UMS Concert Program, April 30, May 1, 2, 3, 1953: The Sixtieth Annual May Festival -- The Philadelphia Orchestra

Concert: SIXTH
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

THE SIXTIETH ANNUAL
MAY FESTIVAL
NINETEEN HUNDRED FIFTYTHREE
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Program of the Sixtieth Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
April 30, May 1, 2, 3, 1953 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 O. Bonisteel, LL.B., LL.D. 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 SIXTIETH ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
CONDUCTORS
Eugene Ormandy, Orchestral Conductor Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Alexander Hilsberg, Guest Conductor Marguerite Hood, Youth Chorus Conductor
SOLOISTS
Zinka Milanov..............Soprano
Dorothy Warenskjold...........Soprano
Janice Moudry.............Contralto
Harold Haugh..............Tenor
Kenneth Smith.............Baritone
Cesare Siepi................Bass
Zino Francescatti . . . ..........Violinist
Alexander Brailowsky...........Pianist
Rudolf Firkusny..............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 University Musical Society Orchestra for their effective services; to Miss Marguerite Hood and her able associates for their valu?able 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 Manager Harl McDonald and his administrative staff.
The Author of the annotations expresses his appreciation to Donald Krummel for his assistance in collecting materials; to Donald Engle, annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra, for his cooperation; and to the late Lawrence Gilman, whose scholarly analyses, in the pro?gram books of the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orches?tras, are authoritative contributions to contemporary criticism.
The Steinway is the official concert piano of the University Musical Society; and the Lester Piano is the official piano of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Philadelphia Orchestra records for RCA Victor and Columbia.
Concerts will begin on time and doors will be closed during numbers.
CONCERT ENDOWMENT FUND
The University Musical Society is a nonprofit corporation de?voted 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 maintaining the ideals of the Society by providing the best possible programs.
The United States Department of Internal Revenue has ruled that gifts or bequests made to the Society are deductible for in?come and estate tax purposes.
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FIRST MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Thursday Evening, April 30, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Soloist ALEXANDER BRAILOWSKY, Pianist
PROGRAM
"Academic Festival" Overture, Op. 80.........Brahms
Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11..........Chopin
Allegro maestoso
Roiiianze; larghetto Rondo: vivace
Alexander Brailowsky
INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 7...............Prokoiev
Moderato
Allegretto
Andante espressivo Vivace
The fiano used is a Steiwway
SECOND MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Friday Evening, May I, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
Soloists
DOROTHY WARENSKJOLD, Soprano
JANICE MOUDRY, Contralto
HAROLD HAUGH, Tenor
KENNETH SMITH, Bass
PROGRAM
Mass in B minor................Bach
Kyrie eleison (Chorus)
Christe eleison (Soprano and Contralto)
Gloria in excelsis Deo (Chorus)
Domine Deus (Soprano and Tenor)
Qui tollis (Chorus)
Qui sedes ad dexteram (Contralto)
Quoniam tu solus sanctus (Bass)
Cum sancto spiritu (Chorus)
INTERMISSION
Credo in unum Deum (Chorus)
Patrem omnipotentem (Chorus)
Et in unum Deum (Soprano and Contralto)
Et incarnatus est (Chorus)
Crucifixus (Chorus)
Et resurrexit (Chorus)
Et in spiritum sanctum (Bass)
Confiteor unum baptisma (Chorus)
Sanctus (Chorus)
Benedictus (Tenor)
Agnus Dei (Contralto)
Dona nobis (Chorus)
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THIRD MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 2, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ALEXANDER HILSBERG, Guest Conductor
THE FESTIVAL YOUTH CHORUS MARGUERITE HOOD, Conductor
Soloist ZINO FRANCESCATTI, Violinist
PROGRAM Overture, L1 Italiana in Algeri............Rossini
Suite of Songs............Benjamin Britten
Orchestrated by Marion E. McArtor
There was a Man of Newington Oliver Cromwell (folk song)
Fishing Song O Waly, Waly (folk song)
Old Abram Brown The Miller of Dee (folk song)
JazzMan "Eeoh!"
Cuckoo!
Festival Youth Chorus
OvertureFantasia, "Romeo and Juliet".......Tchaikovsky
INTERMISSION
f Concerto in D major, for Violin and
Orchestra, Op. 61...........Beethoven
Allegro ma non troppo Larghetto
Rondo: allegro
ZlNO FRANCESCATTI
Specially arranged by permission of the copyright owners, Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. f Columbia Records.
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FOURTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Evening, May 2, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Soloist CESARE SIEPI, Bass
PROGRAM Tone Poem, "Don Juan," Op. 20.......Richard Strauss
"Mentre ti lascio, o figlia" (K. 513)..........Mozart
Cesare Siepi
INTERMISSION
?Symphony, "Mathis der Maler"..........Hindemith
Concert of the Angels
The Entombment of Christ
The Temptation of St. Anthony
"Ella giammai m'amo" from Don Carlos.........Verdi
"Di sposo di padre le giofe serene" from
Salvator Rosa..............Gomez
Mr. Siepi
f Polka and Fugue from Schwanda.........Weinberger
Victor Records t Columbia Records
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FIFTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 3, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
Soloist RUDOLF FIRKUSNY, Pianist
P R O G R A M
Overture in the Italian St)le, in C major, Op. 170.....Schubert
"Prairie"--for Chorus and Orchestra .... Normand Lockwood
(Commissioned by Thor Johnson (or this performance: and dedicated to Charles A. Sink)
"Triumphlied"--A Sacred Cantata..........Brahms
(Baritone solo by Ara Berbf.rias ) University Choral Union
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra........Martinu
Allegro moderato Poco andante
Poco allegro
Rudolf Firkusny
Text adapted from the poem, "Prairie," by Carl Sandburg.
The piano usej is a Sttmwny
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SIXTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 3, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
Soloist ZINKA MILANOV, Soprano
PROGRAM
Symphony No. 7 in C major ("Le Midi")........Haydn
Adagio; allegro Adagio
Adagio
Menuetto
Finale: allegro
Jacob Krachmalnick and David Madison, Violins Lorne MuNROE, Violoncello
Scene and aria, "Ah! perfido," Op. 46........Beethoven
ZlNKA MlLANOV
INTERMISSION
Second Essay for Orchestra.............Barber
"Pace, pace mio Dio" from La Forza del Destine......Verdi
"Ritorna vincitor" from A'ida.............Verdi
Mme Milanov
Choreographic Poem--"La Valse"...........Ravel
Columbia Records
ANNOTATIONS
by
GLENN D. McGEOCH
FIRST CONCERT
Thursday Evening, April 30
Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80........Brahms
Johannes Brahms was born May 7, 1833, at Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, at Vienna.
If ever a piece of music stood as an eternal refutation of all that is meant by "academic," it is this "Festival Overture." The work was written in 1880, as an acknowledgment by Brahms of the doctor's degree which had been conferred upon him by the University of Breslau, as the "Princeps musicae severioris" in Germany. But shockingly enough, the rollicking "Academic Festival Overture" is anything but severely in keeping with the pedantic solemnities of academic convention. It is typical of Brahms that he should delight in thanking the pomp?ous dignitaries of the university with such a quip, for certainly here is one of the gayest and most sparkling overtures in the orchestral repertory.
In the spirit of "He hath cast down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them that are of low degree," Brahms selected as the thematic materials for his overture a handful of student drinking songs, which he championed against all the established conventions of serious composition. We may be fairly certain that if the doctor's diploma had descended from its academic perch and set forth the master's blithe and genial humanity as a composer, instead of designating him with the highsounding "Princeps musicae severioris," he might have brought forth the austere "Tragic Overture" instead.
Brahms always took impish joy in indulging his instinct for championing underdogs of art such as music boxes, banjos, brass bands, and working men's singing societies. And here he elevated the lowly student song into the realm of legitimate art. There was never a "nobler man of the people" in the whole history of music.
The overture begins (Allegro, C minor, 22 time) without an introduction. The principal theme is announced in the violins. Section II is a tranquil melody in the violas, which returns to the opening material. After an episode (E minor) there follows the student song, "Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus" ("We had built a stately house"), heard in three trumpets (C major). At the close of this section, the full orchestra presents another section partly suggested by the first theme of the overture. The key changes to E major and the second violins with
A tune associated with the words: Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus, darin auf Gott vertrauet, durch Wetter, Sturm, und Graus ("We had built a stately house, wherein we aiv our trust to God, through bad weather, storm, and dread"). The melody is by Friedrich Silcher--author of the betterknown tune which he wrote to Heine's "Die Lorelei."
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
cellos fizzicato announce the second student song, "Der Landesvater" ("The Father of the Country"), an old eighteenthcentury tune.
The development section does not begin with the working out of the expo?sition material, but rather, and strangely enough, with the introduction of another student melody (in two bassoons), "Was kommt dort von der Hoh" ("What comes there from on high"), a freshman song. An elaborate development of the material of the exposition then follows. The recapitulation is irregular in that it merely suggests the return of the principal theme; but then it presents the rest of the material in more or less regular restatement. The conclusion is reached in a stirring section which presents a fourth song, "Gaudeamus igitur," in the wood?wind choir, with tumultuous scale passages against it in the higher strings, and with this emphatic and boisterous theme--the most popular of all student songs-the overture gives its final thrust at the Academicians.
Concerto No. i in E minor, Op. 11
for Piano and Orchestra.........Chopin
Frederic Francois Chopin was born in Zelazowa VVola, Po?land, February 22, 1810; died in Paris, October 17, 1849.
In Chopin, all that was subjective and sensitive found a lyrical voice. He, like the other Romanticists, was a product of what the French called le desenchanteitn )it de la ine; he suffered from the malady of the century, indeterminate long?ing and unquenchable desire--In vague des passions, which became such a strong element in the formation of French Romantic thought.
Otherwise he shared little in the activities of the Romantic movement. Being a creature of superfine sensibilities, he never identified himself with the radical element or took an active part in the progressive life of his time. His art therefore is not marked by the usual romantic excesses; he never submitted, as did Tchai?kovsky, to overwhelming grief and deadening depression. In his personal reserve and artistic restraint, he remained a classicist, at least in spirit. He stayed aloof from the whole trend toward programmatic and descriptive music, adamantly resisting the infiltration of drama and "story painting" into music. He ever re?tained his dignity as an absolute and true musician.
He did share, however, in that paradox of personality that gives such color and interest to the typical Romantic figure. Artistically and emotionally he was of course a true Romanticist, creating music with the soul of a sensitive poet; yet
?This is a vivacious and slightly grotesque version of the "Kuchslied" ("Fox Song"), "Fuchs" being equivalent to "Freshman." Max Kalbeck, an admirer of Brahms and his biographer, was shocked at the idea of this irreverence to the learned doctors of the University, but Brahms was unperturbed.
f See notes on Tchaikovsky, pages 3740,
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FIRST CONCERT
his music, for all its twilight glamor, reveals within the small framework he chose an instinctive sense of form, a coherence of structure which, although fluent, suggests a conscious discipline of mind. He remained throughout his artistic career an intense patriot and nationalist who infused into his music, with great independence, the melodic and rhythmic idioms of his native land, singing into the ears and heart of Europe the lament of his ravished Poland. Yet he spent most of his creative life in Paris, a pampered celebrity. He became the voice of a nation but remained always an individualist. Sensitive and introspective by nature, with a decided aversion for the public, he became ultimately a composer for the multi?tudes, through a music that transcended all national boundaries in the univer?sality of its appeal. An extremely limited composer, not only in the quantity of his output but in the variety of his media, having written exclusively for the piano, he created with inexhaustible variety and unlimited imagination and resource?fulness the most individual style ever evolved for this instrument. Paradoxically again, in creating with rigorous selfdiscipline perhaps the most selfconscious and artful music ever conceived, he appears before the world, through the directness and spontaneity of his expression, the most artless of artisans, making an analysis of his music the most futile of intellectual exercises.
Chopin chose not to cast his art in the epic or sublime mold; he sought his inspiration not in a Byron or in the rugged individualistic style of the revolutionary Beethoven, as did Berlioz, but in the lyricism of De Musset and Lamartine and the cantabile style of the Italian composers, particularly Bellini, whose admirer and intimate friend he was. He possessed a profound respect for, and an intimate knowledge of, the art of the singer and the great vocal tradition of his day. Avoiding all of the Italian operatic vulgarities, he distilled from the style its singing essence, and this became the very core of his art. He created, with Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, an era of lyricism in music that became the highest accomplishment of the musical Romantic movement and an exact parallel of what was achieved in literature by such poets as Lamartine, Heine, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley.
Chopin produced two concertos for piano and orchestra. Both were composed when he was twenty years of age, and belong to the period of his triumphs as a young virtuoso concert pianist. The E minor, numbered Opus 11, is in reality a later work than the F minor, Opus 21, but due to the fact that it was published first, it is always referred to as Number i.
We know that Chopin was working on the E minor in March, 1830, for on the 27th of that month, he referred to it in a letter, hoping that he would soon finish the first movement. He did not succeed, however, for from a letter written on May 25,1830, we read:
The rondo for my concerto is not yet finished because the right inspired mood has always been wanting. If I have only the Allegro and the Adagio completely finished I
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
shall be without anxiety about the finale. The Adagio is in E major, and of a romantic, calm, and partly melancholy character. It is intended to convey the impression which one receives when the eye rests on a beloved landscape that calls up in one's soul beautiful memories--for instance, on a fine moonlit spring night. I have written for violins with mutes as an accompaniment to it. I wonder if that will have a good effect. Well, time will show.
The work was finally completed in August and performed for the first time, October 11, 1830.
As in all of Chopin's major works, analysis is a frustrating procedure; to try to capture the secret of this capricious arbitrary art by systematic analytical means is about as futile as attempting to explain the beauty of a butterfly in flight while dissecting it under a microscope. To analyze the tremulous vaporous harmonies, to attempt to explain how the graceful, smoothly molded melodies often grow impassioned and rhapsodic, to catch the lambent, coruscating ornamentations and hold them long enough to discover their harmonic moorings would be about as rewarding as would a detailed analysis of the individual spots of a Monet canvas.
Any formal examination of this concerto would again present us with the ad?mitted fact that Chopin was an inadequate and insecure orchestrator, and that he was often embarrassed in the manipulation of the classic forms.
In writing of the sonatas and concertos, Liszt regretted that Chopin ever felt compelled to employ or tried to adhere to them:
His beauties were only manifested fully in entire freedom. We believe he offered violence to the character of his genius whenever he sought to subject it to rules, to classifications, to regulations not his own, and which he could not force into harmony with the exactions of his own mind. He was one of those original beings, whose graces are only fully displayed when they cut themselves adrift from all bondage, and float on at their own wild will, swayed only by the ever undulating impulses of their own mobile natures. He could not retain, within the square of an angular and rigid mould, that floating and indeterminate contour which so fascinates us, in his graceful conceptions. He could not introduce in its unyielding lines that shadowy and sketchy indecision, which, disguising the skeleton, the whole framework of form, diapes it in the mist of floating vapors, such as surround the whitebosomed maids of Ossian, when they permit mortals to catch some vague yet lovely outline, from their home in the changing, drifting, blind?ing clouds.
There is no point, then, in applying analytical methods that often aid us in understanding some of the marvels of musical expression attained by the "largedimensional architecture" of a Beethoven or a Brahms. Chopin created his own
Franz Liszt, Life of Ciopin, trans, by Martha W. Cook (2c!. rev. ed.j New York: F. W. Christern, 1863).
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FIRST CONCERT
musical universe and it is not subject to the laws that govern any other. In the words of Daniel Gregory Mason, "In the firmament of music, he will continue to shine, a fixed star, not perhaps of the first magnitude, but giving a wonderfully clear, white light, and, as he would have wished it, in peerless solitude."
Symphony No. 7.............Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeievitch Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka, Russia, April 23, 1891; died March 4, 1953.
Sergei Prokofiev, a senior member of a very significant group of young Soviet Republic composers, of whom Dmitri Shostakovich is perhaps the most sensational member, after a few startling excursions into the grotesque, and only an occasional sojourn into the cacophonous realm of musical modernism, produced music that was not merely interesting and clever but brilliantly effective.
At a period when European audiences either were being doped into a state of insensibility by the vacuity of the PostImpressionists, incensed to riots by the shocking barbarism of Stravinsky, or baffled into boredom by the mathematical cerebrations of Schonberg, whose music seemed, as far as emotional expression was concerned, to be hermetically sealed, the spectacle of a composer who was still able to create music that had a natural ease and fluidity, a freshness and spontaneity that was essentially "classical," was as surprising as it was eventful. In this idiom he attained, around 1918, an enviable reputation as a composer, with the orches?tral work Scythian Suite, the ballet Chout, and the everpopular Classical Sym?phony. These works, with their driving energy, clear designs, bright colors, and ironic overtones, won him a position of first importance among Russian composers.
During the years 1918--32, Prokofiev traveled in Japan and the United States and lived for some time in Paris. In America he composed the opera, The Love for Three Oranges (1921), for the Chicago Opera Company.
After returning to Russia in 1933, Prokofiev took an active part in shaping Soviet musical culture. The first works to identify him with Soviet music were: Symphonic Song for Orchestra, Op. 57 (1933); Romeo and Juliet (1935) J Partisan Zhelezmak; Antiutak; the music he composed for children, Peter and the Wolf (1936) ; the incidental music to the Russian film, Alexatuier Nevsky (1939) ; in the same year a cantata which he dedicated to Stalin, Zdravitsa; the Sixth Piano Sonata (1940); and his opera based on Tolstoy's War and Peace (1940). Prokofiev never lost entirely the clear terse style he revealed in his earlier work, and although in his recent composition there was a new emotional value, an almost romantic richness of melody, and the fulfillment of a latent
?Daniel Gregory Mason, The Romantic Composers (New York: Macmillan, 1906), p. 252.
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lyricism to be noted, the style was still definite and clearly defined. This gave to his music the same sureness and spontaneity that has always been its chief distinction. At the time of his death, just two months ago, he was at the very height of his creative powers. He had become more than a clever composer who delighted in the grotesque; his recent music is, according to Leonid Sabaneyev and many other critics, the most original and valuable that Russian art of this century has produced.
We are indebted to Donald Engle, program annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra, for the following information concerning the Seventh Symphony:
Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 7 is his most recent major work to have been an?nounced to the western world, and it may be the last large composition he completed before his untimely death on March 4. It bears no opus number, nor does the score indicate the date of completion.
According to the rather scanty information available from the Leeds Music Corpo?ration, American representatives for Prokofiev's music, the Seventh Symphony was composed in 1952, and given its first performance October 11 in Moscow under the direction of Samuel Samosud. It was repeated there, probably in January or early February of this year, for the Composers' Union, and on that occasion it was given the authoritative though qualified stamp of approval by Pravda, official Communist newspaper, indicating its acceptance by the cultural authorities whose duty seems to be the surveillance of new works of Soviet art.
The Symphony first came to Mr. Ormandy's attention when he read a New York Times account of its performance in Moscow, and he has since been given the honor of conducting its first American performances. The communique, dated February 6 of this year, quoted Pravda as putting the authoritative stamp of approval on the longawaited score, following its hearing in a recital of new works before the Composers' Union. The official Communist newspaper stated that the Seventh Symphony revealed that Prokofiev had "taken to heart" criticism that has for several years been directed at his work and had "succeeded in overcoming in his creative work the fatal influence of formalism."
The reference to formalism, a term which seems to have a portentous connotation to Russian officialdom though vague to western minds, recalls those incidents during the past several years when Prokofiev and several other leading Soviet composers were publicly reprimanded for artistic misdemeanors which we interpret as simply straying from the prescribed party line, and for which they had to offer public apology as the price of having their works played.
Pravda further explained that in this symphony, Prokofiev sought "to create in music a picture of bright youth in answer to the call of the party of composers--to create beautiful, delicate music able to satisfy the esthetic demands and artistic tastes of the Soviet People."
The work is in four movements. The first, according to Pravda, ranges from a chil?dren's fairy tale through romantic dreams "to the first active aspirations of youth." The second is a symphonic waltz; the third is a brief but deeply lyric and expressive movement.
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FIRST CONCERT
The fourth combines the moods of a gay dance and an energetic march, spiced with the sparkling humor and droll wit which appears so frequently in Prokofiev's music.
The scoring of this new symphony is clear, concise, and telling in effect; the themes are straightforward and engaging, the harmonies, marked by the abrupt and frequent shifting of key centers typical of Prokofiev's style, are always clearly defined. The work as a whole is a surprisingly direct and uncomplicated structure, whether to meet the requirements of the cultural authorities or because Prokofiev's natural tendency has been toward greater simplicity in recent years, and audiences will find this new sym?phony quite enjoyable.
The Seventh Symphony was given its first American performances by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra at their regular concerts on April io and 11, and was repeated in New York on April 21. The Symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, xylophone, bells, piano, harp, and strings.
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SECOND CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 1
Mass in B minor..............Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach, March 21, 1685; died at Leipzig, July 28, 1750.
And a voice came out of the throne, saying "Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear Him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundcrings, saying, Alleluia.
--Revelation 19:56
In Johann Sebastian Bach, the musical development of two centuries reached its climax. Coming from a family of distinguished musicians, famous in Germany for one hundred and fifty years, he entered into the full heritage of his predecessors and used, with incomparable effect, all of the musical learning of his day.
Born in the very heart of medieval Germany, in the remote little town of Eisenach, under the treeclad summits of the Thuringer Wald, Bach lived in an atmosphere that was charged with poetry, romance, and music. Towering precipitously over the little village stood the stately Wartburg, which once shel?tered Luther and where, in one of the chambers, the German Bible came into being. Here also in 1207, the famous Tourney of Song was held, and German minstrelsy flowered.
In these surroundings Bach's early youth was spent, and his musical founda?tion formed under the careful guidance of his father. The subsequent events of his life were less propitious. Orphaned at the age of ten, he pursued his studies by himself, turning to the works of Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and other predecessors and contemporaries as models. Singing in a church choir to gain free tuition at school, traveling by foot to neighboring towns to hear visiting organists who brought him occasional touches from the outside world, securing menial positions as organist in Arnstadt and Miihlhausen filled the monotonous years of this great master's youth.
Although he gained some fame as the foremost organist of his day, he was ignored and neglected as a composer. Of all his church music, parts of only one cantata were printed during his life, not because it was esteemed, but because it was written for an annual burgomeister election! References by contemporaries are scanty; they had no insight into the value of his art. Fifty years after his death his music was practically unknown, most of the manuscripts having been lost or mislaid. The neglect, discovery, and final triumph of Bach's music are without parallel in the history of music. His triumphant progress from utter
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obscurity to a place of unrivaled and unprecedented brilliance is a phenomenon, the equal of which has not been recorded. Today his position is extraordinary. Never was there a period when there were more diverse ideals, new methods, confusion of aims and styles, yet never has Bach been so universally acknowledged as the supreme master of music.
Certainly masterpieces were never so naively conceived. Treated with con?tempt by his associates in Leipzig, where he spent the last years of his life, and restrained by the narrow ideals and numbing pedantry of his superiors, he went on creating a world of beauty, without the slightest thought of posterity. The quiet old cantor, patiently teaching his pupils Latin and music, supervising all the choral and occasional music in the two principal churches of Leipzig, gradually losing his sight until in his last years he was hopelessly blind, never for a moment dreamed of immortality. He continued, year after year, to perform his laborious duties, and, in so doing, created the great works that have brought him eternal fame. His ambitions never passed beyond his city, his church, and his family.
Born into a day of small things, he helped the day to expand by giving it creations beyond the scope of its available means of expression. His art is elastic; it grows, deepens, and flows on into the advancing years. The changed media of expression, the increased expressive qualities of the modern pianoforte, organ, and complex orchestra have brought to the world a realization of the great dor?mant and potential beauties that lay in his work.
Few composers have been able to express intelligibly and with certainty the concrete ideas they imagined they were expressing, without verging upon the ludicrous. Music, working in the shadowy realm of the abstract, through a medium little suited to depict the concrete, soon reaches its limits of expression when it leaves the transcendent regions of the vast and vague, the infinite, illusive, and inarticulate and attempts to represent objects in, or ideas of, reality. In spite of this inherent limitation, it has throughout its history attempted to do so. Pic?torial and poetic tendencies have, in all epochs, exercised a tremendous force upon reconditioning musical form, but at the same time they have often led music into pretentious and deceptive ways. When music leaves its unique realm, it does so at the peril of its dignity and power. When, however, music and words join forces as in the art song, opera, or the mass, words can make specific what is, in the music, only the vaguest kind of feeling; and music can, when words begin to falter, enter and take command of domains which are its own by divine right.
Bach's solution of the problem of expression when dealing with words and music is unique and highly individual. There is in his vocal works the most intimate and personal relationship existing between music and text. This intimacy does not relate to poetic and musical form, ictus and rhythm, but rather to spirit, mood, and feeling. Bach's musical style, with its complicated, manyvoiced lines
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simultaneously sung, destroys immediately any verbal form or beauty, stretching as it does at times, a single syllable of a word "upon the rack of many bars"-dismembering it for the sake of musical melisma, repeating words in order to extend musical phrases. The Kyrie of the Bminor Mass, for instance, consisting of six words, is extended over 270 bars into three movements. But his music is at all times noble and expressive; it has caught the mood, the atmosphere of the text, and has conveyed it to us at times with overpowering directness.
That Bach's intention while composing was definitely pictorial and representa?tive, Schweitzer has revealed beyond any doubt; by observing and analyzing the regular return and consistent employment of definite musical formulae to express certain feelings, he has proved indubitably that Bach evolved for himself a complete tonal language. Bach himself, so far as we know, never made any reference to this system. Whether it was consciously or unconsciously created by Bach, and whether or not we are as aware of its details as is Schweitzer, is of no great importance. It is simply based on the fact that for certain feelings Bach preferred certain definite patterns and rhythms. These associations are so natural that they at once suggest their meaning to anyone with a musical mind. The images or ideas in the text give opportunities for definite, plastic musical expression; measured, tranquil intervals in a melody, for instance, indicate reso?lution and confident faith, intervals more widely spaced symbolize strength, pride, and defiance; a motive invariably associated with joy is constructed on an uninter?rupted pattern of eighth or sixteenth notes; one that depicts lamentation is built upon a sequence of notes tied in pairs, torturing grief upon a chromatic motive of five or six notes, and so on. Occurrences of these formulae will be noted in the analysis which follows:
In general Bach follows the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, which includes five sections: I. Kyrie, 2. Gloria, 3. Credo, 4. Sanctus, 5. Agnus Dei. In general, too, he conforms to the literary text, all but the major exceptions of which need not concern us here. In the Catholic Mass, the Sanctus, Osanna, and Benedictus form a single text. Bach treats the Sanctus by itself and places the Osanna and Benedictus in a separate section. The music expands the form to gigantic proportions, treating the text in each case, clause by clause, with alter?nating choruses, arias, and duets, each section exceeding in length that of an ordinary cantata. The Kyrie is in three movements, the Gloria in eight, the Credo in eight; the Sanctus in three, and the Agnus Dei in two--a total of twentyfour separate movements. The following outline of the musical sections as expanded by Bach will reveal the colossal breadth and magnitude of the work:
?Albert Schweitzer, . S. Bach, trans, by Ernest Newman (London: A. & C. Black, Limited, 1935), Vol. II.
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KYRIE
No. i. Kyrie eleison--Chorus Kyrie eleison Lord, have mercy upon us
The mass opens dramatically with the full chorus raising its voice in solemn supplica?tion to God for mercy. It is significant that Bach turned directly to the voices, without an instrumental introduction of any kind, thus emphasizing in this anguished cry the need of all humanity for divine forgiveness. Then follows a Ritornello (an instrumental interlude) in which the woodwind instruments (oboi d'amore, doubled by flutes) surrounded by strings present a theme that becomes, with the entry of the voices immediately after, the subject of a great vocal fugue. In Bach's "tonal language," the downward chromatic movement of the figure, found as a structural unit in the melody, signifies grief and torment of soul. The voices--tenors, first and second sopranos, altos, and basses--enter in turn in a fugal exposition. The theme, for the first five bars, co?incides with that of the Ritornello. The supplication rises and swells in relentless forward motion. The orchestra reinforces the bass voices, which are the last to enter. A short Ritornello then presents sequential fragments of the fugal theme in various keys. Out of the mood of B minor, which dominates the movement, there is in this passage a short but meaningful reference to a major key, presaging, as it were, God's mercy. A second exposition of the vocal fugue begins this time with the voices entering in ascending order from the basses and reaching a tremendous climax at the end. "The scheme of the whole chorus," wrote Sir Hubert Parry, "is built up so as to make the pleading subject mount to successive points with more intense and moving harmonization till the whole five voices roll with devotional fervor into the final cadence."
Man, convicted of sin, cries in his need to God for mercy, and the vast proportion of this first chorus leaves no doubt in the mind as to Bach's intention that represents the common supplication of all Christendom.
No. 2. Chrisle eleison--Duet, Soprano and Alto Christe eleison Christ, have mercy upon us.
After the massive surging Kyrie, the tranquil character of the Christe eleison comes as an indication of divine forgiveness through Christ, the Redeemer. Here in true Italian fashion, Bach writes for two soprano voices, singing together in thirds, occasion?ally in canonic imitation and supported by a richly flowing accompaniment in the massed strings. It is as personal and tender in its expression as the opening Kyrie was universal and inexorable.
No. 3. Kyrie eleison--Chorus
Kyrie eleison Lord have mercy upon us
Omitted in this performance
Charles Hubert Parry, Jofniun Sebastian Bach (New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904).
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GLORIA
No. 4. Gloria in excelsis--Chorus
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et Glory be to God on high, and
in terra pax hominibus bonae on earth peace, good will
voluntatis! towards men.
The Gloria is an exultant expression of adoration for the Holy Trinity. Bach has extended the text musically into eight movements distributed between great choruses, arias for solo voice, and duets. In the Gloria proper, the Laudamus te and the Gratias agimus, God is praised and glorified (the Laudamus te and Gratias agimus are omitted in this performance). In the Domine Dens, Qui toMs, Qui sedes, and Quoniam, praise is given to Christ, and in the Cum sancto, to the Holy Ghost.
The opening Gloria, ascending from the solemnity of the Bminor Kyrie, bursts forth with brilliant animation in the key of D major, opening up a world of praise and thanks?giving to God for His forgiveness.
The trumpet introduction in triple rhythm produces a dazzling effect which is prolonged into the rhythmically vivacious and nielodically exuberant principal subject for a fivepart chorus. On the words, et in terra fax, the music drops momentarily to a quiet, peaceful mood appropriate to the text. A long florid fugal subject is announced in the first sopranos, and climaxes in a jubilant ending with the entry of all the voices.
No. 5. Laudamus te--Aria, Soprano II with violin obbligato
Laudamus te, We praise thee,
benedicimus te, We bless thee,
Adoramus te, We worship thec,
glorificamus te. We glorify thee.
Omitted in this performance
No. 6. Gratias agimus--Chorus
Gratias agimus tibi propter We give thanks to thee for
magnam gloriam tuam. thy great glory.
Omitted in this performance
No. 7. Domine Deus--Duet, Soprano I and Tenor
Domine Deus, rex coelestis! O Lord God, heavenly King,
Deus Pater omnipotens! God the Father Almighty.
Domine Fili unigenite O Lord, the onlybegotten Son
Iesu Christe altissime! Jesus Christ (Most High);
Domine Deus O Lord God,
Agnus Dei Lamb of God,
Filius Patris! Son of the Father!
There are three examples of the use of triple measure in the Mass: the first chorus of the Gloria (No. 4) ; the Pleni sunt coeli of the Sanctus (No. 20) ; and the Osanna (No. 21). It is interesting to note that these are all in the key of D major and accompany texts that deal with praise and jubilation.
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SECOND CONCERT
A Ritornello for flute in dialogue with muted strings introduces a duet for soprano and tenor, written in a singularly tender vein. For Bach the name Jesus always evoked a feeling of love and devotion. Here he employs a motive which often accompanies this mood--a short descending figure of four notes from tonic to dominant. In the first part of the duet, the voices address separately the Father and the Son, singing the Ritornello theme now in free augmentation (note values doubled). They intertwine in such a way as to allow the words Deus and Fili to be heard simultaneously, thus emphasizing the unity of Father and Son. Near the end, the voices unite in adoration of Godmade man. The mood of the movement is emphasized by the accompaniment of flutes, violin and violas muted, and pizzicato basses.
No. 8. Qui tollis--Chorus
Qui tollis peccata mundi That takest away the sins of
miserere nobis. the world,
have mercy upon us.
Qui tollis peccata mundi That takest away the sins of
miserere nobis. the world,
have mercy upon us.
Qui tollis peccata mundi That takest away the sins of
suscipe deprecationem nostram! the world,
receive our prayer!
The core of the Gloria is the Qui tollis, Qui sales, and Quoniam, dealing as they do with Christ's sacrifice. The Qui tollis is a fourpart chorus written in almost strict canon and is, according to Parry, one of Bach's most concentrated and deeply felt movements. The music was originally written for the Cantata No. 46, "Schauet doch und Sehet," where it was designed for the text, "Behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow" The appropriateness of the transfer to the Latin text, "Thou that takest upon thee the sins of the world, have mercy upon us," is obvious. The music is extraordinarily poignant, for Bach considers sinning mankind with compassionate tenderness.
No. 9. Qui seJes--Aria, Alto with oboe d'amore obbligato Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris Thou that sittest at the right
miserere nobis. hand of (God) the Father,
have mercy upon us.
Equally plaintive is the Qui sedes. The movement is introduced by the oboe d'amore playing a motive illustrating gestures of submission, no doubt indicating to Bach the insignificance of man. Bach's prayer is full of humility from its beginning and lays spe?cial stress on the words "miserere nobis" ("have mercy on us").
No. 10. Quoniam--Aria, Bass with corno di caccia obbligato Quoniam tu solus sanctus, For thou only art holy j
Tu solus Dominus, thou only art the Lord;
Tu solus thou only,
Altissimus Iesu Christe; O (Jesus) Christ, art most high,
Parry, of, cit.
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There is nothing of particular interest to point out in this section except the fact that the bass aria is accompanied by an obbligato for corno di caccia (hunting horn), an instrument closely associated with German courts and perhaps subtly related in Bach's mind with this text, which suggests the elevated position of the Saviour. The music is bolder and more strenuous than that of the preceding Qui sedes. At the end of this section there follows, without break, one of the greatest choral movements of the mass.
No. 11. Cum sancto spiritu--Chorus
Cum sancto spiritu With the Holy Ghost,
in gloria Dei in the glory of God
Patris, Amen. the Father, Amen.
The Cum sancto spiritu brings the Gloria section to a thrilling conclusion with Christ upon "the sapphirecolored throne, where the bright seraphim in burning rows Their loud, uplifted angeltrumpets blow."
Here all of Bach's technical resources are brought to play--combining the bold onward march of the fugue with longdrawn harmonies. From climax to climax it surges in mighty expression of rapturous ecstasy. The trumpets add dazzling brilliance and the animated triple rhythm infuses the spirit of joy throughout the movement.
CREDO
No. 12. Credo in unum Deum--Chorus Credo in unum Deum I believe in one God
The Credo is based upon a wellknown and austere Latin theme which had been asso?ciated with the Creed for over fifteen centuries before Bach made use of it here. He treats the movement as a sevenvoiced fugue (five in the voices and two in the violins). The melody is announced in an assertive manner over a persistent accompaniment in the bass {basso ostinato), which is symbolic of the steadfast and confident firmness of faith in God. This bass accompaniment persists with inexorable force from the beginning to the end. The movement gains concision and intensity by virtue of the use of stretti (imitations of the theme in close succession), which culminate when the bass voices enter with the Credo theme in augmentation. While the second sopranos and altos sing it in its original form, the first sopranos answer it in syncopation, and the first and second violins play it in imitation. By this device, the movement achieves a strength and severity in keeping with the austerity of the Gregorian plain song.
No. 13. Palrem omnifotentem--Chorus
Patrem omnipotentem, The Father Almighty,
Factorem coeli et terrae, Maker of heaven and earth,
Visibilium omnium (And) of all things visible
Et invisibilium. And invisible:
Charles Sanford Terry, Bach, the Mass in R minor (London: Oxford University Press, 1931).
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SECOND CONCERT
This movement, the "second Credo," is an adaption, with characteristic changes of detail, of the first chorus of the Cantata No. 171, "Gott, wie dein Name." The fugal chorus and orchestra, fortified with trumpets, picture the Father throned in majesty. It is a less decisive movement than the opening Credo, but it anticipates the splendors of the later Sanctus. In the opening measures, those voices not engaged in enunciating the subject of the fugue, call out three times, "Credo in unum Deum," once for each person of the Trinity.
No. 14. Et in unum Deum--Duet, Soprano and Alto
Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum,
Filium Dei unigenitum.
Et ex Patre natum ante omnia
saecula.
Deum de Deo, Lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum. Consubstantialem Patri, Per quern omnia facta sunt; Qui propter nos homines et propter
nostram salutem descendit de
coelis.
And in one Lord
Jesus Christ,
The onlybegotten Son of God, (And) begotten of (his) Father
before all worlds, God of God, Light of light, Very God of very God. Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the
Father,
Before whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our
salvation came down from
heaven,
This movement is treated in the manner of the Domine Deus; both illustrate the relation of the Father to the Son in duet form. Both voices here sing the same notes in strict canonic imitation--one voice seeming to proceed out of the other as Christ pro?ceeds from God. At the end of the movement, on the words, "descendit de coelis" ("He came down from heaven,") a descending orchestral passage emphasizes the sig?nificance of the words.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu sancto ex Maria virgine,
Et homo factus est.
No. 15. Et incarnatus est--Chorus
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,
And was made man,
For simplicity of means and profundity of feeling, this movement cannot be sur?passed. The choral writing is soft and vaporous; the voices move slowly and quietly through strange nebulous harmonies as though the spirit were hovering over the earth in quest of a being into which it could enter. The violins have a characteristically poignant figure in the accompaniment that tinges the whole movement with mystery and tender brooding. At the words, "Et homo factus est" ("And was made man"), the voices sink to a restless conclusion symbolizing the union of flesh and spirit.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
No. 16. Crucifixus--Chorus
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis
sub Pontio Pilato, Passus et sepultus est.
(And) was crucified for us
under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried,
Here is one of the supreme moments in choral literature and the most emotionally moving experience in the entire mass. It opens with a short instrumental introduction in which Bach establishes a basso ostinato upon which the whole movement is constructed. This fixed bass is fashioned on a descending chromatic phrase of four bars, repeated throughout thirteen times. The persistence of this "motive of grief" emphasizes the tragic intensity of the text. The voices of the chorus enter separately and fragmentarily upon the word "Crucifixus" in accents that express the deepest sorrow. They are ac?companied with lovely effect by antiphonal use of flutes. On the words "pro nobis" ("for us"), the voices join together in one of those miraculous moments which reveal Bach's supreme mastery of achieving the most expressive harmonies through polyphonic means. On the concluding phrase, "passus et sepultus est" ("He suffered and was buried"), the voices sink in desolation to sombre depths. The accompanying instruments cease, and only the grief motive in the bass is heard to continue with the words.
The original version of the "Crucifixus" is found in the final Chorus of Cantata No. 12, "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen." The music appeared also in the early "Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother."
No. 17. Et resurrexit--Chorus
Et resurrexit tertia die
secundum scripturas; Et ascendit in coelum, Sedet ad dcxteram Dei Patris;
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria iudicare vivos
Cuius regni non erit finis.
And the third day he rose again
according to the Scriptures, And ascended into heaven, (And) sitteth on the right hand
of (God) the Father. And he shall come again
with glory
to judge (both) the quick and
the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.
After a moment's pause at the end of the Crucifixus, the Et resurrexit bursts forth in a blaze of jubilant exhilaration which it maintains to the end. The movement, which expresses the victorious rejoicing of redeemed mankind, is divided by orchestral ritornelli into the three sections of the text which deal in turn with the Resurrection, As?cension, and Second Advent. After the final words, "non erit finis" ("shall have no end"), Bach continues the movement with twenty bars of instrumental ritornello.
No. 18. Et in sfiritum sanctum--Aria, Bass with oboi d'amore obbligato
Et in Spiritum sanctum And (I believe) in the Holy Ghost,
Dominum et vivificantem, The Lord and Giver of life,
Qui et Patre Filioquc procedit, Who proceedeth from the Father and
the Son,
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SECOND CONCERT
Qui cum Patre et Filio simul Who with the Father and the Son
adoratur et conglorificatur; together is worshipped and
glorified,
Qui locutus est per Prophetas. Who spake by the Prophets.
Et unam sanctam catholicam et And (I believe in) One (Holy)
apostolicam ecclesiam. Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The Ritornello at the end of the Et resurrexit relieves, in a measure, the emotional tension that was there built up and prepares for the graceful music of this movement. Not only does this aria for the solo bass voice offer a stunning contrast to the Et resur?rexit, but forms a sort of transition between it and the monumental choruses that are to immediately follow (Confiteor and Sanctus).
No. 19. Confiteor--Chorus
Confiteor unum baptisma in I acknowledge one Baptism for
remissionem peccatorum. the remission of sins,
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, And I look for the resurrection
of the dead,
Et vitam venturi saeculi. And the life of the world to come.
Amen. Amen.
The Confiteor is one of the mighty peaks of the mass, marking as it does the end of the Credo section. It is an extended movement in two sections: section one, the Con?fiteor proper, section two, the Et exfecto. Section one is written with an uncompromising decisiveness. The solidarity of faith is emphasized by the procession of chords heard in the bass. From the labyrinth of contrapuntal voices there emerges the ancient plain song intonation of the Confiteor, first in the basses, then in the tenors in augmentation. The insistence of this theme is meant to suggest, no doubt, the assertion of orthodoxy. At the words, "et expecto," of the text ("and I look for the resurrection of the dead"), there is a remarkable passage marked Adagio. In these twentysix measures of transition to Part II, Bach creates some of the most miraculously expressive pages to be found in his entire works. Abandoning, on these words, the old contrapuntal devices he has been employing, he evolves an amazing sequence of harmonies. The chords in the bass pass boldly out of the key of D major, in which the passage has been written, to har?monies that are not related to any key note, suggesting thereby a glimpse of eternity. Perhaps, as Parry suggests, Bach fashioned here Ezekiel's vision of the dead world in confident hope of the approaching miracle of the Resurrection. Expectation of the Final Judgment Day rises from wonder and awe to exultation, as the tempo changes to vivace and allegro,f and the words "et expecto" is confidently declaimed as trumpets and full orchestra sound a soaring theme. All hesitating bewilderment and terror vanish with this song of joyous confidence and belief in the resurrection and the promise of life after death.
Parry, of. cit.
f The material of this section, with some amplification, appeared in the central chorus of Cantata No. 129, "Gott, man lobet tlich."
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SANCTUS
No. 20. Sanctus--Chorus
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Holy, holy, holy
Domine Deus Sabaoth. Lord God (of hosts),
Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria Heaven and earth are full of
eius. (his) glory.
The Sanctus is the fourth large division of the mass and includes two musical sec?tions: the Sanctus proper, and the Osanna (omitted in this performance).
In this, the most monumental conception in the entire mass, Bach gives epic expres?sion to man's devotion to God, to his thanks for His infinite mercies and to his joy at the promise of life after death (end of Confiteor). Bach achieves the grandeur of this conception by employing a sixpart chorus, through which he suggests multitudinous hosts singing in adoration and the rolling of their thunderous harmonies through infinite space. The words are from Isaiah, and Bach no doubt had the beginning of the sixth chapter in mind, where it is narrated how the Lord, sitting on the throne, was sur?rounded by the seraphim, who "cried one unto another, 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts! ' "
The chorus is divided into two sections; the first part is massive and dignified, the basses singing continuously a stalking theme of rugged power. Like the underlying bass theme of the Credo, it creates the feeling of assurance and confidence in God's promise. Above it the other voices sustain a mighty rolling theme which suddenly gives way on the words, "Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria eius" ("Heaven and earth are full of His glory"), to a spirited and rhythmic fugue in fy rhythm, first announced by the tenors, and progressing to a thunderous climax that seems to soar into the empyrean.
No. 21. Osatma in excelsis--Chorus
Osanna in excelsis Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high
Omitted in this performance
No. 22. Benedictus. Aria--Tenor with violin obbligato. Benedictus qui venit Blessed is he that cometh
in nomine Domini. in the name of the Lord.
After the grandeur of the Sanctus, the tender Benedictus comes, as its name implies, with gentle relief. While the tenor voice sings a contemplative melody dwelling upon the essential word "Benedictus," the violin weaves an elaborate obbligato about it.
AGNUS DEI
No. 23. Agnus Dei--Aria, Alto with violin obbligato. Agnus dei O Lamb of God,
qui tollis that takest away the
peccata mundi, sins of the world,
Miserere nobis. Have mercy upon us,
? There is no clue as to what the accompanying instrument should be here. The editor of the BachGesellsciaft indicated the violin. Terry maintains, with sound arguments, that it should be the flute.
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SECOND CONCERT
The last division of the mass consists of two sections, the music of which was again borrowed from previous works. The music of the first section, Agnus Dei, is taken from the alto aria in the Cantata No. 11 ("Ascension Oratorio"), written about 1735. As in the case of the Qui tollis and Crucifixus, it seems impossible to believe that Bach did not conceive this music especially for these words--so appropriate it seems. The deeply pathetic and tenderly melancholy mood established by Bach is diametrically opposed to Beethoven's "cry of the pained and terrified soul for salvation" to the same text. There is no great choral climax to end this cosmic work--only the quiet joy and thankfulness expressed by man assured of freedom from his sins.
No. 24. Dana nobis facem--Chorus. Dona nobis pacem Grant us peace
Here Bach repeats the music of the Gratias agimus (omitted), which was transcribed from the first chorus of the Cantata, No. 29, "Wir danken dir, Gott" ("We thank Thee, God"), written in 1731. The similarity of the German and Latin texts here makes the employment of the same music entirely appropriate for this final prayer for peace--the final song of a soul redeemed.
Spitta, in his learned and comprehensive life of Bach, has this to say of the Bminor Mass:
The Bminor mass exhibits in the most absolute manner, and on the grandest scale, the deep and intimate feeling of its creator as a Christian and a member of the Church. The student who desires to enter thoroughly into this chamber of his soul must use the Bminor mass as the key; without this we can only guess at the vital powers which Bach brought to bear on all his sacred compositions. When we hear this mass performed under the conditions indispensable to our full comprehension of it, we feel as though the genius of the last two thousand years were soaring above our heads. There is some?thing almost unearthly in the solitary eminence which the Bminor mass occupies in history. Even when every available means have been brought to bear on the investiga?tion of the bases of Bach's views of art and of the processes of his culture and develop?ment, on the elements he assimilated from without; on the inspirations he derived from within and from his personal circumstances; when, finally, the universal nature of music comes to our aid in the matter, there still remains a last wonder--the lightning flash of the idea of a mass of such vast proportions, the resuscitation of the spirit of the reformers, as of waters that have been long gathering to a head, nay, the actual resurrec?tion of the genius of primitive Christianity, and all concentrated in the mind of this one artist--as inscrutable as the very secret of life itself.
Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, trans, by Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller Maitland (London: Novello & Co., Ltd., 1899), Vol. III.
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THIRD CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 2
Overture to Ultaliana in Algeri.........Rossini
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, February 29, 1792; died in Paris, November 13, 1868.
Much of Rossini's work was incredibly hasty in execution and shallow in artistic purpose. Thus its great popularity with a thoughtless public tended to turn operatic art back into the mere sensationalism of the traditional seventeenth and early eighteenth century Neapolitan style at its worst, and directly away from the dignified reform ideas of Gluck and the dramatic veracity of Mozart.
Rossini's art and career present many contradictory elements. Although he did display a sparkling genius, a raciness of humor, a daring in discarding con?ventions, and an invention in construction that reminds one of Mozart at times, his appreciation for the higher values of the music drama was slight, if indeed he was capable of understanding them at all. He greatly extended the range of operatic technique, both on the side of lyric ornamentation and in enriching the orchestral texture of his accompaniments. Yet the charm of lyricism for its own sake, the unblushing attempt to captivate audiences by unexpected effects, the typical Italian love for delectability of melody, for brilliant embellishment, for momentum and dash remained his dominating artistic impulses.
The first performance of Ultaliana in Algeri took place May 22, 1813. It was an immediate success with the public who had learned to expect from the youth of twentyone fresh and gay music that sparkled with wit and humor. "When Rossini wrote 'L'ltaliana in Algeri' he was in the flame of his genius and his youth," wrote Stendhal. "He had no fear of repeating himself, he was not trying to compose strong music; he was living in that amiable Venetian country, the gayest in Italy and perhaps in the world. . . . The result of the Venetian char?acter is that people want above all in music agreeable songs, light rather than pas?sionate. They were served to their heart's desire in 'L'ltaliana in Algeri'; never has a public enjoyed a spectacle more harmonious with its character, and of all the operas that have ever existed this is the one destined to please the Venetians most."
Of the plot, which suggests Mozart's Entfiihrung aus dem Serail, Toye has written:
This story of an Italian lady (Isabella) who in company with an ineffective admirer
Stendhal, Vie de Rossini (Paris, 1824) ; trans, into English (London, 1824).
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(Taddeo) sets forth to rescue her lover (Lindoro) and then, fortunately wrecked on the shores of the very country where he is held prisoner, makes a fool of both Taddeo and Mustafa, the Bey of Algeria, is frank farce. But it is very good farce, abounding in funny situations, wily strategems, and ridiculous expedients.
Suite of Songs...............Britten
(Orchestrated by Marion E. McArtor)
Edward Benjamin Britten was born at Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, November 22, 1913.
Benjamin Britten is best known in America for his operas, Peter Grimes, The Rafe of Lucretia, and Albert Herring, and for his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Op. 34). He is, how?ever, an extremely prolific composer. From 1929, when he published his first song, to the present, he has continued to enrich the output of contemporary music by producing works that range from anthems for mixed voices, part songs, organ pieces, folksong arrangements, and incidental music for motion pictures to operas, concertos for violin and piano, and chamber music.
The songs on this afternoon's program were selected from Vol. I and Vol. Ill of his Folk Song Arrangements for Voice and Piano {British Isles), 1948, and from Vol. I and Vol. II of Friday Afternoons: Twelve Songs for Children's Voices and Piano, Op. 7 (words selected from Tom Tiddler's Ground by Walter de la Mare, and from other sources) .f
Much of the effect of the songs, as they are arranged in this suite, is due to the skillful and sensitive orchestration of Marion McArtor; it continually re?flects the charm and emphasizes the humor of the words Britten has so effectively realized in his creative arrangements.
1. There Was a Man of Newington
There was a man of Newington, And he was wond'rous wise, He jump'd into a quickset hedge, And scratch'd out both his eyes.
But when he saw his eyes were out, With all his might and main, He jump'd into another hedge, And scratch'd them in again.
? Francis Toye, Rossini, A Study in TraglComedy (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1934). "j" Specially arranged by permission of the copyright owners, Boosey and Hawkes, Inc.
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2. Fishing Song
Oh, the gallant fisher's life, In a morning up we rise,
It is the best of any! 'Ere Aurora's peeping,
'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife, Drink a cup to wash our eyes,
And 'tis belov'd of many; Leave the sluggard sleeping;
Other joys are but toys; Then we go, to and fro,
Only this lawful is, With our macks to our backs,
For our skill, breeds no ill, To such streams, as the Thames,
But content and pleasure. If we have the leisure.
If the sun's excessive heat,
Makes our bodies swelter,
To an osier hedge we get
For a friendly shelter:
Where in a dyke, perch or pike,
Roach or dace, we go chase;
Bleak or gudgeon, without grudging;
We are still contented.
3. Old Abram Brown
4. JazzMan
Old Abram Brown is dead and gone, You'll never see him more; He used to wear a long brown coat, That button'd down before.
Crash and clang! Bash and bang! And up in the road the JazzMan sprang! The OneManJazzBand playing in the street, Drums with his elbows, cymbals with his feet, Pipes with his mouth, accordion with his hand, Playing all his instruments to beat the band!
Toot and tingle! Hoot and jingle!
Oh, what a clatter! How the tunes all mingle!
Twenty children couldn't make as much noise
As the howling pandemonium of the OneMan Jazz!
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5. Cuckoo!
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Cuckoo, Cuckoo, what do you do
Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo,
In April I open my bill;
In May I sing night and day;
In June I change my tune;
In July far far I fly;
In August away ... I must
Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo.
6.. Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell lay buried and dead, Heehaw buried and dead, There grew an old apple tree over his head, Heehaw over his head.
The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Heehaw ready to fall;
There came an old woman to gather them all, Heehaw gather them all.
Oliver rose and gave her a drop, Heehaw gave her a drop, Which made the old woman go hippetv hop, Heehaw hippetv hop.
The saddle and bridle, they lie on the shelf, Heehaw lie on the shelf,
If you want any more you can sing it yourself, Heehaw sing it yourself.
7. O Waly, Waly
The water is wide, I cannot get o'er, And neither have I wings to fly. Give me a boat that will carry two, And both shall row, my love and I.
O, down in the meadows the other day, Agathering flowers both fine and gay, Agathering flowers both red and blue, I little thought what love can do.
I leaned my back up against some oak Thinking that he was a trusty tree; But first he bended, and then he broke; And so did my false love to me.
A ship there is, and she sails the sea, She's loaded deep as deep can be, But not so deep as the love I'm in: I know not if I sink or swim.
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8. The Miller of Dee
There was a jolly miller once lived on the river Dee; He worked and sang from morn till night, No lark more blithe than he. And this the burden of his song forever used to be, "I care for nobody, no, not I, since nobody cares for me.
I love my mill, she is to me like parent, child and wife, I would not change my station for any other in life." And this the burden of his song for ever used to be, "I care for nobody, no, not I, since nobody cares for me."
9. "EeOh!"
The fox and his wife they had a great strife, They never ate mustard in all their whole life; They ate their meat without fork or knife, And lov'd to be picking a bone, eeoh! And lov'd to be picking a bone!
The fox jump'd up on a moonlight night; The stars they were shining and all things bright; "Oho!" said the fox, "it's a very fine night, For me to go thro' the town, eeoh! For me to go thro' the town!"
The fox when he came to the farmer's gate, Who should he see but the farmer's drake; "I love you well for your master's sake, And long to be picking your bone, ceoh! And long to be picking your bone!"
The grey goose she ran round the farmer's stack, "Ohho!" said the fox, "you are plump and fat; You'll grease my beard and ride on my back, From this into yonder wee town, eeoh! From this into yonder wee town!"
The farmer's wife she jump'd out of bed, And out of the window she popp'd her head! "Oh husband, Oh husband, the geese are all dead, For the fox has been thro' the town, eeoh! For the fox has been thro' the town!"
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The farmer he loaded his pistol with lead, And shot the old rogue of a fox thro' the head; "Ahha!" said the farmer, "I think you're quite dead; And no more you'll trouble the town, eeoh! And no more you'll trouble the town!"
Romeo and Juliet, OvertureFantasy.....Tchaikovsky
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky was born at Wotkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840; died at Petrograd, November 6, 1893.
What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn that mocked the smart, Through Europe to the Aetolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart That thousands counted every groan And Europe made his woes her own
--Arnold
"No, that is nothing like me, I am far unhappier than that," cried Byron when he beheld in Rome the bust made of him by the sculptor Thorwaldsen. Goethe described Byron in the fine phrase, "His being consists in rich despair," and, in fact, fame, love, wealth, and beauty left him sick with satiety--a despiser of the world. The soullife of the age bore the stamp of this man for whom "sorrow was knowledge"; he was, in truth, the eponymous hero of an epoch.
The age was literally infected by Byronism. Under one form or another the wave of influence emanating from him was mingled with the current of French, German, and Slavonic Romanticism; his own soul was incarnate in his Manfred who reflected an increasing egoism in the expression of melancholy. Chateaubriand in France, who gave such fluent and beautiful expression to the emotional ideas originated by Rousseau, created the type of the esprit romanesque in his Rene. At odds with himself and the world, sensitive and disillusioned, full of yearning for love and faith but without the strength for either, he felt nothing but bitter emptiness. "All," says Rene, "preaches to one of dissolution--everything wearies me, painfully I drag my boredom about with me, and so my whole life is a yawn." Lamartine in his Meditations foetique carried emotionalism to the extreme of poetic sensibility. De Musset sang in his selfconscious poetry the pain of a wounded heart; in the art of these poets lyricism embraced eccentricity. Goethe's Werther had the same romantic desire to feel and to suffer uniquely from an unhappiness caused by hidden, indefinable longing. Slavonic literature, too, stated
?The Meditations foetique became the inspiration for Liszt's Les Preludes in 1848.
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the "superfluous" theme. Pushkin, the "Russian Byron," in his Eugen Onegin, and Lermantov in The Hero of Our Time created dramatic young men who wrapped themselves in Byron's dark mantle and stalked from one anguish to another.
This mixture of egoism and sensibility is found as basic stuff in the heroes of the literature of the time. Their philosophy was that of another spokesman of their age, Leopardi, who reflected that "sorrow and ennui is our being and dung the earth--nothing more; wherever one looks, no meaning, no fruit." Literature had become a "splendid greenygold growth, glittering and seductive, but rilled with intoxicating saps that corrode."
The sources for this world sickness can be found in a measure in the effects the Industrial Revolution had upon the lives of men. As a result of this tremendous reorganizing force with its consequent power and wealth, a new attitude toward life was created. The growth of a rationalistic materialism gave rise to a period of doubt and disillusionment; it seemed as though the old culture were to dis?appear completely. Strong spirits like Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Ruskin fought valiantly for the "revenge instinct," and composers like Wagner and Brahms tried to strengthen the flaccid spirit of their time by sounding a note of courage and hopefulness, but less fortified minds fell before the onslaught, sank into mental and spiritual apathy, and decayed. With decay came disease, and the contagion struck deep into men's souls.
From the same overfertilized emotional soil grew a prolific school of com?position. The supersensitive Chopin f cried out his longing in languorous noc?turnes, Berlioz in his Symfhonie antastque pictured the narcotic dreams of a young artist who, because of an unrequited love, had attempted suicide by taking opium. Wagner, expressing one side of the Industrial Revolution in the imperious force and merciless drive of his music, nevertheless allowed his desiresick soul to long for death as the only release from the world. The "renunciation" motive is the basis of his great dramas. Senta renounces life for the salvation of the Dutch?man, Elizabeth dies for Tannhauser, Briinnhilde throws herself upon the funeral pyre of Siegfried to redeem the race, and Tristan and Isolde live only for the night and long for death to unite them forever. Heine had earlier character?ized this feeling in Germany. "People," he said, "practiced renunciation and modesty, bowed before the invisible, snatched at shadow kisses and blueflowered scents." This unnatural and unhealthy mental attitude led to a great deal of selfcontemplation and introspection which tended to substitute futile or morbid imaginings for solid realities of life. The overintrospective and supersensitive artist cuts himself off from a larger arc of experience and is prone to exaggerate the importance of the more intimate sentiments, and when, as in the nineteenth
See notes on Brahms, page 60. f See notes on Chopin, pages 1415.
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century, such a tendency is widespread, a whole school may become febrile and erotic.
Tchaikovsky, like Byron, was a child of his age, another victim of "the grief that saps the mind." It is truly said of Byron that he had but one subject-himself--and that saying is equally true of Tchaikovsky. If his personality was less puissant and terrible than that of Byron, his artistic instincts were reflected none the less forcibly in his selfcultivated and exhibitionistic art. His personal unassuageable grief, the tragedies and frustration of his own life, all he knew of anguished apprehension and despair he poured out in his music. His persistent pen?chant for melancholy expression, his feverish sensibility, his revulsions of artistic feeling, and his fitful emotions which sank him into morbid pessimism, deadening depression, and neurotic fears on the one hand, or raised him to wild hysteria on the other--picture him in the framework of his age. "And if bereft of speech, man bears his pain, a god gave me the gift to tell my sorrow," wrote Tasso. Of this gift, Tchaikovsky had his share.
A Russian to the core, Tchaikovsky was nevertheless criticized severely by those selfstyled nationalists, "The Five," for being too strongly influenced by German and French methods and styles to be a true exponent of Russian music. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, found much to admire in their art, and was very enthusiastic in his praise of RimskiKorsakov in particular. Nevertheless, he resented the assumption of superiority and the canons of judgment laid down by this coterie. He turned rather to Beethoven and to the scholarly technique exhibited in the construction of his symphonies; at the same time he was not immune to the charm of Italian music. Although he deprecated its superficial treatment of the orchestra, he did sense in the music of Italy the eternal value of pure melody, which he brought to fullest beauty through his superb and unequaled knowledge of instrumental effects. From Beethoven, Tchaikovsky no doubt gained what sense of architectural design and unity of style he had, but so intent was he on the fascination and charm of the single episode, and so aware of the spell of the immediate melodic beauty and the particular suggestive power of the orchestral coloring, that he never gained the superb structural heights or the completely epic conception found in Beethoven.
The constant oscillation between sudden exultation, violent passion, and unresisted submission in his temperament excluded the sustaining and impersonal elements necessary to the true epic. He gave himself up, as Sibelius noted when speaking of his music, to every situation without looking beyond the moment. But such is the beauty and power of his themes and so masterful and effective is the use he makes of the orchestral palette that we cannot consider it a weakness that his compositions, in his own words, often "show at the seams and reveal
RimskiKorsakov, Cui, Moussorgsky, Balakirev, and Borodin.
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no organic union between the separate episodes." In fact, Tchaikovsky's faults embrace his virtues, and this is the enigma of his genius.
In "Romeo and Juliet," Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most beautifully expressive and richly poetic music in his entire career. Written when he was young and full of romantic yearnings, the score, uneven as it is, is full of wistful passion, lyrical loveliness, and poignant melancholy. With it all, there is dra?matic intensity and extreme vitality. It was inspired, obviously, by Shakespeare's tragedy; but it was written at the suggestion of the Russian composer Mily Balakirev, who in some instances even outlined the character of the themes.
The overture was composed in the autumn of 1869, when Tchaikovsky was supposed to have been deeply moved by the fact that the beautiful French singer, Desiree Artot, jilted him to marry another. Literary mythologists and sentimen?talists never tire of retelling the story of this passion, or of suggesting it as a source of the melancholy and despair found in the pages of "Romeo and Juliet." They have been aided in this belief by Kashkin, who, a year later, sitting next to Tchaikovsky at a theater where Artot was performing, wrote that "when the singer came on the stage, Peter Ilich put his opera glasses to his eyes and kept them there till the end of the performance, although it is doubtful how much he could see, for the tears ran unheeded down his cheek." This demonstration, how?ever, was small proof of grief for unrequited love, for tears came easily to Tchaikovsky. Music was often paid such a tribute. It is improbable that Artot left any unhealed wounds in Tchaikovsky's soul. Years later he chanced to sit next to her at dinner. To his brother Modeste he wrote, "She was in evening dress and fat as a bubble. We were friends instantly, as though the past had never been. I was inexpressibly glad to see her and found her as fascinating as ever." Tchaikovsky was not of the stuff of which husbands are made, and it is much more probable that Shakespeare and the enthusiastic suggestions of Balakirev were the real sources of his inspiration.
An introduction of a religious nature is intended to suggest the character of Friar Lawrence (clarinets and bassoons, Andante non tanto, quasi moderato, Fsharp minor, 44). It is followed by an Allegro section in B minor, depicting the conflict between the opposing houses of Capulet and Montague. Then follows the expressively beautiful love music, based upon two themes, one rhapsodic in nature and heard in the English horn with muted violas, supported by horns. The other is an exquisite choral passage for divided and muted strings. Again the scene of conflict returns with its strife and fury, against which the Friar Lawrence theme contends in vain. With greater intensity the passionate love music is heard again and culminates in a great climax. After a brief and forbid?ding silence, there occurs a woeful reminiscence of the ecstatic first love theme (cellos, violins, and bassoon over drum beats and pizzicato basses) and an
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elegaic conclusion is formed from a modification of the love song heard in high unison strings, supported by woodwinds, horns, and harp.
Concerto in D major, for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 61 . Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Decem?ber 16, 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827.
In the literature of the violin concerto, the great master of the symphony is represented by a single contribution. For the violin as a solo instrument in other combinations and relations, Beethoven created much, but in the most pretentious and expansive form of virtuoso demonstration, the concerto on this afternoon's program is his single adventure. It was written late in the year 1806, and came from the same period that produced Fidelio, the Leonore overtures, the three Razoumovsky quartets, the Gmajor piano concerto, and the fourth and fifth symphonies. It is reported that the work was not finished in time for rehearsal, and that the soloist of the occasion, Franz Clement, played it at sight at his con?cert in the Theater an der Wien on December 23, 1806. On the page of the manuscript score, which differs in many details from the work as performed this afternoon, there stands in the composer's handwriting the punning title as fol?lows: "Concerto par Clemenza pour Clement, primo violino e Direttore al Theatre de Vienne." The soloist of the first performance was a violinist of re?markable attainment in his day and at the time of the performance was the con?ductor, of the orchestra at the theater in which the concert took place.
Johann Nepomuk Moser, writing a review of the performance in the Theaterzeitung, stated solemnly that "it is to be feared that if Beethoven continues upon this path, he and the public will fare badly." He continued by offering the com?poser a friendly bit of advice to employ "his indubitable talents" to better advan?tage.
The orchestral score of the Concerto was published in 1809, and, as indicated above, shows the result of that familiar process of revision which Beethoven em?ployed with most of his work.
For those who may be interested in following the rather lengthy work in a more detailed fashion, the appended analysis of material is given:
I. (Allegro ma ncn tropfo, D major, 44 time.) This movement is constructed in the sonata form with the double exposition peculiar to nearly all concertos of the earlier masters. Note the important part played by the opening notes of the kettledrum. This rhythmical figure runs throughout the entire movement.
The principal theme opens in the woodwind. The transitional passage leading to
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the second theme begins with new material--and ascending scale--also in the wood?wind. After an outburst in the full orchestra, fortissimo, the second theme appears in the woodwind, later to be continued in the strings. The orchestral exposition does not end with a complete close, as was often customary, but leads at once into the second exposition--for the solo instrument, which enters with an ascending octave figure, introductory to its presentation of the principal theme. The transitional passage begins in the orchestra (scale passage in woodwind), and is continued in octaves by the solo violin. The second theme is given out by the clarinets and bassoons, the solo instrument playing a trill. The strings continue this theme, passagework in triplets accompanying it in the solo.
The Development portion of the movement is ushered in by a fortissimo tutti. The second theme is given further and lengthy presentation. The real working out of the subject matter begins with the entrance of the solo violin, the rhythmical "motto" of the movement being continually in evidence. Following two trills in the violin solo there appears a tranquil episode for the principal instrument.
The Recapitulation enters, fortissimo, in the full orchestra. The principal themes are presented much as before, a sonorous tutti leads into the cadenza for the solo, at the conclusion of which a reminiscence of the second theme brings the movement to a close.
II. (Larghetto, G major, 44 time.) In the scoring of this movement, only two clarinets, two bassoons, and two horns are used, in addition to the strings. The muted strings bring forward a subject, ten measures long, which is repeated three times by the clarinet, bassoon, and strings, respectively, with graceful embroidery in the solo instrument. Following this a new theme appears in the violin, leading to a repetition of the first subject (pizzicato in the strings), and a further embroidered presentation of the second theme in the solo violin. A modulation in the strings, fortissimo, prepares the way for the rondo.
III. (Rondo--allegro, D major, 68 time). The solo instrument announces the principal theme on the G string, the violoncellos providing a light accompaniment. The subject is repeated by the violin two octaves higher, and taken up, fortissimo, by the full orchestra. A transitional passage, in the nature of a hunting call, appears in the horns, with ornamental work in the violin. The second theme is given out, fortissimo, for two measures by the full orchestra, these being answered by the solo violin. There follows rapid passage work for the solo instrument. Reminiscences of the opening theme in the accompaniment lead to its repetition by the violin. The second part of the movement opens with a fortissimo tutti, after which the violin brings forward an episode, the theme of which is repeated by the bassoon with figuration in the solo instrument.
The Recapitulation announces the principal subject in the solo, with violoncello accompaniment, as at the beginning of the movement. The transitional passage (hunting call in the horns) and the second theme are presented as before, the latter being now in the key of the piece. A fortissimo tutti leads to a cadenza, less elaborate than that of the first movement, and the close of the movement is occupied with further develop?ment of the principal theme.
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Saturday Evening, May 2
Symphonic Poem, "Don Juan," Op. 20.......Strauss
Richard Strauss was born at Munich, June II, 1864; died at GarmishPartenKirchen, Germany, September 8, 1949.
Criticism has always been embarrassed in its attempt to evaluate Richard Strauss. There is no doubt that he was one of the most interesting and extraor?dinary personalities in the world of music. Whatever his antagonistic critics have ' to say of him, he remains, in the light of his early works at least, one of the greatest composers of our time.
Trained during his formative years in the classical musical tradition of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, he exerted his individuality and independence of thought and expression with such darina; and insistence that at his mature period he was considered the most modern and most radical of composers. Critics turned from their tirades against Wagner to vent their invectives upon him; they villified him as they had Wagner, with a persistence that seems incredible to us today.
The progressive unfolding of his genius aroused much discussion, largely be?cause it was so uneven and erratic. Hailed on his appearance as the true successor of Wagner, this Richard II became, for some years, the most commanding figure in modern music. Thirtyfive years ago, except in Germany and Austria, he was almost entirely ignored by the leaders of progressive musical opinion. No composer has ever suffered such a startling, such a sudden, and decisive reversal of fortune. Just when his popularity seemed to be steadily growing and contro?versy dying down, his works began to disappear from current programs and for a period of approximately ten years became almost inaccessible to the public.
During this period, music was developing at a greater rate of speed than at any time in its history. Russia had begun to exert herself in the field with such great force that it seemed she was about to usurp the position of Germany as the leading musical nation. France had caught the attention of the musical world with late impressionistic and modern devices, and England had suddenly revived interest in native art by rediscovering her heritage of Elizabethan music, and by attending to a contemporary output.
With the interest of the world suddenly caught by the novelty of new styles and held by the rapid shift from one to another, attention was drawn away from Germany just at that period when Strauss was winning acceptance. When, after ten years of indifference to his output, the world again began to hear his works, it was with different ears. Music that had been controversial now seemed perfectly acceptable; what at first appeared to be novel in harmonic device, exotic in color
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ation, and new in conception of form was now looked upon as commonplace. Strauss's fresh and ingenious manner of treating old material had been mistaken for startling innovation and open rebellion against musical traditions.
Russia in particular had so extended the expressive powers of music that much that had seemed unusual and even cacophonous now appeared to be utterly pro?saic. After the performance of Stravinsky's Sacre du frintemps (1913), Strauss's one time exceptional harmony, erratic melody, and queer instrumentation "left the itch of novelty behind."
When, therefore, criticism again turned to him, it observed that he had not continued to fulfill the great promise of his youth, and that aside from not develop?ing from strength to greater strength, there was a marked decline of his talents. His later works, Ariadne on Naxos (1912 ), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919 ), Die Liebe der Danae (1943), bore witness to the gradual degeneration and final extinction of his creative powers. The world had beheld the tragic spectacle of the deterioration of a genius.
Romain Rolland, in his essay on Strauss, sensed this depletion when he wrote: "The frenzied laugh of Zarathustra ends in an avowal of discouraged impotence. The delirious passion of Don Juan dies away into nothingness. Don Quixote, in dying, forswears his illusions. Even the Hero himself (Heldenleben) admits the futility of his work, and seeks oblivion in an indifferent nature."
Strauss had expressed momentarily in his early masterpieces--the great tone poems and the operas Electra and Salome--the modern psychological point of view; yet he was too strongly marked by the nineteenth century romanticism to venture far into the new and challenging world. The Romantic movement had persisted longer in music than in any of the other arts, still making in the early years of the twentieth century, as Ernest Newman so colorfully writes, "an occa?sional ineffectual effort to raise its old head, ludicrous now with its faded garlands of flowers overhanging the wrinkled cheeks." J Romanticism had long since out?lived itself, yet for composers like Strauss, Mahler, and Rachmaninoff, its fascina?tion proved too strong to be completely resisted. Mahler defended it with a kind of impassioned eloquence; Rachmaninoff embraced it to the end of his life with filial affection; and, although Strauss, in his early sojourn into this dying world, seemed at first to "behave toward it like a graceless, irreverent urchin in a cathe?dral," he soon fell under its spell. The undercurrent of weariness and disgust, of satiety and disillusion, that runs through his work links him today spiritually, mentally, and psychologically with Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and the great roman?tics of the past, rather than with the modernists. He, like them, had his roots in the same soil that nurtured Wagner, Byron, Goethe, Leopardi, and Tchaikov
Romain Rolland, Musicians of Today (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1915). f Ernest Newman, Musical Studies (3d ed.; New York: John Lane Co., 1913).
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sky , and the tragic spectacle of his gradual but perceptible deterioration is a re?flection of the disenchantment with life that had caught the Romantic artists in its merciless grip.
A quarter of a century ago Cecil Gray wrote of Strauss:
His whole career is symbolically mirrored in his own Don Juan, in the splendid vitality and high promise of his beginning, the subsequent period of cold and reckless perversity, the gradual oncoming of the inevitable nemesis of weariness and disillusion, until at last, in the words of Lenau, on whose poem the work is ostensibly based, ergreijt ihn der Ekel, und der ist der Teufel der ihn halt, and the theme of disgust that is blared out triumphantly in Don Juan reappears in Zarathustra. In place of the arrogant, triumphant figure conceived and portrayed in Nietzche, we are shown a man tormented by doubt and disillusion, desperately seeking relief in religion, passion, science, and intellectual ecstasy and finally ending up where he began, in doubt and disillusion.
In the light of today, therefore, Strauss is no longer considered an innovator of any true significance. But let it be said that from the first, he has manifested an extraordinary mastery of technical procedure; that he is one of the few composers of our generation who have shown themselves capable of constructing works on a monumental scale and of approaching the epic conception. His work as a whole is greater than any of its constituent parts, and, in this sense, he possesses an archi?tectonic quality of mind that is impressive. There is in his greatest works a nervous energy and exuberance, a vitality and fertility of invention, and a technique of handling the orchestra that is admittedly unsurpassed. He has again and again shown his power to create beauty of rare freshness, but he most tragically failed in the complete realization of his highest achievement. At the end of his essay, Romain Rolland saw in Richard Strauss's defeat and depletion of talent a symbol of contemporary Germany and spoke thus, and how prophetically:
In this lies the undying worm of German thought. I am speaking of the thought of the choice few who enlighten the present and anticipate the future. I see an heroic people, intoxicated by its triumphs, by its numbers, by its force, which clasps the world in its great arms and subjugates it, and then stops, fatigued by its conquest and asks: Why have I conquered
Nikolaus Lenau, a pseudonym for the Austrian poet Nikolaus Franz Niembsch von Strehlenau, author of the poem "Don Juan," himself expounded the philoso?phy of his poem. "My Don Juan," he said, "is no hotblooded man eternally pur?suing women. It is the longing in him to find a woman who is to him incarnate womanhood, and to enjoy in the one, all the women on earth, whom he cannot
See notes on Tchaikovsky, pages 3740.
f Cecil Gray, A Survey of Contemforary Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1927).
Rolland, of. cit.
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as individuals possess. Because he does not find her, although he reels from one to another, at last Disgust seizes hold of him, and this Disgust is the Devil that fetches him."
Lawrence Gilman in his program notes for this work points out the kinship that exists between Lenau's and Strauss's Don Juan and Theodore Dreiser's Eugene Witla and the Michael Robartes of William Butler Yeats. Like Michael, he loved a woman, not really for herself, but rather as an immortal and tran?scendent incarnation of beauty. This passion for the "ideal beauty" of Plato-"pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colors and vanities of human life," leads the Don from incandescent ardor and impassioned impulse at the beginning of his search to bitterness and despair at the realization that beauty and love are but fleeting illusions, and unattainable.
"Don Juan" is not program music, strictly speaking; it tells no definite story or series of connected incidents; it is an exercise in musical psychology, a field in which Beethoven gave us Coriolanus, and Liszt essayed a portrait of Faust. In this work, Strauss is a student of human nature and life, no less than an accom?plished musician. With all the colors of the modern orchestra on his palette, he paints the youthful hero, in search of what the poem calls a "... magic realm, illimited, eternal. Of gloried woman, loveliness supernal!"
Ernest Newman, speaking of Strauss's music itself, noted that in "Don Juan" we get some of the finest development that is to be found in the history of sym?phonic music; "the music unfolds itself, bar by bar, with as perfect continuity and consistency as if it had nothing but itself to consider, while at the same time it adds fresh points to our knowledge of the psychology of the character it is portraying. No other composer equals Strauss in the power of writing long stretches of music that interests us in and for itself, at the same time that every line and color in it seem to express some new trait in the character that is being sketched." f The various love episodes may be filled with special characters without great harm, save that the mind is diverted from a higher poetic view to a mere concrete play of events. The very quality of the pure musical treatment, referred to by Mr. Newman, thus loses nobility and significance.
"Don Juan" was Strauss's second tone poem.t It was composed in 188788, when he was but twentyfour years of age, and was published in 1890. The first performance was at Weimar in 1889, at which time Strauss himself conducted from manuscript.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Programs, December z6, 1934..
"(? Newman, of. cit.
X "Macbeth," Op. 23, published a year after "Don Juan," was really his first.
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To the score, he prefixed the following stanzas from Lenau's poem:
0 magic realm, illimited, eternal,
Of gloried woman--loveliness supernal!
Fain would I, in the storm of stressful bliss,
Expire upon the last one's lingering kiss!
Through every realm, O friend, would wing my flight,
Wherever Beauty blooms, kneel down to each,
And, if for one brief moment, win delight!

1 flee from surfeit and from rapture's cloy, Keep fresh for Beauty service and employ, Grieving the One, that All I may enjoy.
The fragrance from one lip today is breath of spring:
The dungeon's gloom perchance tomorrow's luck may bring.
When with the new love won I sweetly wander,
No bliss is ours upfurbish'd and regilded;
A different love has This to That one yonder,
Not up from ruins be my temples builded.
Yea, Love life is, and ever must be new,
Cannot be changed or turned in new direction;
It cannot but there expire--here resurrection;
And, if 'tis real, it nothing knows of rue!
Each beauty in the world is sole, unique:
So must the Love be that would Beauty seek!
So long as Youth lives on with pulse afire,
Out to the chase! To victories new aspire!

It was a wond'rous lovely storm that drove me: Now it is o'er; and calm all 'round, above me; Sheer dead is every wish; all hopes o'ershrouded-'Twas p'r'aps a flash from heaven that so descended, Whose deadly stroke left me with powers ended, And all the world, so bright before, o'erclouded; And p'r'aps not! Exhausted is the fuel; And on the hearth the cold is fiercely cruel.
--English version by John P. Jackson
"Mentre ti lascio, o figlia," K. 513.......Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born at Salzburg, Janu?ary 27, 1756; died at Vienna, December 5, 1791.
In its diversity and scope, the music of Mozart is perhaps the most astonishing achievement in the history of European art. Wherever he directed his pen, to
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the creation of opera, serious or comic, to cantata, mass, chamber music, sonata, or symphony, he left imperishable masterpieces. In more than six hundred 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; he carried to perfection all instru?mental and vocal forms of his day. No composer ever revealed 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.
"Is not almost all the instrumental music of the second half of the eighteenth century in general, and that of Mozart in particular, penetrated through and through with the spirit of the opera" wrote the great Mozart authority Alfred Einstein, "nowhere does the purely Italian derivation of Mozart's style show more clearly than in the aria and all other forms that have more or less to do with opera."
Mozart's manifold genius is more freely exploited in the opera than in any other form. His amazing sense of dramatic veracity, his uncanny insight into the psychological aspects of character, and the unbelievable aptness with which he manifested these in his music not only proved his unerring instinct for the theater, but established him as one of the foremost composers of opera in the world.
Mozart was often called upon to write independent arias for concert perform?ances and for insertion in operas by other composers. The aria on tonight's program was written for an opera by the Neapolitan composer Paisiello, La Dhjatta di Darlo. As in, many instances, he wrote the aria for a specific singer--in this case for the young basso friend Gottfried von Jacquin. It was composed during the year 1787, four years before his untimely death. At the time he was at work on his opera Don Giovanni, and within six months time he also produced the Quintet in C major (K. 515), the G minor Quartet (K. 516), the Eine kleine Nachtmusik (K. 525), and the violin and piano Sonata in A (K. 526).
By 1750, the aria had become a miniature concerto for voice and orchestra. "The strange thing about its development," wrote Einstein, " is that the form . . . was perfected in the work of [the Italian composers] Stradella and Alessandro Scarlatti earlier than the concerto, so that the concerto was actually fashioned after the aria, and not vice versa." f In his great concert arias, as in his operas, Mozart followed models established by his Italian predecessors, and upon them he bestowed his richest melodic gifts and the wealth of his instrumental craftsmanship. In none of them is the fact more apparent than in the dramatic aria, "Mentre ti
?Alfred Einstein, Mozart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945). f Ibid.
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lascio, o figlia" ("As I leave you, O daughter"), in which a father bids an affecting farewell to his beloved daughter.
Symphony, Mathis der Maler........Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was born in Hanau, Ger?many, in 1895; now residing in America.
Prior to the advent of Paul Hindemith, German music seemed indecisive as to what course it was to follow. After Wagner and Brahms, some composers seemed intent upon perpetuating the principles of their glorious art, failing to see that these principles grew out of and were associated with an era that was past. Wagner and Brahms had brought German Romanticism and its concept of music as the "soul expression" of the individual to a complete fruition. After a century of personal and private musical expression and one in which music was called upon to paint pictures, comment upon "programs," and abet the drama and ballet, it had lost much of its inherent dignity. Its intrinsic principles had gone into decay and its superficial powers had been exalted and enthroned in their place. A return to some kind of a classic conception of form, simplicity, and the abso?lute was inevitable. When music began to exaggerate Romanticism and to force the continuance of a spirit that had already passed out of art, the reaction set in. Composers like Mahler, Bruckner, and Richard Strauss illustrate a final attempt to administer artificial respiration to the dying Romanticism of the nineteenth century. These postRomanticists were not only writing its last chapter, they were inscribing its epitaph. Schoenberg, in his early career, pursued a similar course with Verkl'drte Nacht in 1899, and until 1912 his scores grew in size and complexity, becoming intricate and unwieldy (GurreLieder, 1901--1910; Pier?rot Lunaire, 1912). Exactly parallel with Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky was creating the involved score of Sacre du frintemfs. It is interesting to note that both these composers reacted rather suddenly in favor of simplicity directly after writing these complicated scores. Schoenberg became increasingly concise, logical, and sparing of decorative complexity, and evolved a system that was more intel?lectual than emotional in its appeal. Another interesting observation, proving the leaven of classicism at work, is that between 1915 and 1929 neither of these composers wrote for full orchestra, but composed for smaller chamber music combinations. This tendency toward simplification in composition became known as neoclassicism. At the time, writers on music, sensing the "new" style, attempted to explain it by pointing out that it was as much a progression as a revival; that in its new rationality it revealed more variety in its treatment of form; that in its harmony there was an underlying direction toward free horizontal movement.
See notes on Strauss, pages 43--4.5.
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(Debussy's revolutionary dissonances had passed their aggressive stage and were now accepted as consonances and points of rest, and had already taken their place alongside the accepted progressions of the past.) They pointed out the pre?eminently horizontal texture of the new music, the sparseness of its style and its general antiromantic and antiidealistic intentions. They noted its selfcontained quality and that it eschewed for the most part descriptive programs, expressionism, or any implication of "inner meaning."
The outspoken propagandist for this movement was Paul Hindcmith. At the age of thirtysix he had become the unrivaled leader of that section of his generation that believed music should be adapted to the demands of its time and no longer reecho an age that was in every sense remote. What he said and wrote about his art was diametrically opposed to the traditional German idealistic and philosophical conception of music. He spoke of it as being human, but not super?human; useful, practical, and purposeful, not inspirational; it was absolute expres?sion with no descriptive intention, no program, no sentimentalism. The composer's responsibility, he further maintained, was not to express individual emotion or to reflect personal moods and feelings but to create directly out of musical substance. There was no mystery about it--music spoke the same accessible language to everyone. The audience was in no way required to react to or "interpret" it accord?ing to any preconceived notions of its meaning. Music should be written not upon impulse but only when demanded. By 1927 Hindemith had formulated this tenet: "It is to be regretted that in general so little relationship exists today between the producers and consumers of music. A composer should write today only if he knows for what purpose he is writing. The days of composing for the sake of composing are perhaps gone forever. On the other hand the demand for music is so great that composer and consumer ought most emphatically to come at last to an understanding."
These realistic ideas about the source and purpose of music gave rise to the popular conception of Gebrauchsmusik ("practical" or "utilitarian music"). In realty this represented no movement in any consciously organized sense. The term in fact was little used in Germany itself. "Only," as Hindemith remarked, "as a name for a tendency to avoid the highly individualistic superexpressive kind of writing we were so much acquainted with." Gebrauchsmusik was a reflection of a state of mind rather than a definite movement. It grew out of a desire to be practical and rational. At first the idea was no doubt associated with the need for economy during the war and postwar periods. The reappearance of the less expensive, more available chamber orchestra at the time was more a matter of economic necessity than mere choice or chance. Before long, however, this useful?ness was identified with the end of music, rather than with the means; this, accord?ing to Hindemith, was very realistic--to satisfy public demand.
Many of Hindemith's ideas are sound theoretically, many are practically
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untenable; some are downright naive. As a critic of and a propagandist for con?temporary music and a progenitor of new musical doctrines, however, he won universal recognition early in his career. As a composer, his music was born out of the order of his ideas and was called into being by historical necessity. But beyond this fact it reveals a strong and consistent individuality, endowed with a masterful command of the technical aspects of his art--which embraces all branches of musical creativeness. At the age of fiftyeight he has already produced a tremendous amount of the most varied kinds of music. With his spontaneous and genuine gift he has helped to break down our prejudices against what is new, offering an easy transition from known to unknown idioms by giving us a music that is interesting and agreeable but one that presents new and challenging problems in listening and execution. His unique vitality and technical dexterity deletes all superfluous elements, creating in a distinctly modern and contemporary idiom a music that is concise, clear, and economical in its means. "There is nothing academic about Hindemith," wrote Alfred Einstein, "he is simply a musician who produces music as a tree bears fruit, without further philosophical purpose."
Mathis der Maler is a symphonic integration of three instrumental excerpts from Hindemith's opera, based on the life of the sixteenthcentury master, Matthias Griincwald. The three movements of the symphony--I, "Angelic Concert"; II, "Entombment"; III, "Temptation of Saint Anthony"--were suggested by the polyptych painted by Griinewald for the Isenheim altar at Colmar, in Alsace. Matthias Griinewald was the chief Rhenish painter at the beginning of the six?teenth century. An artist of extraordinary power and emotional force, a religious mystic whose imagination was both passionate and exalted, he has been called "the last and greatest representative of the German Gothic."
Shortly after the Berlin production of the symphony, Heinrich Strobel, the distinguished German critic and essayist, published an extensive analysis of Hinde?mith's score. The following excerpts quoted in the program book of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, November 30, 1944, may be read with advantage as preparation for a first hearing of the work:
When Paul Hindemith combined three excerpts from his opera, Mathis der Maler, and called the result a "symphony," the term did not imply a symphonic construction as understood by the nineteenth century. These tonepieces do not embody a definite "symphonic idea." They are not related in theme. Their spiritual relationship is derived from a plastic conception: the three movements are based on "themes" suggested by the Isenheim Altar of Griinewald. But, one may ask, has Hindemith become a composer of romantic programmusic Let us dismiss entirely in this connection the word "roman?tic," which is subject to misinterpretation, and let us simply state that this symphony has nothing whatever in common with program music of the customary descriptive sort. Hindemith has endeavored to approximate by musical means that emotional state which is aroused in the onlooker by Grunewald's famous work. Hindemith, that is to say, uses
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here methods which he had previously employed in his instrumental music. He excludes any pictorial intention; also, he abstains from the psychological interpretation and con?version of his themes. He dispenses with dramatizing color effects, changing the soundmaterial in accordance with purely musical laws. The technique of the symphony is the technique of Hindemith's instrumental concertos. The transformation of the emotional tension into purely musical effects is accomplished by the same logical processes that we find elsewhere in his work.
Hindemith's style has gained in tonal plasticity to the same degree that he has sim?plified his art technically. The few themes of the symphony are tonal symbols of extraor?dinary vitality and perceptibility, but at the same time they obey a logic that is subject to wholly personal laws. The effect is further increased by the circumstances that in the first part, "Angelic Concert" (based on the picture of the Nativity painted by Gruncwald for the Isenheim Altar), and in the third part, the "Vision of the Temptation of Saint Anthony," old church melodies are used. These ancient melodies constitute the true germcell of music; they determine its melodic and harmonic tissue.
But this is nothing new in Hindemith's case. The liturgical modes have exercised a deep influence on his music. This influence is evident in his Marienleben and in Das Unaufhorliche; it breaks through again with all its force in Mathis der Maler. It seems as though Hindemith, after many digressions, were recurring to his works of a decade ago. The pathos, the subdued lyricism, the plasticity of the musical vision--all these appear to establish a connection between his most recent art and its earlier expression. . . .
The simplicity of Mathis der Maler does not mean, however, that Hindemith is renouncing his principle of polyphonic development. Polyphony, counterpoint inspired by Bach, remains the basis of his musical thinking and feeling. In the course of the last few years, however, he has abandoned more and more all dispensable contrapuntal ballast, and has lightened his linear style. . . .
This polyphonic style gains in the "Mathis" symphony, a symbolic force which is something entirely new for Hindemith. Without, as we have said, employing descrip?tive music in the ordinary sense, effects are obtained here which could not have been realized by means of dramatic expressiveness. In this connection, we must mention espe?cially the last movement, the pictorial subject of which (the Saint tortured by fantastic beasts) stimulated the tonal imagination of the composer to an exceptional degree.
The development of the three movements is singularly clear. The dynamic curve descends from the festive and happy "Angelic Concert" of the beginning to the quiet elegy of the "Entombment," and then proceeds, after the music of the Saint's ordeal, to the concluding Hallelujah Hymn of the final visionary exaltation.
I. Angelic Concert (Ruhig bewegt--Ziemlich lebhajte Halbe). The tonal basis of the symphony is Dflat, in the range of which there lie the old melodies used in the first and third parts. The tension between the tonalities of Dflat and G underlies the harmonic construction of the movement. The cantus firmus, "Es sungen drei Engel" ("Three Angels Sang"), which we hear first in the trombones (eighth bar), is developed dynamically upward. This is followed by a quick main part, in three sections. The first section is based on a theme (flutes and first violins) which can be regarded as a model of Hindemith's style in melodic development--a melody which is signalized by its wavering
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between major and minor. A second theme follows (strings), of serener and more lyrical character. A third section deals with these two themes in a lightly hovering fugato, to which is added, again in the trombones, the "Angel" melody. The last phrase of the "Angel" melody leads back to that tender serenity which spreads over the entire move?ment, and which evokes for us the gentle radiance of Grunewald's incomparable repre?sentation of the Nativity. A concise coda forms a joyous close, fortissimo.
II. Entombment {Sehr langsam). The two chief themes of the second movement are typical of Hindemith's melodic style--the first with its purely "linear" structure (muted strings, woodwind) ; the second with its intervallic structure of fourths and fifths (oboe, then flute, with pizzicato accompaniment). In wonderful simplicity ascend the melodic lines of the solo woodwinds; and how beautiful is the effect of the plaintive call of the clarinet, after the short crescendo and the pause!
III. The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Sehr langsam, fret im Zeitmass-Lebhttjt). It is the third movement which is executed in the broadest and boldest manner. From the visual tension of Grunewald's picture, an aural tension has been created. The power of the music is so marked that one might almost be induced to impart to this movement a poetic interpretation, although the themes are developed in a strictly linear manner, and even the most grandiose sound effects betray a cogent musical logic. Hinde?mith's art of tonal disposition is consorted with a power of fancy which astonishes even those who best know his works. The Temptation of the Saint develops over a tremendous tonal canvas, from the opening unison of the strings (bearing the quotation, Ubi eras, bone Jhesu ubi eras, quare non affuisti ut sonares vulnera mea), up to the basschorale of the final Hallelujah. The cycle of the key of Dflat is the foundation of the harmonic development, the symbol of Sanctity. The greater the struggle of the contesting forces, the more widely does the piece depart from this harmonic basis. The ascent of the string unisono, which is intensified in an astonishing manner by the opposing figure in the brass instruments, is a striking example of a crescendo developed in the linear manner. This heroic statement is followed by the first assault of the opposing forces (if this expression can be applied to so purely musical a process), with another theme for the unison strings. The solo woodwinds answer, while the stream of motion flows on in the strings. A grandiose passage closes the first part of the movement. There is a long and elaborate workingout. The battle is already decided when the key of Dflat is again reached with the fugato. Clarinets, then the horn, recur to the theme of the unisono string introduc?tion; we hear, in the woodwinds, the hymn, Lauda Sion salvatorem; and then, fortissimo on the brass. The Hallelujah leads up to a resplendent and triumphant close in Dflat major.
In this movement, Hindemith uses thematic material from the closing act of the opera, where Mathis, left alone, carefully packs away for the last time his painting implements. It is music associated with the aging painter resigned to life, his work done, and his passion spent. Like the thematic material of the other two movements, the association is more directly related to the characters and events of the opera, than to the actual scenes from the altarpiece.
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Giuseppi Verdi was born at Roncole, October g, 1813; died at Milan, January 17, 1901.
Don Carlos, from which this aria is taken, was produced at Paris, March II, ' 1867. In it Verdi gave evidence of the growth, both on the musical and dramatic side, which culminated in the works, beginning with A'ida ( I 87 I ), which belong to his third period of creative activity. It was not received with enthusiasm; in?deed, its success was but moderate. At its recent revival at the Metropolitan, November 6, 1950, under the stage direction of Margaret Webster, it was temporarily successful. In spite of the brilliant direction and smartly tailored production it received, the opera has not been popular with the public, and at the end of this season it will be withdrawn from the repertory. Whether this con?tinued failure to attract is due to a lack of perception on the part of the public or the absence of qualities compelling success we may not know but the infrequency with which it is given throughout the world would seem to indicate that it does not possess elements of popularity.
The libretto of Don Carlos was based upon Schiller's famous drama by the same name and tells of the erratic and morbid son of Philip of Spain, who was engaged to Elizabeth of France but subsequently became her stepson. Don Carlos, still in love with Elizabeth, incurs the jealousy of an ardent admirer, Princess Eboli, who informs Philip of the situation. Carlos is placed under arrest and is condemned to death. Eboli repents and confesses her treachery to the queen, and is banished from Spain. Carlos is handed over to the Inquisition and is led to death.
In the aria, "Ella giammai m'amo," from Act III, Scene I, King Philip is alone at dawn in the library of the Royal Palace. He leans heavily on a table upon which two candelabra burn low, and, in an attitude of deepest meditation, laments his wife's coldness and the loss of his political power:
She never loved me; her heart has always been closed to me. I remember her sad face as she looked upon my white hair the day she arrived from France. No, she has never loved me, never! The candles burn low, the dawn creeps along the terrace. It is already morning. Slowly my days pass by, and sleep, Oh God, has left my weary eyes. When my days draw to an end, I shall sleep in my royal robes under the sombre vault. If only the crown could give me the power to read men's hearts! While the monarch sleeps, the traitor wakes, the king loses his sceptre, the husband his honor. I shall sleep alone in my royal robes under the sombre vaults amidst the tombs.
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"Di sposo, di padre," from Salvator Rosa.......Gomez
Antonio Carlos Gomez was born at Campinas, July II, 1836; died at Para, September 16, 1896.
Carlos Gomez was Brazilian by birth only; his parents were Portuguese. He was, nevertheless, a product of Brazilian culture before the revolution of 1889, and his early training in Milan, Italy, where the Emperor had sent him to study, brought him into direct contact with contemporary European musical currents. He was the first composer to employ native subject matter and to make use of the folk music of his country, and the first opera composer of the Americas to win European recognition and acclaim. His opera Salvator Rosa was first produced with great success at Genoa, February 21, 1874. It tells the story of one Salvator Rosa, an Italian soldier, who tries to free himself from the Spanish occupation and ultimately wins a victory over his adversary.
In this monologue the Duke of Arcos, chief of the Spanish army in Italy, asserts that he will have to sign a document of peace because he does not receive more troops and reinforcements from Spain. He is remorseful as he thinks of the injustices and murders which he has had to commit as chief of an army in a foreign country. He dreams of the happy home life with his children whom he had to leave to go to Italy, and denounces the power of his country for having forced upon him the role of cruelty instead of clemency.
Polka and Fugue from Schtvanda,
der Dudelsackpfeifer........Weinberger
Jaromir Weinberger was born in Prague, January 8, 1896; now living in Fleischmanns, New York.
The first America heard of Weinberger's now famous opera Schwaiida, der Dudelsackpfeifer ("Schwanda, the Bagpipeplayer"), which he composed in Prague in 1927, was at a Lewisohn Stadium Concert in New York on August 4, 1930. On that occasion, Albert Coates conducted the selections heard on tonight's program. The popularity of this opera in Europe had been phenomenal. Between its first performance in 1927 and its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House, November 7, 1931, it was given over two thousand performances and was translated into at least fourteen languages. Mr. Ormandy introduced the Polka and Fugue in his first concerts in Philadelphia in 1931. Since then every major orchestra seems to have considered it an indispensable part of its repertory, for it reappears with what is becoming a persistent regularity. Its effectiveness, especially as a closing number, is of course beyond question.
The story of the opera, which is based upon a Bohemian legend, is as follows:
Schwanda, the bagpiper of StrakonitZ, has a young wife, Dorota, who has attracted
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the amorous eye of the genial robber chief, Babinsky. The latter, wishing to get Schwanda out of the way, persuades him to go with him into the world in search of adventure. Dorota, discovering her spouse's defection, goes in pursuit.
Queen IceHeart, rescued from a sorcerer's spell by his merry piping, in gratitude offers to wed the musician when Dorota appears. The Queen in anger sentences him to trial for his life. Outside the city, Schwanda, about to be beheaded, is saved by Babinsky, who substitutes a broom for the axe and restores his bagpipes. Schwanda plays so entrancingly that the court dances away into the city and the gate is locked. When Dorota reproaches her husband, he swears that if he has kissed the Queen, may the Devil take him--which he immediately does!
In Hell Schwanda is again rescued by Babinsky, who offers to play a game of cards with the Devil for the piper's release against half of the infernal kingdom. He wins, and the hero is restored to the upper world and his waiting wife, while the robber chieftain obligingly disappears, after returning the winnings to his Satanic Majesty.
The Polka appears in Act I, Scene 2, as Schwanda plays upon his pipes and charms all the court. The Fugue occurs at the end of Act II where Schwanda performs for the demons in Hell.
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Sunday Afternoon, May 3
Overture in the Italian Style in C major, Op. 170 . . 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 sonata, 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 musical education that resulted in stiff, inelastic forms, extended repetitions, short development sections, and a lack of contrapuntal 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 pro?duced 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 skillful 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.
Toward the end of November, 1816, Vienna was introduced to the music of Gioacchino Rossini with a performance of his oneact opera, L'Inganno felice.
Robert Haven Schauffler, Franz Schubert, the Ariel of Music (New York: G. P. Put?nam's Sons, 194.9).
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From then on, his popularity grew to a veritable mania. In December, his Tancredi was produced; in February, 1817, L'ltaliana in Algen. Until 1825, the fickle Viennese public, as described by Schindler, "grew crazier with each performance until it seemed as though the screaming, huzzahing mob had been bitten by tarantulas." To the serious German of this time, Italian music was the epitome of superficiality, sensuality, and facile but vacuous invention. Against the "in?vasion," the German composers fulminated in vain. Von Weber, struggling to establish an indigenous German opera, voiced his indignation on national grounds, and Beethoven, enraged at the bad taste of the times, railed against the public that was forsaking him for the "Swan of Pesaro." "No one cares any more for the good, the powerful, in a word, for true music," he wrote. "Rossini and com?pany are your heroes . . . you have no time for the symphonies, nor do you want 'Fidelio'. Rossini, Rossini means more than anything else to you." f In spite of his admonitions, Beethoven on several occasions conceded that Rossini was a "talented and melodious composer."
Schubert was attracted to the "forbidden style" in 1817, when he wrote the overture on this afternoon's program. He, like Beethoven, aware of the weaknesses of Rossini, was at the same time cognizant of his "extraordinary genius," and with none of the illtempered criticism of many of his countrymen and with no attempt at parody, he simply imitated with cheerful awareness the delightful spirit of Rossini's Italian opera music. All of the familiar formulas are here: shortwinded melodic figures, snappy rhythms, strings in triplets, typical reiteration of one note, boisterous and busy orchestration, fortissimo clashes, scintillating wood?wind passages, sustained cantabile melody, suave passages in thirds and sixths, numerous crescendi, and the inevitable rollicking double basses--in a word, here is the epitome of Rossini's art. Be it impure Schubert or pseudoRossini, who, except pedants, could object to such infectious and exhilarating music t
"Prairie" for Chorus and Orchestra.......Lockwood
Normand Lockwood was born in New York City, March 19, 1906.
The first performance of the commissioned work ? on this afternoon's program is of special interest to patrons of the May Festival, since it is the work of a com
Ibul., p. 105.
t Ibid.
X Schubert's music continued to abound in "Italianisms." From the early string quartet in C major (second subject of the first movement) to the late Fminor Fantasia for piano, four hands (slow movement), they are apparent. Other instances to be noted are those in the "Little" Symphony in C major (181718), the songs of the period 181618 ( An Schwagen Kronos and Einsamkeit), the Arietta, La Pastorella al Porto to a poem of Goldoni, the Canzones to texts of Metastasio and Vittorelli, less directly in the German RejrainLieder, and in numerous places in his operas.
? Commissioned by Thor Johnson and dedicated to Charles A. Sink.
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poser whose home was formerly in Ann Arbor, and whose early training was obtained here. He studied in the School of Music under his uncle, the late Albert Lockwood, his father, the late Samuel P. Lockwood, former chairmen of the piano and violin departments, respectively, and with Professor Emeritus Otto J. Stahl. From 1925 to 1929, he was a student of two famed teachers of composi?tion, the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, in Rome, and Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 1929 he was appointed to a fellowship at the American Academy at Rome, which he held until 1932. That year, after returning to America, he was made Assistant Professor of Musical Theory and Composition at Oberlin Con?servatory, a position he retained until 1943. In 1946 he joined the staff of Colum?bia University. Since 1948 he has been a member of the faculty of Union Theological Seminary and Westminster Choir College.
Besides the Prix de Rome (1929--32), Mr. Lockwood has been the recipient of many honors and prizes: the Gustavus F. Swift Orchestra Prize (1935) for his symphony, "A Year's Chronicle" (1934); the G. Schirmer World's Fair Prize for his setting of Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" (1938); a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation for the Trio for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1939); two Guggenheim fellowships (194243, 194344); a commission from the Alice M. Ditson Fund for the opera, "The Scarecrow" (1945); the Society for the Publication of American Music Award for his Third Quartet (1946) ; the Ernest Bloch Award (1947) ; and a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Lockwood's major works have been largely choral. Besides "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," mentioned above, there are "Drum Taps" (1930), "Requiem" (1931), and "The Hound of Heaven" (1937). Through them he has won wide recognition as a composer whose output has been continuously and consistently superior, revealing, as the critics have noted, "a salient indi?vidualistic style," "unusual expressive intensity and significance," and "imagina?tive appeal."
The poem, "Prairie," is by Carl Sandburg. The composer has cut and adapted it for his musical purposes. The instrumentation is as follows: the usual strings, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets in Bflat, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns in F, three trumpets in Bflat, two trombones, tuba, tympani, and percussion (cymbals, gong, triangle, segment of steel rail, iron bell, snare drum, bass drum, glockenspiel, xylophone, and celesta).
"Triumphlied," for Chorus and Orchestra, Op. SS ? Brahms
If he will only point his magic wand to where the might of mass, whether in chorus or orchestra, lends him its strength, even more marvelous glimpses into the secrets of the spirit world await us. ...
--Robert Schumann
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Brahms, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky were products of the same artistic soil, nurtured by the same forces that conditioned the standards and norms of art in their period. They lived in a povertystricken and soulsick period, when anarchy seemed to have destroyed culture, an age which was distinctly unfavorable to genu?inely great art--unfavorable because of its pretentiousness and exclusiveness, its crass materialism, its hidebound worship of the conventional. The showy exterior of the period did not hide the inner barrenness of its culture.
It is no accident that the real Brahms seems to us to be the serious Brahms of the Requiem, the Alto Rhapsody, the Song of Destiny, the great tragic songs, and the quiet resignation expressed in the slow movements of his symphonies. Here is to be found, in somber and serious accents, an expression of the true spirit of the period in which he lived. But by the exercise of a clear intelligence, he tempered an excessively emotional nature, and thereby avoided mere sentimentalism. Unlike Tchaikovsky and other "heroes of the age," Brahms, even as Beethoven, was essentially of a healthy mind, and was triumphant in his art. In a period turbulent with morbid emotionalism, he stood abreast with such spirits as Carlyle and Browning, to oppose the forced impoverishment of life and the unhealthy tendencies of his period. Although he suffered disillusionment no less than Tchaikovsky, his was another kind of tragedy, the tragedy of a musician born out of his time. In fact he suffered more than Tchaikovsky from the changes in taste and perception that inevitably come with the passing of time. But his particular disillusionment did not affect the power and sureness of his artistic impulse. With grief he saw the ideals of Beethoven dissolved in a welter of cheap emotionalism; he saw the classic dignity of his art degraded by an infiltration of tawdry programmatic effects and innocuous imitation, and witnessed finally its complete subjugation to poetry and the dramatic play. But all of this he opposed with his own grand style, profoundly moving, noble, and dignified. With a sweep and thrust he forced music out upon her mighty pinions to soar once more. What Matthew Arnold wrote of Milton's verse might well have been written of the music of Brahms: "The fullness of thought, imagination, and knowledge makes it what it is," and the mighty power of his music lies "in the refining and elevation wrought in us by the high and rare excellence of the grand style."
In his admirable book on Brahms, Fuller Maitland,f made reference to the parallelism between the composer and Robert Browning. The association is a happy one. There is something similar in their artistic outlook and method of expression, for Brahms, like Browning, often disclaimed the nice selection and employment of a style in itself merely beautiful. As an artist, none the less, he chose to create, in every case, a style fitly proportioned to the design, finding in
See notes on Tchaikovsky, pages 3740.
fj. A. Fuller Maitland, Brahms (London: Methuen and Company, 1911).
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that dramatic relation of style and motive a more vital beauty and a broader sweep of feeling. This epic conception often lifted Brahms to the brink of the sublime. The work on tonight's program demonstrates his ability to evolve a style and form exactly appropriate to his purpose. The Triumfhlied was written under an immediate stimulation resulting from the German victory over the French in the War of 1870, and was the product of an emotional upheaval incited by an almost fanatical patriotism.
Brahms's mother had never ceased to talk of the Napoleonic Wars and the humiliation endured by the people of Hamburg during the occupation. Ordi?narily a very fair and emotionally stable man, Brahms had nurtured over the years a profound hatred for the French. Thus, under the emotional intoxication of the moment, he produced a work vast in structure and powerful in its sim?plicity and directness, but lacking completely in the spirit of contemplation and resignation that makes his Deutsches Requiem such a compelling work and his great songs such appealing revelations of the profoundest feelings of the human spirit. The true art of Brahms has its roots deep in introspection and intimate reflection; in general, it sings no paean of joy. Here, however, in the Tri?umfhlied, his idiom became momentarily and appropriately rugged and glitteringly theatrical. Written to words from the Book of Revelation, for an eightpart chorus with orchestra and organ, and dedicated to the victorious Em?peror William, it is conceived for the masses and directed to the masses in the spacious manner of Handel's festival Te Deums. It is a pompous, external work with little of the Brahms more characteristically emotional nuances. He himself was quite conscious of its obvious appeal. In a letter to Reinthaler concerning its production, he wrote, "It is not difficult, you simply play forte . . . the chorus rings a peal of victory with all the bells."
The first movement is a highly spirited festal choral fantasia on a convention?alized version of the Prussian national anthem, "Heil dir im Siegerkranz," closing with an eightpart "Hallelujah." The second movement leads up to the intro?duction of the chorale, "Nun danke alle Gott" ("Now thank we all our God"), to the words, "Lasset uns freuen" ("Let us rejoice"), sung by the choir in a soft melodious antiphonal setting, where jubilation gives way to a flowing, tran?quil song of thanksgiving in a passage that recalls only momentarily the Brahms we have grown to respect. A festal Te Deum rings out finally, in praise of vic?tory. The third movement works up from the entry of the baritone soloist to an ecstatic outburst in the concluding chorus, where, again as in Handel's Te Deums, a whole nation seems to, express its jubilation.
The exultation that promoted the creation of this slowly moving and grandiose work has diminished somewhat over the years; for us today, its lava has grown quite cold. In the days of Germany's triumphant hour, it was immensely effective and popular. Today it is difficult for us to realize that as late as the eighties, the
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Triumfhlied was rated by many competent judges above the profoundly moving and deeply expressive Deutsches Requiem.
No. I--Chorus. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, honor and power and glory to God. For in righteousness and truth the Lord giveth judgment. Oh praise ye the Lord, oh praise God our Lord. Hallelujah!
No. 2--Chorus. Glory be to God our Lord; praise the Lord, all ye His servants, praise and glorify our God and ye that fear Him, all, both humble and mighty, glorify the Lord. Hallelujah! For the omnipotent God hath exalted His Kingdom. Oh be joyful, let all be glad; to Him alone give honor.
No. 3--Baritone Solo with Chorus. And I saw how the heavens were opened wide, and yonder a snowwhite horse, upon it sat One, called steadfast and faithful, who warreth, and judgeth all with righteousness. And he treads the winepress of wrath of the Lord God Almighty. And lo, a great Name hath he written upon his vesture, and upon his girdle, called: A King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Yea, a Lord great above all Lords; He shall reign forever, a King of Kings. Hallelujah! Amen. His kingdom shall endure for evermore; the Lord is God. Hallelujah! Amen.
Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra......Martinu
Bohuslav Martinu was born in Policka, Czechoslo?vakia, December 8, 1890; now residing in America.
Bohuslav Martinu was born in a small remote town in eastern Czechoslovakia, not far from the birthplace of Smetana. He lived the early years of his life in almost complete isolation, receiving his earliest musical training at the age of six from the village tailor, who taught him the rudiments of violin playing. At eight he appeared in concert and at ten wrote his first composition--a string quartet; at sixteen, he entered the Prague Conservatory primarily to study violin, receiving occasionally from Joseph Suk some advice in composition. Aside from this and later similar direction in Paris from Albert Roussel, most of Martinu's study in composition and musical theory was selfobtained. At the age of twentyfour he completed his studies and became a member of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at Prague, where he remained for ten years. During this period, his compositions were strongly influenced by Debussy, and his predilection for this style of composition led him to Paris in 1923. His intention was to stay, under a stipend from the Czech government, for three months; he remained for seven?teen years, until the German advance in 1940 drove him ultimately to America.
Martinu has produced an abundance of music. His work encompasses all musi?cal forms--opera, ballet, symphony, choral, and chamber music. Renowned as Czechoslovakia's leading figure in contemporary music, he is today one of the outstanding composers in America.
Because of Martinu's strong individualism and independence as a creative artist, he cannot be classified as belonging to any of the contemporary "schools" of com
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position. He is modern, but not avant garde; he is conservative, but not bound by convention. His music is best described perhaps as an amalgam of a peculiarly Czech musical tradition and a thoroughly contemporary idiom. Being a persistent experimenter, his music is continuously fresh and challenging; having always had a deep interest and abiding faith in Czech folk music as the source of his inspiration, his art is irresistible and appealing.
In the Musical Quarterly for July, 1943, Milos Safranek writes:
As is evident from the catalogue of Martinu's compositions, he has already had an extraordinary rjfh harvest. Most of his compositions were completed within a very short time, a fact that shows us something significant about his composing technique . . . It is characteristic of his compositions that the complete theme often does not appear immediately at the beginning of the movement, but is, rather, gradually evolved during the entire movement, so that an unceasing musical current builds up a final unity. Often the treatment of one constructivism plays an important role in his work, as does a rich and vital rhythmic sense, the latter a Czech and Slovak ingredient. In his later works this feature is less prominent, and Martinu's compositions become more melodic and formal. His sense of orchestration is natural and practically infallible. The sound is always clear, never foggy, and never just stormy, and his discoveries in sonority often take the listener by surprise . . . His melody, rhythm, and color emanate directly from the Czech nature; he continues in the footsteps of Dvorak and Smetana. The years he spent in Paris where his outlook was enriched by the internationalism of the metropolis, clarified his own Czech_e.xpression. Consequently, his works are not attached exclusively to local soil, but contribute rather, as a Czech component, to world culture.
The Second Concerto was written in Paris in 1934, and had its premiere per?formance, November 13, 1935, with Rudolf Firkusny as soloist. It was reorchestrated in New York in 1944. According to Martinu, the first movement, {Allegro moderato) is cast in the sonata form (exposition of themes, development, recapitulation of exposition), although the breadth and freedom of its treatment makes it less apparent than usual. The orchestra announces the main theme in a short preludelike introduction; later it appears in its continuous development as a chorale, and in the coda it is restated and energized by complicated rhythmic devices. A slow second movement (Poco andante) of no specific design, and elastic in its form, is constructed from a simple folklike theme that spreads out into an extended, highly decorative cadenzalike passage for the solo piano. The third movement (Poco allegro) is composed of a kind of rondo form (original theme recurring after digressions), but again, Martinu's unique treatment of thematic development tends to blur the distinct outlines of the classic rondo into a con?tinuously energetic and varied treatment of a theme obviously derived from Czech folkdance sources. It reaches a climax in a brilliant coda for the piano alone.
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Sunday Evening, May 3
Symphony No. 7 in C major ("Le Midi")......Haydn
Joseph Haydn was born March 31, 173 2, at Rohrau; died May 31, 1809, at Vienna.
Five years before the birth of Haydn in 1732, Alexander Pope had written the first version of the Dunclad. When Haydn died in 1809, Walter Scott had just finished Marmion, while William Wordsworth was thirtynine years of age and eleven years before had published his Romantic Manifesto in the Lyrical Ballads. Haydn saw the birth and death of Mozart and lived until Beethoven was thirtynine years of age.
In the seventyseven years of his life, Haydn had witnessed and helped to shape the great classic tradition in musical composition, and had lived to see his formal and serene classic world sink under the surging tide of Romanticism. He himself, however, played no part in nor reflected in his art that period of deep unrest at the end of the eighteenth century that resulted in the literary and philosophical insur?rection of which Goethe in Germany and Rousseau in France were representa?tive. Rousseau and the Sturm und Drang period in Germany had announced that an old civilization had broken up, and that a new one was about to appear. Swift progression was seething all over Europe; Beethoven had caught this spirit in his "Eroica" symphony (1805) and the "Appassionata" sonata (1806). But Haydn, living with his memories and gathering the few last laurels that were thrown at his feet, heard only the faintest echoes of these great works which tore at the very roots of musical expression and rent the whole fabric of musical forms.
The bombshells of Napoleon's army could be heard by Haydn as he lay dying near Vienna, and, with his death, disappeared the even tenor and calm serenity of existence so beautifully symbolized by his own life and so confidently expressed in his music. With Haydn died the classical tradition in music.
Music was late in responding to the violent note of revolt against tradition for the sake of emotion, chiefly because music in the eighteenth century was in a transitional state of technical development and was attempting to gain articulation and freedom through cultivation of forms and designs that were unique to it. For this reason the opposition between classic and romantic principles in the second half of the eighteenth century was not as clearly defined in music as in literature. Haydn represents this period in music history; he systematized musical forms and secularized expression. Not only did he realize the unique powers of music as an art in itself and evolve and codify new forms, but he was the first composer to achieve the glorification of the natural music, which exists in the hearts of the
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people, by elevating its essentially healthy and vigorous qualities into the realm of art. It is beyond controversy that, of the great masters of the German genius epoch, Haydn was the first to make himself intelligible to the masses. He spoke a musical language that appealed with the same directness to the skilled artist as to the merest layman. He disseminated his art among all. He was its true secularizer; he brought it to earth.
In his music, every thought takes on a grace of form. With a unity of the whole, there is a lucidity in detail, a neatness and elegance, and a perfect ease and clearness in the exposition of his ideas. For all who enjoy clear writing, who rejoice to see expression achieved with graceful directness and charming certainty, Haydn has written. He is never too introspective, and his music is never too subjective. He never, in the Ossianic phrase, indulges in the "luxury of grief"; there is no passionate striving for the unobtainable here. Haydn's one theme in art is the joy and beauty of the moment; he saw things simply, and he recorded his impressions with honesty, frankness, and great economy of means.
In 1761, Haydn was appointed ViceCapellmeister at the court of Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy at Eisenstadt. The Prince maintained a small band of musicians under the direction of one Gregorius Joseph Werner, a composer of sorts whose chief interest lay in vocal and ecclesiastical music. Haydn's appointment was made simply to augment the musical activity and not to compete in any way with the older musician. About a year after Haydn was established, however, Prince Paul died and was succeeded by his even more musically dedicated brother, Nicolaus, who encouraged Haydn's desire to reorganize the existing small orchestra into a more disciplined and professional group. He immediately saw to it that the orchestra was, from the physical side, as thoroughly equipped as possible with new or repaired instruments, modern music desks, and an increased library of musical literature. Ultimately, the orchestra consisted of fourteen musicians: five violins, one violoncello, one contrabass, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, and two horns. He also disciplined its members, who had previously taken a rather indifferent attitude toward their duties, by instituting numerous and required rehearsals and by insisting upon meticulous performance. "My Prince," wrote Haydn to his friend Griesinger, "was satisfied with my labors; I received applause; as director of the orchestra, I could make experiments, observe the results of them, perceive that which was weak, then rectify it, add, or take away. I was cut off from the world; no one in my vicinity knew me, or could make me go wrong, or annoy me; so I was forced to become original."
In this Utopian situation, with constant encouragement from his patron, Haydn continued for almost a half century to produce that great body of compositions which brought not only immortality to him, but also everlasting glory and respect to the name of Esterhazy.
The Cmajor Symphony, "Le Midi," was the second of three, titled in turn,
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"Le Matin," "Le Midi," "Le Soir" ("Morning," "Noon," "Evening"), and, according to some sources, the first of the numerous symphonies to be written for the Esterhazy orchestra. From the manuscript preserved in the Eisenstadt museum, we know that at least the first movement was written in 1761, the year of his appointment. Here, as in many another instance, Haydn shared the achieve?ment of his artistic creation with the Deity; at the beginning of the score is inscribed, "In nomine Domini," and at the end, "Laus Deo."
This little gem of a symphony is, in spite of its disarming charm and delicacy, rather unusual. The scoring, for instance, is suggestive of that of the older concerti grossi in which a group of instruments (here, two violins and cello) was occasionally reinforced by the general ensemble. There are two separate and successive slow movements in which Haydn has turned directly to a vocal section by writing a dramatic accompanied recitative (second movement) and an aria (third movement), in which he substitutes a solo violin for the voice, and features a violin and cello duet as a concluding coda.
The exact date of the first performance of the "Le Midi" symphony is not known; it was published for the first time in Hamburg in 1782.
Scene and Aria: "Ah! Perfido," Op. 46.....Beethoven
This composition was written early in 1796 while Beethoven was on a visit to Prague. The text may have been taken from an old libretto. Although dedi?cated to the Countess Josephine Clari, it seems to have been composed expressly for Madame Duschek, a famous singer and close friend of Mozart, and sung by her for the first time in public at a concert she gave in Leipzig on November 21,1796. On the program it appeared as "an Italian scene composed for Madame Duschek by Beethoven." The work is often catalogued as Opus 65, but it is of much earlier origin. Aloys Fuchs wrote Schindler, "I own a manuscript score of this aria. The title is written wholly in Beethoven's hand: 'Une grande Scene mise en musique por L. van Beethoven a Prague 1796. Dedicata alia Contessa di Clari.' Beethoven's writing is recognized often in the score, and on the title page stands in his own hand--Of. 46."
Recitative: Ah faithless one, how can you leave me so cruelly The gods will smite you. Where'er you go, my shade will follow you and gaze upon your torture. Yet no! Smite me instead! For you I lived and for you I'll perish.
Aria: Oh do not leave me I implore you! Surely I deserve some pity--so basely,
so cruelly betrayed.
? The featuring of solo instruments was no doubt stimulated by the presence in his orchestra of two outstanding virtuosi, Luigi Tomasini, violinist, and Joseph Weigl, violon?cellist, who had joined the orchestra soon after Haydn had taken charge of it in 1761.
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SIXTH CONCERT Second Essay...............Barber
Samuel Barber was born March 9, 1910, at West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Samuel Barber received his early musical training at Curtis Institute, Phila?delphia, where he studied piano, voice, and composition. In 1935, three years after graduating, he won both the Pulitzer Prize in music (which was conferred upon him again the following year) and the Prix de Rome, which provided him with two years of study in Italy.
In 1937 Barber composed his first "Essay for Orchestra." It followed no prescribed musical form, but revealed similar qualities inherent in its literary counterpart: its themes were brief, their statement simple and direct, and their development concise and imaginatively manipulated.
The Second Essay, broader in scope and written for a larger orchestra than the First, was composed in 1942. It exemplifies some of Barber's finest writing, containing the essence of the most individual and expressive qualities of his work. Barber has never forgotten that music must be communicative, and the sincerity and directness of his art establishes at once a rapport between the composer and his audience. His lucid and poised writing comes as a refreshing relief from much of the robust, nervous, and erratic music produced by so many of our young Ameri?can composers today. His is an art that does not surprise, explode, or perspire; it has no conscious stylistic purpose, it shows no compulsion to direct American music along new or indigenous paths. In its large coherence, its simple logic, and its economy of means, Barber has given America a music that is aristocratic in style, yet warmly articulate.
"Pace, pace, mio Dio," from La Forza del Destino . . . Verdi
In La Forza del Destino, written in 1862 and later revised in 1869, Verdi made obvious advances in musical style over Trovatore (1853) and La Traviata (1853). Equally melodious, the music reveals a greater seriousness and depth of purpose. The orchestral accompaniment, no longer a mere pedestal for the voice, is fullbodied and darkly hued; the harmonies are richer and more varied. The score, which anticipates the later Don Carlos (1867), A'ida (1871), Simon Boccanegra (1881), and Otello (1887), is surcharged with genuine dramatic feeling and tragic foreboding.
The beauty of the music atones for the incredibility of the tale of this gloomy opera, which takes place in Spain in the early years of the eighteenth century.
Avoiding the tortuous labyrinth of its plot, it tells the story of Don Carlos' revenge upon his sister Leonora and her lover Don Alvaro for the accidental
The libretto was written by Piave, and was based upon a play, Don Alvaro, 0 la Fuerzer del Sino, by the Duke of Rivas.
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death of his father, the Marquis of Calatrava. Pursued by every turn of fate, Leonora seeks refuge in a cave near the monastery at Hornacuelos, where, in the robes of a nun, she attempts to evade the "force of destiny."
Don Carlos is wounded by Don Alvaro, who, thinking he has killed him, enters the monastery as a monk. Don Carlos pursues his enemy to the very entrance of Leonora's cave, and there is mortally wounded by Don Alvaro. Leonora rushes to embrace her dying brother, who, gathering his last strength, stabs her to the heart. Don Alvaro then throws himself from the cliff upon the rocks below.
The aria, "Pace, pace, mio Dio" ("Peace, Peace, My Lord"), is sung by Leonora in Act IV, Scene 2. She comes from her cavern to pray, still tortured by memories of her illfated love. She prays for peace in a melody of haunting beauty, which rises more and more poignantly as memories of Alvaro come crowd?ing back. In it she exclaims that her longing for peace is in vain, and she finally implores Heaven to let her die.
"Ritorna vincitor" from A'ida..........Verdi
A'ida was written for the Khedive of Egypt and was first performed in Cairo, December 24, 1871. Since that time it has exerted its perennial appeal wherever in the world opera is performed. For A'ida has no rivals in the field for the dramatic power of its music and the living intensity of its plot.
Stirring choruses and magnificent orchestration--myriads of vibrant colors, abundance of pure Italian melody against richlymoving harmonies--sound throughout a story of intrigue, love, hate, jealousy, and sacrifice. All this is acted, with attending pomp and spectacular pageantry, against the background of an Egyptian and Ethiopian war in the time of the Pharaohs.
A'ida, daughter of Amonasro, King of Ethiopia, has been captured by the Egyptians and is a slave at the Court of Memphis, where she and the young soldier, Rhadames, have fallen in love. The Ethiopians, under the command of Amonasro, have invaded Egypt to rescue Aida, and Rhadames is named to lead the Egyptian army against them. A'ida, forgetting temporarily her native land, and under the spell of her love for Rhadames, joins the frenzied crowd in their cry, "Return victorious." Left alone, after their departure, A'ida expresses the conflict in her heart between her duty to her father and her love for Rhadames:
Return victorious! From my lips went forth these blasphemous words for the enemy of my father who now takes arms to save me. Recall them, O gods; return me to my father; destroy the armies of our oppressors. But shall I call death upon Rhadames Love, break thou my heart and let me die! Hear me, you gods on high.
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SIXTH CONCERT "La Valse": A Choreographic Poem........Ravel
Maurice Ravel was born March 7, 1875, at Cibourne; died December 28, 1937, in Paris.
In contrast to the ecstatic impressionism of Debussy, which fails to merge emotion into an objective lyricism but merely allows it to spread and dissolve into vague colored patterns, 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. In this structural sense lies the true secret of the differ?ence between him and Debussy.
About 1805, Dr. Charles Burney spoke of the waltz as "a riotous German dance of modern invention. . . . The verb ivaltzen, whence this word is derived, implies a roll, wallow, welter, tumble down, or roll in the dirt and 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 influences of the Strausses, father and son, it reached its graceful and melodious perfection.
On the authority of Alfredo Casella, who, with the composer, played a twopiano arrangement of "The Waltz" in Vienna (1920), the composition had been sketched during the war and was completed in 1920; the themes are of Viennese character, and though Ravel had no exact idea of choreographic production, he conceived it with the idea of its realization in a dance representation. Casella further describes the composition: "The Poem is a sort of triptych: (a) The Birth of the Waltz. The poem begins with dull rumors as in Rheingold, and from this chaos gradually develops () The Waltz, () The Apotheosis of the Waltz."
The following "program" of "La Valse" is printed in the score:
Whirling clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds scatter, little by little. One sees an immense hall peopled with a twirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The lights of the chandeliers burst forth, fortissimo. An Imperial Court about 1855.
The first performance of "La Valse" in the United States was at a concert of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Alfred Hertz, director, October 28, 1921. When the work was played at Boston the following year (January 13--14),
[69]
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Mr. Hale wrote that the music suggested to the critic, Raymond Schwab, who heard it at the first performance in Paris:
The atmosphere of a court ball of the Second Empire, at first a frenzy indistinctly sketched by the pizzicati of doublebasses, then transports sounding forth the full hys?teria of an epoch. To the graces and languors of Carpeaux is opposed an implied anguish with some Prud'homme exclaiming: "We dance on a volcano." There is a certain threatening in this bacchanale, a drunkenness, as it were, warning itself of its decay, perhaps by the dissonances and shock of timbres, especially the repeated combinations in which the strings grate against the brass.
[70]
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, 1904--1927) 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
Thor Johnson, 19401942 Hardin Van Deursen, 19431946 Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947
[71]
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
ORGANIZATIONS
The Boston Festival Orchestra, Emil Mollenhauer, Conductor, 18941904.
The Chicago Syinfhony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, Conductor, 19051935; Eric DeLamarter, Associate Conductor, 1918--1935
The Philadelfhia 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, 19461951, Guest Conductor, 1953
The University Choral Union, Albert A. Stanley, Conductor, 18941921; Earl V. Moore, Conductor, 1922--1939; Thor Johnson, Conductor, 1940--1942; Hardin Van Deursen, Conductor, 1943--1947; Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, 1947--; Lester McCoy, Asso?ciate Conductor, 1947--
The Festival Youth Chorus, trained by Florence B. Potter, and conducted by Albert A. Stanley, 1913--1918. Conductors: Russell Carter, 1920; George Oscar Bowen, 1921 -1924; Joseph E. Maddy, 19251927; Juva N. Higbee, 19281936; Roxy Cowin, 1937; Juva N. Higbee, 1938; Roxy Cowin, 1939; Juva N. Higbee, 1940--1942; Mar?guerite 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, (complete) 1953
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, '942, 1945 Berlioz: The Damnation 0} Faust--1895, 1909, 1920, 1952 BlZET: Carmen--1904, 1918, 1927, 1938 BLOCH: "America," An Epic Rhapsody--1929 Bossi: Paradise Lost--1916
[72]
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Brahms: Requiem, Op. 45--1899 (excerpts), 1929, 19+1, 1949
Alto Rhapsodie, Op. 53--1939
Song of Destiny, Op. 54--1950
Song of Triumph, Op. 55--1953 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--1904, 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
Grainger, 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--1934I" Holst: A Choral Fantasia--i932f
A Dirge for Two Veterans--1923
The Hymn of Jesus--'9z3t
First Choral Symphony (excerpts)--I927f Honegger, Arthur: King David--1930, 1935, 1942 Kodaly: Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13--1939
Lambert, Constant: Summer's Last Will and Testament--195if Lockwood, Norm and: Prairie--1953
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 PlERNE: The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931 PONCHIELLI: La Gioconda--1925 Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78--1946
World premifcre t American premiere
173]
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Rachmaninoff: The Bells--1925, 1938, 1948
Respichi: La Primavera--192
RimskyKorsakoff: The Legend of Kitesh
Rossini: Stabat Mater--1897
SaintSaens: Samson and Delilah--1896, 1899, 1907, 1912, 1916, 1923, 1929, 1940
Schuman, William: A Free Song (Cantata No. 2)--194.5
Sibelius: Onward Ye Peoples--1939, 1945
Smith, J. S.: Star Spangled Banner--1919) 1920
Stanley: Chorus Triumphal!, Op. 14--1897, 1912, 1921
Fair Land of Freedom--1919
Hymn of Consecration--1918
"Laus Deo," Choral Ode--1913, 1943
A Psalm of Victory, Op. 8--1906 Stock: A Psalmodic Rhapsody--1922, 1943 Stravinsky: Symphonie de Psaumes--1932 Sullivan: The Golden Legend--1901 Tchaikovsky: Episodes from Eugen Onegiti--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 Desthio (Finale, Act II)--1924
Otello--1939
Requiem Mass--1894, 1898, 1913, 1920, 1930, 1936, 1943, 1951
Stabat Mater--1899
Te Deum--1947
VillaLobos, HEITOR: Chores No. 10, "Rasga o corac,ao"--1949 Wagner: Die fliegende Hollander--1918
Lohengrin--1926; Act I--1896, 1913
Die Meistersinger, Finale to Act III--1903, 191 3; Choral, "Awake," and Choral Finale to Act III--1923
Scenes from Parsifal--1937
Tanniauser--1902, 1922; March and Chorus--1896; "Venusberg" Music--1946 Walton, William: Belshazzar's Feast--1933, 1952 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, 191 8 Boyd, Jean: The Hunting of the Snark--1929 Brahms: The Little Dust Man--1933
Lullaby--1931
Britten, Benjamin: Suite of Songs (Orchestrated by Marion E. McArtor) --1953 Bruch: April Folk--1922 BUSCH: The Song of Spring--1922
t American premifcre
[74]
MAY FESTIVAL 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
Df.Lamarter, Eric (orchestrator) : Songs of the Americas--1944, 1948 English, Granville: Cantata, "The Ugly Duckling"--1934 Farwell: Morning--1924
Fletcher: The Walrus and the Carpenter--1913, 1917, 1926, 1942, J950 Folk Soncs--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, 1952 HumperdincK: Selections from Hansel and Gretel--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, 1951
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--1 943
Suite of Songs (Britten)--1953 Mendelssohn: On Wings of Song--1934
Spring Song--1924
MohrGruber: Christmas Hymn, "Silent Night"--1916 Moore, E. V.: "The Voyage of Anon"--1921, 1927 Morley: It Was a Lover and His Lass--1921, 1938
Now is the Month of Maying--1935 Mozart: Cradle Song--1930
The Minuet--1922 Myrberg: Fisherman's Prayer--1922 Pierne: The Children at Bethlehem--1916, 1936
The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931
Planquf.ttE: Invitation of the Bells from Chimes of Normandy--1924 ProtheroE: Cantata, "The Spider and the Fly"--1932 PURCELL: In the Delightful Pleasant Grove--1938 REGER: The Virgin's Slumber Song--193s Reinecke, Carl: "In Life If Love We Know Not"--1921
O Beautiful Violet--1924
World premiire
[75
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
RowleyJames: Cantata, "Fun of the Fair"--194.5 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--i934 1939
Linden Tree--1923, 1935
Serenade in D minor--1939
The Trout--1937
Whither--1939
Who Is Sylvia--1920
Schumann, Georg: Good Night, Pretty Stars--1924 Schumann, Robert: Lotus Flower--1930
Spring's Messenger--1929
The Nut Tree--1939 Scott: The Lullaby--1937 Strauss, Johann: Blue Danube Waltz--1934 Strong: Cantata, "A Symphony of Song"--1930 Sullivan: Selections from Operas--1932 Thomas: Night Hymn at Sea--1924 TosTl: Serenade--1933 Van der Stucken: At the Window--1920
Wagner: "Whirl and Twirl" from The Flying Dutchman--1924 WaHLStedt: Gay Liesel--1922 Weber: "Prayer" from Der Freischiltz--1920
The Voice of Evening--1924
World premiere
[76]
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor
Jane Decker, Pianist
Gail Rector, Manager
FIRST SOPRANOS Adler, Janet L. Alexander, Helen Aprill, Virginia A. Bengtsson, Doris E. Boell, Nancy L. Bradstreet, Lola Branson, Allegra Britton, Veronica Buitendorp, Mary L. Castagno, Geraldine Clark, Maury W. Davis, Barbara Day Detwyler, Mary Edna Drake, Gladys Ekwall, Janet M. Frauenthal, Kay Gjelsness, Elizabeth Glenn, Rosemary Kent Hanson, Gladys M. Howe, June B. Huber, Sally Ann Jewett, Patty Kraushaar, Doris K. Krimm, Marilyn Lock, Inez Jeanette MacLaren, Helen L. Malan, Fannie Belle McFarlane, Jean L. Newell, Dorothy P. Norwood, Helen L. Nyberg, Ida May Patton, Beatrice M. Rector, Kathryn S. Robinson, Anne V. Saxon, Jan Scott, Harriet W. Tarboux, Isabelle Tews, Shirley A. Thomas, Joyce E. Tjotis, Ralian J. Van Manen, Lucille L. Warren, L. Eleanor Watt, Susanne Jane
SECOND SOPRANOS Allen, Jean C. Aratani, Katherine Bartlett, Jean H.
Berberian, Balig Bleil, Opal L. Boice, Mary C. Bradley, Barbara S. Brouwer, Winifred Cooley, Anne E. Coy, Audrey Louis Dodge, Thelma I. Dorney, Edith A. Fineman, Arlene R. Fisher, Winifred Folstad, Liv Franzblau, Beverly Godschalk, Donna P. Hagen, Ruth S. Henry, Frances V. Howe, Helene A. Jewell, Esther L. Johnson, Roberta Kuril, Elise Alice MacGregor, Barbara Mead, Julia Lee Merrill, Barbara B. Miller, Nandeen Platt, Bette Jean Puglisi, Elizabeth Reck, Linda M. Rohrbach, Ann E. Roos, Susan Helen Selby, Ruth M. Skaff, Frances M. Smithers, Teresa Suto, Nobuko Thomas, Grace Jean Thomson, Norma Rae Vlisides, Elena C. Waltz, Ingrid P. Wilson, Jane Marie Wolf, Beverly M. Wood, Gertrude L. FIRST ALTOS
Austermiller, Joan Backlar, Barbara Bailit, Irma R. Beigler, Elissa Bilakos, Christena Boice, Irene A. Brehm, Beverly J.
Challis, Evelyn I. Cohen, Judith N. Comstock, Marjorie Coyne, Patricia Ann Darling, Persis Ann Davis, Sally Ann Eiteman, Sylvia F. Fedonis, Sophia Fell, Patricia Fortain, Frances A. French, Alice E. Griffith, Erma R. Hardie, Margaret A. James, Innez L. Johnson, Olga Ball Johnson, Barbara K. Kime, Frances A. Kirchinan, Margaret Lane, Rosemarie Mastin, Neva M. McCormick, Nancy L. McLean, Marjorie A. Meiss, Harriet R. Moncrieff, Alexandra Monroe, Helen DeVoss Nelson, Janet F. Niemann, Willane S. Palmer, Anna W. Potter, Marijane Ratliff, Betty Lou Rouillard, Elizabeth Schreiber, Sylvia Seavoy, Mary H. Stob, Helen Irene Wappler, Margaret Wiedmann, Louise P. Wise, Barbara Nan Zeeb, Helen R. SECOND ALTOS Agre, Chrystial Alchin, Carol W. Ames, Julaine A. Barnes, Barbara Baur, Janet Elsa Bell, Lctitia L. Birk, Allene A. Bloom, Celia A. Bogart, Gertrude J.
[77]
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Bolt, Phyllis Mae Branson, Anita C. Brown, Marian P. Brown, Mary K. Buckwalter, Edith Crossley, SarahLou Crossley, Wirmifred Dansby, Ruth Anne Deuvall, Jane A. Enkemann, Gladys C. Harwell, Judith Ann Holtman, Estella Huey, Geraldine Granger, Beverly Haffner, Edith A. Ison, Jo Bowles Kay, Constance B. Keith, Virginia Lauer, Joan McBride, Sara A. McKinney, E. Belle McMurray, Nancy Machol, Florence Miller, Lorraine Mumma, Joanna Lee Nelson, Marietta Newell, Pat Ann Nyenhuis, Helen J. Papo, Martha Olive Rautiola, Joyce I. Rouse, Elaine G. Roush, Mary Helen Schreier, Geraldine Stienon, Maureen Thiemann, Susan Van den Berge, Irmgard Volkmann, Lois Jean Winston, Ernestine Wright, Erma A. Zumstein, Marguerite FIRST TENORS Bennett, Leslie M.
George, Emery E. James, Dr. William
Kadian, George
Kaiser, Richard B.
Lester, Kenney T.
Liefer, Gerald H.
Lowry, Paul T.
Miller, James A.
Miller, James V.
Mills, George R.
Morillo, Maruin G.
Neumann, Alfred J.
Newton, Michael
78]
Niemann, Frederick
Ohshima, Masanao
Roush, Richard E.
Thompson, Frazier
Weatherill, Robert
Weber, Richard G.
Wingert, Charles W.
Wiseman, Donald O. SECOND TENORS
Ambs, Bruce John
Barnum, Thomas G.
Berg, James K.
Broekema, Andrew, Jr.
Bronson, David L.
DeHaan, Jim
Follin, Weldon L.
Gianakaris, Constantine
Haswell, Max V.
Hindley, Frederic
Horwitz, Fred
Ilgenfritz, Robert
Marks, Harold A.
Moore, Robert E.
Parsons, Daniel B.
Phillips, Herbert
Pinner, Herbert H.
Robinson, Don Carl
Sacqucty, Charles
Schill, Thomas E.
Shafer, John B.
Shatz, Malcolm H.
Schmidtke, Ralph E.
Smith, Jerry J.
Stettenheim, Peter
Tousley, John C.
Vandenberg, Edward L., Jr.
Van Solkema, Sherman
Vis, Vincent Almon
Young, Neil Vivien FIRST BASSES
Bassett, Clark L., Jr.
Beach, Neil W.
Boice, David Geer
Cathey, Arthur James
Clark, J. Bunker
Conger, Edwin H.
Daley, John Grannis
Daniels, Perry C.
Dejager, Donald
Fitch, Robert M.
Friedman, James P.
Frohman, Larry A.
Gielow, James C.
Graden, Bruce B.
Gustafson, John M. Hartwell, Shattuck, W., Jr. Howe, David L. Huber, Franz E. Janifcr, Ellsworth Kays, J. Warren Keith, Robert E. Kutsche, R. Paul, Jr. LeBlond, Richard E., Jr. Levine, Mark David McCaughey, Richard J. Robinson, John D. Roderick, Thomas H. Schreiber, Lawrence Stringer, Lyle H. Upton, John H. VanAntwerp, Malin Van Brocklin, Ralph M. Van Every, Donald F. Weaver, Robert B. Wiedrich, William W. Zakariasen, William ECOND BASSES Bass, Jon Dolf Berberian, Ara Bergin, George, Jr. Boice, Harmon E. Brooks, James O. Brown, Robert G. Burke, Denzer Cape, James David Challender, Ralph C. Darrow, John O. G. Ensign, Allyn B. Gordon, Stuart F. Gozesky, Max A. Haddad, Raymond M. Halstead, Boyd C. Holmberg, Edwin H. Holtgrieve, Martin Jahsman, David P. Johnson, Paul G. Leacock, James A. Mark, Robert H. S. Mastin, Glenn G. McQueen, Albert J. Murray, Elliott C. Murray, Leonard E. Patterson, Jarrold Postma, Howard V. Rose, Arthur Sprague, John F. Steinmetz, George Stetter, Charles Wood, James H.
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY ORCHESTRA
Lester McCoy, Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Gail Rector, Manager
VIOLINS
Sanford, Kenneth V.,
Concertmaster Shanklin, Genevieve Dale, Nathalie Gimbosa, Delores Schwaner, Marilyn Westcott, Anne Streicher, Janet Pasch, Janet Sims, Diana Preston, Geraldine Rupert, Jeanne Pfeiffer, Betty Haerer, Armin Watson, Barbara Schilla, Yvonne
Lentz, Carolyn Wise, Carolyn Whitmire, Rene Roosa, Marj Ellen Reed, William Jones, Roland Shaler, Dorothy Shaw, Mary Jean Spoelstra, Theodore
VIOLAS
Ireland, David Woldt, Elizabeth Mihalyi, William Jao, Michael Y. T. Kranhold, Johanna Papich, George Mauerhoff, Gert Neumann, Alfred Schultz, Alice Gwen Curry, Jon Schaeberle, E. A.
VIOLONCELLOS Shetler, Donald J. Jackson, Jacqueline Jorstad, Judith Biddle, Bruce Ireland, Daphne Stevenson, Anne Streicher, Velma Krengel, Mary Levine, Mark Turner, Charles B.
BASSES
Skidmore, Edward Courtright, Anne Warner, Joan Patterson, Benjamin Hammel, Virginia Dodson, Elizabeth Thompson, Clyde
FLUTES
Hauenstein, Nelson Hauenstein, Louise Mann, Patricia Wilkey, Carol
PICCOLO Wilkey, Carol
OBOES
Heger, Theodore E. Kleis, Carl Kivy, Peter
ENGLISH HORN
Sherman, Sylvia CLARINETS Dailey, Dwight Radant, William Onef rey, Robert Symmonds, Nancy
BASS CLARINET Ban, Richard G.
BASSOONS
Weichlein, William Corey, Gerald Knob, Edward
CONTRABASSOON
Knob, Edward HORNS
Ricks, Robert
Mumma, Gordon
Luce, Beverly
Greenfield, Richard
TRUMPETS
Haas, Donald Ray Willwerth, Paul McComas, Donald E. Harper, Alice M. Jenkins, John
TROMBONES Smith, Glenn Moore, Joseph Green, David
TUBA
Whitacre, Robert TIMPANI
Thurston, Richard BATTERY
Andrae, Jack
Yttrehus, Rolv B.
HARP
Milks, Margery
ORGAN
fStubbins, Mary McCall
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 Bach's Mass in B minor.
[79]
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Eugene Ormandy, Conductor Harl McDonald, Manager
FIRST VIOLINS
Krachmalnick, Jacob, Concerttnaster
Madison, David,
Assistant Concertmaster
Reynolds, Veda Weinberg, Herman Henry, Dayton M. Simkins, Jasha Zenker, Alexander Aleinikoff, Harry Costanzo, Frank Lusak, Owen Gcsensway, Louis Sharlip, Benjamin Simkin, Meyer Goldstein, Ernest L. Shulik, Morris Coleman, David Putlitz, Lois Schmidt, Henry
SECOND VIOLINS
Ruden, Sol Rosen, Irvin 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. Wigler, Jerome
[80]
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 Gorodetzer, Harry Gusikoff, B. Druian, Joseph Belenko, Samuel dePasquale, Francis Gorodetzky, Hershel Siegel, Adrian Sterin,J. Gray, John Saputelli, William
BASSES
Scott, Roger M. Torello, Carl Lazzaro, Vincent Strassenberger, Max Eney, F. Gilbert Wiemann, Heinrich Arian, Edward Maresh, Ferdinand Batchelder, Wilfred Torello, William
HARPS
Costello, Marilyn de Cray, Marcella
FLUTES
Kincaid, W. 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.
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
HORNS
Jones, Mason Tomei, A. A. Fearn, Ward O. Mayer, Clarence Lannuti, Charles Pierson, Herbert
TRUMPETS
Krauss, Samuel Rosenfeld, Seymour Rehrig, Harold W. Hering, Sigmund
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
CELESTA AND PIANO Smith, William R. Putlitz, Lois
ORGAN
Smith, William R.
LIBRARIAN
Taynton, Jesse C.
PHOTOGRAPHIC PUBLICITY
Siegel, Adrian
ASSISTANT TO CONDUCTOR
Smith, William R.
PERSONNEL MANAGER
Schmidt, Henry W.
[81]
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMS 19521953
The University Musical Society, in addition to the annual May Festival, provided the following concerts during the season of 1952--53.
74TH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
RICHARD TUCKER, Tenor
JosEf Blatt at the Piano
October 8, 1952
"Where'er You Walk" (Semele) . . . Handel Recitative and aria, "Sound an Alarm,"
(Judas Maccabaeus)......Handel
Nina............Pergolesi
Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile . . . Duranie "II mio tesoro" (Don Giovanni) . . . Mozart "E lucevan le stelle (Tosca) .... Puccini
Apres un reve..........Faure
Madrigal..........Fourdrain
Le Temps des lilas.......Chausson
Flower Song (Carmen).......Bizet
Fall In............Leosi
The Roving Gambler 1 Words and music by The Gambler's Lament ) John Jacob Niles
Spring Came......Edwin McArthur
YEHUDI MENUHIN, Violinist
Aktur Balsam at the Piano
October 22, 1952
Sonata No. 7, C minor.....Beetijoven
Sonata No. 3 in G (violin alone) . . . Bartok Concerto No. 1, D major, Op. 6 ... Pacanini Prayer, from "Te Deum" . . . HandelFlesch Slavonic Dance in E minor . . DvorakKreisler
Habanera...........Ravel
Perpetual Motion........Novacek
DANISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA
of the State Radio
Erik Tuxen, Conductor
November 13, 1952
Overture to Euryanthe.......Weber
Symphony No. 5, Op. 50 ... Carl Nielsen Symphonic Dances, Nos. 1, 2, 4, Op. 64 . Grieg Suite from "The Firebird" .... Stravinsky
VLADIMIR HOROWITZ, Pianist November 19, 1952
Toccata in C major.....BachBusoni
Sonata in E major 1.......Scarlatti
Sonata in G major)
Arabesque, Op. 18......Schumann
Sonata in Bflat minor, Op. 35 .... Chopin Sonata No. 9, Op. 68 1
Elude, Op. 8, No. 9 [......Scriabin
Etude. Op. 42, No. 5 The Little Shepherd 1 from "Children's Serenade for the Dollj Corner" . . Debussy Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 . . LisztHorowitz
BIDU SAYAO, Soprano
Milne Charnley at the Piano
December 1, 1952
Air de Venus (Thesee).......Lully
"Amor commanda," Arietta de Floridante Handel "Deh vieni, non tardar" (Marriage oj
Figaro)..........Mozart
"Non so piu, cosa son" (Marriage oj
Figaro)..........Mozart
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Limitation au voyage......Duparc
Ce ............Poulenc
Quand je fus pris au pavilion.....Haiin
La Fontaine de Carouet......Letorev
Air de Lia (L'Enjant prodigue) . . . Debussy "Selva opaca" (William Tell) .... Rossini
Repose......Robert Fairfax Birch
The Bird..........John Duke
Go 'Way from my Window . . Arr. J. J. Niles
Men..........Irving Mopper
Till the Sandman Comes . . . Menotta Salta
The Early Morning......Graham Peel
Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 . . . VillaLobos Lundu da Marquesa de Santos . . . VillaLodos
Triste...........Ginastera
Gato...........Ginastera
VIENNA CHOIR BOYS
Harald Heddinc, Musical Director
January 16, 1953
Repleti sunt......Josephus Callus
Hodie Christus.....Jan Pete Sveelinck
Virga Jesse.......Anton Bruckner
One Hundred and Seventeenth
Psalm........Harald Heddino
Duet..........Mendelssohn
"The Calif's Goose," An Operetta . . Mozart
Die Nacht..........Schubert
Die Rose stand im Tau.....Schumann
Bandlterzett..........Mozart
TritschTratsch Polka .....J. Strauss
Kaiserwalzer.........J. Strauss
MINNEAPOLIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Antal Dorati, Conductor
February 12, 1953
"Eine kleine N'achtmusik".....Mozart
"La Mer"..........Debussy
Symphony No. 1 in C minor.....Brahms
GERSHWIN CONCERT ORCHESTRA Lorin Maazkl, Conductor
Carolyn Long, Soprano
Theodor Uppman, Baritone
Sanroma, Pianist
March 2, 1953
Cuban Overture........Orchestra
Concerto in F major . . Sanroma and Orchestra Selections from Porgy and Bess: A Woman Is a Sometime
Thing......Theodor Uppman
My Man's Gone Now . . . Carolyn Long Bess, You Is My Woman
Now......Carolyn Long and
Theodor Uppman Gershwin Fantasy (arr. by Peter Bodge) Orchestra
An American in Paris......Orchestra
Songs from Musical Comedies: The Man I Love
(Lady Be Good) .... Carolyn Long Love Walked In
(The Gnldwyn Follies) . Tiikodor Uppman
Soon (Strike Up the Band) 1 Carolyn Lonc and
S'Wondcrful (Funny Face) ) Theodor Uppman
Rhapsody in Blue . . . SanromA and Orchestra
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
ARTL'R RUBINSTEIN, Pianist March 12, 1953
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue.....Franck
Sonata in E minor, Op. 58.....Chopin
Prelude in A minor
Poissons d'or . . . Debussy
La Fille aux cheveux de lin J
Ondine............Ravel
Prole do Bebe (The Doll's Family) VillaLobos
Valse oubliee..........Liszt
Rhapsody No. a.........Liszt
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
May 19, 1953 Symphony No. 2, D major, Op. 36 . Beethoven
Symphony No. 2........Creston
Suite from the Ballet
"L'Oiseau dc feu".....Stravinsky
Suite from "Der Rosenkavalier" . . . Strauss
SEVENTH ANNUAL EXTRA SERIES
RISE STEVENS, MezzoSoprano Brooks Smith at the Piano
October 17, 1932
"He Shall Feed His Flock" (Messiah) . Handel Early One Morning . . . Arr. Halsey Stevens "Che faro senza Euridice" (Oco) . . . Gluck
Und willst du deinen Liebsten
sterben rehen
Im dem Schatten meiner Locken Verborgenheit Elfenlied
"Adieu forets" {Jeanne d'Arc) . . Tchaikovsky Variations in A major, K. 460 .... Mozart Romanze in Fsharp major .... Schumann Prelude in Bflat major .... Rachmaninoff Brooks Smith
Gretchen am Spinnrade......Schubert
Wohin...........Schubert
Heimkehr...........Strauss
0 liebliche Wangen........Brahms
Loveliest of Trees .... Celius Dougherty A Ballynure Ballad . . . Arr. Herbert Hughes The Lonesome Grove . . . Arr. Ernst Bacon The Indian......Leonard Bernstein
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA George Szell, Conductor
November 9, 1952
Overture to "Benvenuto Cellini" . . . Berlioz Symphony No. 2, in C major, Op. 6t . Schumann Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 . . Sibelius
CLAUDIO ARRAU, Pianist
November 25, 1952
Fantasy in D minor, K. 397 .... Mozart Sonata in ESat major, Op. Sio . . Beethoven Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 .... Schumann Sonata in F minor, Op. 57 .... Beethoven
HEIFETZ
Emanuel Bay at the Piano February 17, 1953
Sonata............Strauss
Fantasy ("Scottish"), Op. 46 .... Bruch
Sonatina No. 3........Schubeht
Nocturne ..........Sibelius
Valses nobles et sentimentales,
Nos. 6 and 7.........Ravel
Notturno..........Szymanowski
Polonaise brillante in A major . . Wieniawski
BOSTON "POPS" TOUR ORCHESTRA
Arthur Fiedler, Conductor
Hilde Somer, Pianist
March 23, 1953
Rakoczy March.........Berlioz
Overture to Mignon.......Thomas
Waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier . . R. Strauss
"Espana" Rhapsody......Chabrier
Italian Caprice.......Tchaikovsky
Hungarian Fantasy for Piano
and Orchestra.........Liszt
Soloist: Hilde Somer
Bolero............Ravel
"Many Happy Returns" .... Ait. by Mason
FiddleFaddle......Leroy Anderson
Bahn Frei Galop. Op. 45.....E. Strauss
Ride of the Valkyries {Die Walkiire) . . Wagner
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS HANDEL'S MESSIAH December 6 and 7, 1952 Nancy Cars, Soprano Eunice Alberts, Contralto David Lloyd, Tenor James Pease, Bass
University Choral Union
University Musical Society Orchestra
Mary McCall Stubbins. Organist
Lester McCoy, Conductor
13th ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
BUDAPEST QUARTET Joseph Roisman. First Violin Jac Gorodetzky, Second Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola Mischa Schneider, Violoncello
Friday Evening, February 20
Quartet in Eflat major, Op. 12 . Mendelssohn Quartet No. 8 (1950) .... Quincy Porter Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 . . . Beethoven
Saturday Evening, February 21
Quartet in D major......Dittersdort
Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 .... Debussy Quartet in G major, Op. 161 . . . . Schubert
Sunday Afternoon, February 32 Quartet in C major, Op. 76, No. 3 ... Haydn Quartet in Eflat major (1943) . . Hindemith Quartet in Bflat major, Op. 130 . . Beethoven
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CONCERTS FOR 19531954
SEVENTYFIFTH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
Roberta Peters, Soprano.......Wednesday, October 7
Boston Symphony Orchestra......Thursday, October 22
Virtuosi di Roma..........Monday, November 2
Vladimir Horowitz, Pianist......Saturday, November 21
dePaur's Infantry Chorus.......Tuesday, November 24
To be announced..........Thursday, February 11
Paul BaduraSkoda, Pianist......Wednesday, February 17
George London, Bass.........Sunday, February 28
Elena Nikolaidi, Soprano.........Friday, March 12
Myra Hess, Pianist..........Wednesday, March 17
EIGHTH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES
Guiomar Novaes, Pianist......'. . Monday, October 12
Cleveland Orchestra........Sunday, November 8
Guard Republican Band of Paris .... Monday, November 30
Marian Anderson, Contralto.......Sunday, January 10
Boston Pops Tour Orchestra......Thursday, March 4
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
Messiah (Handel).........December 5 and 6, 1953
Maud Nosler, Soprano Norman Scott, Bass
Carol Smith, Contralto Choral Union and Orchestra
Walter Fredericks, Tenor Lester McCoy, Conductor
FOURTEENTH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Griller Quartet.........Friday, February 19, 8:30
Reginald Kell Players......Saturday, February 20, 8:30
Griller Quartet.........Sunday, February 21, 2:30
SIXTYFIRST ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
Six Concerts..........April 29, 30, May 1, 2, 1954
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor; University Choral Union, Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, and Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor; Festival Youth Chorus, Marguerite Hood, Conductor. Soloists to be announced.
The right is reserved to make such changes in dates and personnel as necessity may require.
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UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY