only writing its last chapter,
Francis Toye, Rossini, A Study in Tragi-comedy (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1934). [62]
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they were inscribing its epitaph. Schoenberg, in his early career, pursued a similar course with Verktdrte Nacht in 1899, and until 1912 his scores grew in size and complexity, becoming intricate and unwieldy (Gurre-Lieder, 1901--1910; Pierrot Lunaire, 1912). Exactly parallel with Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky was creating the involved score of Sacre du frintemfs. It is interesting to note that both these composers reacted rather suddenly in favor of simplicity directly after writing these complicated scores. Since then Schoenberg has become increasingly concise, logical, and sparing of decorative complexity, and has evolved a system that is intellectual rather than emotional in its appeal. Another interesting observation proving the leaven of classicism at work is that between 1915 and 1929 neither of these composers wrote for full orchestra,, but composed for smaller chamber music combinations. This tendency toward simplification in composition became known as neoclassicism. At the time, writers of music, sensing the "new" style, attempted to explain it by pointing out that it was as much a progression as a revival; that in its new rationality it revealed more variety in its treatment of form; that in its harmony there was an underlying direction toward free horizontal movement. (Debussy's revolutionary dissonances had passed their aggressive stage and were now accepted as consonances and points of rest, and had already taken their place alongside the accepted progressions of the past.) They pointed out the pre-eminently horizontal texture of the new music, the sparseness of its style and its general anti-romantic and anti-idealistic intentions. They noted its self-contained quality and that it eschewed for the most part descriptive programs, expressionism, or any implication of "inner meaning."
The outspoken propagandist for this movement was Paul Hindemith. At the age of thirty-six he had become the unrivaled leader of that section of his generation that believed music should be adapted to the demands of its time, and no longer re-echo an age that was in every sense remote. What he said and wrote about his art was diametrically opposed to the traditional German idealistic and philosophical conception of music. He spoke of it as being human, but not superhuman; useful, practical, and purposeful--not inspirational; it was absolute expression with no descriptive intention, no program, no sentimentalism. The composer's responsibility, he further maintained, was not to express individual emotion or to reflect personal moods and feelings but to create directly out of musical substance. There was no mystery about it--music spoke the same accessible language to everyone. The audience was in no way required to react to or "interpret" it according to any preconceived notions of its meaning. Music should be written not upon impulse, but only when demanded. By 1927 Hinde See notes, page 51.
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mith had formulated this tenet: "It is to be regretted that in general so little relationship exists today between the producers and consumers of music. A composer should write today only if he knows for what purpose he is writing. The days of composing for the sake of composing are perhaps gone forever. On the other hand the demand for music is so great that composer and consumer ought most emphatically to come at last to an understanding."
These realistic ideas about the source and purpose of music gave rise to the popular conception of Gebrauchsmusik (practical or utilitarian music). In reality this represented no movement in any consciously organized sense. The term in fact was little used in Germany itself. "Only," as Hindemith remarked, "as a name for a tendency to avoid the highly individualistic super-expressive kind of writing we were so much acquainted with." Gebrauchsmusik was a reflection of a state of mind rather than a definite movement. It grew out of a desire to be practical and rational. At first the idea was no doubt associated with the need for economy during the war and postwar periods. The reappearance of the less expensive, more available chamber orchestra at the time was more a matter of economic necessity than mere choice or chance. Before long, however, this usefulness was identified with the end of music, rather than with the means; this, according to Hindemith, was very realistic--to satisfy public demand.
Many of Hindemith's ideas are sound theoretically, many are practically untenable; some are down right naive. As a critic of and a propagandest for contemporary music, and a progenitor of new musical doctrines, however, he won universal recognition early in his career. As a composer, his music was born out of the order of his ideas and was called into being by historical necessity. But beyond this fact it reveals a strong and consistent individuality, endowed with a masterful command of the technical aspects of his art--which embraces all branches of musical creativeness. At the age of fifty-four he has already produced a tremendous amount of the most varied kinds of music. With his spontaneous and genuine gift he has helped to break down our prejudices against what is new, offering an easy transition from known to unknown idioms by giving us a music that is interesting and agreeable but one that presents new and challenging problems in listening and execution. His unique vitality and technical dexterity deletes all superfluous elements, creating in a distinctly modern and contemporary idiom a music that is concise, clear, and economical in its means. "There is nothing academic about Hindemith," writes Alfred Einstein, "he is simply a musician who produces music as a tree bears fruit, without further philosophical purpose."
Mathis der Maler is a symphonic integration of three instrumental excerpts from Hindemith's opera, based on the life of the sixteenth-century master, Mat[64]
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thias Griinewald. The three movements of the symphony--I, "Angelic Concert"; II, "Entombment"; III, "Temptation of Saint Anthony"--were inspired by the polyptych painted by Griinewald for the Isenheim altar at Colmar, in Alsace. Matthias Grunewald was the chief Rhenish painter at the beginning of the sixteenth century. An artist of extraordinary power and emotional force, a religious mystic whose imagination was both passionate and exalted, he has been called "the last and greatest representative of the German Gothic."
Shortly after the Berlin production of the symphony, Heinrich Strobel, the distinguished German critic and essayist, published an extensive analysis of Hindemith's score. The following excerpts quoted in the program book of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, November 30, 1944, may be read with advantage as preparation for a first hearing of the work:
When Paul Hindemith combined three excerpts from his opera, "Mathis der Maler," and called the result a "symphony," the term did not imply a symphonic construction as understood by the Nineteenth Century. These tone-pieces do not embody a definite "symphonic idea." They are not related in theme. Their spiritual relationship is derived from a plastic conception: the three movements are based on "themes" suggested by the Isenheim Altar of Grunewald. But, one may ask, has Hindemith become a composer of romantic program-music Let us dismiss entirely in this connection the word "romantic," which is subject to misinterpretation, and let us simply state that this symphony has nothing whatever in common with program music of the customary descriptive sort. Hindemith has endeavored to approximate by musical means that emotional state which is aroused in the onlooker by Grunewald's famous work. Hindemith, that is to say, uses here methods which he had previously employed in his instrumental music. He excludes any pictorial intention; also, he abstains from the psychological interpretation and conversion of his themes. He dispenses with dramatizing color effects, changing the sound-material in accordance with purely musical laws. The technique of the symphony is the technique of Hindemith's instrumental concertos. The transformation of the emotional tension into purely musical effects is accomplished by the same logical processes that we find elsewhere in his work.
Hindemith's style has gained in tonal plasticity to the same degree that he has simplified his art technically. The few themes of the symphony are tonal symbols of extraordinary vitality and perceptibility, but at the same time they obey a logic that is subject to wholly personal laws. The effect is further increased by the circumstance that in the first part, "Angelic Concert" (based on the picture of the Nativity painted by Grunewald for the Isenheim Altar), and in the third part, the "Vision of the Temptation of Saint Anthony," old church melodies are used. These ancient melodies constitute the true germ-cell of music; they determine its melodic and harmonic tissue.
But this is nothing new in Hindemith's case. The liturgical modes have exercised a deep influence on his music. This influence is evident in his Marienleben and in
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Das Unaufhorliche; it breaks through again with all its force in Mathis der Maler. It seems as though Hindemith, after many digressions, were recurring to his works of a decade ago. The pathos, the subdued lyricism, the plasticity of the musical vision--all these appear to establish a connection between his most recent art and its earlier expression. ...
The simplicity of Mathis der Maler does not mean, however, that Hindemith is renouncing his principle of polyphonic development. Polyphony, counterpoint inspired by Bach, remains the basis of his musical thinking and feeling. In the course of the last few years, however, he has abandoned more and more ail dispensable contrapuntal ballast, and has lightened his linear style. . . .
This polyphonic style gains in the "Mathis" symphony, a symbolic force which is something entirely new for Hindemith. Without, as we have said, employing descriptive music in the ordinary sense, effects are obtained here which could not have been realized by means of dramatic expressiveness. In this connection, we must mention especially the last movement, the pictorial subject of which (the Saint tortured by fantastic beasts) stimulated the tonal imagination of the composer to an exceptional degree.
The development of the three movements is singularly clear. The dynamic curve descends from the festive and happy "Angelic Concert" of the beginning to the quiet elegy of the "Entombment," and then proceeds, after the music of the Saint's ordeal, to the concluding Hallelujah Hymn of the final visionary exaltation.
I. Angelic Concert (Ruhig betvegt--Ziemlich lebhajte Halbe). The tonal basis of the symphony is D-flat, in the range of which there lie the old melodies used in the first and third parts. The tension between the tonalities of D-Flat and G underlies the harmonic construction of the movement. The cantus firmus, "Es sungen drei Engel" ("Three Angels Sang"), which we hear first in the trombones (eighth bar), is developed dynamically upward. This is followed by a quick main part, in three sections. The first section is based on a theme (flutes and first violins) which can be regarded as a model of Hindemith's style in melodic development--a melody which is signalized by its wavering between major and minor. A second theme follows (strings), of serener and more lyrical character. A third section deals with these two themes in a lightly hovering fugato, to which is added, again in the trombones, the "Angel" melody. The last phrase of the "Angel" melody leads back to that tender serenity which spreads over the entire movement, and which evokes for us the gentle radiance of Grunewald's incomparable representation of the Nativity. A concise coda forms a joyous close, fortissimo.
II. Entombment (Sehr langsam). The two chief themes of the second movement are typical of Hindemith's melodic style--the first with its purely "linear" structure (muted strings, woodwind) ; the second with its intervallic structure of fourths and fifths (oboe, then flute, with pizzicato accompaniment). In wonderful simplicity ascend the
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melodic lines of the solo woodwinds; and how beautiful is the effect of the plaintive call of the clarinet, after the short crescendo and the pause!
III. The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Sehr langsam, frei im Zeitmass-Lebhaft). It is the third movement which is executed in the broadest and boldest manner. From the visual tension of Grunewald's picture, an aural tension has been created. The-power of the music is so marked that one might almost be induced to impart to this movement a poetic interpretation, although the themes are developed in a strictly linear manner, and even the most grandiose sound effects betray a cogent musical logic. Hinde-mith's art of tonal disposition is consorted with a power of fancy which astonishes even those who best know his works. The Temptation of the Saint develops over a tremendous tonal canvas, from the opening unison of the strings (bearing the quotation, Ubi eras, bone Jhesu ubi eras, quare non afuisti ut sonares vulnera mea), up to the bass-chorale of the final Hallelujah. The cycle of the key of D-flat is the foundation of the harmonic development, the symbol of Sanctity. The greater the struggle of the contesting forces, the more widely does the piece depart from this harmonic basis. The ascent of the string unisono, which is intensified in an astonishing manner by the opposing figure in the brass instruments, is a striking example of a crescendo developed in the linear manner. This heroic statement is followed by the first assault of the opposing forces (if this expression can be applied to so purely musical a process), with another theme for the unison strings. The solo woodwinds answer, while the stream of motion flows on in the strings. A grandiose passage closes the first part of the movement. There is a long and elaborate working-out. The battle is already decided when the key of D-flat is again reached with the fugato. Clarinets, then the horn, recur to the theme of the unisono string introduction; we hear, in the woodwinds, the hymn, Laud a sion salvatorem; and then, fortissimo on the brass. The Hallelujah leads up to a resplendent and triumphant close in D-flat major.
E se un giorno tornasse...........Respighi
Ottorino Respighi was born in Bologna, July 9, 1879; died in Rome, April 18, 1936.
Respighi was, until his death in 1936, one of the most prominent of contemporary Italian composers. He studied for short periods in Russia as a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakoff, and in Berlin with Max Bruch. Whether or not these experiences had anything to do with the formation of his style, he did emerge as a composer who in essence remained Italian, but whose lyrical and emotional instincts were constantly subjected to an intellectual control. Whatever he wrote, however, always remained strongly individual in feeling and expression.
Although his fame rests largely upon his symphonic poems, The Fountaitis of Rome (1916) and The Pines of Rome (1924), he won distinction for his
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chamber music and was, like so many of his countrymen, a significant composer of opera. He was not a prolific writer of songs, and those he wrote are not well known in this country; but here, as in his operas, he composed expressively for the voice.
"E se un giorno tornasse," set to a poem by Vittoria Aganoor Pompili, is an affecting recitative-like song, in which the vocal melody is somewhat curtailed, but through which the eternal lyricism of the Italian composer can still be felt:
And if one day he should come back, what should I tell him
Tell him that I awaited him unto death.
And if again Re should ask without recognizing me
Talk to him as a sister. Maybe he is suffering.
And if he asks where you are, what should I tell him
Give him my gold ring without uttering a word.
And if he should inquire why the room is empty
Show him that the lamp is not lighted and that the door is open.
And if he should again ask about the last hour
Tell him that in that hour I smiled so that he would not weep.
Songs of the Auvergne......Arranged by Canteloube
Recently the Columbia Recording Company reissued by public demand an album of eleven folk songs from the Auvergne country. They were arranged for public performance by Marie Joseph Canteloube, a former pupil of Vincent d'Indy.
From this album we quote several paragraphs from the annotator, Morris Hastings:
Auvergne, one of the oldest provinces of France, is situated in the south central section, well to the south of Paris, just to the north of Gascony and directly to the west of Lyon. It is a country of sharp contrasts. Here there are sombre mountains and sunlit valleys, great volcanic craters and tidy gardens, industrial towns and watering places and mouldering castles and romanesque churches. . . .
The history of Auvergne goes back thousands of years. It was on this soil that Julius Caesar suffered his first defeat in his conquest of Gaul; and even after the Roman had subdued Vercingetorix he did not dare impose his rule on the territory that is now Auvergne but kept it free to preserve its own traditions.
That fierce independence of the Auvergne remains to this day and is as apparent in the native of the section as it is in these bold, invigorating songs. The true Auvergnat has been described as rather tall, dark, robust and with a taste for hard work, a deal of patience, a proud disregard for the opinion of "foreigners" (including natives of other French provinces).
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The atmosphere of the Auvergne and its people has been admirably expressed in words by Jean Ajalbert, member of the Academy Goncourt, who says in part: "My province is the most beautiful of all countries. I wrote that fifty years ago when I had seen nothing of the rest of the world; I repeat it today when, after a half-century of traveling all over the world, I can make comparisons. My province is the most beautiful. Auvergne!
"The things that bind me to my ancestral province, so saturated with the past which is too little understood today, are its history, the oldest of France, dating back to Ver-cingetorix, its natural beauty with its mountain streams, its historical monuments, the rarest of romanesque architecture, and its moral grandeur exemplified in the lofty writings of Pascal."
Translations of the texts for the three songs selected for this occasion follow:
Bailero
"Shepherd, rain is coming and you will have good weather," says the Bailero.
"I do not expect to have good weather, do you, tell me Bailero."
"Shepherd, the fields are flowering--come and watch your flocks," says the
Bailero. "The fields are green--come and watch over me, Bailero."t
MaLUROUS QU'o UNO FENNO
Unhappy he who has a wife
Unhappy who hasn't one
He who has one doesn't want one
He who's single always craves one
Happy the woman who has the right man
But still happier the one who hasn't any.
Brezairola
Come, oh sleep, and touch the eyelids Of my little one who waits for thee.
El VitO................OBRADORS
Little can be found in this country concerning Fernando Obradors. His name appeared at the end of an introduction to a collection of songs for voice and piano, entitled Canchnes clasicas esfanolas, published by the Union Musical Espanola in Madrid. According to Obradors, the texts of the songs were taken from various collections of old Castilian poetry found in the State Library in Madrid. The following song is found among "Cancion popular," Madrid, 1800.
Columbia Album MM--758.
+ The Bailero is a minor deity whose particular province is to watch over the shepherds and their flocks.
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This Spanish dance has been arranged by several contemporary Spanish composers, but the setting by Obradors seems to adhere more nearly to the stark simplicity which is so characteristic of this type of music.
The singer speaks frankly of his poverty, and the relative expense of pleasing old women and young girls.
Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier........Strauss
Richard Strauss was born June 11, 1864, in Munich; he is now living in Vienna.
"If it's Richard, we'll take Wagner; if it's Strauss, we'll take Johann," wrote a Berlin critic after hearing the first performance of Der Rosenkavalier in 1911. But this is not the critical opinion today.
Certainly no other of Strauss's scores has endeared him to so large a public, for no other abounds in such geniality, tenderness, and charm. Nor are there many of his pages that reveal such a wealth of mellifluous and engaging melody or such opulant, and at the same time, transparent orchestration.
To a public shocked and antagonized by the consuming lust and appalling frankness of Salome or by the repellent decadence and crushing dissonance of Electra, the warm humanity and gentility of this comedy of manners with its engaging intrigue and its appealing blend of wit and pathos, buffoonery, and nostalgic charm came as a great relief and restored to the late Victorians their faith in decency and good taste.
Der Rosenkavalier is a comedy of eighteenth century Vienna, written by von Hofmannsthal. It tells the story of a charming woman's reconciliation to her advancing years, and her noble renunciation of a love that has turned from her to a younger woman. The story, relieved by scenes of humor that verge on the bawdy, is so permeated with the spirit of human understanding, humility, and wisdom, that it never fails to leave the spectator with a renewed faith in the goodness in living.
The waltzes occur throughout the opera, particularly at the end of Act II, and are mostly associated with the capers of the fat, lecherous, but impoverished Baron von Lerchenan as he dances around the room, delighted with the outcome of his immediate amorous plans.
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Sunday Afternoon, May 8
Overture to the Ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus,
Op. 43..............Beethoven
Originally indistinguishable from the early symphony, the overture in the period immediately preceding the advent of Beethoven, consisted of a simple fast movement in free symphonic form, usually preceded by a slow introduction. Beethoven, who in this charming but minor work of the year 1800 adhered to the traditional plan, had not as yet exerted his imperious will upon the form. It does not present therefore as complete a revelation of his mature musical processes as do the "Leonore No. 3," the "Egmont," and the "Coriolanus" overtures-those imperishable testimonies of his liberating genius. Written during the same year that saw the completion of the first symphony, the first six quartets, Op. 18, and the third piano concerto, it is the product of a transitional period when Beethoven was emerging slowly to complete self expression.
With the exception of the third piano concerto and a few isolated movements from the other works of the year of 1800, the "Prometheus" overture belongs to the earliest phase of Beethoven's style and waS his first attempt to compose in this form. The choreography for the ballet was devised by Salvatore Vigano, a celebrated Italian dancer and a nephew of the famous composer Boccherini. It is said that he chose Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind, for his subject as a tribute to Maria Theresa, patroness of the arts. How Beethoven came to write the score is unknown, for Vigano himself provided his own musical setting. The following argument was published in the program for the first performance in Vienna, March 28, 1801:
The basis of this allegorical ballet is the fable of Prometheus. The Greek philos-sophers, by whom he was known, allude to him thus--they depict him as a lofty soul who drove ignorance from the people of his time, and gave them manners, customs, and morals. As the result of this conception two statues that have been brought to life are introduced into this ballet, and these, through the power of harmony, are made sensitive to the passions of human life. Prometheus leads them to Parnassus in order that Apollo,
The scenario by Vigano was lost, but many contemporary references to the ballet and its performance have been collected by the French musicologist, Jean Chautavoine, who published in 1930 an edition of the work with the choreographic intention of each movement.
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the deity of the arts, may instruct them. Apollo gives them as teachers Amphion, Arion, and Orpheus to instruct them in music; Melpomene to teach them tragedy; Thalia, corned)'; Terpischore and Pan, the latest shepherd's dance; and Bacchus for the heroic dance, of which he was the originator.
Concerto in B minor for Violoncello and Orchestra . . . Dvorak
Anton Dvorak was born in Nelahozeves on Vltava near Prague, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May I, 1904.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose Well, I have-for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. Do you take it I would astonish Does the red tail, twittering through the woods
--Walt Whitman
It is as little known among performing musicians, as it is among the general listening public that Anton Dvorak was one of the most prolific composers of the late nineteenth century. If we judge him only by the extent of his work, he is incontestably a phenomenon in the world of music. Without a doubt Dvorak was one of the most distinguished musical personalities of the nineteenth century and should take his rightful place beside Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Franck. He ranks today among the great masters in the copiousness and extraordinary variety of his expression.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, other European countries besides Germany, Austria, Italy, and France became articulate in music. The period saw the emergence of such nationalistic composers as Grieg in Norway, Mous-sorgsky and the "Five" in Russia, Albenez in Spain and Smetanaf and Dvorak in Bohemia. The freshness and originality of their musical styles stemmed from their conscious use of folk music sources. The result was an agreeable and popular art, essentially melodic, rhythmic, and colorful. Folk music, consciously cultivated by such artists as Dvorak and Smetana, sheds its provincialisms but retains its essential characteristics--simplicity, directness, and honesty.
As a traditionalist Dvorak accepted the forms of his art without question, but he regenerated them by injecting a strong racial feeling, which gave brilliant vitality, depth, and warmth to everything he wrote. Dvorak possessed genuinely
Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modeste JVtoussorgsky, Nikolas Rimsky-Korsako v.
f See notes, page 41.
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Slavonic characteristics that gave an imperishable color and lyrical character to his art. With a preponderance of temperament and emotion over reason and intellect, he seemed to be always intuitively guided to effect a proper relationship between what he wished to express, and the manner in which he did so. In this connection he had more in common with Mozart and Schubert than he had with Beethoven. His expression is fresh and irresistibly frank, and although it is moody at times and strangely sensitive, it is never deeply philosophical or brooding; gloom and depression are never allowed to predominate. He could turn readily from one strong emotion to another without any premeditation; he could pour out his soul as he does in the second theme of this cello concerto without reserve or affectation, and in the next moment reveal an almost complete lack of substance in his predilection for sheer color combinations or rhythmic effects for their own sake. But everything he felt and said in his music was natural and clear. There was no defiance, no mystical ecstasy in his makeup. He had the simple faith, the natural gaiety, the sane and robust qualities of Haydn. His music, therefore, lacks the breadth and the epic quality of Beethoven's; it possesses none of the transcendent emotional sweep of Tchaikovsky's; but for radiantly cheerful and comforting music, for good-hearted, peasant-like humor, for unburdened lyricism, Dvorak has no peer.
The violoncello concerto was one of the last works written by Dvorak while visiting America. It was begun in November, 1894, and was finished in New York, February 9, 1895. It belongs to a period in Dvorak's creative life when his ideas were co-ordinated rather than developed, but even here his style is lucid and his workmanship skillful.
No arbitrary analysis of the forms of each of the movements would reveal more beauty than is apparent in its attractive rhythms, its noble and quasi-im-provisational melodies, in the inexhaustible flow of their developments, or in the broad, richly colored symphonic scoring. The concerto ranks today as one of the finest and most attractive works in the whole literature of the violoncello.
Choros No. 10, "Rasga 0 coragao"......Villa-Lobos
Hector Villa-Lobos was born at Rio de Janeiro, March 5, 1884.
Brazil can trace her notable musical heritage back to the sixteenth century. The evolution and blending of diverse trends that emanated from Portuguese,
Other outstanding works composed in America between 1892 and 1895, were Symphony in E minor "From the New World" (1893) ; Siring Quartet in F major and Quintet in E-fiat, written in the summer of 1893 at Spillville, Iowaj Ten Biblical Songs (1894).
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African, and Italian sources formed a music whose style during the nineteenth century was further conditioned by European idioms. In Rio under the reign of Dom Pedro II, German composers, particularly Liszt and Wagner, were in the process of exerting a dominating influence. A political transformation, however, gave a new and promising direction to Brazilian music. In 1888 slavery was abolished, and the next year Brazil was proclaimed a republic. The foreign arts thereby lost the support of wealthy and noble patrons, and almost immediately there burst forth a wild and unfettered expression among the freed slaves and the masses of the people. It reached such an intensity that the creation of a conscious and serious art-music seemed, for the time, to be impossible. The songs and dances of the peasants joined with the more sophisticated remnants of the older music into a blend of blazing colors and riotous rhythms.
Villa-Lobos, born in 1884, matured in this era of change and chaos. His remarkable musical talent had to reach its own maturity with little or no formal guidance; his teachers in theory admitted that they had actually taught him nothing. Confident of his talent, he bowed before no tradition, and sought his own level of excellence by trial and error, driven there by a sort of inner compulsion that resulted in the creation of over fourteen hundred works in every conceivable form.
Within the tremendous range and variety of his composition, it is difficult if not impossible to trace, as in other composers, any continuity of artistic growth or logical development of style. His masterworks stand as isolated examples, having little or no relation to those composed before or after them. Although he left the stamp of his unique individuality upon everything he wrote, those works which have their sources in popular and folk music remain the most distinctively original. Out of Brazil's wealth of natural music, Villa-Lobos has fashioned a unique art music, previously unknown in his country. Absorbing the melodic and rhythmic characteristics of her music he has sublimated them into a highly individualistic and personal style.
Like Bach, Villa-Lobos' contact with the world of music during his formative period was negligible. Without first-hand knowledge of what was actually happening in European music, his idiom of expression remained unaffected
Wagner seriously considered giving the first performance of Tristan and Isolde in Rio. He had sent piano scores to Dom Pedro of The Flying Dutchman, Tannhduser, and Lohengrin. The emperor, a Wagnerian enthusiast, was present at the first performance of Das Rheingold in Bayreuth in 1876, and met Wagner personally.
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by any outside influences. He was thirty-seven years of age before he heard the impressionism of Debussy, and he had reached his forty-first year before he left Brazil for the first time to go to Paris. Of that experience he has written:
I didn't come to learn, I've come to show you what I have done .... better bad of mine than good of others .... I have always been, and remain, completely independent. When Paris was the crossroads of the world's music, I was there and listened attentively, but never allowed myself to be influenced by any of the novelties I heard. I claim to be all by myself and I conceive my music in complete independence and isolation. ... I use much Brazilian folk lore in my compositions, because the rhythms have an extraordinary fascination.
This confident and independent spirit conditions everything he wrote, and it is no more apparent than in his series of choros.
Villa-Lobos has stated that "the choros represents a new form of musical composition in which are synthesized the different modalities of Brazilian, Indian, and popular music, having for principal elements rhythm and any typical melody of popular character." His statement here, and his insistence at other times that his choros is a newly developed musical design in direct line with the suite and symphony, can hardly be accepted because of the diversity of structure and length found in the numerous works he so titled.f Written for every sort of instrumental combination,$ they range from a comparatively short composition for solo guitar to a piano concerto of over an hour's duration; from a chamber ensemble to a full orchestra with chorus. To discover any structural similarity between them, or any evidence of "a new form of musical composition" common to all, defies the most astute analyist.
Throughout his works, Villa-Lobos reveals a weakness as a musical architect. Whenever he attempts to write in the larger forms of chamber music,
The word choros has no adequate English equivalent. The closest approximation to its meaning would be our word "serenade."
f Eleven were written between 1920 and 1928. Villa-Lobos has mentioned them, but they are as yet unknown to the public. Lou Harrison mentions sixteen in an article, "On the Choros of Villa-Lobos," Modern Music, January-February, 1945.
Choros No. 10 on today's program is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, three horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tympani, snare drum, large drum without snares, bass drum, tamtam, tambourine, caxambu (bottle filled with gravel), fuita (tin cylinder about fifteen inches deep and ten inches in diameter with a drumhead on one end and a gut string rubbed with rosin which extends from the center of the drumhead through the cylinder--played by tightly pulling the hand over the strings), reco reco (ratchet stick, large and small), xucalho (rattle, in wood and in metal), and strings.
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the symphony or the concerto, his inability to create dynamic structure results in a loss of individuality, characteristic intensity, and boldness. Juxtaposition of sections without fusions, appearances and disappearances of themes without further development, and avoidance of repeated sections are all evidences of his lack of concern for the details of musical structure in the larger forms, but they pass unnoticed in the smaller and less epic ones. Here abrupt changes, fecundity of ideas, and the quick tensions create rhapsodic and exhilerating effects. In the choros, Villa-Lobos is not creating a new form; he is exerting all of his rich fantasy and ready imagination in avoiding traditional ones. Form as such becomes merely an unavoidable ground work, harmony a mere support or an accidental outcome of fluent horizontal writing--both giving way to riotous colors, fluctuating timbres, and resilient rhythms.
Choros No. 10 on tonight's program shows greater organization than is usual, but its form is still interestingly free and elastic. The theme, sometimes erroneously referred to as "a savage Indian chant," was the tune of a popular song picked up from Anacleto de Medeiros, a friend of Villa-Lobos' youth. It was set to the words "Rasga o coragao" ("Rend my heart") by Catullo Ceareuse.
Dr. Franklin M. Thompson, Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Spanish, University of Michigan, has made the following translation of the text:
If thou wishest to see the immensity of the sky and sea Reflecting the prismatization of the sunlight, Tear my heart open, come and bend Over the vastness of my pain.
Inhale all the fragrance which rises
Through the thorny flowering of my suffering!
See if thou canst read in its beatings the white illusions
And in its moans what it says . . . and what not. . .
It can say to you in its palpitations!
Hear it gently sweetly beat,
Chaste and purple, in a threnody of evening,
Purer than an innocent vestal!
Rend it, for within thou shalt see sobbing pain Weeping under the weight of a cross of tears! Angels singing divine prayers, God making rhythms of its poor sighs. Tear it and thou shalt see!
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FIFTH CONCERT Gloria in Excelsis (World Premiere) . . . Llywelyn Gomer
Llywelyn Gomer was born at Morristown, Glamorganshire, Wales, in 1911.
Llywelyn Gomer is the pen name of Gomer L. Jones, Associate Professor of Music at Michigan State College, East Lansing. He received his early education at Cardiff, the Welsh capital, and was graduated from the University of Wales in 1934 with advanced degrees in Greek and Latin as well as music. Thereupon he was appointed to a Fellowship of the Commonwealth Fund of New York City, which brought him to this country for travel and study. He was the first, and remains the only, composer ever granted a fellowship by this foundation. On his return to Cardiff in 1936, Gomer became associated with the Welsh National Council of Music, which was then under the direction of Sir Henry Walford Davies, a leading British musician and Master of the King's Music. In this connection he organized musical activities among the unemployed miners of the South Wales coal district, and did some lecturing, conducting, and arranging of music for special occasions, such as the Coronation Visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth to Caernarvon Castle in 1937. He returned to the United States in 1938 to join the staff of the Music Department at Michigan State College, where he now teaches and conducts the All College Chorus.
Gomer has had several performances of his works by well-known organizations. A Prelude and Fugue in C minor (after Bach) was played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, under John Barbirolli, at two Carnegie Hall concerts in 1943. The Temfest Suite, made from incidental music to Shakespeare's play, was first performed by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra under Guy Fraser Harrison in 1935, and subsequently included in one of the programs of the Three Valleys Festival in Wales. The Sunken Village, for women's chorus and orchestra, has been performed at East Lansing, Rochester, and elsewhere. De Profundis, a set of chorale variations for orchestra on a theme by Martin Luther, after being given its premiere by the Michigan State College Orchestra under Alexander Schuster in 1941, was performed several times, most recently by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Thor Johnson.
The Gloria in Excelsis, which will be heard for the first time this afternoon, is a self-contained part of a Mass which Gomer has finished. The Gloria itself (in one movement) is for eight-part chorus, soli, and full modern orchestra, and contains five main sections with two choral links. The opening chorus,
The vocal score is published by the Michigan State College Press, East Lansing.
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Gloria in excelsis Deo, is followed immediately by a tenor solo Laudamus; a choral link, Domine Fili, connects this with an expressive Qui tollis for contralto solo, accompanied by strings, English horn, and bass clarinet; a second Qui tollis in the chorus acts as a link into the Quoniam, which is for soprano and baritone duet; this leads directly into the Cum Sancto Spiritu, an eight-part double fugue which concludes the whole work brilliantly. The musical idiom is, on the whole, conservative--as are all the works of this young Welshman. Of the setting, Vaughan Williams, to whom it was shown, spoke of its genuine religious feeling and eminent sincerity, qualities which are apparent even at a first hearing. The Gloria has both brilliance and depth; the vocal writing shows that the composer comes of a nation of singers, while the scoring utilizes the rich resources of a modern orchestra. The disposition of the text (here presented in translation) is as follows:
Chorus: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.
Solo: We praise thee, we bless thee, we adore thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory. Lord God, king of heaven, God the Father, almighty.
Chorus: O Lord the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, -Solo: Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.
Chorus: Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.
For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord, thou only art most high, O Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father.
Duet:
Chorus: With the Holy Ghost in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
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Sunday Evening, May 8 Adagio for Strings, Op. 11...........Barber
Samuel Barber was born March 9, 1910, at West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Samuel Barber received his early musical training at Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, where he studied piano, voice, and composition. In 1935, three years after graduating, he won both the Pulitzer Prize in music (which was conferred upon him again the following year) and the Prix de Rome, which provided him with two years study in Italy.
The Adagio for Strings was composed in 1936 as the slow movement of a String Quartet in B minor. It exemplifies some of Barber's finest writing, containing the essence of the most individual and expressive qualities of his work. Barber has not forgotten that music must be communicative, and the sincerity and directness of his art establishes at once a rapport between the composer and his audience. His lucid and poised writing comes as a refreshing relief from much of the robust, nervous, and erratic music produced by so many of our young American composers today. His is an art that does not surprise, explode, or perspire ; it has no conscious stylistic purpose, it shows no compulsion to direct American music along new or indigenous paths. In its large coherence, its simple logic, and its economy of means, Barber has given America a music that is aristocratic in style, yet warmly articulate.
"Deh vieni non tardar" from The Marriage of Figaro . . Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, January 27, 1756; died in Vienna, December 5, 1791.
Over one hundred and sixty years ago (1785--86) Mozart composed his exquisite and charming opera, The Marriage of Figaro, to a text by Lorenzo da Ponte based upon Beaumarchais' comedy by the same name. Since its first performance in Vienna, May 1, 1786, its music has constantly enlivened and refreshed men's spirits with its sparkling, insouciant humor and spicy plot. At the period of its creation, Mozart was at the height of his powers, having already composed Die Entfuhrung mis dem Serail, the "Haffner" symphony, the six
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"Haydn" quartets, and many of his great piano concerti. With this work he brought to a climax the of era buff a (comic opera) which had replaced the of era seria at the end of the eighteenth century.
Mozart's manifold genius is more fully exploited in opera than in any other form and in The Marriage of Figaro, he reveals a vividness of characterization unequaled by any other opera composer. His amazing sense of dramatic veracity, his uncanny insight into the psychological aspects of character and the unbelievable aptness with which he established these in his music, not only proved his unerring instinct for the theater, but established him as one of the foremost composers of opera in the world.
Of all of the delightful moments in the score, none is more ingratiating and charming than that in which Figaro's little bride, Susanna, whom he wrongly suspects of infidelity, sings to an imaginary lover. The scene is from Act IV, and takes place in the moonlit garden of the chateau of Figaro's master, the Count Almaviva. Susanna, disguised as her mistress, the Countess, sings the following soliloquy to harass her jealous husband whom she knows is hidden within sound of her voice:
Here at length is the moment I have so impatiently awaited. When I can call thee mine, my lover. Ah, why delay so long Speed, ah speed thee hither.
"O del mio dolce ardor" from Paride ed Elena .... Gluck.
Christoph Willibald Gluck was born July 2, 1714, in Erasbach; died November 15, 1787, in Vienna.
Gluck's reputation as the great reformer of opera rests upon the beauty and strength of six of his one hundred and seven operas. Orfeo (1762), Alceste (1767), and Paride ed Elena (1770) to Italian texts; Ifhigenie en Aulide (1774), Amide (1777), and Ifhigenie en Tauride (1779) to French texts.
These works embody many of the characteristic features of French opera from the time of Rameau (1683--1764), i. e. comparative subordination of music to drama, avoidance of vocal display, a similarity of style in recitative and aria, general simplicity of subject matter and treatment and a generous use of chorus and ballet, both associated closely with the dramatic action. These ideas were not original with Gluck, they were in the main those of the Italian originators of the opera in the early seventeenth century. But during the swift development and popularization of the form throughout the late seventeenth
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and early eighteenth centuries, abuses had crept in which finally drew the attention of serious minds to the necessity for reform. The reclamation of the opera came from a period alive with ideas of social correction. With the slow disintegration of absolute monarchy and the loss of faith in divine institution, there grew, increasingly, a critical attitude toward the arts. Ultimately the "return to nature" movement also, gave rise to an impulse for reform, and in music that impulse was aimed at the most popular of all musical forms, and the one closest associated with the dying social order, opera. These social movements gradually exposed the artificialities of the form and revealed the abuses from which it had suffered at the hands of singers, overly ambitious to display their vocal prowess, and of composers who had become overindulgent to their demands and to those of a public grown avid for excitement. The writings of the Encyclopedists Grimm, D'Alembert, Rousseau, and especially Diderot, were concerned chiefly with problems of reform. Their suggestions became the basis of a work by Francesco Algarotti whopointed out in his essay on opera every reform suggestion made by Gluck. No doubt these French-inspired ideas came to Gluck directly through his librettist Raniero di Calzabigi, who had received them in turn from Algarotti. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Encyclopedists to music aside from popularizing the new theoretical ideas of Rameau, was to prepare the way for Gluck. In him they recognized a composer who was in sympathy with their ideas and could carry them to complete and practical fulfillment. "A wise man was formerly a philosopher, a poet, and a musician," wrote Diderot, "these talents degenerated when they were separated from one another. The field of philosophy has shrunk, poetry lacks ideas, and song needs energy and force. . . . A great composer and a great opera poet would soon repair all this damage. . . . Let him appear then, this man of genius who will place the true tragedy and the true comedy on the operatic stage. Let him cry out. . . . Adducite mihi jsaltern (Bring me a composer), and he will create the true opera."f That composer was to be Gluck and that "great opera poet," Calzabigi. Grimm, after the advent of Gluck, quoted in his C orres-pondance litteraire for May, 1777, a passage by Marmontel which summarizes Gluck's position:
Gluck made musical declamation move more swiftly, forcefully, and energetically. ... By exaggerating its expression he at least avoided the pitfall of boredom. He used harmony with excellent effect, forced our singers to observe the same measure as the orchestra, fused the chorus into the dramatic action, and linked the dances to a suitable scene. His art is a composite work, in which German taste prevails, but in which is im Conte Francesco Algarotti, Saggio sofra I' of era in musica (2i ed., Leghorn, 1763). fDenis Diderot, Dorval et mot (Paris: 1875-79), VII, 156-57.
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plied the manner of conciliating the outstanding characteristics of the French and Italian opera.
The opera Paride ed Elena ("Paris and Helen") with text by Calzabigi, was performed for the first time in Vienna, November 3, 1770. In the dedication Gluck wrote that in opera, song was, in his opinion, nothing more than a substitute for declamation. In a passage from his "Lettre a La Harpe," published in the Journal de Paris on October 12, 1777, he elaborated upon this theme. "I was persuaded," he wrote, "that song saturated with the feelings it had to express had to be modified in the same degree as those feelings, and express all the nuances thereof. I was convinced that the voices, the instruments, all sounds and even silences, should be used to attain the same end, which is the expression of feelings. And finally, I felt that the union between words and music should be so perfect that the words seem to be made for the music and the music for the words."
In this lovely aria sung in Act I by Paris, as he longs for the beautiful Helen, there is a dignity of sentiment and grace of expression in Gluck's inspired melody that far transcends the prosaic words and their repetitions:
Oh my beloved, whom I adore, the very air thou breathest inspires my soul. Where ever I gaze, some vague semblance of you awakens love within me. In this ardor which inflames my soul, I seek thee and call to thee, O my beloved, whom I adore.
"Stizzoso, mio stizzoso" from La Serva -padrona . . . Pergolesi
Giovanni Pergolesi was born near Ancona, January 3, 1710; died in Pozzuoli, March 17, 1736.
Pergolesi's claim to everlasting fame rests upon a charming little Intermezzo, La Serva fadrona. Historically, this delightful work marks the period at which the Intermezzo merged permanently into the Opera Buffa, its heir.
Its history is curious and complicated. First produced in Naples in 1733, it did not win immediate success. It met no better fate at its first performance in Paris, October 4, 1746. On August 1, 1752, however, a company of Italian comedians, the "Buffons Italian" produced it again as an Intermezzo between the acts of Lully's Acts et Galathee, and it not only scored a triumph, but instigated a civil war in the world of music. The "Guerre des Buffons" ("War of
? Alfred Richard Oliver, The Encyclopedists as Critics of Music (New York: Columbia University Press, 19+7).
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the Buffoons") was begun, with the supporters of Lully defending the classical dignity of the French opera against the unwelcomed intrusion of the frivolous but intriguing style of the Italian buffoons. National pride resented its presence but good taste forbade its rejection, and Rousseau, among others, defended it.
This innocent little piece of Italian froth did more than begin a heated controversy--it exercised a wholesome and lasting effect not only upon French dramatic music, but upon dramatic music everywhere, by arousing national consciousness, and inspiring composers of other countries to similar effort.
Its success has been lasting and brilliant, since those colorful days when a piece of music could cause as much excitement as only a political campaign can today. In 1754, it was translated into French, and enjoyed one hundred and fifty performances in Paris, and after appearing in the usual operatic centers of Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Vienna, Prague, Copenhagen, and London (1750), it arrived in America, where in 1790, at Baltimore, Maryland, it won the distinction of being the first opera sung in French in this country. It has since been sung in Spanish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Croatian, Dutch, and Hebrew.
Lively in its music, amusing in its characterizations, and full of jest and humor in its action, La Serva fadrona has maintained a place in the operatic repertory longer than any other opera in existence.
The plot is naively simple and uninvolved. A maid servant, in order to trick her master into marriage, notifies him of her intention to leave his employ; whereupon the master, foreseeing all kinds of inconveniences and pressed by the intrigues of his comely young servant, finally resolves to marry her. This rash solution to the servant problem has dire consequences as soon as the maid finds herself the mistress of his house.
This sprightly little aria carries with it all of the spirit and wit, all the gaiety and charm, of the "buffa" art. The wily maid, Serpina, having become mistress by ensnaring her master into matrimony, now rules him with an iron hand. After a scene of violent opposition to his hopeless situation, Serpina cautions her wild spouse:
Unruly sir, unruly--and fain to play the bully! You will gain nothing by violence, so end this riot. Be quiet, do you hear, be quiet--now keep your silence--hush, hush! You will obey Serpina, mind you--you dare not offend her now.
La Serva fadrona was revived at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, January 14, 1943.
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"L'Altra notte in fondo al mare," from Mefistofele . . . Boito
Arrigo Boito was born in Padua, Italy, February 24,1842 5 died in Milan, June 10, 1918.
Arrigo Boito, son of an Italian miniature painter and a Polish countess, won fame both as a poet and a composer. His reputation as a composer rests mainly on the opera Mefistofele; as a poet, upon his remarkable libretti for Verdi's Otetto and Falstaff.
Identifying himself with the young intellectuals of his day, he expounded the most advanced ideas of operatic reform and advocated ideals which were, for Italy, revolutionary in the extreme. In upholding Beethoven and Wagner as models, and at the same time violently attacking Italian music and composers, he gave offence to his countrymen who were either not conscious of, or gave no recognition to the ideas of Gluck and Wagner; with the exception of Boito there was no outspoken Wagnerian disciple of note in all of Italy. The announcement, therefore, of the prospective performance of this young radical's opera Mefistofele at La Scala in 1868 assumed the importance of a national crisis. When on March 5 the work had its premiere, the supporters and opponents of Boito created such a tension that violence broke out in the theater before the end of the performance, and continued after the theater had closed its doors. Several other unsuccessful attempts were made to stage the work, but the opera was finally withdrawn by order of the police.
After this fiasco, Boito re-examined the score, curtailed its length, made additions, and reorchestrated parts. This revised version was not performed until 1875. Since then Mefistofele has had literally hundreds of performances in Italy where it remains one of the outstanding works in the repertory. Outside of Italy, however, it has been heard only infrequently.
Boito revealed some of the poetic excellence in this libretto which was later more apparent in Otello and Falstaff. As a youth of twenty-six, however, he attempted too much and achieved too little. His reverence for Goethe's Faust resulted in a libretto that was far closer to the original than either the Berlioz or Gounod versions, and no doubt superior to both as a literary achievement, but it did not serve well the art of music. Out of too much respect for Goethe's epic allegorical and philosophical poem, Boito fashioned a libretto comprising a prologue, four acts, and an epilogue. He drew his scenes, of which only two have to do with Marguerite (Gretchen) from both parts of Faust, embracing fragments of the Easter scene, the scenes in Faust's study and in the garden, a bit of the witches
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gathering on the Brocken, the Helen of Troy episode, the prison scene and Faust's death and salvation--enough material for a dozen operas. Such a series of unrelated episodes does not hold together as an opera libretto, and furthermore would have significance only for those who know Goethe's work in its entirety. As a result, the music has constantly, and by necessity, to give way to the persistent flow of the text. In opera, which is after all essentially a musical and not a dramatic form, it is the poetry which must make the major sacrifice in the combination. Poetry, as Mozart firmly maintained, "must be altogether the obedient daughter of music." Perhaps Boito, after all, was a greater dramatist than composer.
Sections, however, like the aria on tonight's program, survive on the concert stage today, and reveal Boito's lyrical gift whenever he gave it a chance to survive.
This aria is from Act III, and is sung by the demented Marguerite, as she lies on a bed of straw in prison, accused of murdering her mother and child. Her mind wanders as she accuses her jailors of the monstrous deeds:
Last night in the deep deep sea they drowned my little one. Now to drive me to madness, they say the deed was done by me. Cold is the air now, dark and narrow my cell. My sad heart strays like a timid sparrow in the forest; it longs to fly far far away. Oh Father have pity on me! My mother died in her slumber, no help could save her. Twas I they say who poisoned her. Cold is the air now, dark and narrow my cell. Have pity on me!
"Io son l'umile ancella" from Adriana Lecouvreur . . . Cilea
Francesco Cilea was born in Palmi, Calabria, July 29, 1866.
Francesco Cilea has held distinguished musical positions in Italy. From 1896 to 1904 he was professor of composition at the Instituto Musicale in Florence: from 1913 to 1916 he served as director of the Conservatory at Palermo, and since 1916 at the Conservatory at Naples. His fame as a composer rests almost entirely upon the opera Adriana Lecouvreur, based upon a popular play by Scribe and Legouve. It was first produced at Milan in November, 1902.
Adriana Lecouvreur, a famous actress is rehearsing her lines in a new play. In the midst of her impassioned performance her colleagues interrupt to tell her how superb she is'in the part. She answers:
The work was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, December 18, 1907, with Caruso, Cavalieri, Scotti, and Journet in the leading roles.
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I feel humble before the genius of the creator, He gives me the words, I speak them. When he wants me soft, I am soft; When he wants me joyous, I am joyous; When he wants me atrocious, I am atrocious; When he wants my voice a mere whisper, I do so, And that whisper will die at dawn.
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36.....Tchaikovsky
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840, in Kam-sko-Votinsk; died November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg.
Our yearning sets for home, And yet we know not whither ....
----ElSHANDORFF.
"No, that is nothing like me, I am far unhappier than that" cried Byron when he beheld in Rome the bust made of him by the sculptor, Thorwaldsen. Goethe described Byron in the fine phrase, "His being consists in rich despair," and in fact, fame, love, wealth, and beauty left him sick with satiety--a despiser of the world. The real vulnerable spot of this hero lay not in his heel, but deep in his soul. Like Faust, he pined in enjoyment, and like Hamlet in "to be," he constantly sensed "not to be." The soul-life of the age bore the stamp of this man for whom "sorrow was knowledge," he was in truth, the eponymous hero of an epoch. "Wisdom is power," was the ringing triumph-cry of Bacon three hundred years before, and between Bacon and Byron lay the path of knowledge in modern Europe.
Just as a famous picture distributes itself among mankind in thousands of reproductions expensive and cheap, fine and coarse, exact and careless, so Europe was populated with innumerable copies of Byron who, with more or less success, tried to reproduce the essence of this extraordinary creature. The age was literally infected by Byronism. Already Chateaubriand in France, who gave such fluent and beautiful expression to the emotional ideas originated by Rousseau, had created the type of the esfrit romanesque in his Rene. At odds with himself and the world, sensitive and disillusioned, full of yearning for love and faith but without the strength for either, he saw in every fruit for which he reached--the worm. "All," says Rene, "preaches to one of dissolution--everything wearies me, painfully I drag my boredom about with me and so my whole life is a yawn."
In the art of Chateaubriand and Byron, literature tended to become decadent, a "splendid greeny-gold growth, glittering and seductive, but filled with intoxi[86]
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eating saps that corrode." Byron's soul was incarnate in his Manfred, who reflected an increasing egoism in the expression of melancholy. Goethe's Werther too, had this romantic desire to feel and suffer uniquely from an unhappiness caused by hidden, indefinable longing. This mixture of egoism and sensibility is found as basic stuff in the heroes of the literature of the time. Their philosophy was that of another spokesman of their age, Leopardi, who reflected that "sorrow and ennui is our being and dung the earth--nothing more; where-ever one looks, no meaning, no fruit." Slavonic literature too, stated the "superfluous" theme. Pushkin, the "Russian Byron," in his Eugene Onegin and Lermantov in The Hero of Our Time created dramatic young men, who wrapped themselves in Byron's dark mantle, and stalked from one anguish to another. This universal and self-cultivated melancholy had the whole world in its grip. "It was," said Immerman, "as though humanity, tossed about in its little bark on an overwhelming ocean, is suffering from a moral sea-sickness of which the outcome is hardly to be seen."
The sources for this world sickness can be found in a measure in the effects the Industrial Revolution had upon the lives of men. As a result of this tremendous reorganizing force with its consequent power and wealth, a new attitude toward life was created. The growth of a rationalistic materialism destroyed suddenly the comforting old beliefs in the Bible. It gave rise to a period of doubt and disillusionment; it seemed as though the old culture were to disappear completely. Strong spirits like Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Ruskin fought valiantly for the "revenge instinct," and the composers like Wagner and Brahms tried to strengthen the flaccid spirit of their time by sounding a note of courage and hopefulness.
Less fortified minds, however, fell before the onslaught of industrialism and its materialism, sank into mental and spiritual apathy, and decayed. With decay came disease and the contagion struck deep into men's souls. From an over-fertilized emotional soil grew a decadent school of art. Chopin's supersensitive soul cried out its longing in his languorous nocturnes, Berlioz in his Fantastic Symfhony pictured the narcotic dreams of a young artist who, because of an unrequited love, had attempted suicide by opium. Wagner, expressing one side of the Industrial Revolution in the imperious force and merciless drive of his music, nevertheless allowed his desire-sick soul to long for death as the only release from the world. The "renunciation" motive is the basis of his great dramas. Senta renounces life for the salvation of the Dutchman, Elizabeth dies for Tannhauser, Briinnhilde throws herself upon the funeral pyre of Siegfried to
See notes on Brahms, page 32.
[87]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
redeem the race, and Tristan and Isolde live only for the night and long for death to unite them forever. Heine characterized this feeling in Germany. "People," he said, "practiced renunciation and modesty, bowed before the invisible1, snatched at shadow kisses and blue-flowered scents." This unnatural and unhealthy mental attitude led to a great deal of self-contemplation and introspection which tended to substitute futile or morbid imaginings for solid realities of life. The overintrospective and supersensitive artist cuts himself off from a larger arc of experience and is prone to exaggerate the importance of the more intimate sentiments, and when, as in the nineteenth century, such a tendency is widespread, a whole school may become febrile and erotic.
Tchaikovsky, like Byron, was a child of his age. It is truly said of Byron that he had but one subject--himself, and that saying is equally true of Tchaikovsky. If his personality was less puissant and terrible than that of Byron, his artistic instincts were reflected none the less forcibly in his self-cultivated and exhibitionistic art. His personal unassuageable grief, the tragedies and frustrations of his own life, all he knew of anguished apprehension and despair he poured out in his music. His persistent penchant for melancholy expression, his feverish sensibility, his revulsions of artistic feeling, and his superficial emotions which sank him into morbid pessimism, deadening depression, and neurotic fears on the one hand, or raised him to wild hysteria on the other--picture him in the framework of his age.
"And if bereft of speech, Man bears his pain, A god gave me the gift To tell my sorrow,"
wrote Tasso. Of this gift, Tchaikovsky had his share.
A Russian to the core, Tchaikovsky was nevertheless criticized severely by those self-styled nationalists, "The Five," for being too strongly influenced by German and French methods and styles to be a true exponent of Russian music. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, found much to admire in their art, and was very enthusiastic in his praise of Rimsky-Korsakov in particular. Nevertheless, he resented the assumption of superiority and the canons of judgment laid down by this coterie. He turned rather to Beethoven and to the scholarly technique exhibited in the construction of his symphonies; at the same time he was not immune to the charm of Italian music. Although he depreciated its superficial treatment of the orchestra, he did sense in the music of Italy the eternal value of pure melody, which he brought to fullest beauty through his superb and unequaled
[88]
SIXTH CONCE.RT
knowledge of instrumental effects. From Beethoven, Tchaikovsky no doubt gained what sense of architectural design and unity of style he had, but so intent was he on the fascination and charm of the single episode, and so aware of the spell of the immediate melodic beauty and the particular suggestive power of the orchestral coloring, that he never gained the superb structural heights or the completely epic conception of the symphony found in Beethoven.
Tchaikovsky himself spoke of his symphonic works as "showing the seams" and revealing "no organic union between the separate episodes." The constant oscillation between sudden exaltation, violent passion, and unresisted submission in his temperament excluded the sustaining and impersonal elements necessary to the true epic. He gave himself up, as Sibelius noted when speaking of his music, to every situation without looking beyond the moment, and in spite of the fact that his symphonies rank among the finest examples of symphonic architecture, their spirit, like those of Schubert and Berlioz, is not symphonic. But such is the beauty and power of his themes, so fine is their general architectural construction, and above all so masterful and effective is the use he makes of the orchestral palette that we do not consider it a discrepancy to find so thoroughly a lyric conception encased in so epic a form. In fact, Tchaikovsky's faults enhance his virtues, and this is the enigma of genius.
Late in 1876, Tchaikovsky suffered from one of his frequent nervous depressions. Returning later from a European tour, he found himself in a condition of physical and mental collapse. Although at the time he had no one in mind, he astonished his brothers and friends by declaring his intention to marry. In a letter to his brother Modeste in August, he wrote, "I have now to pass through a critical moment in my life. By and by I will write to you about it more fully. Meanwhile I must tell you that I have decided to marry."
Several years previously, there had been a student in the conservatory at Moscow named Antonina Ivanovna Milioukov. She had no particular musical talent and was at the time discouraged by Tchaikovsky from pursuing music as a career. In a letter to his benefactress, Mme von Meek, July 15, 1877, Tchaikovsky describes the circumstances that ultimately led to his tragic marriage:
First of all, I must tell you that at the end of May I became engaged, much to my own surprise. This is how it came about. One day I received a letter from a girl whom I had already seen and met. I learned from this letter that for a long time past she had honored me with her love. The letter was so warm and sincere that I decided to answer it, which I had always avoided doing in other cases of the kind. Without going into the details of this correspondence, I will merely say that I ended by accepting her invitation to visit her. Why did I do this Now it seems as though some hidden force drew me to
[89]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
this girl. When we met I told her that I could offer only gratitude and sympathy in exchange for her love. But afterward I began to reflect upon the folly of my proceedings. If I did not care for her, if I did not want to encourage her affections, why did I go to see her, and how will all this end From a letter which followed, I came to the conclusion that, having gone so far, I should make her really unhappy and drive her to some tragic end were I to bring about a sudden rupture. I found myself confronted by a painful dilemma: either I must keep my freedom at the expense of this woman's ruin (this is no empty word, for she loved me intensely) or I must marry. I could but choose the latter course. Therefore I went one evening to my future wife, and told her frankly that I could not love her, but that I would be a devoted and grateful friend. I described to her in detail my character, my irritability, my nervous temperament, my misanthropy --finally, my pecuniary situation. Then I asked her if she would care to be my wife. Her answer, of course, was in the affirmative. The agonies I have endured since that evening defy description. It is very natural. To live thirty-seven years with an innate antipathy to matrimony, and then, suddenly, by force of circumstances, to find oneself engaged to a woman with whom one is not in the least in love--is very painful. . . . Now a few words as to my future wife. Her name is Antonina Ivanovna Milioukov, and she is twenty-eight. She is rather good-looking, and of spotless reputation. She supports herself and lives alone, from a feeling of independence, although she has a very affectionate mother. She is quite poor, and of moderate education, but apparently very good and capable of a loyal attachment.
Their wedding took place July 18, and after a short trip, Tchaikovsky left for Kamenka and Antonia Ivanovna returned to Moscow to prepare their new home. In another note to Mme von Meek, Tchaikovsky wrote just before departing from his wife, "I leave in an hour's time. A few more days and I swear I should have gone mad." In September he returned to Moscow and his new home, but thirteen days later he left for St. Petersburg in a state bordering upon insanity. He never returned to his wife, and ultimately a permanent separation was made.
It was under these distressing conditions, and in this constant state of mental and spiritual agitation that Tchaikovsky intermittently composed the Fourth Symphony. To his closest friends he constantly revealed his affection for this work as his most personal and intimate expression. After completing his Fifth Symphony he expressed his disappointment in the work to Mme von Meek, referring to it as "repellent, superfluous, patchy, and insincere." At the same time he compared it with the Fourth. "Last night I looked through our Symphony No. 4. What a difference! How immeasurably superior it is! It is very, very sad!"
Antonina Ivanovna returned to her mother's home. When Tchaikovsky died in 1893, she sent a wreath of flowers to be placed on his coffin; and on the twentieth anniversary of his death she inserted a memorial notice in one of the Russian papers. She died in an asylum for the insane during the Bolshevik revolution.
[90]
SIXTH CONCERT
Again Tchaikovsky wrote of his Fourth Symphony in a letter to a former pupil, Sergei Taneiev:
Of course my symphony is program music, but it would be impossible to give the program in words; it would appear ludicrous and only cause a smile ... I must tell you that in my naivete I imagined the plan of my symphony to be so obvious that everyone would understand its meaning. . . . There is not a single bar in this Fourth Symphony of mine which I have not felt, and which is not an echo of my most intimate spiritual life.
Still searching through words to make his emotional meaning more explicit, he wrote to Mme von Meek a more detailed account of his deepest feelings while creating:
It would be vain to try to put into words that immeasurable sense of bliss which comes over me as soon as a new idea awakens in me and begins to take a definite form. I forget everything and behave like a madman. Within me everything starts pulsing and quivering; scarcely have I begun the sketch when thoughts tumble one on the heels of the other. In the midst of this magic process, it often happens that some trivial interruption wakens me from my somnambulistic state--the door bell rings, the servant enters, a clock strikes--reminding me that it is time to quit. Such interruptions are terrible. They often break off the train of inspiration for a considerable time, so that I have to search again, often in vain. In such cases, calm headwork and technical knowledge have come to my rescue. ... If that state of mind and soul which we call inspiration were to persist too long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument would be shattered to bits. . . .
Then follows his last futile attempt through words to utter the unutterable:
Our symphony has a program. That is to say, it is possible to express its contents in words, and I will tell you--and you alone--the meaning of the entire work and its separate movements. Naturally, I can only do so as regards its general features.
The introduction is the germ, the leading idea of the whole work. This is Fate, that inevitable force which checks our aspirations towards happiness ere they reach that goal, which watches jealously lest our peace and bliss should be complete and cloudless-a force which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs perpetually over our heads and is always embittering the soul. This force is unescapable and invincible. There is no other course but to submit and inwardly lament. This sense of hopeless despair grows stronger and more poignant. Is it not better to turn from reality and lose ourselves in dreams O joy! A sweet and tender dream enfolds me. A bright and serene presence leads me on. How fair! How remotely now is heard the first theme of the Allegro! Deeper and deeper the soul is sunk in dreams. All that was dark and joyless is forgotten. Here is happiness! It is but a dream; Fate awakens us roughly. So all life is but a continual alternation between grim truth and fleeting dreams of happiness. There is no haven.
[91]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
The waves drive us hither and thither until the sea engulfs us. This is approximately the program of the first movement.
The second movement expresses another phase of suffering. Now it is the melancholy which steals over us when at evening we sit indoors alone, weary of work, while the book we have picked up for relaxation slips unheeded from our fingers. A long procession of old memories goes by. How sad to think how much is already -past and gone! And yet these recollections of youth are sweet. We regret the past, although we have neither courage nor desire to start a new life. We are rather weary of existence. We would fain rest awhile and look back, recalling many things. There were moments when young blood pulsed warm through our veins, and life gave us all we asked. There were also moments of sorrow, irreparable loss. All this has receded so far into the past. How sad, yet sweet, to lose ourselves therein!
In the third movement no definite feelings find experssion. Here we have only capricious arabesques, intangible forms, which come into a man's head when he has been drinking wine and his nerves are rather excited. His mood is neither joyful nor sad. He thinks of nothing in particular. His fancy is free to follow its own flight, and it designs the strangest patterns. Sudden memory calls up the picture of a tipsy peasant and a street song. From afar come the sounds of a military band. These are the kind of confused images which pass through our brain as we fall asleep. They have no connection with actuality, but are simply wild, strange, bizarre.
The fourth movement; if you find no reason for happiness in yourself, look at others. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity. A rustic holiday is depicted. Hardly have we had time to forget ourselves in other people's pleasures when indefatigable Fate reminds us once more of its presence. Others pay no heed to us. They do not spare us a glance nor stop to observe we are lonely and sad. How merry and glad they all are! All their feelings are so inconsequent, so simple. And will you still say all the world is immersed in sorrow Happiness does exist, simple and unspoilt. Be glad in others' gladness. This makes life possible.
.... For the first time in my life I have attempted to put into words and phrases my musical ideas and forms. 1 have not been very successful. I was horribly out of spirits all the time I was composing my symphony last winter, and this is a true echo of my feelings at the time--but only an echo. But there lies the peculiarity of instrumental music; we cannot analyze it. "Where words leave off, music begins," as Heine has said.
[92]
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Organized in 1879. Incorporated in 1881.
PRESIDENTS
Henry Simmons Frieze, 1879-1881 and 1883-1889 Alexander Winchell, 1881-1883 and 1889-1891 Francis W. Kelsey, 1891-1927 Charles A. Sink (Executive Secretary, 1904-1927) 1927MUSICAL DIRECTORS
Calvin B. Cady, 1879-1888 Albert A. Stanley, 1888-1921 Earl V. Moore, 1922-1939
CONDUCTORS
Thor Johnson, 1939--1942
Hardin Van Deursen, 1942-1947
Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor, 1947THE ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL
Maintained by the University Musical Society
Founded by Albert A. Stanley and his associates in the Board of Directors in 1894
MUSICAL DIRECTORS
Albert A. Stanley, 1894-1921 Earl V. Moore, 1922-1939
CONDUCTORS
Thor Johnson, 1940-1942 Hardin Van Deursen, 1943--1946 Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947[93]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
ORGANIZATIONS
The Boston Festival Orchestra, Emil Mollenhauer, Conductor, 1894-1904
The Chicago Symfhony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, Conductor, 1905--1935; Eric DeLamarter, Associate Conductor, 1918--1935
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, Conductor, Saul Caston and Charles O'Connell, Associate Conductors, 1936; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, 1937, 1938; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, Saul Caston, Associate Conductor, 1939--1945; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor, 1946The University Choral Union, Albert A. Stanley, Conductor, 1894--1921; Earl V. Moore, Conductor, 1922-1939; Thor Johnson, Conductor, 1940-1942; Hardin Van Deursen, 1943-1947; Thor Johnson (Guest Conductor), 1947--; Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor, 1947-The Young People's Festival Chorus (now the Festival Youth Chorus), trained by Florence B. Potter, and conducted by Albert A. Stanley, 1913-1918. Conductors: Russell Carter, 1920; George Oscar Bowen, 1921-1924; Joseph E. Maddy, 1925-1927; Juva N. Higbee, 1928-1936; Roxy Cowin, 1937; Juva N. Higbee, 1938; Roxy Cowin, 1939; Juva N. Higbee, 1940-1942; Marguerite Hood, 1943The Stanley Chorus (now the Women's Glee Club), trained by Marguerite Martindale, 1934; trained by Wilson Sawyer, 1944
The University Glee Club, trained by David Mattern, 1937 The Lyra Chorus, trained by Reuben H. Kempf, 1937
GUEST CONDUCTORS
Gustav Hoist (London, England), 1923, 1932
Howard Hanson (Rochester), 1926, 1927, 1933, 1935
Felix Borowski (Chicago), 1927
Percy Grainger (New York), 1928
Jose Iturbi (Philadelphia), 1937
Georges Enesco (Paris), 1939
Harl McDonald (Philadelphia), 1939, 1940, 1944
FESTIVAL CHORAL REPERTOIRE University Choral Union
Bach: Mass in B minor (excerpts)--1923, 1924, 1925
Magnificat in D major--1930 Beethoven: Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123--1927, 1947
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125--1934, J942 1945
[94]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust--1895, 1909, 1920
Bizet: Carmen--1904, 1918, 1927, 1938
Bossi: Paradise Lost--1916
Brahms: Requiem, Op. 45--1899 (excerpts), 1929, 1941, 1949
Alto Rhapsodie, Op. 53--1939 BRUCH: Arminius--1897, 1905
Fair Ellen, Op. 24--1904, 1910
Odysseus--1910
Bruckner: Te Deum laudamus--1945 Chadwick: The Lily Nymph--1900 Delius: Sea Drift--1924 Dvorak: Stabat Mater, Op. 58--1906 Elgar: Caractacus--1903, 1914, 1936
The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38--1904, 1912, 1917 FOGG: The Seasons--193y Franck: The Beatitudes--1918 GLUCK: Orpheus--1902
Goldmark: The Queen of Sheba (March)--1923 Gomer, Llywelyn: Gloria in Excelsis--1949 Gounod: Faust--1902, 1908, 1919
Gallia--1899
Grainger: Marching Song of Democracy--1928 Hadley: "Music," An Ode, Op. 75--1919 Handel: Judas Maccabeus--1911
Messiah--1907, 1914 Hanson, Howard: Songs from "Drum Taps"--1935
Heroic Elegy--1927
The Lament for Beowolf--1926
Merry Mount--1933 Haydn: The Creation--1908, 1932
The Seasons--1909, 1934 Heger: Ein Friedenslied, Op. 19--i934t HOLST: A Choral Fantasia--1932!
A Dirge for Two Veterans--1923
The Hymn of Jesus--1923!
First Choral Symphony (excerpts)--I927t Honegger: King David--1930, 1935, 1942 Kodaly: Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13--1939
McDonald, Harl: Symphony No. 3 ("Lamentations of Fu Hsuan")--1939 Mendelssohn: Elijah--1901, 1921, 1926, 1944
St. Paul--1905
Moussorgsky: Boris Godounov--1931, 1935 Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, K. 427--1948
Requiem Mass in D minor--1946 Parker: Hora Novissima, Op. 30--1900
World premiere t American premiere
[95]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Pierne: The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931 Ponchielli: La Gioconda--1925 Prokofieff: Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78--1946 Rachmaninoff: The Bells--1925, 1938, 1948 Respighi: La Primavera--i924t Rimsky-Korsakoff: The Legend of Kitesh--i932f Rossini: Stabat Mater--97
Saint-Saens: Samson and Delilah--1896, 1899, 1907, 1912, 1916, 19231 1929, 1940 Schuman, William: A Free Song (Cantata No. 2)--1945 Smith, J. S.: Star Spangled Banner--I9I9 1920 Sibelius: Onward Ye Peoples--1939, 1945 Stanley: Chorus Triumphalis, Op. 14--1897, 1912, 1921
Fair Land of Freedom--1919
Hymn of Consecration--1918
"Laus Deo," Choral Ode--1913, 1943
A Psalm of Victory, Op. 8--1906 Stock: A Psalmodic Rhapsody--1922, 1943 Stravinsky: Symphonie de Psaumes--1932 Sullivan: The Golden Legend--1901
Tchaikovsky: Episodes from "Eugene Onegin"--1911, 1941 Thompson, Randall: Alleluia--1941 Vardell: Cantata, "The Inimitable Lovers"--1940 Verdi: ATda--1903, 1906,1917, 1921, 1924 (excerpts), 1928, 1937
La Forza del Destino (Finale, Act II)--1924
"Manzoni" Requiem--1S94, 1898, 1913, 1920, 1930, 1936, 1943
Otello--1939
Stabat Mater--1899
Te Deum--1947
Villa-Lobos, Heitor: Choros No. 10, "Rasga o corac,ao"--1949 Wagner: The Flying Dutchman--1898
Lohengrin--1926; Act I--1896, 1913
Die Meistersinger, Finale to Act III--1903, 19135 Chorale, "Awake," and Chorale Finale to Act III--1923
Scenes from "Parsifal"--1937
Tannhauser--1902, 1922; March and Chorus--1895 Walton: Belshazzar's Feast--1933 Wolf-Ferrari: The New Life, Op. 9--1910, 1915, 1922, 1929
Festival Youth Chorus
Abt: Evening Bells--1922 Anonymous: Birds in the Grove--1921 ArnE: Ariel's Song--1920
The Lass With the Delicate Air--1937 Barratt: Philomel with Melody--1924 Beethoven: A Prayer--1923
[96]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Benedict, Jules: Sweet Repose is Reigning Now--1921 Benoit: Into The World--1914, 1918 Boyd: The Hunting of the Snark--1929 Brahms: The Little Dust Man--1933
Lullaby--1931 BrucH: April Folk--1922 BUSCH: The Song of Spring--1922 CARACCIOLO: Nearest and Dearest--1923
A Streamlet Full of Flowers--1923
Carey: National Hymn, "America"--1913, 1917, 1918, 1920 Chopin: The Maiden's Wish--1931 Coleridge-Taylor: Viking Song--1924
DeLamarter, Eric (orchestrator) : Songs of the Americas--1944 1948 English: Cantata, "The Ugly Duckling"--1934 Farwell: Morning--1924
Fletcher: The Walrus and the Carpenter--1913, 1917, 1926, 1942 Folk Songs--Italian: The Blackbirds, Sleep Little Child--1921
Scotch: "Caller Herrin"--1920
Welsh: Dear Harp of My Country--1920
Zuni Indian: The Sun Worshippers--1924 Gaul: Cantata, "Old Johnny Appleseed"--1931
Cantata, "Spring Rapture"--1933, 1937 GlLLETT: Songs--1941 Gounod: Waltz Song from "Faust"--1924 Grainger: Country Gardens--1933 GRETCHANINOFF: The Snow Drop--1938 Handel: "He Shall Feed His Flock," from "Messiah"--1929 Hyde: Cantata, "The Quest of the Queer Prince"--1928 Howland, Russell (orchestrator) : Song Cycle from the Masters--1947 HuMPERDlNCK: Selections from "Hansel and Gretel"--1923 d'IndY: Saint Mary Magdalene--1941 James, Dorothy: Cantata, "Jumblies"--1935
Cantata, "Paul Bunyan"--1938
American Folk Songs (orchestration)--1946
Lieder Cycle (orchestration)--1949 Kelly: Suite, "Alice in Wonderland"--1925 KjERULF: Barcarolle--1920 Madsen: Shepherd on the Hills--1920, 1922 McArtor, Marion (orchestrator) : Songs--1940
Folk Song Fantasy--1943 Mendelssohn: On Wings of Song--1934
Spring Song--1924
MoHR-GRUBER: Christmas Hymn, "Silent Night"--1916 Moore, E. V.: "The Voyage of Arion"--1921, 1927 MORLEY: It Was a Lover and His Lass--1921, 1938
Now is the Month of Maying--1935 Mozart: Cradle Song--1930
The Minuet--1922
World premiere [ 97 ]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Myrberg: Fisherman's Prayer--1922
Pierne: The Children at Bethlehem--1916, 1936
The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931
Planquette : Invitation of the Bells from "Chimes of Normandy"--1924 PROTHEROE: Cantata, "The Spider and the Fly"--1932 Purcell: In the Delightful Pleasant Grove--1938 Reger: The Virgin's Slumber Song--1938 Reinecke, Carl: "In Life If Love We Know Not"--1921
O Beautiful Violet--1924
Rowley-James: Cantata, "Fun of the Fair"--1945 Rubinstein: Thou'rt Like Unto a Flower--1931
Wanderer's Night Song--1923 Sadero: Fa la nana bambin--1935 Schubert: Cradle Song--1924, 1939
Hark, Hark the Lark--1930
Hedge Roses--!934i 939
Linden Tree--23, 1935
Serenade in D minor--1939
The Trout--1937
Whither--1939
Who Is Sylvia--1920
Schumann, Georg: Good Night, Pretty Stars--1924 Schumann, Robert: Lotus Flower--1930
Spring's Messenger--1929
The Nut Tree--1939 SCOTT: The Lullaby--1937 Strauss, Johann: Blue Danube Waltz--1934 Strong: Cantata, "A Symphony of Song"--1930 Sullivan: Selections from Operas--1932 Thomas, Goring: Night Hymn at Sea--1924 Tosti: Serenade--1933 Van der Stucken: At the Window--1920 Wagner: Whirl and Twirl from "Flying Dutchman"--1924 Wahlstedt: Gay Liesel--1922 Weber: "Prayer," from "Der Freischutz"--1920
The Voice of Evening--1924
World premiere
[98]
[HE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
Maintained by the University Musical Society Founded in 1879
Seventieth Season, 1948-1949
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor
Mary Jane Stephans, Pianist
Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist
Marjorie Hollis and Marjorie Gould, Librarians
FIRST SOPRANOS
Alschbach, Floy J. Aprill, Virginia A. Beabes, Virginia I. Boyd, Elinor Jean Bradstreet, Lola M. Britton, Veronica F. Campbell, Ruth R. Corbin, Horatia J. Dalton, Patricia M. Daudna, Virginia D. Dennis, Jean M. Eagle, Carol Frances Eckhout, Ann Clare Elliott, Joanne E. Finlay, Nancy Anne Gale, Doris A. Gobdel, Mary C.
Hammett, Eleanore M. Hanson, Gladys M. Heldreth, Dorothy J. Heyde, Norma S. Jastram, Frances G. Kays, Doris R. Lake, Mary Eleanor Lipkin, Monnya L. Lock, Inez C. Lyman, Jean MacLaren, Helen L. Malan, Fannie Belle Newell, Dorothy P. Patton, Beatrice M. Peck, Betty Jean Porter, Daphne Y. Ranger, Mary I.
Reed, Mary Alice Roy, Sarah B. Shirley, Hazel R. Shufelt, Phyllis J. Skidmore, Beth A. Sloss, Alice M. Smith, Frieda L. Stauffer, Mary L. Taylor, Merle G. Thrush, Sarah J. Van Manen, Lucille Warren, L. Eleanor Whelan, Eleanor R. Williams, Jane N. Zeeuw, Faith D. Zwagerman, Marcia
SECOND SOPRANOS
Beerends, Esther Beller, Betty L. Boone, Nancy C. Brockett, Eleanor G. Brooks, Faith S. Burton, Mary Jeanne Carillo, Edith M. Crawford, Mary C. Daly, Caryl A. Davidter, Hazel E. DeGraaf, Malois W. DeMond, Carol W. Dorney, Edith A. Fisher, Winifred Folz, Sylvia
Green, JoAnn Hall, Lois Jean Hendrian, Suzanne Hendricks, Marie E. Holtzinger, Irene R. Hooper, Helen Kay Jensen, Cohleen Jewell, Arlene Jane Jewell, Esther L. Kinley, Katherine C. Koning, Phyllis V. Manring, Jan H. McDowell, Wanda E. McKinley, Ann Watson Mills, Katherine M.
Newman, Virginia S. Oates, Dolores E. Osterhoudt, Blanche Patrick, Patricia J. Patsloff, Patricia K. Reynolds, Jessie M. Schmitkons, LaVerne Shafer, Ann Dyke Traxler, Ellen N. Utley, Joann Irene Vlisides, Elena C. Vogt, Elva Marion Wakefield, Elva Mae Wilson, Harriette R. Zuckerman, Shirley R.
[99]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
FIRST ALTOS
Baumgarten, Patricia Blair, Virginia Ellen Brask, Harriet B. Conover, Mary Chase Elder, Katherine J. Estep, Jeannette F. Estes, Betty Jane Falcone, Mary L. Fandrem, Barbara J. Fox, Margaret W. Gillis, Diana Goble, Patricia Ann Gonan, Gloria J. Gould, Marjorie L. Griffith, Erma R. Haab, Ethel Marie Hackett, Anne D. Hamrick, Martha Hoesman, Maxine M.
Hollis, Marjorie H. Hourigan, Virginia L. James, I. Lucille Johnson, Joann P. Kelso, Barbara Ann Leet, Leonora I. Lindbert, Marjorie E. Lindemann, Bette J. Lewis, Nancy Joan Maguire, Kathleen A. Mastin, Neva M. McCoy, Hester Jane McKeachie, Joyce E. Mettetal, Myra Ann Niemann, Mary Jane O'Dell, Nesby Palmer, Anna W. Pettitt, Marcia A. Pierce, Janet Carol
Randall, Ella May Rapp, Dorothy Jean Rauschkolb, Sunhild J. Reed, Marilyn Edythe Risk, Harriet Roff, Willane S. Sieber, Lois Marie Sill, Martha M. Stefan, Elsie Louise Stegner, Virginia Stein, Ruth Eleanore Stephans, Mary Jane Stoltz, Barbara Lou Symmonds, Charleen Turner, Mary Elizabeth Van Laar, Eloise Widmann, Sybil A. Wiedmann, Louise P. Zeeb, Helen R.
SECOND ALTOS
Barnett, Margaret S. Bennett, Harriet J. Birk, Allene Bogart, Gertrude J. Brovan, Elaine R. Brown, Rosemary C. Clapham, Elizabeth Clark, Helen Marie Crossley, Sarah Lou Crossley, Winnifred Dice, Dorothy Easton, Helen Ruth Enkemann, Gladys C. Fowler, Virginia Lee Fratcher, Mary L. Goodkind, Gloria L.
Hagen, Esther C. Hamrick, Julia R. Holtman, Estella Holzer, Jeanne F. Huey, Geraldine E. Johnson, Lisbeth H. Kluckhohn, Ruth M. Korhonen, Gloria V. Krueger, Patricia A. Lenz, Elsa F. McKinney, E. Belle McMurray, Nancy Miller, Elizabeth A. Miller, Virginia G. Oberholtzer, Erma R.
Palmer, Beverly S. Ries, Catherine M. Robinson, Elizabeth Rosen, Arlynn Sargent, Stephanie Sitts, Jean Elaine Smith, Marguerite M. Sorenson, Carolyn J. Stevens, Adelaide I. Sullivan, Marion B. Tulecke, Hazel B. Vander Velde, Patricia Wersen, Katherine A. Woodworth, Alta Wulsin, Margaret M. Zumstein, Marguerite
FIRST TENORS
Anderson, Donald R. Brown, Archie McE. Brown, Hugh C. Davis, Leonard C.
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DeVoe, John H. Gale, William Harris, Robert A. James, William S.
Kirby, Richard L. Liefer, Gerald H. Lowry, Paul J. Manring, Darryl T.
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
FIRST TENORS (Continued)
Norling, Richard L. Parrot, S. Jean Pearson, Robert S.
Robertson, Allen B. Schoonmaker, Grant Thompson, Peter
Vis, Vincent A. Wagner, Herbert P. Wiseman, Donald O. Wright, John Joseph
SECOND TENORS
Barber, Joseph W. Beu, Karl Emil Bronson, David L. Engelder, Theodore Falk, Richard L. Fisher, Charles R. Fox, Howard P. Goodwin, F. Walter Grove, Gayle Day
Hardy, Gerald D. Hennes, Allen R. Hines, Paul R. Horton, Josiah T. S. Kirsten, Walter Kochenderfer, Leon V. Lenz, Wallace W. MacGowan, William B. McGaw, Richard W.
Munzel, Herbert L. Olander, Eino R. Reynolds, Jimmie H. Sargent, Douglas A. Tripp, W. Thomas Truesdell, F. Donald Vandenberg, Edward L., Jr. Watkins, Glenn E.
FIRST BASSES
Daley, John G. Broadbooks, Harold E. Button, Donald W. Button, Robert E. Cathey, Arthur J. DeGraaf, Donald E. Dejager, Donald Elson, Robert A. Faurot, John R. Guenter, Thomas E. Guthrie, Charles E. Hamilton, Ralph E., Jr.
Heyde, John Bradley Hocking, Reginald S. Hughes, John Charles Kays, J. Warren Mark, Robert H. S. McCaughey, Richard J. McKeachie, Duane D. Nielsen, Kenneth L. Niemann, Robert B. Nylen, J. Lawrence Pfluke, Edward W. Phelps, Lynn Andrew
Pirner, Reuben G. Porretta, Francis S. Putnam, Leon J. Putnam, Lloyd W. Raymond, Jack R. Roberts, William H. Schiltz, Grover E. Schneider, Curt R. Snook, Arthur J. Towler, Lewis W. Van Laar, Jack Wechsler, Martin T.
SECOND BASSES
Anderson, Carl A. Berberian, Ara Chase, Willis E., Jr. Chu, Kuang-ya Coons, John Donald Crystal, Richard O. Davidter, Royal C. Doolittle, James S. Dreifus, John A. Hildebrandt, Paul R. Jastram, Philip S.
Kolloff, Richard H. Lambert, Paul Larson, David D. Murray, David C, Jr. Northorp, Peter B. Olthoff, Ned Leroy Petach, Alexander M. Plott, Donald B. Razey, Don Hubert Schubert, Earl D.
Sommerfeld, Roy E. Spencer, Haven H. Spencer, Melvin J. Stetter, Charles Strickland, J. Bertram Swisher, John E., Jr. Ulmer, David F. Weinberg, Edwin B. Wilhelm, James K., Jr. Williams, Lewis R., Jr.
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THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Eugene Ormandy, Conductor Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor
Harl McDonald, Manager Norman S. Shirk, Assistant Manager
FIRST VIOLINS
Hilsberg, Alexander, Concertmaster
Madison, David,
Assistant ConcertTnaster
Zenker, Alexander Reynolds, Veda Henry, Dayton M. Simkin, Jasha Costanzo, Frank Aleinikoff, Harry Lipkin, Arthur B. Gesensway, Louis Lusak, Owen Sharlip, Benjamin Coleman, David Simkin, Meyer Goldstein, Ernest L. Putlitz, Lois Schmidt, Henry
SECOND VIOLINS
Ruden, Sol Rosen, Irvin Bove, D. DiCamillo, A. Gorodetzky, A. Snader, Nathan Eisenberg, Irwin Brodo, Joseph Shulik, Morris Kaufman, Schima Dabrowski, S.
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Miller, Charles S. Roth, Manuel Schwartz, Isadore Mueller, Matthew J. Pepper, Joseph
VIOLAS
Lifschey, Samuel Roens, Samuel Mogill, Leonard Braverman, Gabriel Frantz, Leonard Ferguson, Paul Bauer, J. K. Kahn, Gordon Greenberg, Wm. S. Loeben, Gustave A. Gray, Alexander Epstein, Leonard
VIOLONCELLOS
Olefsky, Paul Hilger, Elsa Gusikoff, B. Belenko, Samuel Gorodetzer, Harry Siegel, Adrian de Pasquale, Francis Lewin, Morris Druian, Joseph Gray, John Sterin, J. Gorodetzky, Hershel
BASSES
Scott, Roger M. Benfield, Warren A. Lazzaro, Vincent Torello, Carl Strassenberger, Max Eney, F. Gilbert Wiemann, Heinrich Arian, Edward Maresh, Ferdinand
HARPS
Costello, Marilyn Bailiff, Jill
FLUTES
Kincaid, W. M. Terry, Kenton F. Atkinson, Burnett F. Fischer, John A. Shaffer, Elaine
PICCOLO Atkinson, Burnett F.
OBOES
Tabuteau, Marcel de Lancie, John Di Fulvio, Louis Minsker, John Siegel, Adrian
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
ENGLISH HORN Minsker, John
CLARINETS
McLane, Ralph Serpentini, Jules J. Rowe, George D. Lester, Leon Musumeci, Joseph
BASS CLARINET Lester, Leon
SAXOPHONES
Lester, Leon Guerra, Selma
BASSOONS
Schoenbach, Sol Fisnar, John Gruner, William Del Negro, F. Angelucci, A. L.
HORNS
Jones, Mason Tomei, A. A.
Fearn, Ward O. Mayer, Clarence Lannuti, Charles Pierson, Herbert Hale, Leonard Kent, Douglas
TRUMPETS
Kraus, Samuel Hering, Sigmund Rehrig, Harold W. Rosenfeld, Seymour Dell'Angelo, Michael
BASS TRUMPET Gusikoff, Charles
TROMBONES
Gusikoff, Charles Lambert, Robert W. Cole, Howard Harper, Robert S.
EUPHONIUM Gusikoff, Charles
TUBA
Karelia, Clarence
TIMPANI
Grupp, David Schulman, Leonard
BATTERY
Hinger, Fred D. Schulman, Leonard Valerio, James Roth, Manuel
CELESTA AND PIANO
Putlitz, Lois Levine, Joseph
ORGAN Elmore, Robert
LIBRARIAN Taynton, Jesse C.
PHOTOGRAPHIC PUBLICITY
Siegel, Adrian
PERSONNEL MANAGER
Schmidt, Heniy
2
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMS, 1948-1949
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY, in addition to the annual May Festival, provided the following concerts during the season of 1948--49:
Seventieth Annual Choral Union Series
EILEEN FARRELL, Soprano
Nathan Price at the Piano
October 6, 1948
Care selve..........Handel
"II est doux" ("Herpdiade") . . . Massenet Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer . . Brahms
Botschaft...........Brahms
Der Engel..........Wagner
Schmerzen........... Wacner
"Pace, pace" ("La Forze del destino") . Verdi
Beau soir...........Dehussy
Nuit d'etoiles .........Debussy
La Pavane..........Bruneau
Chere nuit..........Bachelet
Strew No More Red Roses.....Bridge
Sing No Sad Songs ... .... Thorp
If There Be Ecstasy.......Shaw
A Memory...........Ganz
Bird of the Wilderness.....Horsman
ORCHESTRE NATIONAL OF FRANCE
Charles Munch, Conductor
October 25, 1948
Fantastic Symphony No. 1 .... Berlioz
Toccata............Piston
"Iberia" Suite.........Debussy
"Sorcerer's Apprentice".......Dukas
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA
George Szell, Conductor
November 7, 1948
Overture, "Flying Dutchman" . . . Waones Symphony, G major, No. 88 .... Haydn
"La Valse"...........Ravel
Symphony No. 1, Op. 38 .... Schumann
EZIO PINZA, Bass
Herman Allison at the Piano
November 18, 1948
"Beato chi puo" ("Serse") .... Cavalli "Alma mia" ("Floridante") .... Handel "Dormi, amore" ("La Flora") . Da Gigliano Nel cor piu non mi sento .... Paisiello
Che fiero costume.......Legrenzi
Aria from an Unknown Opera . . . Pasquini "Se vuol ballare" ("Marriage of Figaro") Mozart "Non piu andrai" ("Marriage of Figaro") Mozart
La Prison...........Faurb
"L'Heureux vagabond"......Bruneau
The Bell Man.........Forsyth
The Velvet Shoes......R. Thompson
Dirge.......... V. Thomson
I Due tarli..........Zandonai
II Maritino 1
II Cacciatore del bosco [ . Arr. by Sinigaglia
Novara 0 la bella I
"II Lacerato spirito" ("Simon Boccanegra") Verdi
CLIFFORD CURZON, Pianist November 27, 1948
Andante and Variations, F minor . . . Haydn Rondon a capriccio, Op. 129 ... .Beethoven Sonata, G minor, Op. 22 .... Schumann Four Impromptus, Op. 90 .... Scuuqert Sonata in B minor........Liszt
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Serge Koussevitsky, Conductor
December 6, 1948
Symphony for Strings......Honegger
Two "Gymnopedies"........Sates
Scythian Suite, Op. 20.....YvoKormrr
Symphony No. 1, C minor .... Bkahms
GINETTE NEVEU, Violinist
Jean Neveu at the Piano
January 8, 1949
Concerto in G major.......Mozart
Chaconne (for violin alone).....Bach
Sonata in A major.......Brahms
Piece en forme de habanera.....Ravel
Etude in Thirds........Scriabin
Nocturne et tarentelle .... Szymanowski
VLADIMIR HOROWITZ, Pianist February 11, 1949
Impromptu, G major. Op. 90 ... Schubert Sonata, D major, No. 3 .... Beethoven Pictures at an Exhibition . . . Moussorgsky Ballade No. 3
Chopin
Nocture, E minor
Nocturne, F-sharp
Etude, C-sharp minor
Mazurka, F minor
Rakoczy March.....Arr. by Horowitz
NATHAN MILSTEIN, Violinist
Artur Balsam at the Piano
March 4, 1949
Adagio, K. 261.........Mozart
Adagio and Fugue, G minor.....Bach
Sonata, D minor........Brahms
"Paganiniana".........Milstein
Concerto, G minor ..... Bruch
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Fritz Busch, Guest Conductor
March 27, 1949
Overture, "Luisa Miller"......Vekdi
Symphony No. 92, G major .... Haydn Variations on a Theme by Haydn,
Op. 56a...........Brahms
Symphony No. 2, D major . . . Beethoven
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Third Annual Extra Concert Series
MARIAN ANDERSON, Contralto
Franz Rupp at the Piano
October 14, 1948
Te Deum...........Handel
Serse, Recitative and Aria.....Handel
Come raggio di sol.......Caldaba
Che fiero costume.......Legrenzi
Suleika
Wohin
SCHOBERT
Der Doppelganger
Der Erlkonig J
"Suicido" ("La Gioconda") . . . Ponchielli
Night on Ways Unknown Has Fallen . Grippes
Blow, Thou Winter Wind.....Quilter
Sweet Nightingale.......Arr. Rupp
Yarmouth Fair.......Arr. Warlock
Steal Away.......Arr. Burleioh
Oh, What a Beautiful City . . Arr. Boatner
Crucifixion..........Arr. Payne
Roll, Jord'n, Roll......Arr. Johnson
CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Thor Johnson, Conductor
November 15, 1948
Overture, "Russian and Ludmilla" . . Glinka Symphony No. 35, D major .... Mozart "Job," Masque .... Vadghan Williams
Midsummer Vigil, Op. 19.....Alfven
Suite, "Der Rosenkavalier" .... Stbauss
RUDOLF SERKIN, Pianist December 3, 1948
Italian Concerto..........Bach
Sonata, F-sharp major.....Beethoven
Phantasie, C major.......Schubert
Two Romanzen, Op. 28 .... Schumann
Scherzo in E minor.....Mendelssohn
Two Songs Without Words . . Mendelssohn
Ballade, A-flat, Op. 47......Chopin
Tarentelle, Op. 43........Chopin
HEIFETZ
Emanuel Bay at the Piano February 19, 1949
Sonata No. 8..........Mozart
Concerto No. 5.......Vieuxtemps
Partita, E major.........Bach
Caprice No. 20 1 Paganini-Kkeislbk
Caprice No. 13 J
Tzigane............Ravel
INDIANAPOLIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Fabien Sevttzky, Conductor
March 13, 1949
"Roman Carnival" Overture .... Berlioz
Sei Danze Antiche.....Vinci-Gtjebrini
Essay No. 1..........Barbes
"Porgy and Bess" . , . Bennett-Gershwin Symphony No. 5, E minor . . . Tchaikovsky
Ninth Annual Chamber Music Festival
THE PAGANINI QUARTET
Henri Temianka, First Violin Gustav Rosseels, Second Violin Robert Courte, Viola Adolphe Frezin, Violoncello
Friday Evening, January 14, 1949
Quartet, E-flat, No. 1......Schobert
Quartet, F major, No. 1 .... Beethoven Quartet, C major, K. 465.....Mozakt
Saturday Evening, January 15, 1949
Quartet, G major, No. 1......Haydn
Quartet No. 3.........Jacobi
Quartet, E-flat, Op. 127 . . . . Beethoven
Sunday Afternoon, January 16, 1949
Quartet, B-flat, No. 6.....Beethoven
Quartet No. 7........Milhaud
Quartet, D major........Feancx
Annual Christmas Concerts
MESSIAH
George Frtedrich Handel December 11 and 12, 1948
soloists:
Doris Doree, Soprano Nan Merriman, Contralto Frederick Jagel, Tenor John Gurney, Bass
University Choral Union
University Musical Society Orchestra
Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist
Lester McCoy, Conductor
[i05]
CONCERTS FOR 1949-1950
SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
Artur Rubinstein, Pianist...........October 4
Vienna Boys Choir.............October 15
Boston Symphony, Charles Munch, Conductor .... October 23 Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, Conductor . . November 6
Italo Tajo, Bass..............November 16
Rise Stevens, Mezzo-Sop-ano.........December 5
Cincinnati Symphony, Thor Johnson, Conductor . . . January 17
Myra Hess, Pianist.............February 17
Pittsburgh Symphony, Paul Paray, Guest Conductor . February 23 Zino Francescatti, Violinist...........March 20
FOURTH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES
Nelson Eddy, Baritone............October 9
Boston Symphony, Charles Munch, Conductor . . . October 25
Tossy Spivakovsky, Violinist..........November 22
Carroll Glenn, Violinist and Eugene List, Pianist . . January 6
Chicago Symphony, Fritz Reiner, Guest Conductor . . March 12
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
"Messiah" (Handel)........December 10 and 11, 1949
Chloe Owen, Sop-ano Oscar Natzka, Bass
Anna Kaskas, Contralto Choral Union and Orchestra
David Lloyd, Tenor Lester McCoy, Conductor
TENTH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL Budapest String Quartet......January 13, 14, 15, 1950
Josef Roismann, Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola
Jac Gorodetzky, Violin Mischa Schneider, Violoncello
FIFTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL Six Concerts ...".........May 4, 5, 6, 7, 1950
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, and Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor; University Choral Union, Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor and Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor; Festival Youth Chorus, Marguerite Hood, Conductor. Soloists to be announced.