UMS Concert Program, May 1, 2, 3, 4, 1952: The Fifty-ninth Annual May Festival -- The Philadelphia Orchestra

Concert: SIXTH
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

THE FIFTYNINTH ANNUAL
MAY FESTIVAL
NINETEEN HUNDRED FIFTYTWO
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Official Program of the FiftyNinth Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
May 1, 2, 3, 4,1952 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. . VicePresident
Shirley W. Smith, A.M., LL.D........Secretary
Oscar A. Eberbach, A.B..........Treasurer
Roscoe 0. Bonisteel, LL.B. . . Assistant SecretaryTreasurer
James R. Breakey, Jr., A.B., A.M., LL.B. Harlan Hatcher, Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D. Harley A. Haynes, M.D. 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 FIFTYNINTH ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
CONDUCTORS
Eugene Ormandy, Orchestral Conductor Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Orchestral Conductor Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Marguerite Hood, Youth Chorus Conductor
SOLOISTS
Eleanor Steber.............Soprano
Patrice Munsel.............Soprano
Astrid Varnay..............Soprano
Patricia Neway.............Soprano
Set Svanholm..............Tenor
Mack Harrell.............Baritone
Philip Duey..............Baritone
George London..............Bass
Nathan Milstein............Violinist
Guiomar Novaes.............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, to the members of the Choral Union and the Univer?sity Musical Society Orchestra 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; and to the teachers, in the various schools from which the young people have been drawn, for their cooperation. Appreciation is also expressed to the Philadelphia Orchestra, to Eugene Ormandy, its distinguished conductor, and to Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor; as well as to Manager Had Mc?Donald and his administrative staff.
The Author of the annotations expresses his appreciation to Louise Goss for her assistance in collecting materials, to Donald Engle, annotator for the Phila?delphia Orchestra, for his cooperation, and to the late Lawrence Gilman, whose scholarly analyses, in the program books of the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestras, are authoritative contributions to contemporary criti?cism.
The Steinway is the official concert piano of the University Musical Society and the Lester Grand piano 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 in order to ensure continuance of the high quality of the concerts. All contributions will be utilized in main?taining 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 1, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
ELEANOR STEBER, Soprano
PROGRAM
Short Symphony..............Howard Swanson
Allegro moderato Andante Allegro giocoso
Motet: "Exsultate, jubilate," K.16S...........Mozart
Eleanor Steber
Love Scene from Feuersnot, Op. SO........Richard Strauss
INTERMISSION
Ballet Suite, Le Festin dl'araignie, Op, 17.........Roussel
Recitative, "Nun eilt herbei," and Aria, "Frohsinn und Laune" from
Die lustigcn Weiber von Windsor..........Nicolai
Marietta's Lied from Die tote Stadt...........Korngold
Csardas from Die Fledermans..........Johann Strauss
Miss Steber
?Suite No. 2 from the Ballet, Daphnis et Chloi........Ravel
Columbia Records
The supplementary orchestra parts for the Roussel Ballet Suite are through the courtesy of the Edwin A. Fleischer Music Collection, The Free Library of Philadelphia.
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SECOND MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 2. at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
PROGRAM
The Damnation oj Faust, Dramatic Legend in Four Parts, Op. 24 . Berlioz
cast
PATRICIA NEWAY, Soprano...........Marguerite
SET SVANHOLM, Tenor...............Faust
PHILIP DTJEY, Baritone..............Brander
GEORGE LONDON, Bass...........Mephistopheles
I. Plains of Hungary
II. Faust's Study (in North Germany); Auerbach's Cellar (in Leipzig); On the Banks of the Elbe
INTERMISSION
III. Marguerite's Chamber
IV. Marguerite's Chamber; Cavern and Forest; The Ride to Hell; Pandemonium
Epilogue. On Earth; In Heaven; Marguerite's Glorification.
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THIRD MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 3, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ALEXANDER HILSBERG, Associate Conductor
THE FESTIVAL YOUTH CHORUS MARGUERITE HOOD, Conductor
SOLOIST
NATHAN MILSTEIN, Violinist
PROGRAM ?Overture to Russian and LudmiUa............Glinka
Song Cycle from the Masters........Arr. Russell Howland
FESTIVAL YOUTH CHORUS
?Symphony No. 5 in Bflat major............Schubert
Allegro
Andante con moto Menuetto: allegro molto Allegro vivo
INTERMISSION
Concerto in A minor, Op. 53, for Violin and Orchestra.....Dvorak
Allegro ma non troppo Adagio ma non troppo Allegro giocoso ma non troppo
Nathan Milstein
1 Columbia Records
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FOURTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Evening, May 3, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOISTS
ASTRID VARNAY, Soprano SET SVANHOLM, Tenor
PROGRAM
Compositions of Richard Wagner Overture to Die fiiegende Hollander
Act I, Scene III, from Die Walkiire (Siegmund and Sieglinde) Astrid Varnay and Set Svanholm
INTERMISSION
Prelude to Tristan und Isolde
Night Scene--Act II, Scene II, from Tristan und Isolde Miss Varnay and Mr. Svanholm
FIFTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 4, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
SOLOIST
GUIOMAR NOVAES, Pianist MACK HARRELL, Baritone
PROGRAM
Overture to Leonore, No. 3, Op. 72..........Beethoven
"Belshazzar's Feast".............William Walton
University Choral Union and Mack Harrell
INTERMISSION
?Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, for Piano and Orchestra . . Beethoven Allegro moderato Andante con moto Rondo: vivace
GUIOMAR NOVAES Columbia Records
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SIXTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 4, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
PATRICE MUNSEL, Soprano
PROGRAM Passacaglia..................Hans Haug
"Chacun le sait" from La Fille du regiment .......Donizetti
"0 mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi........Puccini
"Mi chiamano Mimi" from La Boheme..........Puccini
Patrice Munsel
Symphony No. 5 in Eflat major, Op. 82..........Sibelius
Tempo molto moderato
Allegro moderato, ma poco a poco stretto Andante mosso, quasi allegretto Allegro molto
INTERMISSION
Lucy's Arietta, from The Telephone......GianCarlo Menotti
Willow Song...............ColeridgeTaylor
Miss Munsell
Suite from Die Fledermaus...........Johann Strauss
Overture.................Orchestra
"Do You Still Belong To Me"..........Orchestra
"I've a Sister"..............Miss Munsel
"What a Lovely Rendezvous" ......... Orchestra
"A Lady's Name" ............ Miss Munsel
"TickTack" Polka ............. Orchestra
"Look Me Over Once"...........Miss Munsel
Finale, Act II...............Orchestra
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ANNOTATIONS
by GLENN D. McGEOCH
FIRST CONCERT
Thursday Evening, May 1 Short Symphony.............Swanson
Howard Swanson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, August 18, 1909; now living in New York City.
Last January the Music Critic's Circle of New York City voted awards for the most outstanding new compositions heard in that city during the previous fifteenmonth period. For the first time this organization, which had previously limited its citations to American composers, opened its annual awards to those of all nationalities. It was a particular honor therefore, that, considering the keen competition offered by such wellknown names in contemporary music as Arthur Honegger, William Schuman, Aaron Copland, Paul Creston, and Peter Mennin, the award for the best symphonic piece should go to a hitherto generally unknown American Negro composer, Howard Swanson. It was also an indication of the indisputable fact that a composer of significance had been publically recognized.
Mr. Swanson's career has not been spectacular. He began the study of music at the age of twelve; at twenty he entered the Cleveland Institute of Music as a composition pupil of Herbert Elwell, and at graduation in 1937 received a fellow?ship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Since his return to this country in 1941, he has devoted himself to composition. His work, however, has not been entirely unknown to musicians. He had already revealed himself as a sen?sitive artist and a meticulous craftsman in an orchestral work, Night Music, four piano preludes and a sonata, a suite for cello, and numerous songs. His talent is essentially lyrical, and the often drastic harmonic and rhythmic devices that plague so much contemporary American composition are refreshingly absent from his work. There remains, however, a strong individuality of style and idiom that is marked by profundity of musical thought and intensity of feeling.
The "Short Symphony" was commissioned by Dimitri Mitropoulos in 1948 and performed for the first time under hjs direction by the New York PhilharmonicSymphony, November 23, 1950. It takes only twelve minutes to perform and evolves from a concise central theme that is intensively developed throughout three traditionally formed symphonic movements. The emotional impact of this remarkably effective work is as direct in its appeal as its material is compact and its form concentrated.
Motet "Exsultate, jubilate," K. 165.......Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born at Salzburg, Janu?ary 27, 17S6; died at Vienna, December 5, 1791.
In its diversity and scope, the music of Mozart is perhaps the most astonish?ing achievement in the history of European art. Wherever he directed his pen, to the creation of opera, serious or comic, to cantata, mass, chamber music,
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sonata, or symphony, he left imperishable masterpieces. In more than six hun?dred works, created at a breathless speed during his short span of less than thirtysix years, Mozart revealed a universality unknown to any other composer, for his art was founded upon a thorough assimilation and sublimation of the prevailing Italian, French, and German styles of his period; and he carried to perfection all instrumental and vocal forms of his day. No composer ever re?vealed simultaneously such creative affluence and such unerring instinct for beauty; few artists in any age have been so copious and yet so controlled, or have so consistently sustained throughout their creative lives such a high level of artistic excellence.
In November of 1772, Mozart, then seventeen years of age, arrived in Milan, Italy, to finish his opera Lucio SUla. The continued success of the opera after its premiere on December 26 inspired Mozart to create for one of its principal singers, the male soprano Venanzio Rauzzini, a motet "Exsultate, jubilate," accompanied by strings, oboes, horns, and organ. The work was performed by him in the church of Theatines, Milan, January 17, 1773.
By temperament, taste, and training, Mozart followed the rococo gallant manner of his great Italian predecessors, Alessandro Scarlatti, Caldara, Porpora, and others. Into his religious work he carried, as did they, the transparency and charm of the Italian operatic style. To the purist, works like the "Exsultate, jubilate" may indicate a lack of religious sincerity in Mozart--a degradation of ecclesiastical composition and a vulgar mixture of styles. A large part of the church music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was thus censured and condemned by nineteenth century critics. Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, the masses and litanies, the motets of the Italians, as well as the religious works of Haydn and Mozart, were considered inappropriate and unliturgical. Absence of austerity was taken for lack of respect by those critics who in their incredible seriousness failed to sense the childlike piety, the humanity, and directness of those works, or failed to realize that these composers were writing in the style and reflecting the taste of their period. They failed to recognize that in such artists religious feeling and artistic impulse were one and the same thing. If music like Mozart's "Exsultate jubilate," Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, or Hadyn's Creation are to be excluded from the church, then, as Einstein points out, so should the circu?lar panels of Botticelli depicting the infant Christ surrounded by Florentine angels.
Allegro in F major
Exsultate, jubilate Exult, rejoice,
0 vos animae beatae. 0 happy souls.
Dulcia canatica canendo And with sweet music
Cantui vestro respondendo, Let the heavens resound,
Psallant aethera cum me. Making answer, with me, to your song.
?Alfred Einstein, Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943).
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FIRST CONCERT
Recitativo
Fulget arnica dies,
Jam fugerc et nubila et procellae;
Exortus est justis inexpectata quies.
Undique obscura regnabat nox.
Surgite tandem laeti,
Qui timuistis adhuc
Et jucundi aurorae fortunatae.
Frondes dextera plena et lilia date.
Aria (Andante)
Tu virginium corona, Tu nobis pacem dona, Tu consolare affectus, Unde suspirat cor.
Allegro in F major Alleluja
The lovely day glows bright,
Now clouds and storms have fled,
And a sudden calm has arisen for the just.
Everywhere dark night held sway before.
But now, at last, rise up and rejoice,
Ye who are not afeared,
And happy in the blessed dawn
With full hand make offering of
garlands and lilies.
And Thou, O Crown of Virgins, Grant us Peace, And assuage the passions That touch our hearts.
Alleluia
Love Scene from Feuersnot, Op. 50
Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss was born at Munich, June 11, 1864; died in GarmishPartenKirchen, Germany, September 8, 1949.
Richard Strauss had already established himself as the world's outstanding composer of the symphonic tone poem before he attempted to write an opera. Between 1886 and 1898 he had created all of his major works in this field, and, as they reveal, he had acquired a masterful technique of writing for a large and complicated orchestra.
His first attempt at opera, Guntram (1894), was merely an exercise in Wagnerian style and made little impression on the public. Feuersnot (1900), his second opera, perhaps because of an unfortunate libretto, was no more successful. The score of Feuersnot, however, shows that amazing command of polyphonic writing and that bewildering richness and variety of orchestration which was ultimately to shift the burden of expression from the singers on the stage to the players in the orchestra pit. It marked the progress from Wagner's symphonically conceived opera to his own symphonically dominated ones, Salome (1905) and Electra (1909).
Feuersnot, designated as a Singgedicht (a sung poem) is in one act, written to a libretto by Ernst von Wolzogen, and was first produced at the Royal Opera House in Dresden, November 21, 1901. Its plot deals with an old legend of the love of a sorcerer, Kunrad, for Diemut, the daughter of the town's burgomaster. The sorcerer is rejected and in revenge deprives the town of all fire and light. The townspeople press the maiden to relent and her yielding is signaled by an
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instantaneous lighting of bonfires and lanterns, as children and burghers rejoice and dance throughout the town.
The love music is heard at the point where Diemut, who has secretly loved the young magician, finally welcomes him to her arms.
Ballet Suite, Le Festin de I'araignee, Op. 17.....Roussel
Albert Roussel was born at Tourcoing, April 5, 1869; died at Royan, August 23, 1937.
In 1S94 at the age of twentyfive, Albert Roussel turned from a wellestablished career in the French Navy to that of a professional musician. From 1896 on, his works appeared with greater frequency in the concert salons of Paris, bringing to him immediate and continuing success.
Although Roussel failed to achieve a position of any eminence in the annals of early twentiethcentury French music, his fastidious and distinctive talent won for him the highest respect and acclaim from connoisseurs. His musical gifts eminated from a profoundly artistic temperament that found in nature and in all of the arts a sustaining inspiration. His limited ability to build up musical continuity in the larger forms was richly compensated by a wealth of finesse and subtlety in expression. His music was, in the words of Jean Aubry, a reflec?tion of his "love of life without loudness, his restrained but lively ardor, his exquisite sense of pleasure, a thousand refinements without affectation, and, beneath this delicacy and his smiling nature, a gentle and firm power with occa?sional melancholy .t
Le Festin de I'araignee ("The Spider's Banquet") was a ballet with scenario by Gilbert de Yoisin based upon the Souvenirs entomologiques of Henri Fabre, and was performed in April, 1913, at the Theatre des Arts, Paris. The Suite formed from the ballet was played for the first time in America at a concert of the New York Symphony Orchestra, October 23, 1914.
In the published suite, Roussel furnished the following description: Prelude: A garden on a fine summer afternoon. The spider is in his web. Entrance of the Ants: They industriously explore the garden until they find a fallen rose
petal which they carry off with great difficulty. Dance of the Butterfly: The gay creature dances into the spider's web, where she dies
after a brief struggle.
Hatching of the Ephemera: Dance of the Ephemera. Funeral March of the Ephemera: All the insects join with great pomp in the funeral
procession, after the death of the spider. Night Falls on the Solitary Garden.
The origin of the story is lost in antiquity, and many versions have appeared throughout the cen?turies. Von Wolzogen based his libretto upon an old Netherland version "Das erloschene Feur zu Andenaerde" but with Strauss made many alterations. Strauss had discovered the story in Johann Wilhelm Wolff's Niederlandhche Sagen, published in 1842.
t G. Jean Aubry, French Music oj Today (London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1919).
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FIRST CONCERT
Edward Burlingame Hill says of the Suite:
Roussel has been singularly successful in devising music for this microscopic drama. Using a miniature orchestra, he has yet found the means to illustrate the action, characterize its personages with delicate and pungent humor, and yet rise to tense moments. Among many striking episodes, the delicate Prelude, the spider's dance of triumph, the butterfly's dance, the tragic death of the spider, and the calm epilogue are vitalized in music of unfettered invention, often acridly dissonant, but an unfailing counterpart of the dramatic situations. Its ingenuity does not descend to an unbecoming subtlety, nor does it once overstep its stylistic boundaries.
Recitative, "Nun eilt herbei" and Aria, "Frohsinn und Laune"
from Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor .... Nicolai
Otto Nicolai was born in Konigsberg, June 9, 1810; died in Berlin, May 11, 1849.
In March, 1849, two months before Nicolai's sudden and premature death, the world premiere of his Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor ("The Merry Wives of Windsor") took place at the Berlin Hofoper with sensational success. Although this triumph was never repeated in America, in Europe the work has always re?mained a popular favorite.t
The opera came from a crucial period in the history of German music. In the revolutionary years of 184849, German theaters refrained from producing new works; in 1849 for instance, only four new operas were performed in all of Germany. One of these was Nicolai's Lustigen Weiber in Berlin. While political events were climaxing in Dresden in 1849, Berlin was settling down to a compar?ative state of normality, and opera production had resumed its old activity.
The political controversies in this period had their counterpart in the conflicts that raged among German composers, critics, and the operatic public as to the relative value of established and popular Italian works and the distractingly experimental ones of native composers. In this preWagnerian period German music was not quite conscious of its destiny. The full impact of Beethoven's revolutionary art was not yet fully comprehended although it had left a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with the traditional in the minds of the composers of the day. With the public, however, the Italian opera, with its routine of form and expression occupied a position of unquestioned superiority. "How," wrote Nicolai, in his diary, "is one to find opera libretti in a country when nothing is done for new operas and next to nothing is paid for them Germany would rather put up with the worst Italian or French opera than pay anything for a German one. Sad, sad fate to be a German opera composer." t The preference of the public
Edward Burlingame Hill, Modern French Music (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1924).
t Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor had its initial performance in America at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, March 16, 1863, and was repeated in New York at the Academy of Music in April. At the Metropolitan it received a single performance March 9, 1900, with Sembrich and SchumannHeink in the cast, and was then dropped from the repertory. In 1936 the Juilliard School of Music presented it in English translation.
+ Otto Nicolai, Brieje an seiner Vater herausgegeben von Wilhclm Altmann (Regensburg, 1924.)
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for foreign opera was a constant grievance among German composers who found it exceedingly difficult to win success in their own country until they had first been acclaimed in Italy.
Nicolai had written several Italian operas in Italy before going to Vienna as court Kapellmeister in 1841. When in 1849 he found himself director of opera in Berlin he composed Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor in a cosmopolitan style that artfully blended Italian elegance and wit with German robustness of spirit. In this delightful score German harmonic warmth fuses with simple, selfeffacing Italian cantilena and melodic embellishment. With this work Nicolai achieved what Wagner and countless thoughtful Germans were hoping for-ideal opera in which a blend of the best qualities of both Italian and German styles intermingled.
In this aria, Frau Fluth (Mistress Ford in the original of Shakespeare) plots how to get even with the rake Sir John Falstaff for presuming to send love letters to herself and her neighbors. She plans first to berate him for reflecting upon her wifely virtues by such a bold approach, then to appear to soften to his entreaties. She ends by singing of the humor and wisdom women have in the control of life's little affairs of the heart. This gay and frolicsome aria precedes the famous scene wherein Falstaff, having been hidden in a laundry basket by Mistress Ford and Mistress Page to escape the jealous wrath of Master Ford, is dumped into the river.
Recitative:
Come now, oh wit and merry humor, maddest pranks, craft and fun.
Nothing goes too far if it serves to punish men unmercifully.
That's a crowd, so bad are they, that we can't torture them enough.
Especially that fat glutton who wants to seduce us, ha. ha!
He'll have to pay for it.
But, when he comes, how shall I behave
What will I say Yes, I know it now.
Seducer! Why do you pursue the virtuous housewife
Why Seducer!
I should never forgive such outrage, no, never; my wrath should be your punishment.
However, a woman's heart is weak.
You plead so touchingly your pain, you sigh, and my heart softens, no longer can I be
cruel, and I confess blushingly: my knight, I love you. Ha, ha, ha, ha. He will believe me! I certainly can make believe. Though it is a bold adventure, yet, we can afford that bit of fun.
Aria:
Good cheer and humor put spice into life, and a joke can well be forgiven.
Just for pleasure a lie can't be bad, as long as the heart remains faithful and full of love.
Yes--Then confidently I dare to do it, Merry wives know how to help themselves.
English translation by Herman Adler, by permission of the Oceanic Records, Inc., 15 Park Row, New York 7, X. Y.
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FIRST CONCERT Marietta's Lied from Die tote Stadt......Korngold
Erich Korngold was born in 1897 at Briinn.
The action of Korngold's Die tote Stadt ("The Dead City") takes place near the end of the nineteenth century in the city of Bruges. There Paul lives in a secluded manner, cherishing the memory of his dead wife, Marie. In his house is a room consecrated to relics of the adored one. A company of players comes to the city, among them a dancer, Marietta, who bears a remarkable re?semblance to Paul's dead wife. Fancying that she is his wife's reincarnation, Paul transfers his affections to Marietta. At his invitation she comes to his house and appears in the wife's sanctuary, wearing garments and speaking with a voice that calls to mind the dead Marie. Paul gives her his wife's lute, and, to humor him, the astonished Marietta agrees to sing an old ballad to its accompaniment-a song that Marie sang to him in the distant past:
Joy that is mine, hold me fast, my own true love. Evening fades, thou are my own true love. Heart to heart may beat in pain; hope soars to heaven again. How true, this sad song of the faithful lover who must die. I know the song. I heard it often in happier times. It has another verse. How does it go Dark though life may prove, hold me fast, my own true love. Lie close on my heart. Death can never part. When the hour comes you must go. You will rise again, I know.
Csardas from Die Fledermaus......Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss, the younger, was born in Vienna, October 5, 1825; died there June 3, 1899.
In Act II of Strauss's scintillating opera Die Fledermaus Baron von Eisenstein is captivated by his own attractive wife, the charming Rosalinda, who, in the disguise of a Hungarian countess so enchants her unsuspecting husband that she wins not only his heart, but also his gold watch which she intends to use later as evidence of his unfaithfulness. In the Csardast she continues her deception by singing nostalgically as a Hungarian of her native land:
Homeland, your echoes awake all my yearning,
Tears that are burning well in my eyes!
I hear your laughter, your beautiful singing,
All is bringing me nearer sorrow to your skies!
Oh homeland, so dear, so grand, fatherland! Ha!
The sun lights your grass and your sand,
Your green woods are looming, your meadows are blooming,
Where once I was happy, oh land.
Yes, the beloved sight of your skies gives my soul delight,
Oh beloved sight I
And tho I'm far on my way, my way, ah!
My thoughts, my love for aye, still will be for you and
For your skies so gay!
See notes on Die Fledermaus Suite, pages 6768.
t A csardas is a Hungarian dance properly made up of a slow, pathetic introduction (lass) and a quick step (fris), the two sections alternating at the dancer's wish.
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Oh homeland, so dear, so grand,
The sun lights your grass and your sand,
Your green woods are looming, your meadows are blooming,
Where once I was happy, oh land!
Life and love with zest fill the Hungarian breast;
Come and dance with me csardas gay and free!
Maiden, tanned by sun, come, you're the only one!
Let me take your hand, fairest in the land!
There's no drowsing while carousing;
All are dancing, all are dancing quickly round about!
Today's sorrow ere tomorrow raise a toast to the fatherland. Ha!
Burning joyous zest fills every Magyar breast!
Hey the dance with me Csardas gay and free!
Suite No. 2 from the Ballet Daphnis et Chloe.....Ravel
Maurice Ravel was born at Ciboure, BassesPyrenees, March 7, 187S; he died in Paris, December 28, 1937.
The term "impressionism" passed from a general term to a specialized usage about 1863, when a sunset by Monet was shown in Paris at the Salon des Refuses, entitled "Impression." The name was then adopted for a whole group of painters, of which Monet, Manet, and Degas were the leaders, and later by a similar group of composers, of whom Debussy was the most important figure, and Maurice Ravel, a more recent member. Impressionism came to reject all tradi?tions and devote itself to the sensuous side of art to the exclusion of the intel?lectual. It subordinated the subject for the most part to the interest of the execu?tion, and it interpreted isolated momentary sensations, not thoughts or concrete things. In the words of Walter Pater, impressionism is "a vivid personal impres?sion of a fugitive effect." Debussy used his art as a plastic medium for recording such fleeting impressions and fugitive glimpses. His style and technique, like that of Monet, Renoir, and early Pissarro, render a music that is intimate though evasive, a music with a twilight beauty and glamor, revealing a world of sense, flavor, color, and mystery. And so Debussy, working to the same end as the French impressionists in art, through the subtle and ephemeral medium of sound created an evasive world of vague feelings and subtle emotions--a world of old brocades, the glimmer of moonlight, morning mists, shadowy pools, sunlight on waves, faint odor of dying flowers, the flickering effect of inverted images in a pool, or the more vigorous and sparkling effects of an Iberian fete day.
In contrast to the ecstatic impressionism of Debussy, the art of Maurice Ravel appears more concrete. Although he was at home among the colored vapors of the Debussyan harmonic system, Ravel expressed himself in a more tangible form and fashioned the same materials into set designs. His art, in this connec?tion, stands in much the same relationship to musical impressionism as the art of Renoir does to the same style in painting; it restores formal values. In this structural sense lies the basic difference from Debussy. But, like Debussy, he reveals the typical French genius, an exquisite refinement, unerring sense of form,
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purest craftsmanship, attention to minute details, impeccable taste, and a finesse and lucidity in execution.
The ballet, Daphnis et Chloe, was composed for the Russian Ballet in 1910, at the request of Serge de Diaghilev. It was first performed in June, 1912, at Paris, with Nijinsky as Daphnis and Monteux conducting.
In the score is to be found the following descriptive note:
No sound but the murmur of rivulets fed by the dew that trickles from the rocks. Daphnis lies stretched before the grotto of the nymphs. Little by little the day dawns. The songs of birds are heard. Afar off a shepherd leads his flock. Another shepherd crosses the back of the stage. Herdsmen enter, seeking Daphnis and Chloe. They find Daphnis and awaken him. In anguish he looks about for Chloe. She at last appears encircled by shepherdesses. The two rush into each other's arms. Daphnis observes Chloe's crown. His dream was a prophetic vision; the intervention of Pan is manifest. The old shepherd Lammon explains that Pan saved Chloe, in remembrance of the nymph Syrinx, whom the god loved.
Daphnis and Chloe mime the story of Pan and Syrinx. Chloe impersonates the young nymph wandering over the meadow; Daphnis, as Pan, appears and declares his love for her. The nymph repulses him; the god becomes more insistent. She disappears among the reeds. In desperation he plucks some stalks, fashions a flute, and on it plays a melancholy tune. Chloe comes out and imitates by her dance the accents of the flute.
The dance grows more and more animated. In mad whirlings, Chloe falls into the arms of Daphnis. Before the altar of the nymphs he swears his fidelity. Young girls enter; they are dressed as Bacchantes and shake their tambourines. Daphnis and Chlo6 embrace tenderly. A group of young men comes on the stage.
Joyous tumult. A general dance.
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Friday Evening, May 2
The Damnation of Faust, A Dramatic Legend
in Four Parts, Op. 24 ..........Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was born in CoteSaintAndre, France, December 11, 1803; died in Paris, March 8, 1869.
To find the way of being expressive and truthful, without ceasing to be a musician; to endow music, rather, with new means of action--that is the problem.
--Berlioz
Among the Romanticists in art, music, literature, and politics, Hector Berlioz was the most dramatic manifestation of the spirit of the times--the one who most theatrically symbolized the new movement of revolt, not only in his native France, but in all of Europe.
Berlioz went to Paris in 1821, a youth of eighteen, and came under the hypnotic spell of Chateaubriand's Rene and the morbid, selfrevealing poetry of De Musset. He responded with shocked awareness to the turbulent painting of Gericault and Delacroix and heard with excitement the clarion call of Victor Hugo for artistic liberation. Stimulated by the excesses of these artists, his mind became volcanic. So intimately identified was his personality and art with the radically progressive spirit of the new literary and social upheaval that, like Byron, he personified the whole movement. Of each it can be said that he had but one subject--himself. Possessing a personality as expansive and powerful as that of Byron, Berlioz' aesthetic impulses were exposed with the same force and bombast; the result was a similar spectacular and exhibitionistic art. Like Tchaikovsky and other "heroes of the age" he proudly displayed, for all to share, his unassuageable grief and the tragedies and frustrations of his own life. His melancholy moods, his sudden revulsions of feeling, his morbid depressions, his neurotic fears, and his ferocity of imagination all picture him in the framework of his period. In this "Byron of music," all the complexities of the Romantic movement are mirrored. Although he, too, like De Musset and Chopin, occa?sionally revealed the sensitive, introspective, poetic side of a suffering soul, his real creative nature manifested itself, with a burst of daemonic originality, in expressions of turbulent passion. He was to the music of his time what his con?temporaries Gericault and Delacroix were to painting. In terms of this art, he filled his scores with riotous color, imposing masses, and rich chiaroscuro. As has been said of Delacroix' brush, Berlioz seemed to compose with a "drunken" pen. Like the writings of Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas, his music became a
? English translation and adaptation by George and Phyllis Mead, prepared on the notes and text of the original French score.
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"glowing tapestry of bewitching color schemes." In his scores, bold and triumphant in their will to revolt, he displayed an immense organizing and creative power beside which the extravagances of many of the other artists of his period seemed reticent and inarticulate. His penchant for the abnormal, grim, and grotesque forced music with such suddenness into new channels of expression that he alone became the founder of modern program music and the source of an entirely new art of orchestration. Here his genius found the greatest scope. Relying upon his own empirical method of composition, he constantly revealed such an unerring sense of color values, that he became, and remains today, a model for other composers to seriously contemplate. "In the domain of fancy," wrote the Russian composer Glinka, "no one has such colossal inventions and his combinations have, besides all other merits, that of being absolutely novel. Breadth in the ensemble, abundance in details, close weaving of harmonies, powerful and hitherto unheard of instrumentation are the characteristics of Berlioz' music."
Fertile and diversified as was his creative imagination, Berlioz remained a master of form and construction. In spite of the new freedom he brought to music, to everything he composed he gave artistic form, both in detail and in overall structure. There can be no greater injustice done to this artist than to consider him, as have so many critics in the past, merely as a "fantastic" and "bizarre" composer who sacrificed everything for temporary sensational effect. Jacques Barzun has recently pointed out in his definitive work on Berlioz the basic aesthetic principles which guided him from the beginning of his career: that all of the elements of music should contribute to form, that music must ever remain a complete and independent art, and that in composing dramatic works, such as The Damnation of Faust, "the primacy of music meant the shaping of forms suited to words or actions, but never subordinated to them, and more often wholly autonomous." t "The great difficulty," Berlioz once wrote, "is to find the musical form--that form without which music does not exist, or exists only as the humble slave of speech--I am for the kind of music that you call 'free' . . . music is so powerful that in given instances it can conquer alone, and it has a thousand times earned the right to say with Medea: 'Myself, which is enough'." t
It was keen, critical perception that led Mr. Richard Capell in 1933 to describe the art of Berlioz as "so inventive, so varied, so clearly classical." ? One would have to read Barzun's twovolume work for the incontestable proof of the fact that Berlioz must today be considered one of the greatest formalists in the history of music. Coming after Beethoven and his broadened concept of musical structure, Berlioz did not imitate the German master, but continued to exert a powerful influence upon the establishment of ever new and fluctuating
Nathan Haskell Dole, Famous Composers (2d ed.; New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1925). t Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and the Romantic Century (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1950), 2 vols. t Ibid. ? Richard Capell, "The Damnation of Faust," Daily Telegraph, May 27, 1933.
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forms. Berlioz' intrinsic form is not discovered by looking for the juxtaposition of sections and the regular recurrence of thematic materials, but rather in noting his fluent melodic variation, his metamorphosis of melodic ideas in protracted and altered restatement, his destruction of identity in the interest of balance by asymmetry and the intermingling of his themes, and by becoming sensitive to the "simultaneity of contrasting effects." Musical form in Berlioz, more than in any other nineteenthcentury composer, freed itself from all academic and pedantic restriction.
Nowhere in all of Berlioz' works is there more conclusive evidence of the fact that he bent the whole force of his intellect on freely fashioning the appropriate form for the particular work at hand; nowhere is there a clearer revelation of his seemingly inexhaustible power to generate many from few musical ideas. His propagation of thematic material often leaves the impression of carelessness and weakness in structure. "Berlioz often gives but a brief sketch," wrote Robert Schumann, "but it is a sketch of genius in the manner of Beethoven. He seldom repeats his most beautiful inspirations or does it as if in passing. Then with a delicate hand he completes at a later time an idea which seemed entirely for?gotten." This fluent treatment of thematic material is noted throughout The Damnation 0} Faust: The orchestra restates fragments from Faust's first aria, to the end of the scene; Faust's lament at the end of Part II, Scene 1, is used later in Faust's soliloquy in Marguerite's chamber (Scene 9) and again in his Invocation to Nature (Scene 16); Mephistopheles' idyllic aria at the beginning of Scene 7 is later echoed by a chorus of sylphs and gnomes; fragments from Marguerite's entrance in Scene 2 are used later in her love song; the theme of the parody on "Amen" is taken from Brander's aria to "The Dead Rat"; the theme that is heard as Faust departs from his study accompanies him as he leaves Auerbach's cellar; an alto melody from the willothewisp chorus becomes the theme of the ensuing Ballet; in the Ballet itself, a new idea appears that is to become the material for Mephistopheles' Serenade in Scene 12; the soldiers' song in Scene 8 reappears in the street song heard outside Marguerite's chamber in Scene 15; parts of the Students' Chorus from Scene 8 mingle with the end of her lament. This incomplete enumeration of thematic distribution is merely to indicate some of the formgiving details that completely evade the casual listener. Any attempt to further analyze the structural details of this superbly constructed work would go far beyond the purpose of program annotation. The essential point to make, however, is that the heroic and grandiose effect of this "romantic" masterpiece is achieved with the greatest "classic" concision and directness; there is in this whole amazing score not an instance of nineteenthcentury megalomania--all is classically formed, unified, and concentrated.
Berlioz first read Goethe's Faust in 1828 in a French translation by Gerard de Nerval. It exerted a peculiar fascination over him as he states in his Memoirs:
I always carried it about with me, reading it anywhere and everywhere--at dinner, in the Barzun, op. cit.
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theater, even in the streets ... I yielded to the temptation of setting some of its songs; and no sooner was this difficult task ended than I was foolish enough to have them printed-at my own expense without even having heard a note of them.
This music was published in Paris with the title, "Huit scenes de Faust," in April, 1828. He later regretted this impetuous move, realizing the immaturity of his technique at the time, and withdrew the work from circulation, destroying as many copies as he could lay his hands on. This early work contained elements which survived seventeen years later in some of the most remarkable and char?acteristic pages of The Damnation oj Faust, the composition of which he began in 1845. In his Memoirs, he has left us an engaging account of how he composed the score:
It was in the course of this trip to Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and Silesia, that I began the composition of my legend of "Faust," over the plan of which I long had been rumin?ating. As soon as I had made up my mind to undertake it, I also had to resolve to write nearly the whole of the libretto myself; the fragments of the French translation of Goethe's "Faust" by Gerard de Nerval, which I already had set to music twenty years before, and counted on introducing in my new score after remodelling them, and two or three other scenes, written according to the directions of M. Gaudonniere before I left Paris, did not amount to a sixth part of the work.
So I tried, while rolling along in my old German postchaise, to write the verses intended for my music. I began with Faust's invocation to Nature, trying neither to translate nor even to imitate the masterpiece, but merely to draw inspiration from it and to extract what musical substance it contained. Once started, I wrote the verses I needed just as my musical ideas came to me, and I wrote my score with an ease that I seldom have experienced with my other works. I wrote when and where I could--in my carriage, on the railway, on steamboats, and even in cities, in spite of the various cares occasioned by the various concerts I had to give. Thus at an inn at Passau, on the Bavarian frontier, I wrote the introduction: "Le Viel hiver a fait place au printemps." In Vienna I wrote the scene on the banks of the Elbe, Mephistopheles' air, "Void des roses," and the ballet of the sylphs. In Pesth, by the light of a gasjet in a shop, I wrote the choral refrain of the Dance of the Peasants, one night that I had lost my way in the town. In Prague I got up in the middle of the night to write a melody that I trembled for fear of forgetting, the chorus of angels in Marguerite's apotheosis: "Remonte au ciel, ame naive que l'amour egara."
In Breslau I wrote the words and music of the Latin students' song: "Jam nox stellata velamina pandit."
On my return to France, having gone to spend a few days near Rouen, at M. le Baron de Montville's countryseat, I composed the grand terzet: "Ange adore, dont le celeste image."
The rest was written in Paris, but always on the spur of the moment--at home, at a cafe, in the Tuileries garden, and even on a curbstone of the Boulevard du Temple. I did not look for my ideas, I let them come; and they presented themselves in the most unforseen order. When at last the whole sketch of the score was finished, I set to working it all over, to polishing its various parts, to uniting them and welding them together with all the fury and diligence and patience of which I am capable, and to finishing the instrumentation, which had been only briefly indicated up to that time. I look upon this work as one of the best I have produced; the public, so far, seems to agree with me.t
He published the new work under the title, La Damnation de Faust, and
Memoirs oj Hector Berlioz, trans, by Rachel (Scott Russel) Holmes and Eleanor Holmes; rev. by Ernest Newman (New York: Knopf, 1932), pp. 41719. t Ibid.
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
dedicated it to Franz Liszt. The preface, written by Berlioz, but not reprinted in later editions of the score, further reveals with what freedom and daring he re?jected or deleted Goethe's poem to suit his own musical ends:
The title alone of this work, will indicate that it is not based on the principal idea of Goethe's "Faust," in which illustrious poem Faust is saved. The author of "The Damnation of Faust" is indebted to Goethe only for a certain number of scenes which entered into his original plan--scenes whose charm was irresistible. But had he remained faithful to Goethe's idea, he would not the less have been reproached by many who already (some of them with bitterness) have accused him of mutilating a masterpiece. In reality, it is absolutely imprac?ticable to set to music a poem of such length, which has not been written for vocal inter?pretation, without making a crowd of modifications. And of all existing dramatic poems "Faust," without any doubt, is the most impossible to sing in its entirety from beginning to end. If one would conserve the theme of "Faust," it would be necessary, in order to make it the subject of a musical composition, to modify a hundred different things and thus commit the crime of lesemajeste to genius, which in this case, as in the other, would merit equal reprobation. It follows, therefore, that musicians should be forbidden to choose illustrious poems as the subjects of their compositions. If that were so, we should have been deprived of the opera "Don Juan" by Mozart, for the text of which Da Ponte modified the "Don Juan" by Moliere; nor would we be in possession of "The Marriage of Figaro," in the text of which the comedy by Beaumarchais certainly has not been respected; nor that of the "Barber of Seville," of Rossini, for the same reason; nor the "Alceste" by Gluck, which is only an informal paraphrase of the tragedy by Euripedes; nor his "Iphigenia in Aulis," for which--and this was truly culpable--Racine's verses were cruelly spoiled; verses which in their pure beauty would have been admirable in the recitatives. There have not been many Shakespearean operas composed, but attention should be drawn to M. Spohr, who, perhaps, will be condemned in that he has produced a work which also carries the name of "Faust" and in which one finds Faust, Mephistopheles, Marguerite, and a witches' scene carrying but little resemblance to the poem by Goethe. Now to the observations concerning the text of "The Damnation of Faust" it will be easy to reply. Why, some have said, has the author taken his hero into Hungary Because he wished to bring to the ear a piece of instrumental music whose theme was Hungarian. This he avows sincerely. He would have gone even further than this if there had been a musical reason for his doing so. Did not Goethe him?self, in the second part of his "Faust" take his hero to the palace of Menelaus in Sparta The Faust legend has been treated in many ways; it is public property; it had been drama?tised before Goethe; it had been, in various forms, in circulation in the literature of northern Europe long before he concerned himself with it. In England Marlowe's "Faust" had re?joiced in some celebrity, the glory of which Goethe caused to grow pale and attenuated. With regard to the German verses sung in "The Damnation of Faust" and which are Goethe's verses modified, it may seem that they should shock German ears, just as Racine's verses, altered without reason in "Iphigenia" shock French ears. One must not forget, however, that the score of this work was written to a French text which, in certain parts, is itself a trans?lation from the German and which, in order to satisfy a desire of the composer to submit his work to the judgment of the most musical public of Europe, he has had written in Ger?man as a translation of the translation. Perhaps these observations may seem puerile to those excellent people who, able to see at once to the root of things, do not care to be informed that it is impossible for anyone to dry up the Caspian Sea or to move Mont Blanc. M. H. Berlioz has not, however, believed it possible to dispense with them, because he has been accused of being untrue to the religion of his whole life and of being lacking in respect for genius.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to classify The Damnation oj Faust or to fit it into any accepted musical category. Its title, "A Dramatic Legend," places it in a unique position among musical forms. It is not a symphony with vocal
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parts; it is not a cantata or oratorio, and most certainly it is not an opera. That Berlioz never intended the work for stage presentation is indicated clearly in its lack of dramatic continuity--its scenes having no particular rela?tion to each other. Its music belongs entirely to the realm of the ideal, for Berlioz selected those scenes from Goethe's poem which he could directly translate into music, rather than those which would use music merely as a background for dramatic action. Thus Faust on the pTains of Hungary sings of his love for nature; peasants dance and sing for joy at the return of spring; an army intrudes upon the solitude of nature (Rakoczy March); a choir from a nearby church sings an Easter hymn. The symbolic ride to Hell defies any kind of visual realization. The terror and horror which the words and music evoke are more effective envisioned than realized scenically. The compression of scenes 13 and 14 in which Faust and Marguerite meet for the first time, results in a combined climax at the end of only 350 bars in the score-the length and speed of which would again negate any realistic presentation of the action. "Berlioz' ability," writes August Halm, "to make the drama come out of the parts and not the story--this I call Berlioz' claim to fame as a dram?atist--the ideal direction of the whole drama issues from the power of the music . . . this is genuine music drama, as against plays that are merely 'composed,' the verbal dramas that are 'set to music' "
For these reasons, every attempt to present The Damnation of Faust on the stage as an opera has met with disaster, for in it Berlioz observes none of the basic operatic conventions and traditions. "Berlioz," wrote Krehbiel, "was in his soul a poet, in his heart a symphonist, and intellectually (as many futile efforts proved) incapable of producing a piece for the boards." t Be that as it may, The Damnation of Faust, without benefit of category, is a superb masterwork in which a great poem has been sacrificed to the all consuming power of music:
Berlioz' intention was not ... to use music as a means to a literary or dramatic end, to compel literary ideas to subserve a musical end . . . and so far from allowing foreign ele?ments belonging to the other arts to intrude into the domain of music, he rather extended the boundaries of music in such a way and to such an extent that it was able to express, free and unaided, many conceptions which had.hitherto been considered exclusively literary or pictorial; but were, as he conclusively showed, equally suited to musical realization. In a word, the art of Berlioz represents an extension of the frontiers of music.J
SYNOPSIS
Part I. On the Plains of Hungary
Scene 1. Faust is alone at sunrise, wandering the fields in Hungary. He sings of the return of spring and longs to remain forever close to nature, far from the world. (Aria). Rolland comments:
Berlioz' love of nature is the soul of the Damnation. No musician with the exception of
August Halm, Von Greuzcn und Laudern der Musik (2d ed.; Munich, 1916). t Henry Edward Krehbiel, Book oj Operas; Their Histories, Plots and Music (New York: Scribner's, 1909).
X Cecil Gray, A History of Music (2d rev. ed.; New York: Knopf, 1931), pp. 22426.
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Beethoven has loved nature so profoundly. Wagner himself did not realize the intensity of emotion which she aroused in Berlioz and how this feeling impregnated the music of the Damnation.
[Scene 2. Peasants are singing and dancing under the linden trees (Chorus). Faust hears their merry song and regrets that he cannot share in their joy. He hears ominous sounds of war. Omitted in this performance.]
Scene 3. An army advances over the fields. Distant sounds of its approach disturb Faust, and he retires from the scene untouched by thoughts of glory. The famous Rakoczy March ends the scene and Part I on a powerful climactic note.
Part II. In Northern Germany
Scene 4. Faust, alone in his study, is troubled by doubts and unfulfilled desires. Still pursued by unquenchable grief and longing, he contemplates the meaning of life and death (as in Goethe). He is about to take poison when he hears a choir from a nearby church singing an Easter Hymn, "Christ is Risen from the Dead" (Chorus). Memories of the simple faith of his childhood and the blessedness of prayer bring him peace. The choir sings "Hosannah" (Chorus). Faust again embraces life (Aria).
Scene 5. Mephistopheles appears before Faust suddenly and mocks his holy resolutions. (His appearance is signaled by three sibilant chords which will ac?company him throughout). He suggests they discover the joys and pleasures of the world together. Faust consents and they disappear into the air.
Scene 6. In Auerbach's cellar in Leipzig, a group of students and soldiers are making merry with song and drink (Chorus). One of the group, Brander, drunk with wine, sings the "Song of the Rat." t At the end the chorus drones a "Requiescat in Pace, Amen." Brander then suggests they sing a fugue on the "Amen," for the dead rat (Chorus).X Mephistopheles makes sarcastic remarks on this scholarly parody, and then sings a song himself (Aria).? Faust grows weary of this reveling crowd and desires relief from the tumult. He and Mephistopheles spread their mantles and take flight.
Scene 7. To prepare Faust for the soft joys he desires, Mephistopheles has led him to the grassy banks of the Elbe. Here he sings of the fragrant bowers and the heavenly perfumed air (Aria). Gnomes and sylphs lull Faust to restless sleep (Chorus). In his slumber he has a vision of Marguerite and calls her name. Mephistopheles praises his spirits and bids them sink Faust into deep slumber. Then follows the famous Ballet of the Sylphs (Orchestra), in which the spirits hover around the sleeping Faust, then disappear, one by one. Faust
Romain Rolland, Musicians of Former Days, trans. Mary Blaiklock (New York: 1914), p. 30.
t This follows the words of Goethe, but the order of the first two pairs of lines in each stanza is inverted.
X Berlioz, often falsely criticized for being a deficient contrapuntist, wrote sixteen fugues in free style in nine out of his twelve major works.
? Mephistopheles' air follows Goethe's "Song of the Flea," with a bravo refrain at the end.
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awakens suddenly and is impatient to seek the living Marguerite. Mephistopheles bids him arise and follow a passing throng to her chamber.
Scene 8. A chorus of soldiers is heard singing of conquering cities. (Chorus, accompanied by brass in 68 rhythm). A group of students appears, singing a student song in Latin: Jam nox stellata velamina pandit (words by Berlioz, and accompanied by woodwinds in 24 time). The two choruses are combined ingeniously, and the intense and tumultuous climax dies away as the crowd passes out of sight.
Part III. In Marguerite's Chamber
Scene 9. It is evening and Faust awaits Marguerite in her chamber. He wel?comes night, friend of lovers (as in Goethe) and contemplates Marguerite's room in ecstacy (Aria).
[Scene 10. Mephistopheles conceals Faust behind curtains and bids him fare?well. Omitted in this performance.]
Scene 11. A long, undulating melody in the strings prepares for the entrance of Marguerite, who enters with a lamp in her hand. She sings of the youth she saw in her dreams, of her awakened love, and of her premonitions of evil (Recitative). As she prepares for sleep, she sings of the faithful lovers in "The King of Thule" (Aria, follows words of Goethe).
Scene 12. Mephistopheles, in a stern invocation (Recitative), calls upon the spirits of evil to beguile Marguerite. In the name of Satan, he bids them dance and play, and threatens them with destruction if they fail to obey. They dance (Minuet of the WillotheWisps--Orchestra). Mephistopheles sings his Serenade and, with mocking morality, warns Marguerite of her waiting lover (Aria with male chorus; words by Goethe).
Scene 13. Marguerite discovers Faust and there follows an impassioned love duet, after which they fall into each other's arms.
Scene 14. This begins with the sudden and abrupt entrance of Mephistopheles, who warns the lovers of a gathering crowd of gossiping neighbors. They are heard scoffing and ridiculing Marguerite (Chorus). The lovers linger for a long fare?well, in which Marguerite longs for Faust's return on the morrow, and Mephisto?pheles reflects on his hour of triumph. The trio unites with full chorus for a grand finale. Faust escapes through the garden gate.
Part IV. In Marguerite's Chamber; In a Cavern and Forest; the Ride to Hell.
Scene 15. Marguerite, alone in her chamber, laments the absence of Faust (Aria, based upon Goethe's "Meine Ruh ist hin," but not treated as a spinning song. [A group of students and soldiers interrupts her reflections (Chorus, based on themes of the chorus in Scene 8). Marguerite notes the end of the day, and regrets that Faust has not returned. Omitted in this performance.]
Scene 16. In the Woods and Caverns (as in Goethe), Faust sings his invocation
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
to Nature, identifying his mixed emotions with her moods of calm and fury (words by Berlioz). The section is written with great sustaining power and lofty inspira?tion, and again reveals Berlioz' passionate love of nature.
Scene 17. Mephistopheles, climbing among the rocks, interrupts Faust's mus?ings to inform him that Marguerite has been dragged to prison for poisoning her mother. He promises to save her if Faust will place his signature on a parch?ment scroll. In signing, Faust has delivered his soul into the hands of Mephisto?pheles, who calls for Vortex and Giaour, the magic steeds, to take them to Hell.
Scene 18. (The Ride to Hell). Faust and Mephistopheles ride the black steeds into the abyss. Faust hears a voice lamenting and cries to Marguerite. A chorus of peasants kneeling before a roadside crucifix sing a Sancta Maria; they scatter in confusion at the approach of the riders. Faust is terrified at the howling creatures that pursue them, at the monstrous birds whose wings strike him, at the leering skeletons' hollow laughter, and at the raining of blood. The horses quicken their speed as Mephistopheles urges them forward, crying "On, on!" Mephisto?pheles, in a thunderous voice, proclaims the doom of Faust, as they both tumble into the abyss.
Scene 19. (Pandemonium). A chorus of Devils (bass voices in unison) hail their master Mephistopheles, and rejoice at his victory. At the close of this scene there is an Epilogue on Earth, in which a chorus of bass voices in unison proclaims Faust's awful doom (baritone solo in this performance). The chorus ends in hushed, terrified tones.
Scene 20. (Epilogue in Heaven) A chorus sings of Marguerite's glorification as she is pardoned for her sins and ascends into heaven.
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THIRD CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 3 Overture to "Russian and Ludmilla".......Glinka
Michael Ivanovich Glinka was born in Novospasskoi, June 2, 1803; died in Berlin, February 15, 18S7.
In the reign of Catherine the Great, Russia showed a vigorous musical enthusiasm, but an enthusiasm which emanated from foreign sources, particu?larly French and Italian. No conscious effort had been made toward the forma?tion of a national artistic style until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Glinka was the founder of that style. In his opera The Life of the Tzar (1834), Glinka had found a subject of national import, and in his music he established a definite Russian school. If The Life of the Tzar is to be regarded as a national epic, Glinka's second opera, Russian and Ludmilla (1842), must be credited with a significance equally nationalistic, though in a different sphere. Here he forsook history for folklore, as Wagner had done after his Rienzi.
The influence of Russian and Ludmilla was tremendous. It set a style for such creations as have since come from the pens of Borodin, RimskiKorsakov, and Stravinsky. RimskiKorsakov's Kostchei, Tsar Sultan, Snow Maiden, Sadko, Kitesh and Stravinsky's Fire Bird Suite all have a foundation in a folklore in which the supernatural and the fantastic predominate.
But there are other elements to support this opera's claim to the distinction of being a pioneer work. It is here that oriental color is for the first time brought to Russian music. The opera is not the only field benefiting from Glinka's innovation. Balakirev's piano fantasia "Islamey," an epic of the Orient, Borodin's "In the Steppes of Central Asia," and RimskiKorsakov's Scheherezade all owe their inspiration to Russian and Ludmilla.
Ludmilla, daughter of Prince Svietozar of Kiev, had three suitors, one of whom, the knight Russian, was accepted. At her wedding Ludmilla was car?ried away by the magician Chernomor, and her hand was promised by her father to the suitor who would rescue her. Russian, evoking benevolent magic, received a charmed sword and rescued Ludmilla. On the homeward journey, another suitor, Farlaf, cast the pair into magic slumber and took the maiden to Prince Svietozar, demanding her hand in marriage. Russian, returning to the palace, denounced the traitor Farlaf and won the hand of Ludmilla.
The overture contains so small an amount of the musical material found in the subsequent pages of the opera as to be hardly representative of it. It is clearly written in the classical form. The principal theme (D major, 22) is announced in the full orchestra. The second theme (F major) is given out by the cellos and violas, accompanied by the strings. There is the customary develop?ment and recapitulation, and the overture ends with a coda.
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SONG CYCLE FROM THE MASTERS
Orchestrated by Russell Howland
Papageno's Song, from "
A fowler's life is bold and free, And just the life for a man like me. Across the hill I take my way And set my traps at break of day.
The Magic Flute" .... Mozart
My name is held in great renown Throughout the land, in every town. For all the little birds I lure I've customers both rich and poor.
I play upon my pipe, and soon But it would be a finer life
The birds flock round to hear the tune; If I could catch a little wife.
And when they touch my little trap I'd keep her safe and love her true,
Down, down it comes with a snap, snap, snap. And that's the most a man can do.
The Blacksmith (Op. 19, No. 4)........Brahms
The blacksmith I hear, How sturdy his stroke
The clanging and clashing His bellows he's blowing.
The blows of his hammer, The soot darkened fireplace
On anvil are crashing. With flame is aglowing
Like clanging of bells A Thor with his thunder
Sounding loud on the ear. He stands in the smoke.
The Trout...............Schubert
In brooklet small and sunny With ripples all about There swam around so nimbly A gentle little trout. Beside the brooklet strolling I saw a pretty sight It was the small trout playing In water clear and bright.
Not far away a fisher Stood on the bank secure. With rod in hand he started The silv'ry trout to lure. I knew the small stream flowing Was always clear throughout The fisher ne'er could capture That happy little trout.
But when the wily fisher
Would wait no more,
He quickly made the water muddy
And then, before I thought
His cunning line had darted
And hooked fast the gentle little trout.
And so with saddened feeling
I saw the victim caught.
The Rose Tree (Op. 34, No. 1).......Schumann
How lovely is a rose tree fair, When blooming, when blooming, Of all the garden she is queen And reigns with dignity serene, Her fragrant petals red and white The evening air perfuming.
No other flower growing there
So well repays our tender care,
And if in Heaven gardens be
No flower so fair you there will see,
How lovely is a rose tree fair
In form and fragrance beyond compare.
Reprinted from The Lyric Song Books by permission of Carl Fischer, Inc. Sole Agents for Patterson's Publications, Ltd.
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The HurdyGurdy Man (Op. 89, No. 24) .... Schubert
Yonder thro' the village comes the or Xot a single penny has he earn'd today,
gan man And the dogs are snarling at him all
Grinding out his dreary tunes, as best the way;
he can; But he scarcely hears them, slowly
Frozen are his fingers, ragged are his trudges on,
clothes Dreams of happy days, now long since
Where he comes from, where he goes past and gone.
to, no one knows.
Wonderful old fellow! Let me come
along, You will grind your organ, I will sing
my song.
In a Boat (Op. 60, No. 3)...........Grieg
Sea gulls, sea gulls in white clouds Free thy tresses, my love
Flocking in sunshine gay! Oh loose them, shining bright!
Each little duck with its yellow stocking Then we will dance in the bright and starry
struts away. warm June night!
Row, row to fisher's strand Wait, wait a summer day
All is calm at the edge of land There'll be wedding and dance so gay
Seas are peacefully lying. All of the fiddles are playing.
Ho! willow, willow! Ho! willow, willow!
Hark! Hark! the Lark...........Schubert
Hark! hark! the lark at heav'n's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise
His steeds to water at those springs
On chalic'd flow'rs that lies
And winking Mary buds begin
To ope their golden eyes,
With ev'rything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise.
Arise, arise, my lady sweet arise.
The Little Sandman, from "VolksKinderlieder" . . . Brahms
The flowers all sleep soundly, Now see the little sandman
Beneath the moon's bright ray; At the window shows his head,
They nod their heads together And looks for all good children
And dream the night away. Who ought to be in bed;
The budding trees wave to and fro, And as each weary one he spies,
And murmur soft and low, Throws sand into its eyes. Sleep on! Sleep on! Sleep on, my little Sleep on! Sleep on! Sleep on, my little one! one!
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Ladybird (Op. 79, No. 14).........Schumann
Sweet ladybird, come rest awhile Oh ladybird! fly quickly home,
Upon my hand, upon my hand, Thy house is down, thy young ones cry so Be sure I will not harm thee, no, sorely,
I'll not harm thee. Ah, so sorely, cry,
I only wish thy wings to see, Cry so sorely,
Pretty little wings that make thee free, The hungry spider waits for thee,
Tis thy pretty wings that charm me. So thou must hasten warily,
To thy children crying sorely.
Hedge Roses (Op. 3, No. 3)........Schubert
Once a boy a rosebud saw Said the boy "I'll pluck thee now,
By the wayside growing, Rose by wayside growing,"
"Never lovelier flow'r," said he, Said the rosebud "Best beware!
"Have I seen on any tree, I can pierce, so have a care,
All the air perfuming." On thy way be going."
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red
By the wayside growing. By the wayside growing.
Ruthlessly he pluck'd the rose By the wayside growing, Now, too late, he understands, By his torn and bleeding hands, And his tears are flowing. Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red By the wayside growing.
While Bagpipes Sound, from "The Peasant Cantata" . . Bach
While bagpipes sound, we'll sing all day,
Ah, merry, merry, merry, merry, merry, merry lay,
And dance a measure gay.
We sing with joy, we shout with glee, We wish our host and family, "Good luck and all prosperity, Long life and all things good to thee!"
While bagpipes sound, we'll sing all day,
Ah, merry, merry, merry merry, merry, merry lay
And dance a measure gay.
Sec footnote on page 32.
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Symphony No. 5 in Bflat major........Schubert
Franz Schubert was born in Lichtenthal, a suburb of Vienna, January 31, 1797; died there November 19, 1828.
A blissful instrument of God, like a bird of the fields, Schubert let his songs sound, an invisible grey lark in a plowed field, darting up from the earthy furrow, sent into the world for a summer to sing.
--Friedell
In the year 1815, Schubert, then only eighteen, produced more music than most composers today produce in a lifetime--two symphonies, two masses, four dramatic works, a cantata, smaller piano pieces, church music, choral works, and one hundred and fortyfive songs! "In all this mountain of notes," writes Schauffler, "there is no evidence of carelessness or superficial taste. Bach, Handel, and Haydn were rapid writers, but none of them showed such fecundity as this. So the formidable year of Waterloo, which saw the master of mankind hurled into the depths, countered this carnage by giving evidence that the world's greatest master of song was in the full tide of his creation."
A certain type of academic criticism has never ceased to call attention to the constructive weakness of Schubert's instrumental works and to his lack of con?trapuntal treatment of material. What this kind of criticism fails to recognize is that every major work Schubert left us is, in a sense, an early work. He died at the age of thirtyone, having produced in the incredibly short creative period of eighteen years over one thousand works. Who knows what perfection he might have achieved had he lived to his full artistic maturity.
It is no defense of his weaknesses to note that in Schubert there are no artful concealments of art, no artifices to cover his failures. With all the natural faults of youthful expression, where is there to be found such honest statement, such exuberance and irresistible gaiety of spirit; where in art are there so many effects discovered with so few means detected With disconcerting naivete, how gently but firmly this artless art of his defies the probe.
The Fifth Symphony was composed between September 16 and October 3, 1816, when Schubert was barely nineteen years of age. In company with the Third Symphony in D major, the Fourth in C minor ("Tragic"), and the "Little Symphony" in C major, it was written for the small orchestra which had evolved from the string quartet that used to perform at Schubert's parental home. Adapted to moderately skilled amateur players, its themes are simple and direct, its instrumental scoring modest; t the whole work having the intimate quality of
Robert Haven Schauffler. Franz Schubert, the Ariel of Music (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1949).
t Scored for a single flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings, its orchestral combina?tion is exactly that of the original version of Mozart's G minor symphony without clarinets.
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chamber music. It is the finest of Schubert's early symphonies, revealing a greater concentration of form, especially in the curtailment of those prolix developments, so full of repetitions, that appear in his later works. Everything seems spontan?eous and epigrammatic, ''relishing," as Tovey writes, "the prospect of having nothing to do but recapitulate."
The dynamic level of the whole work is definitely in the preBeethoven tradi?tion, and some of its loveliest passages are reminiscent of Haydn and Mozart. Especially notable is the first theme of the second movement which recalls that of the rondo movement of Mozart's F major Sonata, K. 377, and the whole of the third movement which, as Einstein notes, "is so Mozartian that it would fall into place quite naturally in the G minor Symphony." t The finale with its frolicsome and merry theme recalls Haydn in his most polished form and jolliest mood. But this sort of thematic detection proves nothing when it refers to a com?poser so melodically prolific; these are not conscious borrowings but rather the spontaneous sharing of similar artistic impulses on the part of an abundantly gifted young composer who momentarily feels the sheer joy of creation. All is spontaneous, natural, and artless in this gem of a little symphony. Moved by the simplicity of its expression we recall Walt Whitman. "The art of art," he once wrote, "the glory of expression is simplicity. To speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movement of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art. The greatest poet swears to his art: 'I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. What I tell, I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me'."
Perhaps Schubert's treatment of the symphonic form was unsophisticated and immature, perhaps he did lack the constructive power of a Beethoven or a Brahms, perhaps he did nothing to extend the formal limits of the symphony, but he endowed it with a magic, a romance and sweet naturalness that no other composer has ever approached. By these, all analysis is rendered superfluous.
Concerto in A minor, Op. 53 for Violin and Orchestra . . Dvorak
Anton Dvorak was born in Nelahozeves on Vltava near Prague, September 8, 1841; died in Prague, May 1, 1Q04.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose Well, I have--for the Fourthmonth 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
Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), III, 203.
t Alfred Einstein, Schubert, A Musical Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 109.
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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, Moussorgsky and the "Five" in Russia, Albeniz in Spain and Smetana and Dvorak in Bohemia. The freshness and originality of their musical styles stemmed from their deliberate 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 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 relation?ship 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 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 ecstacy 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 goodhearted, peasantlike humor, for unburdened lyricism, Dvorak has no peer.
Dvorak completed the first version of his violin concerto in 1879, under the guidance of the famous violinist Joseph Joachim. It was revised in 1880 and sent to Joachim for approval. In a letter to the publisher Simrock, September 16,
C4sar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev. Modeste Moussorgsky, Nikolas RimskyKorsakov.
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1882, Dvorak wrote: "Here I am again in Berlin. I have played over the violin concerto twice with Joachim. It pleased him--as for me, I am glad that at last the whole business is finished. The revision has been in Joachim's hands for at least two years. He was so kind as to make over the solo part, and only in the Finale have I to make a few alterations and in some places to lighten the instru?mentation." The finished work bore the inscription: "Composed and dedicated to the great master Joseph Joachim with deepest respect." It had its first per?formance at Vienna, on December 3,1883.
The first movement (A minor: allegro ma non troppo, 44) opens, after a short orchestral flourish, with the presentation in the violins of the vigorous yet lyrical principal theme of the movement. After a short development, the orchestra leads into an expressive second theme heard in the violins in octaves, against a running countermelody in the woodwinds. Considerable time is given to the development of this material before the violin announces a third theme which ultimately pre?sents the solo instrument in elaborate passage work. During this section frag?ments of the first theme can be heard weaving themselves into the musical fabric. Finally the theme receives its full restatement, first in the orchestra and then in the violin in octaves. After a crescendo, the orchestra subsides and leads directly into the next movement.
The second movement (F major, adagio ma non troppo, 38) is simply con?structed from three thematic ideas. The first, in the solo instrument, is a romanza kind of melody, reminiscent of Czech folk music, played against a woodwind background. After a period in which the violin engages in florid passages, there is a return to the initial theme. The second subject, again presented in the violin (F minor, poco piu mosso) is soon transferred into passage work against which the strings announce softly the third theme (C major, un poco tranquillo, quasi tempo) which is vaguely reminiscent of the initial theme of the movement. The violin then enters a section of rhapsodic treatment after which further develop?ments of the themes are heard: the second returning in the whole orchestra, the first reasserted in the woodwinds with violin figures embellishing it; the third, first heard in the orchestra then in the solo instrument. The first theme returns briefly in the horns while the violin ornaments it with running figuration.
The third movement (finale: A major, allegro giocoso, ma non troppo, 38) is a spirited rondo in which the violin presents three themes. The auxiliary ma?terial that appears is combined with these into an impelling movement that cli?maxes brilliantly.
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Saturday Evening, May 3
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 control our thinking, 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 nationalsocialist goals were to be achieved through art and music and the invisible Volkseele--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 eleva?tion 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.
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 nation?alism and its remoteness from the political sphere; they betray a complete anarchistic in?difference to the state, so long as the spiritually German, the "Deutsche Kunst," survives.
? Thomas Mann, Freud, Goethe and Wagner (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1933).
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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 writ?ing 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 1933, 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 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 para?doxical 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 every?thing they have learned to despise in the age he epitomizes--excessive emotional?ism, vulgarity of overstatement, and unashamed exploitation of private feeling.
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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 formidable proportions, and compelled to write tomes of cumbrous prose to make his purpose apparent to posterity. In these verbal explanations he over?wrote himself as he overcomposed, for he lived in a period that expected over?statement.
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, philoso?phers, 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 impo?tence 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.
Reduced to its simplest 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 treat?ment 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, Wag?ner quite typically overstated his central theme. "The error in the art genre of opera," he wrote in Opera 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 com?posed by it, we would not be listening tonight to a complete program of his music
William Ashton Ellis, trans.. "Art Works of the Future." Wagner's Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner & Co., 189299), I.
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in the concert hall. The selfcontained completeness of his music makes it perfectly adaptable to concert performance. Quite the contrary to Wagner's inten?tion 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 over?bearing 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, Parsifal, 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 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 incorporat?ing 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 struc?ture. These phrases, known as "leitmotives," 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 declama?tion in the voice and this vast, endless symphonic stream, are inseparably con?nected and built into each other's substance.
The use of the "leitmotive" sprang from the same desire, so characteristic of romanticism, to impart profoundity and "meaning" to music What is often
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
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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. In 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 arbitrary and preconceived formulas of balance and recurrence of phrase, flowed on in one seemingly con?tinuous stream, the leitmotives 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 emo?tional 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 drama's 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 fol?lowing seldom if ever quoted passages will come as something of a shock--no less a revelation.
In an offtherecord 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 fiveline staff."
While working on Tannhauser 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 charac?teristic motive [leitmotive] in my head, so when the versification is complete and the scenes arranged the opera is practically finished for me."
In his essay, "A Pilgrimmage 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 im?pelled to express himself in the form of opera, he was by nature a symphonic com
the idie fixe of Berlioz's Symphonie jantastiqve and in the "unknown song whose initial solemn note is tolled by death" theme of Liszt's "Les Preludes.'' These nineteenthcentury attempts to cir?cumvent 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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poser. 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 good angel which preserved me as an artist, nay, which really first made me an artist, when my inner feeling commenced to revolt."
Overture to The Flying Dutchman
In 1839, Wagner had ample time to gather and become vividly impressed with the details of the legend of the ''Flying Dutchman," having spent threeandahalf weeks on an illfated and stormy voyage from Pillau to London. He writes that the boat was undermanned, and being a small merchant vessel, had inadequate accommodations for passengers. She encountered violent storms in the Baltic and was compelled to seek shelter in the safety of Norwegian fiords. He adds that "the passage through the fiords made a wondrous impression on my fancy; the legend of the Flying Dutchman as I heard it confirmed (he already knew the Heine version) by the sailors, acquired a definite, peculiar color, which only my adventures at sea could have given it."
The legend can be traced as far back as the sixteenth century and seems to be an outgrowth of the state of feeling engendered by the two most significant facts of that period: The discovery of the New World by the Spaniards and of a New Faith by the Germans. Captain Vanderdecken attempts to round the Cape of Good Hope in the face of a heavy gale. The storm being too much for his craft, he swears that he will accomplish his purpose should it take him till Doomsday. The oath is overheard by the Evil One who takes it literally, and the unfortunate sailor is condemned to sail the Seven Seas forever. The denoue?ment of Wagner's opera follows the Heine version, in which the Captain may be released "by the love of a woman faithful unto death": the love of Senta, in the opera.
The overture opens with phrases descriptive of a storm and soon is sounded the motive of the curse of the Dutchman--horns and bassoons against open fifths in the strings. As the storm dies down a pause ensues, and in a different key and rhythm a part of Senta's Ballad appears (which, like Lohengrin's Narrative in Lohengrin, contains the musical germs of the opera)--a motive expressive of hope and faith, and contrasting with the restless music of the storm and the "eternal curse." These themes and a suggestion of the Sailor's Chorus from the third act are the musical materials out of which this vigorous overture is con?structed.
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Act I, Scene III, from Die Walkiire
Wagner was at 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 fourpart 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 pattern. 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 ac?complished it.t
Das Rheingold is the prelude to the other dramas of the series which by themselves constitute the Tetralogy: Die Walkiire, Siegfried, Die Gotterddmmerung. In Die Walkiire, 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 Walse 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:
A sword--so promised my father-But she for whom I now long, I'd find in my hour of need. . Who has cast about me her spell,
Weaponless am I, Is held in thrall by the man
My host a foe. Who scorns--me, all unarmed.--
By his wrath fore doomed, Walse! Walse!
Here I now lie. Where is thy sword
A woman came, The strong, good sword
Witching and pure; That in fight went flashing!
And ravishing anguish Burst from my sorrowful breast,
Burns my heart; The frenzy my heart had hid!
The composition of the four 'Ring' dramas extended 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 Meistcrsingers were written during this period.
t Lawrence Gilman, Wagner's Operas (Xew York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937).
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(The smoldering cinders on the hearth fall to pieces; a clear light from the resulting glow shines on the tree, illuminating the spot which Sieglinde's glance had designated, and reveals the handle of a sword.)
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!
(From now on the fire on the hearth begins to die out.)
In the glorious glow
My heart takes fire!
Is it 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.
I seasoned his draught with a drug. Use thou the night for thy weal!
(The fire is now quite out. It is deep night. The chamber door opens softly. Sieglinde, clad in white, enters and draws near to Siegmund.)
Sieclinde: Sleep'st thou, guest
Siecmund: (Springing up in joyful surprise.)
Who steals this way
Sieglinde: (Mysteriously and in haste.)
Hear me, friend; it is I!
Opprest with sleep lies Hunding;
Siegmund: (Interrupting her eagerly.)
Bliss comes now thou'rt near!
Sieglinde :
But a weapon first I would show thee--
0 would that thou couldst win't!
The highest hero
Then could I call thee--
The mightiest alone
Owns it as lord!
0 pay good heed now to my story!
The host of kinsmen
Sat in the hall,
By Hunding bid here to a wedding.
A woman he wooed
Whom all by force,
Robbers had brought him for bride.
Sadly sat I
While they were drinking:
A stranger slowly strode in--
An aged man, all in grey.
Pressed low on his head,
One eye had his hat kept hidden;
But the other flamed,
Awful and boding,
All it threatened
On whom it gazed.
I alone
Shrank not in terror,
Felt sad and yet glad,
Tearful and hopeful both!
On me looked he,
And flared at the others;
Then a sword uplifted he swung.
And drove it deep
In the ashen stem--
To the hilt hewed it a way.
He who from the tree could draw it
Should some day own the steel.
The men sought vainly,
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Come from a far land
To give me aid.
Whatever I have suffered
Of bitterest pain--
Whate'er was my load
Of scorn and of shame,
Sweetest of vengeance
Comfort should bring me.
Regained were all
That I e'er had lost;
Whate'er I had mourned
Would be recovered;
Could I but find him, that friend
And press my lord to my breast!
They strove and they struggled,
The wondrous weapon to win:--
Guests acoming,
And guests agoing,
The strongest tugged at the steel--
Not an inch it budged from the stem.
There buried still lies the sword.
Well knew I who was he
That had greeted me who grieved.
I know, too,
Who alone
The sword is destined to win.
0 would he were here,
And now, that friend!
Siegmund: (Embracing her ardently.)
Then here in his arms
Holds thee that friend,
Who weapon and wife should win!
Hot from my heart
Take now the oath
That weds me, dearest, to thee.
Whate'er I had dreamt
In thee I divined;
In thee found all
That e'er I had craved!
Siegldjde: (Starts in alarm and tears Ha! Who went Who was it came
(The outer door has opened wide. It remains open. Outside the night is beautiful. The full moon shines upon the two lovers, and all about them suddenly becomes plainly visible.)
Siegmund: (In gentle ecstacy.)
No one went-Vet someone came.
Shame thou hast known, And pain have I borne; Outcast I've wandered, Dishonored thou'st been. Now at last vengeance Comes to delight us! Loud laugh I In holiest joy--
Pressing thee, sweet, to my bosomFeeling thy heart as it beats!
herself from his embrace.)
See how the Spring Smiles in the hall.
(He draws her gently but firmly to him on the couch.)
Winter's storming's stilled
By the lovelit 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,
Wide he opes
His laughing eyes:
And happy birds are singing
Songs he taught
Sweetest perfumes
Scent his train.
As he warms 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.
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The bride who was sister Is freed by the brother; And shattered now Lie barriers and chains.
Sieglinde :
Thou art the Spring
For whom I lay longing
And fasting through winter's frost;
'Twas thou my heart hailed
With holiest awe,
As thy look with love on me lighted.
Strange the world ever had seemed,
Friends had n'er come to cheer me,
And all I counted as naught
That I met on my way.
But thee knew I,
Joyous greeting
Their lips exchange:
For Love has wed with the Spring I
Surely and soon;
When my glances met thine,
Mine thou wast only:
All my heart had once hid,
All I am,
Clear as the day
Now I could see:
The truth in mine ear
Sounded at last,
As in chill and dreary sorrow
A friend I in thee divined.
(She embraces him in rapture and looks searchingly into his face.) Siegmund :
0 sweetest of rapture! Woman divine!
Sieglinde: (Gazing into his eyes.)
O let me nearer To thee, dear, nestle, For fain I'd gaze on The holy light
Siegmund :
The lovelit moon Glows in thy face; Soft enfolds thee Thy waving hair.
Sieglinde: (Brushes the hair back from his brow and looks at him in amazement.)
That in thine eyes
And face doth shine,
And so sweetly draws me to thee.
How I thy thrall Became, know I well-For rapture rivets my look.
Broad is thy brow, And frank and fair, Thy veins all entwined In thy temples I trace. I tremble, as my passion
Siegmund :
A dream of love, I, too, recall.
Sieglinde :
A brooklet mirrored My face one morn-And now again I behold it.
Siegmund : Thine is the face
Holds me enchained-Some wonder thrills me with terror: Before I found thee tonight Mine eyes thy face had seen!
I surely sought thee. Wooed thee, ere now!
What once the water revealed Now in thy face I can see
That my heart had hid.
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Sieglinde: (Averting quickly her gaze.)
Ah, still! Let me Thy voice recall, love! Methinks, as a child, Heard I it once--
Siegmund :
How lovely the echoes
Sieglinde: (Again gazing into his eyes.)
Ah, those eyes of thine Ere now I have seen. So beamed on me once, Cheering my grief,
(She pauses, and then goes on in a low voice): "Woeful," surely I see Siegmund :
Not so I'm named For thee, my love.
Sieglinde :
And "Peaceful" none may
Siegmund :
Give me the name
That thy love would award me;
Seglinde :
But was not thy father called Wolfe
Siegmund :
Ay, Wolfe to dastard foxes! Yet he whose eye Shone with the lustre
Sieglinde : (Beside herself.)
Thy father was Walse Then thou art a Walsung! Fast in the tree His sword for thee waits.
Siegmund :
Siegmund, Victor, Henceforth proclaim me. Bear witness the sword I grasp without shrinking. Walse foretold that, In direst need, Help it should bring-I hold it now! Love the most holy, Direst need, Loving and longing,
Yet no! 'Twas lately I heard it, When, echoing through the woods, There came to me my own voice.
Sound as I listen!
The strange eyes of that aged man.
By that glance
My father I found.
I nearly had named him by name.
My world is all bliss and rapture.
Call thee forever
That name alone I will bear.
That shines, 0 beloved, in thine, He was--Walse, I ween.
So let me rename thee As I do love thee: Siegmund-I thee proclaim!
Sorest of need,
Burn and flame in my breast,
Drive to deeds and death.
Nothung! Needful!
Thou, sword, shalt be named--
Nothung! Nothung!
Blade of the brave!
Show me thy sharp
And shattering steel:
And--out of thy scabbard now leap!
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(With a mighty tug he draws the sword from the trunk and shows it to the astonished and delighted Sieglinde)
Siegmund, the Walsung, His love from her foe.
Look, thou, wife! Far from here
Now brings to thee, Go where he goes,
Bride, a true blade Into the smiling
'Tis thus he woos Sunshine of Spring,
His dearest and best; Where Nothung aye shall keep guard
Tis thus he frees When Siegmund by love is disarmed I
(He puts his arm round her to take her away with him.) Sieglinde: (Ecstatically.)
Art thou Siegmund, For thee I sigh:
Here by my side Thine own true sister
Sieglinde am I, Thou'st won with the rape of the sword!
Siegmund :
Bride and sister So blest be thou, Walsungen blood!
Be to thy brother--
(He draws her to him rapturously. She embraces him with a cry of ecstacy.)
Prelude to Tristan und Isolde
When Wagner conducted the Prelude and Finale from Tristan in Vienna on December 27, 1863, he gave the title "Liebestod" (Love Death) not to the Finale as we do today, but to the Prelude. Giving us a key to its dramatic meaning, he wrote: "Tristan, as bridal envoy conducts Isolde to his uncle the King. They love each other from the first stifled moan of quenchless longing, from the faint?est tremor to unpent avowal of a hopeless love, the heart goes through each phase of unvictorious battling with its inner fever, till, swooning back upon itself, it seems extinguished as in death."
In the Triumph oj Death, Gabrieli d'Annunzio, through his hero, eloquently expresses the vivid impression the music of this prelude made upon him:
In the shadow and silence of the place, a sigh went up from the invisible orchestra, a murmuring voice made the first mournful call of solitary desire, the first and confused anguish in presentiment of the future torture. And that sigh and that moan and that voice mounted from vague suffering to the acuteness of an impetuous cry, telling of the pride of a dream, the anxiety of a superhuman aspiration, the terrible and implacable desire of possession. With a devouring fury, like a flame bursting from a bottomless abyss, the desire dilated, agitated, enflamed, always higher, always higher . . . The intoxication of the melod?ious flame embraced everything; everything sovereign in the world vibrated passionately in the immense ravishment, exhaled its joy and most hidden sorrow, while it was sublimated and consumed. But, suddenly, the efforts of resistance, the cholers of a battle, shuddered and rumbled in the flight of that stormy ascension; and that great flame sank and died . . . In the shadow and silence of the place, in the shadow and silence of every soul, a sigh arose from the Mystic Gulf, a broken voice told of the sadness of eternal solitude. ...
No one in our generation of music critics has so beautifully and effectively
?Gabrieli d'Annunzio, Triumph oj Death (Boston: Page & Co., 1917).
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put into words the significance of Wagner's music as Lawrence Gilman, whose description follows:
Tristan is unique not only among Wagner's works, but among all outgivings of the musical mind, because it is devoted, with an exclusiveness and concentration beyond parallel, to the rendering of emotional substances. This is the stuff of life itself; the timeless human web of desire and grief, sorrow and despair and ecstacy.
In this Prelude . . . Wagner is at the summit of his genius ... he has uttered, once and for all, the inappeasable hunger of the human heart for that which is not and never can be ... He has steeped this sovereign music, with its immemorial pain and its soaring exaltation, in a tragic beauty so suffusing and transfiguring that our possession of it is needlessly renewed.
For Tristan, like all excelling masterworks, becomes at every hearing a revival in the deeper sense, a thing as modern as tomorrow's dawn. ''In great art are not only the hopes men set their hearts upon," wrote a sensitive student of imaginative values, "but also their ful?fillment. For posterity, the passion of an age lives principally as a preparation for its poetry. And where but in poetry is the consumation Where is to be found Dante's Paradise Where, in all reason and sufficiency, but in Dante!" And where is to be found that paradise of the dreaming mind and the desirous will toward which Wagner agonized through all his life--where, but in this insuperable song
Like Blake, Wagner in his greatest score transfigured the living flesh, bending his fiery gaze upon it until it became translucent, and he saw through it immortal, incandescent shapes, immortal patterns--"holy garments for glory and for beauty."
Night Scene, Act II, Scene III from Tristan und Isolde
The following description is taken from the program notes of the Philadelphia Orchestra, by Mr. Lawrence Gilman:
The scene is an oldworld garden on a summer night, before Isolde's chamber in the Cornish castle of King Mark. At the opin door a burning torch is fixed. The sound of huntinghorns is heard from the nearby forest as King Mark and his courtiers disappear in pursuit of their sport. Isolde, consumed with longing, awaits her lover. They have arranged that the signal for Tristan to join her shall be the extinction of the torch. Isolde's attendant, Brangane, who is wise, observant, and realistic, warns Isolde that the courtier, Melot, who pretends that he is Tristan's friend, has secretly been spying upon the lovers, and has planned this nocturnal hunt in order to entrap them. But Isolde will not listen. Frantic with impatience, she puts out the torch. As Brangane ascends an outer staircase leading to the watchtower of the castle, Isolde beckons the hastening Tristan with her scarf.
At the peak of the orchestral excitement, Tristan rushes in, and the pair fall into each other"s arms with incoherent exclamations.
Then follows that extended and marvelous dialogue which is usually referred to as the "love duet." Yet this is no "love duet" in the usual operatic sense. It is an impassioned interchange of feeling and experience between two nobly tragic natures who find themselves confronting the profoundest realities of the spirit.
It would be impossible to explain their dialogue without quoting virtually the whole of the text, in the original, as Ernest Newman has pointed out; for no translation could convey the metaphysical doublemeanings of Wagner's words. The lovers speak almost throughout in metaphors and in a language that is abstract and subtle and allegorical. But the essential thing to remember is that Tristan and Isolde look upon Day as symbolizing the world
Philadelphia Orchestra Program Book, December 20, 1929.
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of illusion, and Night as symbolizing the world of reality and truth and liberation. They long to escape from the hateful and deceptive Day into that Night of the inner world of the spirit in which their souls can become one. With that basic idea in mind, we can regard the music of this scene as a kind of symphonic poem, with obbligato voiceparts, on the contrasted themes of Night and Day, Love and Death.
As the stress and passion of the music subside, the lovers, reclining on a bank of flowers, sing their sublime hymn to the Night, and fall into a trancelike quiet, while the voice of Brangane t floats down from the watchtower, warning the oblivious pair that the night is almost over. Her voice is borne to us across an orchestral nocturne in which all the nameless mystery and enchantment of the night are concentrated into less than half a hundred measures. This symphonic interlude with its vocal obbligato is a tissue of melodies, an intricate polyphonic tapestry woven of many strands. In this wondrous tonal web, Wagner turns everything to song. These ascending and descending melodies are heard together, enmeshed and superposed, twining about the voice of the distant watcher as if they were the interlacing voices of the night.
This hypnotic evocation passes like some ineffable and transporting dream--music of a beauty that approaches the bounds of the intolerable; and as the distant voice of Brangane ends its prophecy of the waning night we hear in the strings one of those orchestral songs of which only Wagner knew the secret: an infinitely tranquil melody which seems to have been born of some inward and fathomless peace existing at the heart of human agitation.
To this serene and assuaging music the lovers resume their dialogue. They sing of their longing for death as a release from the illusions and treacheries of life, and dedicate them?selves to that mystical union of their spirits which will make their love triumphant over change and fate--since every fruition of desire (as Wagner has said in explanation of his drama) only sows the seeds of fresh desire and renewed illusion.
Again, as the sky turns pale above the forest trees, the warning voice of Brangane is heard from the tower; but the lovers pay no heed to her; for they are borne out of them?selves and out of the oppressive world about them upon the crest and momentum of such a tide of transport as not even Wagner has elsewhere imagined or set free.
At this point, in the opera, the catastrophe occurs. The duet is ended by a shriek from Brangane. Kurvenal, Tristan's henchman, rushes in with drawn sword, followed by King Mark with his courtiers and the treacherous Melot, while the hated day breaks above the encircling woods, and the night of ecstacy is past.
At this point the section of the love duet on tonight's program begins, t The voice of Brangane is not heard in the concert version of this scene.
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FIFTH CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 4 Overture to "Leonore" No. 3........Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was born at Bonn, Decem?ber 16, 1770; 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 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 had announced the breaking up of an old civilization and the dawn of a new social regime. The spirit of freedom that animated the poetic thought of Goethe, Schiller, Words?worth, and Byron 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 person he embodied the ideas of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, be?came 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, womout forms, and to endow them with new passion. His re?spect 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 con?temporaries. 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 epochmaking master?pieces, built upon firm foundations but emancipated from all confining elements of tradition, and set free to discover new regions of unimagined beauty.
As a master of absolute music Beethoven undeniably exerted a powerful influence upon succeeding opera composers. But Fidelio, his own single at?tempt in the field of opera, has had far less emancipating force than most of his instrumental compositions or the operas of his lesser contemporary, von Weber. The supreme service of Fidelo to aesthetic history, on the other hand, was
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accomplished when it turned Beethoven's attention to the dramatic overture. There is more real dramatic art in the four overtures Beethoven wrote for his Fidelio than exists in the entire bulky score of the opera, for which they were designed as preludes.
iThe four overtures are known as the "Leonore" Nos. 1, 2, and 3 in C major, and the "Fidelio," in E major. We know that the overture numbered by the publishers as 2, was used for the premiere of the opera on November 20, 180S. The incomparable No. 3 on this afternoon's program is a remodeled form and was written for a reconstructed version of the opera which had its hearing March 29, 1806. For the revival of the opera in Vienna in 1814, Beethoven, obviously dissatisfied with his previous efforts, wrote an entirely new overture in E major on a much smaller scale. Why he should have rejected the supreme product of his genius, No. 3, is still an enigma.
For years it was a question as to what place No. 1 really occupied in the sequence of composition. Schindler had stated that it had been tried out before a few friends of Beethoven and discarded as inadequate for the premiere of the opera, implying that it was the first written. The subsequent researches of Nottebohm, now proved false, declared Schindler's information incorrect, and stated, as positive fact, the actual succession of the "Leonore" overtures to be No 2 (1805), No. 3 (1806), No. 1 (Opus 138, written in 1807 but not published until 1832), with the "Fidelio" overture the last to be composed. This order was accepted by such authorities as Alexander Wheelock Thayer and H. E. Krehbiel, the editor of Thayer's definitive biography of Beethoven. In this work we find the following statement:
Schindler's story that it (Leonore No. 1) was tried at Prince Lichnowsky's and laid aside as inadequate to the subject, was based on misinformation; but that it was played either at Lichnowsky's or Lobkowitz's is very probable, and if so, may well have made but a feeble impression on auditors who had heard the glorious "Leonore" Overture of the year before (No. 3 in 1806).
According to more recent research by the musicologist, Dr. Joseph Braunstein, Nottebohm's conclusions as restated by Thayer, are incorrect, and the established order of composition is now considered to be the natural sequence of No. 1 before 1805, No. 2 in 1805, No. 3 in 1806, and the "Fidelio" overture in 1814. Schindler and others, such as Czerny and Schumann who supported him against Nottebohm, were right in their contention that as Schumann put it, "the 'Lenore' No. 1 represents the roots from which sprang the grand trunk (No. 3); No. 2, with widespreading branches to the right and left of No. 3, ended in delicate blossoms of the 'Fidelio' overture."
The action of "Fidelio" occurs in a fortress near Seville. Don Florestan, a Spanish nobleman, has been imprisoned for life, and to make his fate certain, his mortal enemy, Don Pizarro, governor of the prison, has announced his death, meanwhile putting the unfortunate man in the lowest dungeon, where he is
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life ol Ludwig van Beethoven, trans, and ed. by H. E. Kreh?biel (New York: Novello Co. Ltd., 1921), 3 vols.
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expected to die by gradual starvation, thus rendering unnecessary a resort to violent means.
Don Florestan, however, has a devoted wife who refuses to believe the report of his death. Disguising herself as a servant, and assuming the name of Fidelio, she secures employment with Rocco, the head jailer. Rocco's daughter falls in love with the supposed handsome youth, and he is soon in such high favor that he is permitted to accompany Rocco on his visits to the prisoner.
Hearing that the minister of the interior is coming to the prison to investi?gate the supposed death of Florestan, the governor decides to murder him, and asks Rocco's aid. Fidelio overhears the conversation and gets Rocco to allow her to dig the grave. Just as Don Pizarro is about to strike the fatal blow, Fidelio rushes forward, proclaims herself the wife of the prisoner, and shields him. The governor is about to sacrifice both when a flourish of trumpets announces the arrival of the minister just in time to prevent the murder of Florestan.
Richard Wagner in his essay "On the Overture" paid a remarkable tribute to Beethoven and to this great overture, when he wrote:
Far from giving us a mere musical introduction to the drama, it [the "Leonore" No. 3] sets that drama more completely and more movingly before us than ever happens in the broken action which ensues. This work is no longer an overture, but the greatest of dramas in itself. . . .
In this mighty tonepiece, Beethoven has given us a musical drama, a drama founded on a playwright's piece, and not the mere sketch of one of its main ideas, or even a purely pre?paratory introduction to the acted play; but a drama, be it said, in the most ideal meaning of the term. . . . His object was to condense to its noblest unity the one sublime action which the dramatist had weakened and delayed by paltry details in order to spin out the tale; to give a new, an ideal motion, fed solely by its inmost springs.
This action is the deed of a staunch and loving heart, fired by the one sublime desire to descend as an angel of salvation into the very pit of death. One sole idea pervades the work: the freedom brought by a jubilant angel of light to suffering manhood. We are plunged into a gloomy dungeon; no beam of day strikes through to us; night's awful silence breaks only to the moans, the sighs, of a soul that longs from its deepest depths for freedom, freedom.
As through a cranny letting in the sun's last ray, a yearning glance peers down; 'tis the glance of an angel that feels the pure air of heavenly freedom a crushing load the while its breath cannot be shared by the one who is pent beneath the prison's walls. Then a swift resolve inspires it, to tear down all the barriers hedging the prisoner from heaven's light: higher, higher, and ever fuller swells the soul, its might redoubled by the blest resolve; 'tis the angel of redemption to the world. Yet this angel is but a loving woman, its strength the puny strength of suffering humanity itself; it battles alike with hostile hindrances and its own weakness, and threatens to succumb. But the superhuman idea, which ever lights its soul anew, lends finally the superhuman force; one last prodigious strain of even fibre, and, at the moment of supremest need, the final barrier falls.
Richard Wagner, "On the Overture," Gazette Musk ale, January 10, 14, and 17, 1841, trans, by William Ashton Ellis, Wagner's Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul, French, Trubner & Co., 189299), VII.
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Analysis
After a long and solemn introduction, relating to Florestan's hopeless situa?tion (adagio C major, 33 time), the main movement (allegro, 22 time) presents a short figured principal theme in the cellos and violins, which is de?veloped to unusual length in a grimly passionate manner. The second subject, entering rather abruptly in an extended upward flight in violins and flutes, con?tinues in short fragmentary phrases to a climax of vigorous syncopated string and woodwind passages. The development section continues with these short phases, occasionally joined by the figures of the principal theme. Sudden and unexpected outbursts in the whole orchestra lend an inarticulate expressiveness to the climax of the work, dramatically interrupted by the trumpet call which, in the opera, announces the arrival of Don Fernando. A quiet and brief interlude follows, creating an air of expectancy and heightening the dramatic effect of the second and closer announcement of the trumpet call. Wagner objected to the altered, yet formal, recapitulation of the first part of the overture as undramatic, and in truth he is artistically justified in wishing that Beethoven had, after the trumpet fanfare, rushed on to the conclusion. But Beethoven paid this respect to the conventional form, and then, in a passage of syncopated octaves (presto), created an overwhelming and novel effect in this section. The coda, based on a vigorous working of the principal subject, brings this mighty overture to a thrilling finale.
Belshazzar's Feast.............Walton
William Turner Walton was born at Oldham, England, March 29, 1902.
In the second and third decades of this century two young English composers stimulated a great deal of active interest in the musical world. William Walton's Viola Concerto (1929), Belshazzar's Feast for Baritone, Chorus, and Orchestra (1931), First Symphony (1935), Violin Concerto (1939), and Constant Lam?bert's Ballet Romeo and Juliet (1926), Rio Grande for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra (1929), Music for Orchestra (1931), Summer's Last Will and Testa?ment, a Masque, for Chorus and Orchestra (1936), and other major works of each raised high expectation among musicians and critics. Walton's name be?came linked with Lambert's for no other reason than that they alone seemed to stand out hopefully in a dearth of creative talent. Actually they represent highly individual and completely independent styles.
After an enthusiastic reception of a performance of Belshazzar's Feast in 1931, Ernest Newman wrote in the London Sunday Times:
Nothing so full blooded as this, nothing so bursting with a very fury of exultation in the power of modern music, has been produced in this or any other country for a very long time; by the side of it, Stravinsky's Symphonic de Psaumes is very anemic stuff indeed. Mr. Walton works consistently at a voltage that takes our breath away.
Performed at the 19S1 May Festival. [56]
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But it is not mere sound and fury; the astounding thing about it all is the composer's musical control of the pounding, panting engine he has launched. It is difficult to realize that so young a man has so complete a command of his subject, of his craftsmanship, and of himself; it is all new, all individual, yet all so thoroughly competent musically. After this, I should not care to place any theoretical bonds to Mr. Walton's possible development.
Although much of the novelty of the score has evaporated in the past twenty years, and we are more aware today of its obvious and external effectiveness, the music still impresses with its dramatic tension and immediacy. The individuality of Walton's style persists, although it no longer seems to defy tradition even though it sometimes discards it. It is marked by rapid pace, elasticity of thematic treatment, rhythmic displacements and fluctuations, and a complexity of har?mony that is often mistaken for polyphonic writing. Today we are perhaps more acutely aware of the craftsmanship and the practicality of Walton's inventiveness than we were when this effective work first shocked us with its seemingly brutal expression. For all its harsh dissonance there is a retention of "key" feeling throughout; for all its apparent complexity of texture, the total effect is achieved without too much elaboration. The epic union of a double chorus, a large orches?tra, and two brass bands cannot fail to excite by the sheer impact of its dynamics. This unabashed exploitation of all the resources of volume and sonority has been censured by some critics who point out that, in spite of the sensational effects achieved, there is little evidence of real creative energy. Yet the fact that Walton is able to sustain throughout this work a persistent unyielding pitch of relentless dramatic power attests to the fact that he has unquestioned inventiveness and resourcefulness as a composer.
The epic framework within which he shapes his musical forms and colors into a sonorous structural unity is an assembled text drawn from the Book of Psalms and the Book of Daniel by Osbert Sitwell. The vehemence of the Biblical text amply justifies the character of the music, which is always dramati?cally appropriate. This unanimity of sense and sound was noted and aptly expressed by Dr. Earl V. Moore in the Program Book of 1933, when the work was presented at the May Festival of that year:
The harmonic dissonances are consistent with the demands of the text; they are not inter?jected for superficial effect as is the case with some youthful composers. For example, the dissonance with which the initial phrase for male chorus is invested--''Thus spake Isaiah: thy sons that thou shalt beget"--serves to show at once the scorn and derision of the prophet as he adjures them: "Howl ye therefore, for the day of the Lord is at hand." Simple diatonic triads such as nineteenth century composers might have employed, or even the mild disson?ances of that generation, would have seemed weak and sophisticated in comparison to the bold, barbaric, musical embodiment of the mood of the Prophet Isaiah as he delivered this dire warning. A plaintive mood follows as the mixed chorus, unaccompanied, sings, by way of sharp contrast, a melodic fluent passage in modern counterpoint to the words "By the waters of Babylon." From this point the pictures of the despair of the Israelites in captivity alter?nate with the orgiastic revels of the Babylonians. Climax is piled on climax, sometimes it is orchestral, at other moments it is choral; the two forces complement each other, yet maintain their individuality in a manner that is novel and breath taking.
The treatment of the solo baritone as he narrates the qualities which made Babylon a
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great city, and, later, when he describes the handwriting on the wall is a vivid, bold con?ception, a definite break with traditional formulae, in which the unaccompanied voice stands out in marked contrast to the fury of the chorus as it tells its part of the story.
One of the most spectacular effects is that of the pagan marchdance in "praise to God of Gold, of Silver; Iron, Stone, Wood and Brass." Glitter, pomp, and festive orgy are reflected in the music; it is so vivid that the listener feels he has been transported back hundreds of years and is actually present at the scene of Belshazzar's feast to the strange gods and idols, and actually joins in the shout "0 King, live forever." The handwriting scene, and the death of the king, provide a moment of respite before the onward sweep of the music to the final climax which is inspired by the phrase, "Then sing aloud to God our strength; make a joy?ful noise unto God of Jacob."
There is no doubt that this myriad colored music, now restless and sullen, now savage and menacing--sings to us "of old unhappy far off things, and battles long ago."
The text is as follows:
Thus spake Isaiah: Thy sons that thou shalt beget They shall be taken away, And be eunuchs In the palace of the King of Babylon
Howl ye, howl ye, therefore:
For the day of the Lord is at hand!
By the waters of Babylon, By the waters of Babylon There we sat down: yea, we wept And hanged our harps upon the willows.
For they that wasted us
Required of us mirth;
They that carried us away captive
Required of us a song.
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song In a strange land
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee,
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth. Yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my
chief joy.
By the waters of Babylon
There we sat down: yea, we wept.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be
destroyed, Happy shall he be that taketh thy children
And dasheth them against a stone, For with violence shall that great city Baby?lon be thrown down And shall be found no more at all.
Babylon was a great city,
Her merchandise was of gold and silver,
Of precious stones, of pearls, of fine linen,
Of purple, silk and scarlet,
All manner vessels of ivory,
All manner vessels of most precious wood,
Of brass, iron, and marble,
Cinnamon, odours, and ointments,
Of frankincense, wine, and oil,
Fine flour, wheat, and beasts,
Sheep, horses, chariots, slaves,
And the souls of men.
In Babylon
Belshazzar the King
Made a great feast,
Made a feast to a thousand of his lords, And drank wine before the thousand.
Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, Commanded us to bring the gold and silver
vessels: Yea! the golden vessels, which his father,
Nebuchadnezzar,
Had taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem.
He commanded us to bring the golden vessels
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Of the temple of the house of God, That the King, his Princes, his wives, And his concubines might drink therein.
Then the King commanded us: Bring ye the cornet, flute, sackbut,
psaltery, And all kinds of music: they drank wine
again And then spake the King:
Praise ye
The God of Gold Praise ye
The God of Silver Praise ye
The God of Iron Praise ye
The God of Stone Praise ye
The God of Wood Praise ye
The God of Brass
Thus in Babylon, the mighty city, Belshazzar the King made a great feast, Made a feast to a thousand of his lords And drank wine before the thousand.
Belshazzar whiles he tasted the wine Commanded us to bring the gold and
silver vessels That his Princes, his wives, and his
concubines Might rejoice and drink therein.
After they praised their strange gods, The idols and the devils. False gods who can neither see nor hear Called they for the timbrel and the pleas?ant harp
To extol the glory of the King.
Then they pledged the King before the
people,
Crying, Thou, 0 King, art King of Kings: 0 King, live for ever .... And in that same hour, as they feasted Came forth fingers of a man's hand And the King saw The part of the hand that wrote. And this was the writing that was written:
'MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN' 'THOU ART WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE AND FOUND WANTING.'
In that night was Belshazzar the King slain And his Kingdom divided.
Then sing aloud to God our strength: Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. Take a psalm, bring hither the timbrel, Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, Blow up the trumpet in Zion For Babylon is fallen, fallen.
Alleluia!
Then sing aloud to God our strength: Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob, While the Kings of the Earth lament And the merchants of the Earth Weep, wail, and rend the raiment. They cry, Alas, Alas, that great city, In one hour is her judgment come.
The trumpeters and pipers are silent, And the harpers have ceased to harp, And the light of a candle shall shine no more.
Then sing aloud to God our strength. Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. For Babylon the Great is fallen.
Alleluia!
Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 for Piano and Orchestra . . .
Beethoven
Beethoven always approached a new form with caution, leaning heavily at first upon traditions established by his predecessors, Haydn and Mozart. What?ever the form--the symphony, the sonata, the quartet, or the concerto--he en?tered the untried field with deliberation. Once he found himself the master, he subjected the form to merciless scrutiny and went about deliberately to free it from the fetters of the past that were binding it.
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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 nineteenthcentury romantic piano music. Isolated movements from the others began to show feverish exploration, such as that detected in the slow move?ment of Op. 10, No. 3, one of the most powerful utterances to be found in his early music.
Beethoven's first three piano concertos came from the same period (17951800), although the third showed considerable advance over the first two rather conservative ones, disclosing a more conscious liberation of creative energy. It was the most mature and highly developed of all the compositions which Beethoven had brought to fruition in the first year of the new century. In the grandeur of its conception the third piano concerto is an imposing landmark on the way to the epochmaking "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 he touched.
About five years elapsed between the writing of the third and fourth concertos, the latter being composed for the most part and completed in 1806. During this period Beethoven was pursued by disaster, disappointments, and sorrows of all kinds brought about by the full realization of the seriousness of his increasing deafness and the collapse of the high hopes he had for his opera Fidelio. In a letter to Wengeler dated November 16, 1801, he had written, "I will as far as possible defy my fate, though there must be moments when I shall be the most miserable of God's creatures--I will grapple with Fate, it shall never drag me down."
There are few more potent examples of an artist's defense against his fate or escape from personal grief and tragic circumstances than those that are to be found in the fourth piano concerto, the first Rasoumowsky quartet, the fourth symphony, and the violin concerto which came from his pen during this time. In their exuberance and lighthearted charm, Beethoven lost himself in a world of his own making, a world of adolescent happiness and fairytale atmo?sphere.
The fourth concerto was dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph of Austria and was published in August, 1808. It had its initial performance at one of the two subscription concerts devoted entirely to Beethoven's works, given at the home of Prince Lobkowitz, in Vienna in March, 1807. In addition to the new concerto, the fourth symphony and the "Coriolanus" overture were also presented for the first time. The first public performance took place at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 22, 1808.
For many years the fourth Concerto was neglected, overshadowed by the over?whelming popularity of the great one in Eflat major known as "The Emperor." It was Mendelssohn who saved it from possible oblivion when he revived it at a
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Gewandhaus concert at Leipzig in 1836. At the time Robert Schumann wrote "I have received a pleasure from it such as I have never enjoyed and I sat in my place without moving a muscle or even breathing, afraid of making the least noise."
The fourth concerto marks an innovation in the long evolution of the form, from a mere show piece with a servile orchestral accompaniment to a full emanci?pation of the orchestra, such as one finds in those of Schumann and Brahms.
The first movement (allegro moderato, G major, 44) begins unconventionally with the announcement of the principal theme in the piano. By giving the initial statement to the solo instrument instead of the orchestra, Beethoven freed the concerto from one of its most traditional bonds. It is a brief statement of only four measures after an introductory chord, but none the less daring for its brevity. With the entrance of the orchestra the treatment becomes orthodox, presenting the conventional exposition of contrasting themes.
The second movement {andante con moto, E minor, 24) is compared by Tovey to Orpheus taming the wild beasts with his music. He refers obviously to the contrasts between the forbidding, strongly rhythmic recurring figure in the strings and the tender, wistful melody in the piano. The movement is very free in its construction, aiming chiefly at expressiveness. Described by Sir George Grove, it "is one of the most original and imaginative things that ever fell from the pen of Beethoven, or any other musician. The strings of the orchestra alone are employed, but they maintain throughout a dialogue with the piano in al?ternate phrases of the most dramatic character--the orchestra in octaves forte and staccato, fierce and rude; the piano employing but one string molto cantabile, molto expressivo, as winning, soft, beseeching as ever was human voice."
The third movement (rondo: vivace, G major, 24), following the preceding movement without pause opens with a lively theme announced immediately in the strings, pianissimo, answered by the piano in a florid variation. After a short melodic phrase, first heard in the strings and taken up by the piano, and a bold digressing section in the orchestra, the second theme of the movement is stated in the piano. This "round" of returning themes is brilliantly developed in a "reck?less, devilmaycare spirit of jollity" to a coda of enormous proportions, and the movement ends on an exciting increase of tempo.
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Sunday Evening, May 4 Passacaglia................Haug
Hans Haug was born July 27, 1900.
Disregarding the dialectical discussions of the derivations of, and what con?stitutes the difference between, a passacaglia and a chaconne, the passacaglia was a baroque form of music employing a continuous set of variations upon a clearly distinguishable bass theme, which, however, was often transferred to an upper voice.
The basic theme in Haug's passacaglia is sixteen measures in length and goes through ten variations, in which the theme is not only transferred to the upper voices but, after the fourth variation, mounts with persistence through successively higher dynamic levels. Beginning in the low lugubrious instruments such as the contrabassoon and bassoon, basses, and bass trombones, it rises through the violins and violas in variation five, into the flutes, oboe, and clarinet in variation six, to a compelling statement in the horns, and full body of strings in variation seven. A broad climax is achieved in variation eight, followed by a slight leveling off in variation nine, only to gather force for the crushing climax of the last variation where the theme is now heard soaring out in the upper strings with full orchestral support.
Hans Haug, although virtually unknown in this country, is highly respected in Europe as a conductor, teacher, and composer. Among his often performed works are an opera, Tartuffe, a ballet, L'Indifferent, and concertos for piano, violin, and cello. Among his latest works is a concerto for guitar and orchestra and an unfinished opera, "Orpheus."
"Chacun le sait" from La Fille du regiment .... Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti was born November 29, 1797, in Bergamo; died there April 8, 1848.
The number of operas accredited to Donizetti is sixtyseven, including four posthumously performed, but of the total number only four or five are now recognized as of enduring quality. Among this group must be included The Daughter of the Regiment, which, after disappearing from the repertory of the Metropolitan for twentytwo years, was revived in 1940 with sensational suc?cess. This success does not rest entirely on its real musical or dramatic merit, but more particularly upon its rollicking songs, its beating drums, and its eartickling arias for the coloratura soprano. Unlike the many Italian operas whose heroines go mad, are stabbed, poisoned, or die of unrequited love or con?sumption before the final curtain, this frolicksome little opera provides a vivacious heroine and a slight but entertaining plot which tells of a Tyrolese peasant, Tony,
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who joins a regiment to win the heart of its adopted daughter, Marie. A marquise, however, claims Marie as her daughter and separates her from the regiment and her lover, providing a noble suitor for her hand. When the wedding ceremony is about to take place, Tony, now a captain, arrives on the scene with a band of soldiers, ready to rescue her. The marquise, deeply touched at Marie's willingness to carry out her wishes, relents and gives her blessing to the persistent lover.
The aria on tonight's program is from Act I and is sung by Marie as she eulogizes her beloved regiment:
It is acknowledged wherever one goes that our regiment is unexcelled. We are welcomed in all the cabarets of France and even the landlords trust us. While husbands and lovers dread us, the ladies love us. For valor and boldness we are supreme. We are so brave that the Emperor is seriously contemplating making marshalls of us all. We must confess it--no regi?ment is more victorious than the fearless Twentyfirst.
"O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi .... Puccini
Giacomo Puccini was born at Luca, Italy, Decem?ber 22, 1858; died at Brussels, November 29, 1924.
Giacomo Puccini, referred to by Verdi as the most promising of his successors, may be said to dominate modern operatic composers even today, a quarter of a century after his death. He justified his master's prophecy by a career of unin?terrupted success from the date of his first dramatic venture, Le Ville, Milan, 1884, to the last, unfinished work, Turandot, 1924. While there are numerous men such as Mascagni and Leoncavallo who have won fame through a single work, Puccini achieved high esteem both by the quantity and quality of his operatic creations.
Gianni Schicchi is one of Puccini's three oneact operas and the action fits admirably the requirements of a oneact play. It is swift, varied, interesting, and the music aids it at every point. When the action of Gianni Schicchi opens, one Donati has been dead for two hours. His relatives are thinking of the will. When it is finally read, it is found that Donati has left all his money to charity. Schicchi, father of Lauretta who is in love with one of Donati's kin, is called in and consulted. He plans a ruse. So far only those in the room know of Donati's demise. The corpse is hidden. Schicchi gets into bed and, when the doctor calls, imitates the dead man's voice and pretends he wants to go to sleep. The lawyer is sent for. Schicchi dictates a new will in favor of himself and becomes the heir to Donati's fortune.
The aria on tonight's program is sung by Lauretta to her father, Gianni Schicchi. In it she begs his consent to her marriage. Pleading coyly at first, she ends by threatening to throw herself under the Ponte Vecchio if he does not allow her to go to Porte Rossa to buy a wedding ring.
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"Mi chiamano Mimi" from La Boheme......Puccini
If the Frenchman, Bizet, was able to express most adequately the life and spirit of Spain in his Carmen, it remained for the Italian, Puccini, to interpret and fix in an opera the student and artist life of Paris. There is a vigor, a life?like realism, and a delicately drawn pathos in this work that raise it to a high position in the field of lyric drama. It is without doubt the most beloved of all operas today. Audiences seem never to weary of the simple love story of the consumptive little seamstress, Mimi, and her artist lover, Rudolph, nor fail to respond to the combination of gaiety and sadness, comedy and tragedy, opulent vocal melody and orchestral richness that comes to them from the pages of this most expressive score.
In this aria from Act I, which is almost too familiar to warrant comment, Mimi is speaking to Rudolph at their first meeting. She tells him of her pitifully simple life--of how she works all day making artificial flowers for a living, of her longing for the real blossoms of spring time and the green meadows of the countryside, and of how lonely she has become in her tiny attic room high above the housetops.
Symphony No. 5 in Eflat major, Op. 82.....Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was born in Tavastehus, Finland, December 8, 186S.
I begin already dimly to see the mountain that I shall certainly ascend. God opens his door for a moment, and his orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.
--Sibelius
Sibelius remains, without doubt, by virtue of the quality and quantity of his output, the outstanding representative of the symphonic tradition today. It was really through him that the long line of symphonic writing has survived; a line which, except for his efforts, seemed to have come to an end. Contemporary composers of the "new school," having lost the epic sweep and sustaining power that marked such masters as Beethoven and Brahms, declared the symphony a dead form, and turned to the less architectural and more programmatic sym?phonic poem and a new conception of the suite in which to frame their more lyrical and less epic conceptions. Sibelius alone, working against the tendency of his age and continuing in the tradition of the great masters of the past, not only saved the symphonic form from oblivion but raised it again to a level of dignity and grandeur equaled only by Beethoven.
In September, 1914, Sibelius wrote: "I have, indeed, had to suffer much from having persevered in writing symphonies when other composers occupied them?selves with other forms of musical expression. My obstinacy was an annoyance to many critics and conductors, and only recently did their opinion begin to change."
It was Beethoven in fact who guided Sibelius through the labyrinth of his own ideas. "The composer for me above all others is Beethoven," he wrote. "I am affected as powerfully by the human side of him as by his music. He is a revela
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tion to me. He was a Titan. Everything was against him, and yet he triumphed."
A careful consideration of Sibelius' great symphonies reveals this one fact: that he has again sensed the "grand manner" in music, has sustained his inspira?tion throughout a long life, and has cast this inspiration in a monumental series of symphonies that remain a unique structure in contemporary music. In the words of his biographer, Karl Ekman, "The noble structure of his works has come forth from the grand line of his life. He has won his inner strength and harmony in a hard battle. In a disjointed time, a period of dissension, Jean Sibelius pro?vides us with the uplifting picture of a man who dared to follow his genius and never was subservient to other claims than those of his own artistic conscience, who dared to live his life in the grand style." .Such an indomitable spirit, it seems, must ultimately triumph in art.
The fifth symphony was composed at the end of 1915, revised in 1916, and again recast in 1918. On May 18, Sibelius wrote in his diary: "The fifth symphony in a new form, practically composed anew, I work at every day. Movement I is entirely new; Movement II reminiscent of the old one; Move?ment III reminiscent of the end of the old first movement. Movement IV, the old subjects, but made stronger by revision. The whole, if I may say so, a vital climax to the end. Triumph."
Although the symphony appears to be in three movements, it is actually, as Sibelius indicates in the above quotation, cast into four, the first movement being divided into two distinct sections, contrasted in mood and structure but held together by a theme first heard in the opening measures. Beginning calmly (molto moderato), the music grows into a dark and passionate utterance, finally changing without interruption into a scherzo (allegro moderato, ma poco a poco stretto) that reaches a stunning climax. In the substructure of both sections can be heard that restless, rustling sound in the strings that has become idiomatic in Sibelius. The slow movement (andante mosso, quasi allegretto) has a single idea that dominates through continuous variation in its repetitions. The mood is gracious and tender, the treatment of the material simple and appropriate. The finale (allegro molto) opens with the characteristically agitated sound in the strings, over which a simple, almost banal melody, reminiscent of the popular ballad of some years past, "Oh Dry Those Tears," is formed. Sibelius' treatment of this commonplace theme endows it ultimately with a feeling of spaciousness and nobility, as it asserts itself to a thrilling climax of epic breadth.
In the Daily Telegraph, after a performance of the work in London, appeared the following:
It is true that this symphony is designed on broader lines than its predecessor; it contains more positive statement of its ideals, many of which are of the simplest melodic kind, that the coloring is richer and fuller, with more use of the effects of orchestral masses--Sibelius, both as composer and conductor, stands apart, a lonely figure seeking with difficulty to bring the ideals which are intensely real to him into touch with other minds. Possibly it is his struggle for expression which sometimes recalls Beethoven as one listens to him.
Karl Ekman, Jean Sibelius, His Life and Personality (New York: Knopf, 1938).
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Lucy's Arietta from The Telephone......Menotti
GianCarlo Menotti was born in Cadogliano, Italy, July 7, 1911.
GianCarlo Menotti is perhaps the most promising and exciting operatic crea?tive talent of our time. In his operas he has demonstrated a natural talent for the lyric stage, unknown to any other composer of our period in America. To date his important works have been: Amelia Goes to the Ball (1937), performed at the Metropolitan in 1938; The Old Maid and the Thief (1939), written for the National Broadcasting Company and since then performed with regularity throughout the country; The Island God, a tragic oneact opera performed at the Metropolitan in 1942; The Medium (1946), commissioned by Columbia Uni?versity (Alice M. Ditson Fund) and produced first at Brander Matthews Hall by the Columbia Theatre Association in conjunction with the music department, and later on Broadway with resounding success. Since its sensational reception it has been made into a motion picture. The Consul, produced with similar success on Broadway in 1950, again furthered his reputation as an operatic composer. His latest work, Amahl and the Night Visitors, was commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company in 1950 for their network series of television operas and was the first opera written especially for this medium. It had its first performance December 24, 1951, and was received with enthusiastic critical acclaim. It is included in the current repertory of the New York City Center Opera Company.
Menotti has an innate sense of the theater, an acute insight into what, in the aggregate, an opera really should be--i.e., he possesses an exceptional ability to protract in music the emotional atmosphere created by the events on the stage, and to penetrate, through an essentially vocal style, depths of character and personality. His remarkable talent is the result of a unique combination of two or more centuries of operatic tradition and inheritance, a feeling for contemporary musical and theatrical values, and that illusive thing known as an indigenous American expression. If Menotti continues to mature as a composer and musician and begins to control his somewhat youthful desire to contrive theatrical tricks and effects for their own sake--which is his besetting sin--he may easily one day create a music drama that will place him among the masters of this genre.
As a curtain raiser to The Medium, Menotti wrote The Telephone, an un?pretentious but delightful little work in the preMozartian frivolous style of Italian opera buffa. Its slender story is of a young man who tries to propose to a young lady, already so wedded to her telephone that his constantly interrupted proposal goes unheeded. In final desperation, he leaves her to call from a nearby telephone, by means of which he successfully pleads his cause and finally wins her. Lucy's Arietta appears at the opening and is sung while the thwarted young man waits for an end of the conversation to pursue his proposal. Inconsequential as this music may sound, it is written with a natural fluency and keen feeling for vocal expressiveness. Its sparkling style is amusingly gay, pleasantly tuneful, yet quickwitted and satirical.
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SIXTH CONCERT
Willow Song...........ColeridgeTaylor
Samuel ColeridgeTaylor was born in London, England, August IS, 1875; died at Croydon, September 1, 1912.
Samuel ColeridgeTaylor, a British composer of AfricanNegro descent, had a short, brilliant career. He left to the world, when he died at the age of thirtyseven, an art ranging from opera through symphony, chamber, and choral music, the individuality of which made an immediate and lasting impression and won him a rapid recognition throughout the Englishspeaking world.
He made three concert tours of the United States, in 1904, 1906, and 1910, conducting his own works, and gained from American audiences a lasting respect and affection.
An important part of his work which has lasted through the years is the inci?dental music written for various plays produced at His Majesty's Theatre, Lon?don. The wellknown "Willow Song" from Shakespeare's Othello, sung by Desdemona in her chamber just before her death, has been set by this gifted composer with sensitivity and taste.
Suite from Die Fledermaus.......Johann Strauss
About 1806, Dr. Charles Burney spoke of the waltz as "a riotous German dance of modern invention. . . . The verb waltzen, whence this word is derived, implies to roll, wallow, welter, tumble down, or roll in the dirt or mire. What analogy there may be between these acceptations and the dance, we pretend not to say; but having seen it performed by a select party of foreigners, we could not help reflecting how uneasy an English mother would be to see her daughter so familiarly treated and still more to witness the obliging manner in which the freedom is returned by the females."
The waltz flourished, however, in spite of nice old Dr. Burney, and during the middle of the nineteenth century, under the refining influence of the Strausses, father and son, it reached its graceful and melodious perfection.
Johann Strauss began his public career in a concert, October 15, 1844, at Donmayer's Casino. The tremendous success on that occasion began a series of uninterrupted triumphs which finally brought him to the peak of popularity as a conductor. As a composer, his output was prodigious. He composed almost five hundred dances and sixteen operettas. Although he chose to write in a limited idiom, within it he surpassed all others in effectiveness and expressiveness. His genius as a composer should not be minimized because he avoided working in the larger forms. He remains one of the musical masters of his age. Richard Wagner referred to him as "the most musical brain of the century" and declared that "one of Strauss' waltzes surpassed, as far as charm, finish and musical worth, hundreds of artificial compositions of his contemporaries, as the tower of St. Stephen's surpasses the kiosks on the boulevards of Paris. Long live our classicists from Mozart to Strauss!"
[67
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
In the spring of 1872, Meilhac and Halevy, librettists for Offenbach, concocted, from a German comedy by Roderick Bendix, a runofthemill farce entitled Le Reveillon ("The Awakening"). This unpretentious, rather crude comedy of errors and mistaken identities became the source of one of the most delightfully unique scores in the history of opera.
The French version of the story was converted by Haffner and Genee into a German libretto, and presented to Strauss, who, intrigued by the fact that the piece centered about a grand ball, emerged after fortythree days of seclusion with the score of a waltzopera, Die Fledermaus.
The effervescent beauty and exhilaration of this music has served and survived three quarters of a century of modernminded directors, producers, and versi?fiers who have periodically attempted to adapt it to the tastes and desires of their various generations. It has been produced as "La Chauve Souris," "La Tzigane," "II Pipistrello," "The Bat," "The Merry Countess," "The Night Birds," "The Masked Ball," "Fly by Night," "Champagne Sec," "A Wonderful Night," "Rosalinda," and under dozens of other titles. No amount of theatrical or dra?matic restoration, renovation, rejuvenation, or reconversion of this work could in the slightest degree either increase or diminish the brilliance that is for all time caught within its miraculous musical pages. A brief resume of the plot of Die Fledermaus follows:
Baron von Eisenstein, who has been sentenced to prison for insulting an officer, is persuaded by a notary, Dr. Falke, to postpone for one day the beginning of his sentence in order to attend a masked ball. After von Eisenstein bids a mourn?ful farewell to his wife Rosalinda, telling her he must go to prison, Dr. Falke invites her to attend the same ball. When her husband has departed, Rosalinda receives a visit from an old admirer, Alfred, and when the warden of the prison comes to take von Eisenstein to jail, he mistakes Alfred for the prisoner and carries him off. Rosalinda goes to the ball disguised as a Hungarian countess and immediately wins the attentions of her unsuspecting husband, who, as a token of his admiration, leaves with her his treasured watch. When the festivi?ties end, Eisenstein returns to the prison to give himself up. He then learns, much to his surprise, that "Eisenstein" had been arrested the previous night, and that Alfred had, in his absence, visited his wife's apartment. When Rosalinda appears at the jail, he accuses her of infidelity, but when she produces the watch as evidence of his own transgression, all is forgiven between them.
After his sensationally successful conducting of the opera last year at the Metropolitan, Mr. Ormandy arranged a suite from some of the most ingratiating pages of the score. For this concert, the suite has been expanded to include three popular soprano arias.
The first of these, "I've a Sister," is sung by Adele, the pert and resourceful maid of the Eisensteins. She has just received an invitation to the masked ball
The Csardas sung by Miss Steber on Thursday night's program appears at the end of this scene, see page 19.
[68]
SIXTH CONCERT
from her sister, a famous dancer. She enters the room singing a brilliant cadenza that expresses her excitement at the contents of the letter, from which she then reads.
In the second excerpt, "A Ladies' Name," Rosalinda, after the departure of Eisenstein, is visited by her old admirer, Alfred. They are interrupted by Frank, the warden of the jail, who has come for his prisoner. Rosalinda in this aria attempts to explain away all implications of scandal to save her good name.
The third aria, "Look Me Over Once," popularly known as "The Laughing Song," is sung by Adele, who is attending the ball in a dress of her mistress, Rosalinda. She is recognized by her master, Eisenstein, but laughs off her em?barrassment in a serieaof staccato scales, several high B's, a D, and a brilliant cadenza which ends on a trilled high C.
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[69]
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Organized in 1879. Incorporated in 1881.
PRESIDENTS
Henry Simmons Frieze, 18791881 and 18831889 Alexander Winchell, 18811883 and 18891891 Francis W. Kelsey, 18911927 Charles A. Sink (Executive Secretary, 19041927) 1927
MUSICAL DIRECTORS
Calvin B. Cady, 18791888 Albert A. Stanley, 18881921 Earl V. Moore, 19221939
CONDUCTORS
Thor Johnson, 19391942
Hardin Van Deursen, 19421947
Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947
Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor, 1947
THE 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, 18941921 Earl V. Moore, 19221939
CONDUCTORS ThorJohnson, 19401942 Hardin Van Deursen, 19431946 Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947
[70]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
ORGANIZATIONS
The Boston Festival Orchestra, Emil Mollenhauer, Conductor, 18941904
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, Conductor, 19051935; Eric DeLamarter, Associate Conductor, 19181935
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, 19391945; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor, 1946
The University Choral Union, Albert A. Stanley, Conductor, 18941921; Earl V. Moore, Conductor, 19221939; Thor Johnson, Conductor, 19401942; Hardin Van Deursen, 19431947; Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, 1947; Lester McCoy, Associate Con?ductor, 1947
The Festival Youth Chorus, trained by Florence B. Potter, and conducted by Albert A. Stanley, 19131918. Conductors: Russell Carter, 1920; George Oscar Bowen, 19211924; Joseph E. Maddy, 19251927; Juva N. Higbee, 19281936; Roxy Cowin, 1937; Juva N. Higbee, 1938; Roxy Cowin, 1939; Juva N. Higbee, 19401942; Marguerite Hood, 1943
The 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, 1950 Beethoven : Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123--1927, 1947
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125--1934, 1942, 1945 Berlioz : The Damnation of Faust--1895, 1909, 1920, 1952 Bizet: Carmen--1904, 1918, 1927, 1938 Bloch : "America," An Epic Rhapsody--1929 Bossi: Paradise Lost--1916
[71]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Brahms: Requiem, Op. 45--1899 (excerpts), 1929, 1941, 1949
Alto Rhapsodie, Op. 53--1939
Song of Destiny, Op. 54--1950 Bruch : Arminius--1897, 1905
Fair Ellen, Op. 24--1904, 1910
Odysseus--1910
Bruckner: Te Deum laudamus--1945 Carey: "America"--1915 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--1004, 1912, 1917 Fogg: The Seasons--1937 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
Gratnger, Percy : 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 Beowulf--1926
Merry Mount--1933 Haydn: The Creation--1908, 1932
The Seasons--1909, 1934 Heger: Ein Friedenslied, Op. 19--1934t Holst: A Choral Fantasia--1932t
A Dirge for Two Veterans--1923
The Hymn of Jesus--1923t
First Choral Symphony (excerpts)--1927t Honecger, Arthur: King David--1930, 1935, 1942 Kodaly: Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13--1939 Lambert, Constant: Summer's Last Will and Testament--1951t McDonald, Harl: Symphony No. 3 ("Lamentations of Fu Hsuan")--1939 Mendelssohn: Elijah--1901, 1921, 1926,1944
St. Paul--1905
Mennin, Peter : Symphony No. 4, "The Cycle,"--1950 Moussorgsky: Boris Godounov--1931, 1935 Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, K. 427--1948
Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626--1946 Parker: Hora Novissima, Op. 30--1900 Pierne : The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931 Ponchtelli: La Gioconda--1925 Prokofieff : Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78--1946
World Premise t American Premiere
[72]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Rachmaninoff: The Bells--192S, 1938, 1948
Respighi: La Primavera--1924t
RrMSKYKoRSAKOFF: The Legend of Kitesh--1931t
Rossini : Stabat Mater--1897
SaintSaens: Samson and Delilah--1896, 1899, 1907, 1912, 1916, 1923, 1929, 1940
Schuman, William: A Free Song (Cantata No. 2)--194S
Sibelius : Onward Ye Peoples--1939, 194S
Smith, J. S.: Star Spangled Banner--1919, 1920
Stanley: Chorus Triumphalis, Op. 14--1897, 1912, 1921
Fair Land of Freedom--1919
Hymn of Consecration--1918
"Laus Deo," Chora] 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, Charles : Cantata, "The Inimitable Lovers"--1940 Verdi: Aida--1903, 1906, 1917, 1921, 1924 (excerpts), 1928, 1937
La Forza del Destino (Finale, Act II)--1924
Otetto--1939
Requiem Mass--1894, 1898, 1913, 1920, 1930, 1936, 1943, 1951
Stabat Mater--1899
Te Deum--1947
VillaLobos, Heitor: Choros No. 10, "Rasga o corac,ao"--1949 Wagner : Die fliegende Hollander--1898
Lohengrin--1926; Act 1--1896, 1913
Die Meistersinger, Finale to Act III--1903, 1913; Choral, "Awake," and Chorale Finale to Act III--1923
Scenes from Parsifal--1937
Tannhauser--1902, 1922; March and Chorus--1896; "Venusberg" Music--1946 Walton, William : Belshazzar's Feast--1933, 19S2 WolfFerrari: 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 Benedict: Sweet Repose is Reigning Now--1921 Benoit : Into The World--1914, 1918 Boyd, Jean : The Hunting of the Snark--192? Brahms : The Little Dust Man--1933
Lullaby--1931 Bruch: April Folk--1922 Busch : The Song of Spring--1922
t American Premidre
[73
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Caraciolo: Nearest and Dearest--1923
A Streamlet Full of Flowers--1923 Carey: "America"--1913, 1917, 1918, 1920 Chopin : The Maiden's Wish--1931 ColeridgeTaylor: Viking Song--1924
DeLamarter, Eric (orchestrator): Songs of the Americas--1944, 1948 English, Granvhxe : Cantata, "The Ugly Duckling"--1934 Farwell: Morning--1924
Fletcher: The Walrus and the Carpenter--1913, 1917, 1926, 1942, 19S0 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 Gillett: Songs--1941 Gounod: "Waltz Song" from Faust--1924 Grainger, Percy : Country' Gardens--1933 Gretchaninoff : The Snow Drop--1938 Handel : "He Shall Feed His Flock," from Messiah--1929 Howland, Russell (orchestrator): Song Cycle from the Masters--1947, 19S2 Humperdinck : Selections from Hansel and Grelel--1923 Hyde : Cantata, "The Quest of the Queer Prince"--1928 d'Indy : Saint Mary Magdalene--1941 James, Dorothy: Cantata, "Jumblies"--1935
Cantata, "Paul Bunyan"--1938
American Folk Songs (orchestration)--1946, 19S1
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
MohrGruber : Christmas Hymn, "Silent Night"--1916 Moore, E. V.: "The Voyage of Arion"--1021, 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 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"--1032 Purcell: In the Delightful Pleasant Grove--1938 Recer : The Virgin's Slumber Song--1938 Reinecke, Carl: "In Life If Love We Know Not"--1921
O Beautiful Violet--1924
World Premtere
[74]
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
RowleyJames : 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--1934, 1939
Linden Tree--1923, 1935
Serenade in D minor--1939
The Trout--1937
Whither--1939
Who Is Sylvia--1920
Schumann, Georc: 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 : Night Hymn at Sea--1924 Tosti : Serenade--1933 Van der Stucken : At the Window--1920
Wagner : "Whirl and Twirl" from The Flying Dutchman--914 Wahlstedt: Gay Liesel--1922 Weber: "Prayer" from Der Freischutt--1920
The Voice of Evening--1924
World Premltre
[75]
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor
Frederick Don Truesdell, Pianist Mary McCall Stubbins, Organist
First Sopranos
Alexander, Helen Aprill, Virginia A. Avsharian, Margaret Boyd, Elinor J. Bradstreet, Lola Branson, Alle.sra Britton, Veronica Burney, Margaret Clark, Janice R. Clark, Maury VV. Clements, Jean Crawford, Mary C. Davis, Barbara Elliott, Joanne Enkemann, Eileen Ford, Betty Ann Gilligan, Louise Glenn, Rosemary Graham, Dorothy H Hanson, Gladys M. Heyde, Norma Lee Howe, June Beverly Krimm, Marilyn M. Kraushar, Doris K. Lamberton, Pauline Lock, Inez J. Long, Ardis C. Lowe, Shirley L. MacLaren, Helen Malan, Fannie Belle McFarlane, Jean L. Meersseman, Marilyn Meyer, Beatrice F. Moore, Inez B. Newell, Dorothy Nyberg, Ida May Ongpin, Norma R. Patton, Beatrice Ravesloot, Grace Saxon, Jan Sublett, Vernett Treckelo, Mary M. VanManen, Lucille Warren, L. Eleanor Watt, Susanne J.
[76]
Second Sopranos
Allen, Jean C. Anderson, Barbara Berry, Margaret D. Bradley, Barbara S. Brater, Betsy B. Carillo, Edith M. Conover, Mary C. Coy, Audrey L. Crawford, Alice B. Davidter, Hazel E. Dorney, Edith A. Fisher, Winifred Franzblau, Beverly Hagen, Ruth S. Hall, L. Jean Hansen, Joan B. Hedrick, Norma V. Henry, Frances Howe, Helene A. Jewell, Arlene J. Jewell, Esther L. Johnson, Roberta L. Jones, Lee E. Kuhl, Elise Alice Marshall, Marilyn Merrill, Barbara Mikulich, Alice Miller, Nandeen Nanney, Jean K. Northrup, Martha Peterson, Ingrid Puglisi, Elizabeth Reck, Linda M. Roos, Susan Helen Sanderson, Doris Sharfman, Susan I. Skaff, Frances Mary Spurrier, Virginia Tate, Emma Louise Thomas, Grace Jean Turner, Mary E. Vander Kolk, Claire Vlisides, Elena C. Wolf, Beverly M. Wood, Gertrude Zapf, Joan C.
First Altos
Bailit, Irma R. Bilakos, Christena Blair, Virginia E. Brehm, Beverly J. Cheek, Gloria Lee Comstock, Marjorie Coutts, Margaret Darling, Persis Ann Davis, Sally Ann DeVoss, Helen A. Duncan, Camilla Falcone, Mary L. Garrett, Barbara Gleason, Mary J. Goldstein, Rhoda Griffith, Erma R. Hall, Nancy S. Henderson, Anne James, I. Lucille Johnson, Barbara Katzenmeyer, Ann Kime, Frances A. Little, Ann Clark Mallett, Patricia Mastin, Neva M. McLean, Marjorie Moncrieff, Alexandra Moore, June E. Nelson, Janet F. O'Conner, Edna A. Palmer, Anna W. Ratliff, Betty Lou Rauchle, Gloria I. Rouillard, Elizabeth Schreiber, Sylvia Seavey, Mary H. Shaull, Verla Rae Stansberry, M. Lucille Stimson, Sally Anne Stoltz, Barbara Lou VandeKieft, Ruth M. Wappler, Margaret C. Wiedmann, Louise Zeeb, Helen R.
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Second Altos
Agre, Chrystial Alchin, Carol Allmand, Jo Anne Ames, Julaine A. Ball, Genevieve S. Bell, Letitia L. Biddle, Jane L. Bogart, Gertrude Branson, Anita C. Brown, Francis J. Brown, Mary K. Buckwalter, Edith Case, Marietta Lou Clapham, Elizabeth Crossley, SarahLou Dansby, Ruth Anne Eckel, Helene G. Eiteman, Sylvia C. Enkemann, Gladys C. Farris, Charlotte Foster, Dorothy Anne Granger, Beverly J. Gross, Carol Ann Haswell, Judith Ann Holtman, Estella Huey, Geraldine E. Johnson, Grace E. Johnson, Marilyn M. Karnischky, Nancy Le Kay, Constance Blair Keith, Virginia M. Kish, Rhea K. Larsen, Joan Elizabeth Lauer, Joan Lenz, Elsa F. Levine, Barbara Machol, Florence L. Mattfeld, Mary M. McManus, June R. McMurray, Nancy Newell, Jean Roush, Mary Helen Stevens, Evelyn M. Straka, Jane Ann Wilcox, Ruth E. Winston, Ernestine Wright, Erma A. Zumstein, Marguerite
First Tenors
Akin, J. Richard Alperin, Harvey A. Anderson, John H. Bennett, Leslie M. D'Antonio, Arthur Dunn, James P.
Foster, John A. George, Emery E. Hagen, Ivan J. Henderson, William Horwitz, Frederick James, Dr. William S. Jones, Arthur J. Kadian, George Lawrence, William H. Lenz, Wallace W. Liefer, Gerald H. Lowry, Paul T. Monroe, John Bland Morillo, Marvin G. Moyer, Mark H. Roush, Richard E. Shapero, Bertram M. Stephenson, Charles Szor, Samuel Paul Thompson, Peter Visosky, John M. Weatherill, Robert Wynn, John Gee
Second Tenors
Applegate, Albert Bronson, David L. Follin, Weldon Lee Graden, Bruce B. Goree, Frederick Hall, Percy Foster Haswell, Max J. Herring, James Edwin Johnson, Gary Reid Kirsten, Walter T. McCracken, Dr. William Perez, Dr. Pablo Robinson, Donald C. Robinson, John D. Schmidtke, Ralph E. Schreiber, Lawrence Shatz, Malcolm H. Sickrey, William T. Stettenheim, Peter Swanson, Nils R. ten Brink, Dr. Jacobus Vandenberg, Ed Van Solkema, Sherman Vis, Vincent Almon Wall, Roger Wang, James Whitehouse, Frank, Jr.
First Basses
Arnesen, Richard B. Beach, Neil William Cathey, Arthur J. Clark, J. Bunker
Curry, Jon E. Daley, John Grannis Driesbach, Paul K. Foster, Emerson C. Friedman, James P. Fudge, James T. Gielow, James C. Glaser, Donald A. Graham, Garrett R. Hall, Reginald H. Hamilton, Ralph E., Jr. Huber, Franz E. Kays, J. Warren Keith, Robert E. Lewis, James Lee, Jr. McCaughey, Richard J. Murray, David C, Jr. Roberts, William H. Roderick, Thomas H. Thurston, Richard E. True, Wesley 0. Umphrey, James R. Upton, John H. Vedder, Morris A. Wiselogel, Jean R.
Second Basses
Berberian, Ara Berg, Arthur D. Bergin, George, Jr. Brown, Robert G. Clugston, George A. Curtice, Russell E. Davidter, Royal C. Dean, Louis, Jr. Friedman, John Lee Halstead, Boyd C. Holmberg, Edwin H. Holtgrieve, Martin Huffer, James W. Jahsman, David P. Krueger, Irwin C. Larounis, George Leacock, James A. Mark, Robert H. S. Mastin, Glenn G. McCandliss, Donald McCracken, David Moore, George H. Northrup, Peter B. Otto, David John Postma, Howard F. Reinhart, Melvin J. Richards, Tudor Ringold, Anthony F. Rose, Arthur Stetter, Charles
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UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY ORCHESTRA
Lester McCoy, Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Gail Rector, Manager
Violins Merte, Herman Ambrazevich, William Williams, Carl Lloyd, Maria Shaler, Dorothy Stuart, Alexander V. Rupert, Jeanne L. Stoltz, Jane E. Westcott, Anne Redner, Arthur L. Pfeiffer, Betty Pasch, Janet Watson, Barbara Wright, Nancy Weiss, Barabara Schilla, Yvonne Hewitt, Gail Eddleblute, Clarence Joseph, Helen K. Jones, Roland Leo Wise, Carolyn Whitmire, Rene Streicher, Janet Erhard, Brigette Shaw, Mary Jean Haerer, Armin F. MacKay, Dorothy Phillips, Patricia Baay, Muriel
Violas
Woldt, Elizabeth Bjorke, Wallace Dalida, Ann Nichols, Genevieve Neumann, Alfred R. Maueroff, Gert Cohrt, Alberta Strain, Luzella Wagner, Lilias Schultz, Alice Gwen Schaeberle, E. A. Kovats, Daniel
Violoncellos Lewis, Joan Streicher, Velma Shetler, Donald J.
Sano, Alice Y. Jackson, Jacqueline Krengel, Mary Jorstad, Judith Heller, Camilla Bradbury, Dallas Martin, Ann Inman, Mary Jane
Basses
Skidmore, Edward Spera, Beverly Courtright, Ann Thompson, Clyde Hammel, Virginia Warner, Joan Otto, David
Harp
Milks, Margery
Flutes
Hauenstein, Nelson Hauenstein, Louise Weitknecht, Nancy Tubbs, Kathryn
Piccolo Weitknecht, Nancy
Oboes
Heger, Theodore E. Schiltz, Grover Smith, Harriet
English Horn Schiltz, Grover
Clarinets
Dailey, Dwight Stubbins, William Symmonds, Nancy Morton, James W.
Bass Clarinet Frelich, Maxine
Alto Saxophone fDailey, Dwight
Bassoons Weichlein, William Helm, Sanford M. Beck, John Szor, Samuel P.
CoNTRABASSOON
Corey, Gerald
Horns
Ricks, Robert Dalley, Nielsen Mumma, Gordon Dow, David Luce, Beverly
Trumpets fHaas, Donald Ray fWillwerth, Paul fPeters, Richard tOsadchuk, Mitchell M. fAndersen, Marvin
Patrick, Joan
Harper, Alice M.
Visosky, John M.
McComas, Donald E.
Trombones Smith, Glenn Moore, Joseph Green, David Noblit, Doris Herman, Thomas S.
Tuba Otto, David
Timpani
Salmon, James Thurston, Richard Yttrehus, Rolv B.
Battery Andrae, Jack McGoey, Barbara
Piano
Truesdell, Frederick Don Organ
Stubbins, Mary McCall Librarian
Dalley, Nielsen
Combined list of personnel who participated with the Choral Union in the two Messiah performances and in the preparation of May Festival choral works this season.
t Participating with The Philadelphia Orchestra in Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast," Sunday afternoon.
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THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Eugene Ormandy, Conductor
Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor
Harl McDonald, Manager
First Violins
Krachmalnick, Jacob,
Concertmaster Madison, David,
Assistant Concertmaster Rosen, Irvin Reynolds, Veda Henry, Dayton M. Simkins, Jasha Zenker, Alexander Aleinikoff, Harry Costanzo, Frank Lusak, Owen Gescnsway, Louis Sharlip, Benjamin Simkin, Meyer Goldstein, Ernest L. Coleman, David Putlitz, Lois Schmidt, Henry
Second Violins
Ruden, Sol Shulik, Morris Eisenberg, Irwin I. Brodo, Joseph Bove, D. Di Camillo, A. Gorodetzky, A. Miller, Charles S. Schwartz, Isadore Stahl, Jacob Dabrowski, S. Kaufman, Schima Roth, Manuel Black, Norman Mueller, Matthew J. Scott, Roger M. Wigler, Jerome
Violas
Lifschey, Samuel Mogill, Leonard Braverman, Gabriel Ferguson, Paul
Frantz, Leonard Kahn, Gordon Roens, Samuel Bauer, J. K. Epstein, Leonard Greenberg, Wm. S. Loeben, Gustave A. Primavera, Joseph P., Jr.
Violoncellos
Munroe, Lome Hilger, Elsa Gusikoff, B. Belenko, Samuel Gorodetzer, Harry Siegel, Adrian dePasquale, Francis Lewin, Morris Druian, Joseph Gray, John Sterin, J. Gorodetzky, Hershcl
Basses
Scott, Roger M. Torello, Carl Lazzaro, Vincent Strassenberger, Max Eney, F. Gilbert Wiemann, Heinrich Arian, Edward Maresh, Ferdinand Batchelder, Wilfred
Harps
Costello, Marilyn Bailiff, Jill
Flutes
Kincaid, VV. M. Cole, Robert Terry, Kenton F. Krell, John C.
Piccolo Krell, John C.
Oboes
Tabuteau, Marcel de Lancie, John Di Fulvio, Louis Minsker, John Siegel, Adrian
English Horn Minsker, John
Clarinets
Gigliotti, Anthony M. Serpentini, Jules J. Rowe, George D. Lester, Leon
Bass Clarinet Lester, Leon
Saxophone Waxman, Carl
Bassoons
Schoenbach, Sol Angelucci, A. L. Shamlian, John Del Negro, F.
CONTRABASSOON
Del Negro, F.
Horns
Jones, Mason Tomei, A. A. Fearn, Ward 0. Mayer, Clarence Lannuti, Charles Pierson, Herbert Hale, Leonard
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Trumpets Krauss, Samuel Hering, Sigmund Rehrig, Harold W. Rosenfeld, Seymour
Bass Trumpet Gusikoff, Charles
Trombones Gusikoff, Charles Lambert, Robert W. Cole, Howard Harper, Robert S.
Euphonium Gusikoff, Charles
Bass Trombone Harper, Robert S.
Tuba
Torchinsky, Abe Batchelder, Wilfred
Timpani Hinger, Fred D. Schulman, Leonard
Battery
Podemski, Benjamin Schulman, Leonard Valerio, James Roth, Manuel Hoffman, Jacob
Celesta and Piano
Putlitz, Lois Sokoloff, Vladimir
Librarian Taynton, Jesse C.
Photographic Publicity
Siegel, Adrian
Personnel Manager
Schmidt, Henry
[80]
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMS 19511952
The University Musical Society, in addition to the annual May Festival, provided the following concerts during the season of 195152.
73RD ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
VICTORIA DE LOS ANGELES, Soprano Paul Hi.km: at the Piano
October 4, 1951 Recitative and Messagera's aria
(Orpheus).....Monteverdi
La Violette.......Scarlatti
"HStt ich Jubal's Harf" (Joshua) . . Handel Widmung
Der Nussbaum .....Schumann
Icb grolle nicht I
Nell.........Faure
En priere . ......Faure
Kaddiscb, from Melodies htbraiquis . . Ravel "Le Roi de Thule" and Air de bijoux
(Faust).......Gounod
El amor es como un nino.....Nin
No quiero tus avellanas .... Glridi
Jota castellana.......Guimi
El Pano moruno
Seguidilla murciana ] . . . . de Falla
Jota )
Farruca........Tubina
JOSEPH SZIGETI, Violinist
Carlo Bussoti, Pianist
October 15, 1951
Adagio......TartiniOndricek
Courante and Double from Bminor
Partita (violin alone) .... Bach
Caprice No. 24......Paganini
Introduction and Rondo Brillante,
Op. 70.......Schubert
Sonata in D major, Op. 94 . . PnoKonrrr Sonata No. 9 in A major (Kreutzer) . Beethoven
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ? Charles Munch, Conductor
October 21, 1951 Overture to "Egmont," Op. 84 . Beethoven
Symphony No. 5.....Honegces
Symphony No. 6, B minor
(Pathetique) .... Tchaikovsky
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA George Szell, Conductor
November 4, 1951
"Tragic" Overture, Op. 81 ... Brahms Divertimento for String Orchestra . . Baxtok "Ein Heldcnleben," Op. 40 ... Strauss
ALEXANDER BRAILOWSKY, Pianist
November 16, 1951
Toccata and Fugue in D minor . BachBdsoni Rondo a capriccio in G major,
Op. 129......Beethoven
Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 . . . Schumann
Impromptu in Fsharp major
Ballade in Aflat major
Nocturne in C minor . . Chopin
Waltz in Eflat major
Polonaise in Aflat major
Prelude: "Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest" . Debussy
Estampe: "Jardins sous la pluie" . Debussy
Etude in Dflat major ("Un Sospiro") . Liszt
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12,
Csbarp major......Liszt
SALVATORE BACCALONI, Basso Bufo Marcel Frank at the Piano
November 29, 1951
"Son imbrogliato" (La Serva padrone) . Pergolesi "Le Veau 3'or" (Faust) .... Gounod "Solche hergelauf'ne Laffen" (Die Ent
Jukrung aw, dem Serail) . . . Mozari "Ha, wie will ich triumphieren" (Die
Ent juhrung aus dem Serail) . . Mozart "Mondo ladro, mondo rubaldo" (FalstaS) . Verdi "Quand' ero paggio" (Falstafi) . . . Verdi
Moment Musical.....Schubert
Minuet in Eflat.....Beethoven
Bolero.........Ravel
Marcel Frank
"Madamina" (Don Giovanni) . . . Mozart "Siege of Kazan" (Boris Godounojj) . Moussorgsky Chanson de la puce .... Moussorgsky Swing Low, Sweet Chariot 1 Peter, Go Ring dem Bells } Negro Spirituals My Lord, What a Morning J
CINCINNATI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Thor Johnson, Conductor
January 14, 1952
Overture to "The Wasps" . Yaughan Williams Symphony No. 8, Op. 88, G major . . Dvorak A Night on Bald Mountain . Moussorgsky Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes
by von Weber.....Hindehith
SINGING BOYS OF NORWAY
Ragnvale Bjarne, Conductor
February 20, 1952
Grosses Amen.....Olavsknaben
Star Spangled Banner.....Smitu
Ja wi elsker dette landet . . National Anthem Misere mei Deus . . . Gregokio Allegri Rex tremendae majestatis from "Requiem
Ave Verum Corpus" .... Mozart
0 Jerusalem zart, dem Kripplein
ist hart.......Bach
Exultate Deo......Palestrina
The March of Sinclair.....Grieg
Mclvin Simonson, Pianist
Romance in D......Svendsen
Eivind BullHansen, Violinist Rex Olavus gloriosus . . from the Middle Ages
1 Himmrich.......Grieg
No livnar dct i lundar . . . Lindemann Ku baane .... Norwegian Folksong
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM
Ola Glomstulen .... Folk Dance Song Hear My Prayer .... Mendelssohn Allelujah from "Exsultate, jubilate" . Mozart
Wiegenlied........Flies
Eccho........di Lasso
Ave Maria......da Victoria
Jubilate Deo omnis terra . . . Gabkieli Grosses Amen.....Olavsknaben
THE ROBERT SHAW CHORALE
and CONCERT ORCHESTRA
Robert Shaw, Conductor
March 18, 1952
Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) . Mozart Liebeslieder Waltzer, Op. 52 (Nos. 816) . Brahms
Trois Chansons.......Ravel
"It Ain't Necessarily So"
Lament for Brother Robbins, "Gone, Gone, Gone" (.Porgy and Bess) .... Gershwin
RUDOLPH SERKIN, Pianist
April 22, 1952
Prelude and Fugue in A minor . . . Bach Sonata. Iiflat major
("Hammerklavier") . . . Beethoven
Berceuse........Busoni
Perpetuum mobile......Busoni
Invitation to the Dance. Op. 65 . . Weber
Barcarolle, Op. 60.....Chopin
Bolero, Op. 19......Chopin
SIXTH ANNUAL EXTRA SERIES
GLADYS SWARTHOUT, MezzoSoprano Eugene Bossart at the Piano
October 9, 1951
"V'adoro pupille" (Guilio Ccsare) . Handel "Un Cenno leggiadretto" (Scrjc) . . Handel "Del mio core" (Orjeo) .... Haydn
Mermaid's Song......Haydn
El Major discreto.....Granados
El Mirar de la maja .... Granados
Bolero......Traditional Spanish
Modinha.......VillaLobos
El Vito........Obradors
Excerpts from Uignon .... Thomas
Perpetual Motion......Weber
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 11 . . . Liszt Eugene Bossart
The Serenader )
The Bird and the Beast I _ _
an Essay f Celius Dougherty
The K'e J
I Never Had But One Love . John Jacob Niles A Love Song.....Clara Edwards
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Charles Munch, Conductor
October 22, 1951
Suite from Dardanus.....Rajieau
Symphony No. 4, D minor, Op. 120 . Schumann Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24 . Strauss Rapsodie espagnole......Ravel
dePAUR INFANTRY CHORUS Leonard dePaur, Conductor
November 20, 1951
These Are the Times . Herbert Haufrecht Nightingales .... Howard Swanson The Tiger's Ghost .... Otto Luening Diree for Two Veterans . Normand Lockwood
La Llorona.....Arr. by dePaur
Rio Que Fasas Llorando . . Arr. by dePaur
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Sarape Oaxaqueno . . MondragondePaur
Money is King .... Patterson dePaur
I'ye Got Sixpence 1
Lili Marlene [ . . . Arr. by dePaur
Partizaner Lid
Rodger Young .... LoesserdePaur
John Henry (A Legend)
NoL7KnoPws de Trouble I See A" "
Witness J
Soon Ah Will Be Done . . Arr. by Dawson
No Peace I'll Thee Give.....Bach
A Dudule--Thou
(Sung in Yiddish) . . LowHaufrecht Blessings of St. Francis . Owen da Silva, O.F.M. CredoLiturgie de St. Jean Chrysostome,
Op. 29.....GrETCHANINOFF
OSCAR LEVANT, Pianist January 18, 1952
Waltz in Csharp minor, Op. 64. No. 2
Waltz in Gflat major. Op. 70, No. 1
Etude in Csharp minor, Op. 10, No. 4 Chopin
Etude in Gflat, Op. 10, No. 5
Etude in C minor, Op. 10, No. 12
Berceuse in Dflat major .... Debussy
Concerto in F major 1
An American in Paris} .... Gershwin
Three Preludes J
Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2 .... Beethoven
Polka.......Shostakovich
Fire Dance.......DE Falla
CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Rafael Kubelik, Conductor Soloist: Arthur Grouiaux, Violinist
March 9, 1952
Overture to The Bartered Bride . . Smetana Concerto for Violin and Orchestra . . Bartok Symphony No. 3, Eflat ("Eroica") . Beethoven
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
HANDEL'S MESSIAH December 8 and 9, 1951
Nancy Carr, Soprano David Lloyd, Tenor
Eunice Alberts, Contralto James Pease, Bass
University Choral Union
University Musical Society Orchestra
Mary McCall Stubuins, Organist
Lester McCoy, Conductor
I2TH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
BUDAPEST QUARTET Josef Roisman, First Violin jac Gorodetzky, Second Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola Mischa Schneider, Violoncello
Friday Evening, February 15 Quartet in Eflat, Op. 64, No. 6 . . Haydn Quartet in G major (1947) . . . Lucas Foss Quartet in C, Op. 59, No. 3 . . Beethoven
Saturday Evening, February 16 Quartet in G major, K. 387 . . . Mozart Quartet No. 17 (1950) .... Milhaud Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2 . . Brahms
Sunday Afternoon, February 17 Quartet in G, Op. 18, No. 2 . . Beethoven
Quartet in B minor.....Barber
Quartet in D, Op. 44, No. 1 . . Mendelssohn
CONCERTS FOR 19521953
SEVENTYFOURTH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
Richard Tucker, Tenor..............October 8
Yehudi Menuhin, Violinist............October 22
Danish State Symphony Orchestra........November 13
Vladimir Horowitz, Pianist............November 19
Bidu Sayao, Soprano...............December 1
Vienna Choir Boys...............January 16
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.........February 12
Gershwin Concert Orchestra............March 2
Artur Rubinstein, Pianist.............March 12
Boston Symphony Orchestra.............May 19
SEVENTH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES
Rise Stevens, Mezzosoprano............October 17
Cleveland Orchestra..............November 9
Claudio Arrau, Pianist.............November 25
Heifetz, Violinist................February 17
Boston "Pops" Tour Orchestra...........March 23
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
Messiah (Handel)...........December 6 and 7, 1952
Nancy Carr, Soprano James Pease, Bass
Eunice Alberts, Contralto Choral Union and Orchestra
David Lloyd, Tenor Lester McCoy, Conductor
THIRTEENTH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Budapest String Quartet........February 20, 21, 22, 1953
Josef Roisman, Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola
Jac Gorodetzky, Violin Mischa Schneider, Violoncello
SIXTIETH ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
Six Concerts............April 30, May 1, 2, 3, 1953
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, and Alexander Hilsberg, Guest Conductor; University Choral Union, Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, and Lester McCoy, Associate Conduc?tor; Festival Youth Chorus, Marguerite Hood, Conductor. Soloists to be announced.
[83]
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY