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UMS Concert Program, October 22: Boston Symphony Orchestra -- Henry Lee Higginson

Day
22
Month
October
Year
1950
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(This is the program provided by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for this concert. You can also view the UMS program).

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OCR Text

Season: 1950-1951
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor

FOUNDED IN 1881 BY
SEVENTIETH SEASON
I95Q"1 95 i
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor
Sunday Evening, October 22
SEVENTY-SECOND ANNUAL CHORAL UNION CONCERT SERIES. OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AUSPICES, UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Boston Symphony Orchestra
[Seventieth Season, 1950-1951] CHARLES MUNCH, Music Director
RICHARD BURGIN, Associate Conductor PERSONNEL
Violins
Richard Hurgin, Concert-n)asltr
Alfred Krips Gaslon Elcus Rolland Tapley Norbert l.auga George Zaolsky I'aul Cherkassky Harry Dubbs Vladimir Rcsnikofl Joseph Leibovici Kinar Hansen Harry Dickson Fmil koinsand Carlos Piulield Paul l'edoro.iky Minot Hcale Hennan Silberinan Roger Schermanski
Clarence Knudson Pierre Mayer Manuel ting Samuel Diamond Victor Manusevitch James Nagy Leon Gorodctzky Raphael Del Sordo Melvin Hryanl John Murray Lloyd Stonesdeet Henri Erkelens Saverio Messina Stanley Benson Sheldon Rotenberg Gottfried Wilfinger
Basses
Georges Moleux Willis Page Ludwig Juht Irving Frankel Henry Greenberg Henry Portnoi Gaston Dufresne Henri Girard Henry Freeman John Barwicki
Violas
Joseph de Pasquale Jean Caiihapc Georges Fourcl I ugen Lchncr Albert Bernard George Humphrey Jerome Lipson Louis Ar-lieres Robert Karol Reuben Green Charles Van Wynbeigeii Siegfried Gerhardt
Violoncellos Samuel Mayes Alfred Zighcra acobus Langendoen Mischa Nicland Hippolyle Droeghmans Karl Zeise osef imbler Bernard Parronchi Knrico Fabrizio Leon Marjollet
Flutis
(jcorges Laurent James Pappoutsakis Phillip Kaplan
Piccolo George Madsen
Oboes
Ralph Gomberg Jean Devergie Joseph Lukatsky
English Horn Louis Speyer
Clarinets Gino Cloffi Manuel Valerio Pasquale Cardillo
E Clarinet
Bass Clarinet Rosa no Mazzeo
Bassoons
Raymond Allan! Ernst I'ancnkn Theodore Brewstcr
Contra-Bassoon Bnaz I'iller
Horns
James Stagliano Harry Shapiro Harold Meek Paul Kcancy Walter Macdonald Osl)ourne MrCoiiathy
TRUMPETS Roger Voisin Marcel I.afossc Harry Herforth Rene1 Voisin
Tromhonks Jacob Raichman I.ucien Hansolte John Coffey Josef Orosz
Tuba Vinal Smith
Harps
Bernard Zighcra Klford Caughey
TlMl'ANI
Roman Szulc Cliarlcs Smith
Percussion Max Polster Simon Sternberg A'iclor di Stefano
Librarians Leslie Rogers Leonard Durkat
Hill Auditorium [University of Michigan] Ann Arboi
SEVENTIETH SEASON, 1950-1951 '
Boston Symphony Orchestra
CHARLES MUNCH, Music Director Richard Burgin, Associate Conductor
Concert Bulletin of the First Concert
SUNDAY EVENING, October 22
with historical and descriptive notes by John N. Burk
The TRUSTEES of the BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, Inc.
Henry B. Cabot . President
Jacob J. Kaplan . Vice-President
Richard C. Paine . Treasurer
Philip R. Allen John Nicholas Brown Theodore P. Ferris Alvan T. Fuller N. Penrose Hallowell Francis W. Hatch
M. A. De Wolfe Howe Charles D. Jackson Lewis Perry Edward A. Taft Raymond S. Wilkins Oliver Wolcott
George E. Judd, Manager T. D. Perry, Jr. N. S. Shirk, Assistant Managers
Air View of Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts
Plan to visit Tanglewood next summer. Detailed announcements of the Berkshire Festival and the Berkshire Music Center will be sent upon request.
Address George E. Judd, Manager Symphony Hall, Boston 15, Massachusetts
Hill Auditorium [University of Michigan] Ann Arbor
Boston Symphony Orchestra
CHARLES MUNCH, Music Director
SUNDAY EVENING, October 22, at 8:30 o'clock
Program
Beethoven........................Overture to "Fidelio," Op. 72b
Beethoven..................Symphony No. 1, in C major, Op. 21
I. Adagio molto; Allegro con brio
II. Andante cantabile con moto
III. Menuetto: Allegro molto e vivace
IV. Finale: Adagio: Allegro molto vivace
INTERMISSION
Beethoven......Symphony No. 3, in E-flat major, "Eroica," Op. 55
I. Allegro con brio
II. Marcia funebrc: Adagio assai
III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace
IV. Finale: Allegro molto
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Broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal are given on the National Broadcasting Company Network Consult your local station
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OVERTURE TO "FIDELIO," Up. 72
By Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, December 16 () , 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827
Beethoven composed this Overture for the revival o£ his opera in 1814. It was not completed in time for the first performance.
The Overture requires two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and strings.
The record of the four overtures which Beethoven wrote for Fidelio is in line with the revisions of the score itself. For the first production of Fidelio in Vienna, November 20, 1805, Beethoven wrote the superb overture which later came to be known as "Leonore No. 2." Rewriting the overture for the second production in the year following, using similar material, he gave it different stress, a greater and more rounded symphonic development. The result was the so-called "Leonore No. 3." When again the opera was thoroughly changed for the Vienna production of 1814, Beethoven realized that his fully developed overture was quite out of place at the head of his opera, and he accordingly wrote a typical theatre overture, soon permanently known as the Fidelio overture, since it was publicly accepted and became one with the opera.
The poet Treitschke has related that Beethoven, intending to write a suitable overture for this production, postponed it until the last moment. "The final rehearsal was on May 22 [1814], but the promised new overture was still in the pen of the creator." On that day, or just before, Beethoven dined with his friend Bertolini in the Romischer Kaiser. He turned over the menu and drew a staff. Bertolini suggested leaving, as they had finished, but Beethoven said, "No, wait a little, I have the idea for my overture," and he covered the sheet with sketches. "The orchestra," continues Treitschke, "was called to rehearsal on the morning of the performance.
The so-called "Leonore" Overture No. 1, a posthumous score, for a long time attributed to the intended Prague production of 1808, has since been established as an early (and so properly numbered) score.
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The Faculty of the Conservatory includes many members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and instruction is olfered in all orchestral instruments at the Conservatory by principals or leading members of the Orchestra. Ensemble and Orchestral Training.
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"Beethoven did not come. After waiting a long time we drove to his lodgings to fetch him, but -he lay in bed, sleeping soundly, beside him stood a goblet with wine and a biscuit, and the sheets of the overture were scattered on the bed and the floor. A burnt-out candle showed that he had worked far into the night. The impossibility of completing the overture was plain; for this occasion his overture to 'Prometheus' was used."
Schindler has it that another of the Leonore Overtures was "substituted -Seyfried that it was the Ruins of Athens Overture. But the so-called Fidelio Overture took its plac'e when ready, and has served ever since as the most suitable to introduce the opera. It prepares the audience for the opening scene of Marcelline with her ironing and her Singspiel suitor, as certainly as the two imposing predecessors do not."
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SYMPHONY NO. 1 in C MAJOR, Op. 21
By Ludwig van Beethoven Born at Bonn, December 16 (), 1770; died at Vienna, March 26, 1827
The original manuscript of this symphony has not been found, and there is no certainty as to when it was composed, but sketches for the Finale were found among the exercises in counterpoint which the young composer made for Albrechtsberger as
JULES WOLFFERS
PIANIST TEACHER LECTURER
BOSTON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC
25 Blacden Street Boston 16, Massachusetts
AEOLIAN-SKINNER ORGAN COMPANY, INC.
Boston, Massachusetts
Builders of the Organs in Symphony Hall,
Boston and Tanglewood, Massachusetts
President -G. Donald Harrison
Vice Pres. -William E. Zf.uch
Vice Pres. -Joseph S. Whiteford
early as 1795. It was on April 2, 1800, in Vienna, that this symphony had its first performance. It was published in parts at the end of 1801. The full score did not appear in print until 1820.
The orchestration includes two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings. The score is dedicated to Baron van Swieten.
Beethoven, giving his first public concert in Vienna "for his own benefit," after making due obeisance to the past with a symphony of Mozart and airs from Haydn's "Creation," submitted his popular septet, and one of his piano concertos, playing, of course, the solo part; he also improvised upon the pianoforte. Finally he presented to the audience his newly completed Symphony in C major. Thp concert was received with marked interest, and a certain amount of critical approval. Indeed the young man was not without a reputation in Vienna as a pianist with almost uncanny powers of improvisation, who had written a number of sonatas, trios, quartets, and sets of variations. In the orchestral field he had not yet committed himself, save in two early cantatas (never published) and in the two piano concertos (in B-flat and in C) which he had written a few years before for his own use.
The introductory Adagio molto, only twelve bars in length, seems to take its cue from Haydn, and hardly foreshadows the extended introductions of the Second, Fourth and Seventh symphonies to come. There once was learned dissension over the very first bars, because the composer chose to open in the not so alien key of F, and to lead his hearers into G major. The composer makes amends with a main theme which proclaims its tonality by hammering insistently upon its tonic. With this polarizing theme he can leap suddenly from one key to another without ambiguity. The second theme, of orthodox contrasting, and "feminine" character, seems as plainly designed to bring into play the alternate blending voices of the wood winds.
The theme itself of the Andante cantabile was one of those inspirations which at once took the popular fancy. The way in which the composer begins to develop it in -contrapuntal imitation could have been suggested by his recent studies with Albrechtsberger. The ready invention, the development of a fragment of rhythm or melody into fresh and charming significance, the individual treatment of the various instruments confirms what was already evident in the development of the first movement -Beethoven's orchestral voice already assured and distinct, speaking through the formal periods which he had not yet cast off.
The "Minuet," so named, is more than the prophecy ot a scherzo with its swifter tempo -allegro molto e vivace. Although the re[7]
'"fora con
dudor"
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peats, the trio and da capo are quite in the accepted mold of the Haydnesque minuet, the composer rides freely on divine whims of modulation and stress of some passing thought, in a way which disturbed the pedants of the year 1800. Berlioz found the scherzo "of exquisite freshness, lightness, and grace -the one true original thing in this symphony."
It is told of the capricious introductory five bars of the Finale, in which the first violins reveal the ascending scale of the theme bit by bit, that Turk, cautious conductor at Halle in 1809, made a practice of omitting these bars in fear thai the audience would be moved to laughter. The key progressions, the swift scale passages, the typical eighteenth-century sleight of hand, allies this movement more than the others with current ways. It was the ultimate word, let us say, upon a form which had reached with Haydn and Mozart its perfect crystallization, and after which there was no alternative but a new path.
[copVRir.im-.nl
SYMPHONY NO. 3 in E-FLAT, "EROICA," Op. 55 By Ludwig van Beethoven
Born at Bonn, December 16), 1770: died at Vienna, March 26, 1827
Composed in the years 1802-1804, the Third Symphony was first performed ai a private concert in the house of Prince von Lobkowitz in Vienna, December, 1804, the composer conducting. The first public performance was at the Theater an der Wirn, April 7, 1805. The parts were published in 1806, and dedicated to Prince von Lobkowitz. The score was published in 1820.
The symphony is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Those who have listened to the Eroica Symphony have been reminded, perhaps too often, that the composer once destroyed in anger a dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte. The music, as one returns to it in the course of succeeding years, seems to look beyond Napoleon, as if it really never had anything to do with the man who once fell short of receiving a dedication. Sir George Grove once wrote: "Though
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the Eroica was a portrait of Bonaparte, it is as much a portrait of Beethoven himself -but that is the case with everything he wrote." Sir George's second remark was prophetic of the present point of view. His first statement represented an assumption generally held a half century ago, but now more seldom encountered.
The concept of heroism which plainly shaped this symphony, and which sounds through so much of Beethoven's music, would give no place to a self-styled "Emperor" who was ambitious to bring all Europe into vassalage, and ready to crush out countless lives in order to satisfy his ambition. If the Eroica had ever come to Napoleon's attention, which it probably did not, its inward nature would have been quite above his comprehension -not to speak, of course, of musical comprehension. Its suggestion is of selfless heroes, those who give their lives to overthrow tyrants and liberate oppressed peoples. Egmont was such a hero, and so was Leonore. The motive that gave musical birth to those two characters also animated most of Beethoven's music, varying in intensity, but never in kind. It grew from the thoughts and ideals that had nurtured the French Revolution.
Beethoven was never more completely, more eruptively revolutionary than in his Eroica Symphony. Its first movement came from all that was defiant in his nature. He now tasted to the full the intoxication of artistic freedom. This hunger for freedom was one of his deepest impulses, and it was piqued by his sense of servitude to titles. Just or not, the resentment was real to him, and it increased his kinship with the commoner, and his ardent republicanism. The Eroica, of course, is no political document, except in the degree that it was the deep and inclusive expression of the composer's point of view at the time. And there was much on his heart. This was the first outspoken declaration of independence by an artist who had outgrown the mincing restrictions of a salon culture in the century just ended. But, more than that, it was a reassertion of will power. The artist, first confronted with the downright threat of total deafness, answered by an unprecedented outpouring of his creative faculties. There, especially, lie the struggle, the domination, the suffering, and the triumph of the Eroica Symphony. The heroism that possesses the first movement is intrepidity where faith and strength become one, a strength which exalts and purifies. The funeral march, filled with hushed mystery, has no odor of mortality; death had no place in Beethoven's thoughts as artist. The spirit which gathers and rises in the middle portion sweeps inaction aside and becomes a life assertion. The shouting triumph of the variation Finale has no tramp of heavy, crushing feet; it is a jubilant exhortation to all mankind, a foreshadowing of the Finales of the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. It is entirely incongruous as applied to the vain and preening Corsican and his bloody exploits.
Beethoven may once have had some misty idea of a noble liberator; he was to have an increasingly bitter experience of the misery which spread in Napoleon's wake.
The Third Symphony is set down by Paul Henry Lang, in his Music in Western Civilization, as "one of the incomprehensible deeds in arts and letters, the greatest single step made by an individual composer in the history of the symphony and the history of music in general." The statement is well considered; it looms in a summation which is broad, scholarly, and musically penetrating. Indeed, wonderment at that mighty project of the imagination and will is not lessened by the passing years. Contemplating the harmless docilities of the First and Second Symphonies, one looks in vain for a "new road" taken so readily with so sure and great a stride. Wagner's Ring following Lohengrin, Brahms' First Symphony -these triumphant assertions of will power were achieved only after years of germination and accumulated force. With Beethoven, spiritual transformations often came swiftly and without warning. Having completed his Second Symphony in the summer of 1802 at Heiligenstadt, he forthwith turned his back upon the polite patterns of Haydn and Mozart.
The moment was the most critical in his life. The realization came upon him in that summer that deafness must be accepted, an ironic blotting out of the precious faculty of his calling, shutting him from converse with the world of tone and the world of men. He contemplated suicide, but seized upon the thought that living to compose was his one great duty and resource. To Dr. Wegeler, one of the two friends whom he could bring himself to tell of his deafness, he wrote in a letter of resurgent determination, "I will take Fate by the throat." The Eroica was his direct act of taking "Fate by the throat," for the first sketches are attributed by Nouebohm to October, 1802, the very month of the Heiligenstadt Will. In this sense, the idealized heroism of the Symphony can be nothing else than autobiographical. It is not explicitly so, for Beethoven would not reveal his secret tragedy; not even consciously so, for the deeper motivations of Beethoven were quite instinctive.
As his notebooks show, he forged his heroic score with a steady onslaught, expanding the inherited form almost beyond recognition, yet preserving its balance and symmetry. The plans for each movement but the scherzo were laid in the first fever of creation. But Beethoven seems to have been in no great hurry to complete his task. The work "I am not satisfied," said Beethoven to Krumpholz in 1802. "with my works up to the present time. From today I mean to take a new road." (This on the authority of Czerny -¦'Recollection of Beethoven.")
manship in detail is largely attributed to his summer sojourns of 1803 at Baden and at Ober-Dobling. Ries remembered seeing the fair copy in its finished state upon the composer's table in the early spring of 1804.
Musicians have never ceased to wonder at the welded and significant organism ot the exposition in the first movement, the outpouring invention and wealth of episodes in the working out, the magnificence and freshness of the coda. The unity of purpose, the clarity amid profusion, which the Symphony's early critics failed to perceive, extends no less to the Funeral march, the scherzo, the variation finale -forms then all quite apart from symphonic practice. One whose creative forces r;m in this wiffls could well ignore precedent, and extend his score to the unheard-of length of three quarters of an hour.
Certain definitely established facts, as well as legends based on tne sometimes too fertile memories of his friends, surround Beethoven's programmistic intentions regarding theEroica Symphony. Ries told how in the early spring of 1804, he saw the completed sheets upon Beethoven's work table with the word "Buonaparte" at the top, "Luigi van Beethoven" at the bottom, a blank space between; how when he told Beethoven a few weeks later that the "First-Consul" had proclaimed himself "Emperor of the French," pushing the Pope aside and setting the crown on his own head, the composer flew into a rage, and tore the title page in two. Schindler confirms this tale, having heard it from Count Moritz Lichnowsky. The manuscript copy (not in Beethoven's script, but freely marked by him) which has come down to posterity and which is now at the Library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, has a different title page. It reads: "SLnfonin Grande -Intitulata Bonaparte -804 in August -del Sigr. Louis van Beethoven -Sinfonia 3, Op. 55." The words "Intitulata Bonaparte" have been blotted out, but can still be traced. Under his name in lead pencil, now barely discernible, Beethoven has written: "Geschrieben aul limiaparie." Beethoven wrote to Breitkopf and Hartel, August 26, 1804, offering them "a new grand symphony, really entitled Bonaparte, and in addition to the usual instruments there are specially three obbligaio horns. I believe it will interest the musical public." This was the Beethoven who liked to take the tone of a shrewd business man,
Beethoven is said to have retorted to those who vigorously protested the length of the Eroica: "If I write a symphony ati hour long, it will be found short enough !" And so he did. with his Ninth. He must have realized, however, the incapacity of contemporary audiences, when he affixed to the published parts (and later to the score) of the Eroica: "Since this symphony is longer than an ordinary symphony, it should be performed at the beginning rather than at the end of a concert, either after an overture or an aria, or after a concerto. If it be performed too late, there is the danger that it will not produce on the audifni-f. whose attention will be already wearied by preceding pieces, the elTect which .the composer purposed in his own mind to attain."
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and also the Beethoven who devised his dedications with a cold eye for expediency. The symphony "written on Bonaparte" was finally published as "Sinfonia Eroica, composed to celebrate the memory of a great Man." The inscription might well have been put this way: "Composed in memory of greatness dreamed by a musician and forfeited by a statesman."
The immense step from the Second Symphony to the Third is primarily an act of the imagination. The composer did not base his new power on any new scheme; he kept the form of the salon symphony which, as it stood, could have been quite incongruous to his every thought, and began furiously to expand and transform. The exposition is a mighty projection of 155 bars, music of concentrated force, wide in dynamic and emotional range, conceived apparently in one great sketch, where the pencil could hardly keep pace with the outpouring thoughts. There are no periodic tunes here, but fragments of massive chords, and sinuous rhythms, subtly articulated but inextricable, meaningless as such except in their context. Every bar bears the heroic stamp. There is no melody in the conventional sense, but in its own sense the music is melody unbroken, in long ebb and flow, vital in every part. Even before the development is reached the composer has taken us through mountains and valleys, shown us the range, the universality of his subject. The development is still more incredible, as it extends the classical idea of a brief thematic interplay into a section of 250 bars. It discloses vaster scenery, in which the foregoing elements are newly revealed, in their turn generating others. The recapitulation (beginning with the famous passage where the horns mysteriously sound the returning tonic E-flat against a lingering dominant chord) restates the themes in the increased strength and beauty of fully developed acquaintance.
But still the story is not told. In an unprecedented coda of 140 bars, the much exploited theme and its satellites reappear in fresh guise, as if the artist's faculty of imaginative growth could never expend itself. This first of the long codas is one of the most astonishing parts of the Symphony. A coda until then had been little more than a brilliant close, an underlined cadence. With Beethoven it was a resolution in a deeper sense. The repetition of the subject matter in the reprise could not be for him the final word. The movement had been a narrative of restless action -forcefulness gathering, striding to its peak and breaking, followed by a gentler lyricism which in turn grew in tension until the cycle was repeated. The movement required at last an established point of repose. The coda sings the theme softly, in confident reverie under a new and delicate violin figure. As the coda takes its quiet course, the theme and its retinue of episodes are transfigured into tone poetry whence conflict is banished. The main theme, ringing and joyous, heard as never before, brings the end.
He first projected the movements conventionally, as the sketchbo
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The second movement, like the first, is one of conflicting impulses, but here assuaging melody contends, not with overriding energy, but with the broken accents of heavy sorrow. The legato second strain in the major eases the muffled minor and the clipped notes of the opening "march" theme, to which the oboe has lent a special somber shading. The middle section, in C major, begins with a calmer, elegiac melody, over animating staccato triplets from the strings. The triplets become more insistent, ceasing only momentarily for broad fateful chords, and at last permeating the scene with their determined rhythm, as if the composer were setting his indomitable strength against tragedy itself. The opening section returns as the subdued theme of grief gives its dark answer to the display of defiance. But it does not long continue. A new melody is heard in a fugato of the strings, an episode of quiet, steady assertion, characteristic of the resolution Beethoven found in counterpoint. The whole orchestra joins to drive the point home. But a tragic decrescendo and a reminiscence of the funeral first theme is again the answer. Now Beethoven thunders his protest in mighty chords over a stormy accompaniment. There is a long subsidence -a magnificent yielding this time -and a return of the first theme again, now set forth in full voice. As in the first movement, there is still lacking the final answer, and that answer comes in another pianissimo coda, measures where peacefulness is found and sorrow accepted, as the theme, broken into incoherent fragments, comes to its last concord.
The conquering life resurgence comes, not shatteringly, but in a breath-taking pianissimo, in the swiftest, most wondrous Scherzo Beethoven had composed. No contrast more complete could be imagined. The Scherzo is another exhibition of strength, but this time it is strength finely controlled, unyielding and undisputed. In the Trio, the horns, maintaining the heroic key of E-flat, deliver the principal phrases alone, in three-part harmony. The Scherzo returns with changes, such as the repetition of the famous descending passage of rhythmic displacement in unexpected duple time instead of syncopation. If this passage is "humorous," humor must be defined as the adroit and fanciful play of power.
And now in the Finale, the tumults of exultant strength are released. A dazzling flourish, and the bass of the theme is set forward simply by the plucked strings. It is repeated, its bareness somewhat adorned before the theme proper appears over it, by way of the wood winds. The variations disclose a fugato, and later a new theme, a sort of "second subject" in conventional martial rhythm but an inspiriting stroke of genius in itself. The fugato returns in more elaboration, in which the bass is inverted. The music takes a graver, more lyric pace for the last variation, a long poco andante. The theme at this tempo has a very different expressive beauty. There grows from it a new alternate theme (first given to the oboe and violin). The principal theme now strides majestically across the scene over triplets of increasing excitement which recall the slow movement. There is a gradual
The varied theme had already appeared under Beethoven's name as the finale of Prometheus, as a contra-dance, and as a set of pidno variations. Was this fourth use of it the persistent exploitation of a particularly workable tune, or the orchestral realization for which the earlier uses were as sketches The truth may He between.
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dying away in which the splendor of the theme, itself unheard, still lingers. A presto brings a gleaming close.
The recorded opinions of early performances have been many times quoted for the delight of succeeding generations. Among several private or semi-private performances in Vienna in the year 1805 was one in January, at the house of the banker Herr von Wiirth. A reviewer was present and wrote of it in the ALlgemeint Musikahsche Zeiiung. Whereas he called the First Symphony "a glorious art-creation" with "an extraordinary wealth of lovely ideas treated in the most splendid and graceful style, with coherence, order and clearness reigning throughout," the new symphony was "virtually a daring wild fantasia, of inordinate length and extreme difficulty ol execuiion." The writer found passages of beauty and force, "but," he said, "the work seems often to become lost in utter confusion." He finally condemned the score as "odd and harsh," and expressed his preference for a symphony by Eberl in the same key. It was at the first public performance, on April 7, that Heethoven, conducting, lound hiniM-ll ai odtN wiih the orchestra in the vigorous, syncopated chords of the first movement, and had to begin again. Ries tells how, ai a first rehearsal, "which whs horrible," he thought the horn had made a false eniranre in the famous passage where the composer, indulging an "evil whim" ("hose Laune") introduces the principal theme in the original kev against the dominant B-flat -A-fiat of the strings. "I srnnd heside Beethoven, and thinking that a blunder had been made. I said' 'Can't the damned hornist count -it sounds infamouslv false!' I think I rame pretty close to receiving a box on the ear. Beethoven did not forgive the slip for a long time."
?Instead of the word "work he might have substituted "critic.
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"sA JftCusical Education in One Volume" ""Boston's Remarkable Book of Knowledge"
m Lawrence Gilman in the N. Y. Herald and Tribune
Price $6.00 per volume Address: SYMPHON.Y HALL . BOSTON. MASS.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
CHARLES MUNCH, Music Director
SCHEDULE OF CONCERTS, Season 1950-1951
OCTOBER
Boston (Fri.-Sat. I)
10 Huston (Tues. A)
3-'4 Boston (Fri.-Sat. II)
7 Troy
18 Syracuse
9 Rochester
ao Buffalo
XI Detroit
33 Ann Arbor
23 Battle Creek
4 KalamaXK)
25 Ann Arbor
37-38 Boston (Fri.-Sat. Ill)
3l Providence (0
NOVEMBER
3-4 Boston (Fri.-Sat. IV)
5 Boston (Sun. a)
7 Cambridge (')
10-11 Boston (Fri.-Sat. V)
'4 New Haven (0
i New York ("Wed. 1)
16 Washington ()
7 Brooklyn ()
18 New York (Sat. 1)
XI Boston (Tues. B)
24-25 Boston (Fri.-Sat. VI)
28 Providence (2)
DKCEMBER
1-2 Boston (Fri.-Sat. VII)
3 Boston (Sun. b)
5 Newark
6 New York (Wed. 2)
7 Washington (2)
8 Brooklvn (2)
9 New York (Sat. S)
IX Cambridge (2)
15-16 Boston (Fri.-Sat. VIII)
9 Boston (Tues. C)
22-33 Boston (Fri.-Sat. IX)
29-3O Boston (Fri.-Sat. X)
JANUARY
2 Providence (3)
3 Boston (Pension Fund)
5- Boston (Fri.-Sat. XI)
9 Boston CTues. D)
lit--13 Boston I ri.-Sat. XII)

i6 New London
¦7 New York (Wed. 3)
'9 Brooklyn (3)
120 New York (Sat. 3)
3 Cambridge (3)
2(5-27 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XIII)
28 Boston (Sun. c)
30 Boston (Tues. E)
FEBRUARY
2-3 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XIV)
6 Providence (4)
9-10 Hoston (Fri.-Sat. XV)
12 Philadelphia
3 Washington (3)
'4 New York (Wed. 4)
1.5 Newark
16 Brooklyn (4)
17 New York (Sat. 4)
l!0 Boston (Tiics. F)
23-24 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XVI)
2.5 Boston (Sun. d)
Cambridge (4)
MARCH
2-3 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XVII)
G Boston. (Tues. G)
9-10 Boston (Fri.-Sat.XVlII)
12 Hartford
'3 New Haven
l4 New York (Weil. 5)
15 New Brunswick
16 Brooklyn (5)
l7 New York (Sat. 5)
20 Boston (Tues. H)
23-24 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XIX)
27 Cambridge (5)
30-31 Boston CFri.-Sat. XX)
APRIL
1 Hoston (Sun. e)
3 Providence (5)
6-7 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XXI)
10 Cambridge (6)
13-M Boston (Fri.-Sat. XXII)
17 Boston (Pension Fund)
20-21 Boston (Fri.-Sat.XXIII)
22 Boston (Sun. f)
24 Boston (Tues. I)
87-28 Boston (Fri.-Sat. XXIV)

No greater tribute
o greater tribute can be paid any instrument than its selection and continued use by the truly great orchestras of its time.
The choice of the Baldwin by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and by Charles Munch, Conductor, is the finest tribute that could be paid to Baldwin quality.
THE
BALDWIN PIANO COMPANY
760 B o y I s t o n Street Boston, Massachusetts

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