UMS Concert Program, May 5, 6, 7, 8, 1955: The Sixty-second Annual May Festival -- The Philadelphia Orchestra

Season: Seventy-Sixth
Concert: SIXTH
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

The Sixty-Second Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
1955
presented by
The University Musical Society
of the University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SeventySixth Season Program of the Sixty-Second Annual
MAY FESTIVAL
May 5, 6, 7, 8, 1955 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Published by the University Musical Society, Ann Arbor
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Charles A. Sink, A.B., M.Ed., LL.D......President
Alexander G. Ruthven, Ph.D., LL.D., Sc.D. . Vice-President
Shirley W. Smith, A.M., LL.D........Secretary
Oscar A. Eberbach, A.B...........Treasurer
Roscoe O. Bonisteel, LL.B., LL.D., Sc.D.
Assistant Secretary-Treasurer
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 Arthur D. Berg, Assistant to the President Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor
THE SIXTY-SECOND ANNUAL ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL
CONDUCTORS
Eugene Ormandy, Orchestral Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Marguerite Hood, Youth Chorus Conductor
SOLOISTS
Rise Stevens............Mezzo-soprano
Lois Marshall.............Soprano
Nell Rankin...........Mezzo-soprano
Leslie Chabay..............Tenor
William Warfield............Baritone
Morley Meredith............Baritone
Jeanne Mitchell............Violinist
Rudolf Serkin..............Pianist
Grant Johannesen............Pianist
ORGANIZATIONS
The Philadelphia Orchestra
The University Choral Union
The Festival Youth Chorus
Notices and Acknowledgments
The University Musical Society expresses appreciation to Thor Johnson, Lester McCoy, the members of the Choral Union, and the University Musical Society Orchestra for their effective services; to Marguerite Hood and her able associates for their valuable services in training 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 co-operation. Appreciation is also expressed to the Philadelphia Orchestra, to Eugene Ormandy, its distinguished conductor, and to the late manager Harl McDonald and his administrative staff.
The Author of the annotations expresses his appreciation to Muriel Kingston for her assistance in collecting materials; to Ferol Brinkman for her editorial services; and to Donald Engle, annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra, for his co-operation.
The Steinway is the official concert piano of the University Musical Society; and the Lester Piano is the official piano of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Philadelphia Orchestra records for RCA Victor and Columbia.
CONCERT ENDOWMENT FUND
The University Musical Society is a nonprofit corporation devoted to educational purposes. Its concerts are maintained through the sale of tickets of admission. The prices are kept as low as possible to cover the expense of pro?duction. 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 income and estate tax purposes.
FIRST MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Thursday Evening, May 5, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
RUDOLF SERKIN, Pianist
PROGRAM
Prelude and Fugue in C minor..............Bach
(Transcribed for orchestra by Eugene Ormandy)
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67..........Beethoven
Allegro con brio
Andante con moto Allegro; trio
Allegro; presto
INTERMISSION
?Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83, for Piano and Orchestra . . Brahms Allegro non troppo
Allegro appassionato Andante
Allegretto grazioso
Rudolf Serkin
Columbia Records
The piano used is a Stcinway
SECOND MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Friday Evening, May 6, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
SOLOISTS
LOIS MARSHALL, Soprano NELL RANKIN, Mezzo-soprano
LESLIE CHABAY, Tenor MORLEY MEREDITH, Baritone
PROGRAM
Missa Solemnis in D major, Op. 123..........Beethoven
Kyree Gloria
Gratias agimus
Qui tollis
Quoniam
INTERMISSION
Credo
Et incarnatus Crucifixus Et resurrexit
Sanctus Osanna Benedictus
Agnus Dei Dona nobis
THIRD MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Afternoon, May 7, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
THE FESTIVAL YOUTH CHORUS MARGUERITE HOOD, Conductor
SOLOIST
JEANNE MITCHELL, Violinist
PROGRAM Overture to Donna Diana..............Reznicek
Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 2976, for
Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, and Orchestra......Mozart
Allegro Adagio
Andantino con variazione
John deLancie, Oboe Sol Schoenbach, Bassoon
Anthony Gigliotti, Clarinet Mason Jones, Horn
Viennese Folk and Art Songs
Edited and translated by Marguerite Hood Orchestrated by Marion McArtor
Hunting Song (folk song) ? Sanctus (Schubert)
The Linden Tree (Schubert) The Pinzgauer Song (folk song)
Enchanting Bells (Mozart) Frohe Botschaft (folk song)
The Magician (Mozart) Cradle Song (folk song)
Still, Still, Still (folk song) The Question (folk song)
Festival Youth Chorus
intermission
?Symphony No. 8 in B minor ("Unfinished").......Schubert
Allegro moderato
Andante con moto
Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219, for Violin and Orchestra . . . Mozart Tempo aperto Adagio
Tempo di menuetto
Jeanne Mitchell
Columbia Records
FOURTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Saturday Evening, May 7, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
WILLIAM WARFIELD, Baritone
PROGRAM
Overture and Allegro, from the Suite, "La Sultane".....Couperin
(Arranged for orchestra by Darius Milhaud)
"Thy Glorious Deeds Inspired My Tongue" from Samson .... Handel
Two Songs from Vier ernste Gesange, Op. 121........Brahms
O Tod, wie bitter bist du Wenn ich mit Menschen
William Warfield
Epigraph...................Dello Joio
INTERMISSION
Five Old American Songs.........Arr. by Aaron Copland
The Boatman's Dance (Minstrel Song)
The Dodger (Campaign Song)
A Long Time Ago (Ballad)
Simple Gifts (Shaker Song)
I Bought Me a Cat (Play Game Song)
Mr. Warfield
Concerto for Orchestra................Bartok
Andante non troppo; allegro vivace Allegro scherzando
Elegy: andante non troppo
Intermezzo interrotto: allegretto Finale: presto
S
FIFTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Afternoon, May 8, at 2:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
THOR JOHNSON, Guest Conductor
SOLOISTS
LOIS MARSHALL, Soprano
LESLIE CHABAY, Tenor
MORLEY MEREDITH, Baritone
GRANT JOHANNESEN, Pianist
PROGRAM
"Carmina Burana" (Cantiones profanae) for Soprano,
Tenor, Baritone, Chorus, and Orchestra.......Carl Orff
Prelude
In Springtime
In the Tavern
The Court of Love
Postlude
University Choral Union and Soloists
INTERMISSION
Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26, for Piano and Orchestra . . Prokofiev Andante; allegro
Theme and variations
Allegro ma non troppo
Grant Johannesen
The piano used is a Steinway
SIXTH MAY FESTIVAL CONCERT
Sunday Evening, May 8, at 8:30
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA EUGENE ORMANDY, Conductor
SOLOIST
RISE STEVENS, Mezzo-soprano
PROGRAM
Concerto Grosso No. 2 for String Orchestra......Ernest Bloch
Maestoso; allegro (fuga); maestoso Andante Allegro
Teraa con variazioni
"Gods of Eternal Night" from Alceste...........Gluck
(English text by John Gutman)
"Adieu, forets" from Jeanne d'Arc..........Tchaikovsky
Rise Stevens
intermission
"Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" from Samson et Dalila .... Saint-Saens
Habanera, "L'Amour est un oiseau rebelle" from Carmen.....Bizet
Seguidilla, "Pres des ramparts de Seville" from Carmen.....Bizet
Miss Stevens
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36.........Tchaikovsky
Andante sostenuto; moderato con anima Andantino in modo di canzone Scherzo: pizzicato ostinato Finale: allegro con fuoco
10
ANNOTATIONS
by GLENN D. McGEOCH
FIRST CONCERT Thursday Evening, May 5
Prelude and Fugue in C minor.........Bach
Transcribed for Orchestra by Eugene Ormandy
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, March 21, 1685; died in Leipzig, July 28, 1750.
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 predeces?sors 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 Eise?nach under the tree-clad summits of the Thuringian Wald, Bach lived in an at?mosphere that was charged with poetry, romance, and music. Towering precipi?tously over the little village stood the stately Wartburg, which once sheltered Luther, and where, in one of its 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. 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 on foot to neighboring towns to hear visiting organists who brought him occasional touches with 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 ig?nored 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 and most of the manuscripts had been lost or mislaid.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
The neglect, discovery, and final triumph of Bach's music are without parallel in the history of music. This triumphant progress from utter 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 and new methods, more 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 contempt 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 fulfill his laborious duties, and in doing so created the great works that have brought him eternal fame. His ambitions never passed beyond his city, church, and family.
Born into a day of small things, he helped that 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. What a magnificent world did the mighty Sebastian evolve from the dry, stiff, pedantic forms of his time! As Wagner put it, "No words can give a conception of its richness, its sub?limity, its all-comprehensiveness." The changed media of expression, the in?creased expressive qualities of the modern pianoforte, organ, and complex orches?tra have brought to the world a realization of the great dormant and potential beauties that lay in his work.
Bach lived in Weimar from 1708 to 1713, where he held the position of court organist. Here he wrote his finest organ works, using the contemporary French and Italian styles with great independence. The C-minor Fugue dates from the early part of Bach's residence here, the Prelude from a later period when he sub?stituted it for an earlier one and revised many of his other organ works.
In spite of the conflicting arguments of some academicians who either resent orchestral transcriptions of Bach's original organ works or who justify the prac?tice on the basis of making his music more available to audiences today, it should be noted that Mr. Ormandy's recent transcription of this work (1953-54) was done with great respect and feeling for the old master, and that, as on previous oc?casions, he has revealed through his masterful handling of the modern orchestra many marvels of hidden beauty.
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67.....Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Decem?ber 16, 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827.
It is difficult to decide whether the man creates the age or the age the man, but in the case of Beethoven each is true to some extent. Certainly, as far as
12
FIRST CONCERT
music is concerned, he created the age of Romanticism to such a degree that the new movement which began in the nineteenth century could be called "Beethovenism" as well. On the other hand, there is no more decided proof to be found in music history of the fact that the age produces the man than in the case of Beethoven. Certainly in his life and in his works he is the embodiment of his period. Born at the end of the eighteenth century, he witnessed, during the formative period of his life, the drastic changes that were occurring throughout central Europe, changes which affected not only the political but the intellectual and artistic life of the world as well. The French Revolution had announced the breaking up of an old order and the dawn of a new social regime. The spirit of freedom that animated the poetic thought of Goethe, Schiller, Wordsworth, and Byron infused itself into the music of Beethoven, from the creation of the Appassionata Sonata to the Choral Ninth Symphony.
During this period of chaos and turmoil, Beethoven stood like a colossus, bridging with his mighty stride the two centuries in which he lived. In his person he embodied the ideas of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; he be?came the sage and prophet of his period and the center of the classic and romantic spirits.
These two elements were mutually helpful in making him the outstanding representative of each. His romantic tendencies helped him to infuse Promethean fire into the old, worn-out forms and to endow them with new passion. His re?spect for classic forms made him the greatest of the early Romanticists, for it aided him in tempering the fantastic extremes of his radical contemporaries. Thus, this harmonious embodiment of opposing forces, controlled by an architec?tonic intelligence that molded and fused them together into one passionate, creative impulse, resulted in the production of epoch-making masterpieces, built upon firm foundations but emancipated from all confining elements of tradition, and set free to discover new regions of unimagined beauty.
He boldly entered this new uncharted realm with the Third Symphony ("Eroica") in 1803. Never before had music been so avid in its attempt to express the profound or to explore the heights and depths of thought and emo?tion; its sudden ingenuity, audacity, and resourcefulness freed it forever after from the fetters of convention and tradition that were restricting it. Beethoven had taxed his creative powers to the utmost in this stupendous work, and even his genius could not readily regain the heights he there attained. In the Fourth Symphony (1806) less problematical material was treated with far less intensity of effort. But in the Fifth, Beethoven again sought the unexplored, guided by the artistic insight he had gained in composing the "Eroica."
The date of the completion of the Fifth Symphony is not definitely known. According to Thayer "this wondrous work was no sudden inspiration. Themes for the Allegro, Andante, and Scherzo are found in sketchbooks belonging, at the very latest, to the years of 1800 and 1801 (between the composition of the First and Second Symphonies). There are studies also preserved which show that Beethoven wrought upon it while engaged on 'Fidelio' and the 'Pianoforte
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Concerto in G' (1804-6), when he laid the C-minor Symphony aside for the composition of the Fourth. That is all that is known of the rise and progress of this famous symphony."
Those who believe that a great piece of music is simply profoundly felt emotion poured out under the immediate impact of events or experience that generate that emotion have been persistent in their attempts to read specific meaning into this work. Beethoven's noble music has been constantly dragged from its Empy?rean heights to dwell in the world of the commonplace, by imposing upon it an extramusical content. The romantic vaporings of incurable sentimentalists have read everything into the Fifth Symphony from the summons of Fate to the Song of the Yellowhammer, and have never ceased to mention the inevitable overtones of unrequited and tragic love. Sir George Grove, for instance, writes:
The composition of the C minor covered the time before the engagement of Beethoven with the Countess Therese von Brunswick, the engagement itself, and a part of the period of agitation when the lovers were separated. . . . Now, considering the extraordinary imag?inative and disturbed character of the symphony, it is impossible not to believe that the work --the first movement, at any rate--is based on his relations to the Countess, and is more or less a picture of their personality and association. ... In fact, the first movement seems to contain actual portraits of the two chief actors in the drama. ... At any rate, in this move?ment he unbosoms himself as he has never done before ... we hear the palpitating accents and almost the incoherence of the famous love-letters, but mixed with an amount of fury which is not in them.t
M. Vincent d'Indy, an equal offender, remarks in his book on Beethoven: "All of those compositions of Beethoven's Second Period, 1801-1815, which tell of or reveal amorous anguish, can apparently be traced chronologically speak?ing only to his passion for Giulietta Guicciardi. Neither Theresa Malfatti, nor Amalie Sebald, nor Bettina Brentano, nor the other women whom Beethoven might have noticed, have left any impression on his musical production."+
The utter futility of ever attempting to interpret truthfully the meaning of this music is further shown in the rapturous depiction of Hector Berlioz, who, writing of the first movement, says:
It is devoted to the painting of disordered sentiments which overthrow a great soul, a prey to despair; not the concentrated, calm despair that borrows the shape of resignation; not the dark and voiceless sorrow of Romeo, who learns of the death of Juliet; but the terri?ble rage of Othello, when he receives from Iago's mouth the poisonous slanders which persuade him of Desdemona's guilt. Now it is a frenetic delirium which explodes in frightful cries; and now it is the prostration that has only accents of regret and profound self-pity. Hear these hiccups of the orchestra, these dialogues in chords between winds and strings which come and go, always weaker and fainter, like unto the painful breathing of a dying man, and then give way to a phrase full of violence in which the orchestra seems to rise to its feet, revived in a flash of fury; see this shuddering mass hesitate a moment, and then rush headlong, di?vided in two burning unisons as two streams of lava; and then say if this passionate style is not beyond and above everything that had been produced hitherto in instrumental music.?
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life o) Ludwig van Beethoven, trans, and ed. by H. E. Krehbiel. English ed. publ. by the Beethoven Association of New York (London: Novello & Co., 1921), 3 vols. t George Grove, Beethoven and Bis Nine Symphonies (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1888). j Vincent d'Indy, "Beethoven," Muskiens celibres, 1913. English trans. (New York: G. Schirmcr). 8 Hector Berlioz, "Etude analytique des symphonies de Beethoven," Voyage Musicale, I (Paris, 1844).
14
FIRST CONCERT
How far music's meaning can vary when its effects are confused with its essence is charmingly stated by E. M. Forster in his novel, Howards End, at the beginning of Chapter V:
It is generally admitted that Beethoven's Vth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts of conditions are satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--or like Helen, who can see heros and shipwrecks in the musical flood; ... or like their cousin, Fraulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is, "echt Deutsch," or like Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach. In any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at 2 shillings.
All of this is, of course, an insult to the very spirit of music. Such imaginings tie it down to finite things, and music should not be thus bound. What poverty of mind and little understanding of the psychical processes by which a significant piece of music comes into being is revealed by such attempts to make the most evasive and ephemeral of all the arts finite and specific. "Music," writes Ernest Newman, "is simply air in motion, and though the sound symbols written down by the composer at a particular time may have taken the form and color they did because of some volcanic experience of his in the outer world, or some psycho?logical change within himself at that or some earlier time, it is always dangerous to try to read into the notes an expression of that experience."f
Whatever Beethoven was trying to express outside of the music itself, one thing is certain: he created a symphony of tremendous concentration, concision, and heroic power. In the words of Lawrence Gilman:
Whatever Beethoven did or did not intend to say to us in this tonal revelation, there is one trait that the C-minor Symphony has beyond every other, and that is the quality of epic valor.
There is nothing in music quite like the heroic beauty of those first measures of the finale that burst forth at the end of the indescribable transition from the Scherzo with its swiftly cumulative crescendo, and the overwhelming emergence of the trombones--so cannily held in reserve throughout the foregoing movements.
This is music pregnant with the greatness of the indomitable human soul. Listening to it, one knows that the inward ear of Beethoven had almost caught that lost word which, could a man but find it, would make him master of the hosts of Fate and of the circling worlds.t
Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83
for Piano and Orchestra.........Brahms
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, April 3, 1897.
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 poverty-stricken and soul-sick period, when anarchy seemed to have destroyed culture, an age which was distinctly unfavorable to
E. M. Forster, Howards End (New York: Putnam & Sons, 1911).
t Ernest Newman, "Beethoven: the Last Phase," Atlantic Monthly, March, 1953.
t Program Book of the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1937-38 Season, p. 232.
? See notes on Tchaikovsky, pages 61-64.
IS
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
genuinely great art--unfavorable because of its pretentiousness and exclusive-ness, 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 great tragic songs and of the quiet resignation expressed in the slow move?ments of his symphonies. Here is to be found an expression of the true spirit of the period in which he lived. By the exertion of a clear intelligence, he tem?pered 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, with a spirit strong and virile, he met the challenge of his age 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 unhealthful 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 sentimentality; 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 make it what it is" and its mighty power lies "in the refining and ele?vation wrought in us by the high and rare excellence of the grand style."
Fuller-Maitland, in his admirable book on Brahms, made reference to the parallel between the composer and Robert Browning. This association, too, is a significant 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, he chose to create, in every case, a style proportioned to the design, finding in that dramatic relation of style and motive a more vital beauty and a broader sweep of feeling. In this epic conception Brahms often verged upon the sublime. He lived his creative life upon the "cold white peaks." No master ever displayed a more inexorable self-discipline, or held his art in higher respect. For Brahms was a master of masters, always painstaking in the devotion he put into his work and undaunted in his search for perfection. The Brahms of music is the man, in Milton's magnificent phrase, "of devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out His seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases."
J. A. Fuller-Maitland, Brahms (London: Methuen & Co., 1911). 16
FIRST CONCERT
No other work of Brahms is more characteristic than this magnificent piano concerto. It contains music that arises from his most secluded spiritual realm and is among the richest and best balanced works he ever produced. Nowhere else does he reveal such conscientiousness and solid thoroughness.
The concerto was begun in May, 1878, at Portschach in southern Austria, on the day before his forty-fifth birthday. It was completed in 1881 at Press-baum, near Vienna. In letters that year to Clara Schumann and Elizabeth von Herzogenberg, Brahms jestingly announced that he had written "quite a little concerto with quite a little scherzo." What he had actually created was a piano concerto and a symphony in one work. Here he found a new solution of the problem of reconciling the piano with the orchestra. By embedding its sound in that of the orchestra, and at the same time preserving its contrasting quality; by suppressing all display of technical virtuosity in the soloist as an end in itself; by relating every theme, figure, chord passage, scale, and run organically to the whole, Brahms created an overpowering concerto.
Unlike the earlier classical concept of the form founded on the alternation of orchestral ritornelli and solo episodes, and the later highly romantic display pieces of Liszt with their magnificent tone colors, breath-taking bravuras, and ostentatious effects, Brahms allows the soloist's vanity no satisfaction in his sym-phonically constructed passages where the parts are firmly molded into one radiant whole. The piano part, often dense and slow-moving, with its constant preference for working with massive chord effects and broken chord passages, drives into the very tone center of the orchestra to contribute its thread and color to the rich symphonic texture.
ANALYSIS
The principal theme of the first movement (Allegro non troppo, B-flat major, 4-4 time) is foreshadowed by a short dialogue between the first horn and piano, creating a quiet twilight atmosphere. The piano leads to a full, sonorous state?ment of the theme in the orchestra. This prepares for the contrasting lyricism of the second subject, announced by the violins with pizzicato violas and celli, and, after a vigorous passage, the piano enters in octaves, leading to its state?ment of the principal theme. Part of the opening in the orchestra and the second theme are now developed to some extent. After a passage in F minor for the piano, which leads to a statement in the full orchestra, the development section begins. The principal themes are elaborately treated. The recapitulation begins on the quiet subject of the horn that was heard at the opening of the movement, but the rest of the section is not a literal re-presentation of the exposition mate?rial. A tremendous coda, derived from the material heard in the orchestral open?ing of the concerto and summarizing in a broad melodic sweep the material of the main section of the movement, closes this section.
The second movement (Allegro appassionato, F major, 3-4 time), is the "quite a little scherzo" to which Brahms referred in his letters, although it is not desig?nated as such in the score. The theme, recalling the piano scherzo in E minor,
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Op. 4 and the later piano capricci in its brooding and sullen tone, is stated in the piano. An episode in the orchestra, derived from the rhythmic figure of the piano theme, is continued later in the solo instrument. This forms a concise sonata-form exposition which closes in A major, and is repeated. A development follows which introduces a new jubilant theme in D major, which has the effect of a trio section. There is a free sonata-like recapitulation of the themes of the exposition, after which a coda, giving freest scope to the piano and orchestra, brings this unique movement to a close.
The orchestra begins the third movement (Andante, B-flat major, 6-4 time) with a broad melody for the cello, a forethought of the sad sweet melody of the later song "Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer"; and, after its restatement in which the oboe joins the cello, the piano sounds a figure derived from the same theme. Then in typical Brahms fashion there is a closely woven passage which, in spite of its familiar material, is treated in an improvisatory manner. After a sudden change to F-sharp major, a new melody, found in Brahms' song "Todes-sehen," Op. 86, is stated by two clarinets in the accompaniment. "The melody," writes Tovey, "consists of a few notes spaced like the first stars that penetrate the sky at sunset. When the strings join in, the calm is as deep as the ocean that we have witnessed in the storms of this huge piece of music." The first theme returns to the cello in F-sharp minor, and a recapitulation of the opening in the orchestra, this time ornamented by a figure in the piano, brings this lovely movement to a quiet and serene close.
The fourth movement (Allegretto grazioso, B-flat major, 2-4 time), an airy, glittering, and delicately animated finale, presents no trumpets and drums, al?though after such a tremendous treatment as this concerto has received, one might expect a more triumphant close. The piano states the first rhythmic theme, and it is soon followed by another idea, almost Hungarian in style, which alter?nates between woodwinds and strings. Another section of it is heard in the solo instrument which leads to a playful subject, still in the piano and accompanied by pizzicato strings. An elaborate development of this and subsidiary material follows, and all is climaxed with a lengthy coda.
Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1936), III, 124.
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Friday Evening, May 6
Missa Solemnis in D, Op. 123.......Beethoven
There is nothing higher than to come closer to God than any other man, and from that point of vantage to spread abroad the beams of divinity among the human race.
--Schiller
In the year 1819, Beethoven began the composition of a ceremonial Mass to be performed at the installation of his friend and patron, the Archduke Rudolph, as Archbishop of Olmiitz. It was not finished, however, until 1823, two years after this event took place. Thus the work began not as the creation of a free artistic impulse, but as the fulfillment of a traditional form, in a given time, for a specific occasion. But in the process of its making, it became a work of such compelling individuality that it finally transcended the limitations of expression imposed upon it by its form and, by the laws of some mysterious necessity, it emerged as one of the most personal, and, therefore unique compositions of its kind.
In the presence of a work like Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, words are inade?quate to explain or describe all that it conveys to the spirit. No composer has ever equaled Beethoven in his power of suggesting, through sound alone, that which can never be expressed absolutely, and nowhere do we find a work in which all the noble attributes of an art are more happily combined. No formal analysis dealing with mere details of musical construction could touch the real source of its power, even though it could reveal Beethoven's complete mastery over his medium; nor could any interpretation by philosopher or poet state with any degree of certainty just what the forces were that guided the creative mind of the composer, although they may give us vivid impressions of the effect the music has upon them. They would be hard-pressed indeed to reconcile the moral and ethical lapses of the man Beethoven--in promising the work to four pub?lishers at the same time, in securing a loan from his closest friend as an advance on a contract which he never intended to fulfill, or in any of the other tricks he employed to seek the best possible pecuniary reward for his composition--with the fact that during the same period Beethoven, the creator, allowed his spirit to soar to unknown heights, and remain in the realm of the sublime. There is no point in dwelling upon the shabby and sometimes shocking details of Beethoven's unethical behavior in connection with the sale of the Mass, for Beethoven the man, with all his moral weaknesses, can in no way dwarf the high-seeking and uncompromising artist. If any justification for his behavior is needed, let it come from his great biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer, who wrote:
During the period of the negotiations for the sale of the Mass, Beethoven continued to create such works as the "Hammerklavier" Sonata in B-flat, Op. 106, the C-minor Sonata, Op. Ill, and the Choral Ninth Symphony.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
It is not only proper, but a duty, to give all possible weight to the circumstances which can be, ought to be, must indeed be pleaded in extenuation of his conduct; but the facts can not be obscured or ignored without distorting the picture of the man Beethoven as this biog?raphy has consistently striven from the beginning to present it. For English and American readers, moreover, the shock of surprise will be lessened by a recollection of Beethoven's first transactions in London, which more than five years before had called out the advice of the English publishers to Neate "for God's sake" not to buy anything of Beethoven! As for the rest it is right to remember that at this time many of the sources of Beethoven's income had dried up. He was no longer able to offer his publishers symphonies in pairs, or sonatas and chamber compositions in groups. He produced laboriously and, in the case of composi?tions which were dear to his heart, with infinite and untiring care and insatiable desire for perfection. Engrossed in such works, he gave no thought to pecuniary reward; but, rudely disturbed by material demands, he sought the first means at hand to supply the need. Hence his resurrection of works composed and laid aside years before; his acceptance of commissions which he was never able to perform; his promise of speedy delivery of works scarcely begun; his acceptance of advances on contracts which he could not fulfill; his strange confidence (this we feel we are justified in assuming) in his ability to bring forth works of magnitude in time to keep his obligations even when the works which he had in mind had already been there for years; his ill-health which brought with it loss of creative vitality, of fecundity in ideas and facility in execution in inverse ratio to the growth of his artistic ideals; the obsession of his whole being by his idolatrous love for his nephew and the mental distress and monetary sacrifice which his self-assumed obligation entailed and which compelled him to become the debtor of his publishers lest he encroach upon the emoluments of the Vienna Congress which he had solemnly consecrated to his foster-son. Let all these things be remembered when the story of his short-comings is told.
This momentarily reassuring paragraph remains inconclusive when one is forced to meet face to face the moral defects in Beethoven's character and at best, it is merely a sorrowful shaking of the head at the realization that the qualities of nobility, honesty, and sincerity dwelt not in him, but only in the world his imagination created--in his music. The Missa Solemnis is a canticle of that sincerity and honesty, and without any doubt whatever, it realized the motto he inscribed upon the score, "Written from the heart, may it again reach the heart."
It is further difficult for the philosopher, poet, or musical analyst to fathom the process by which Beethoven, an unbeliever, was able to accommodate his personal religious concepts to a form of music that was sanctified by tradition, and to a text, the significance of which had for centuries been dogmatically assured. For Bee?thoven was not a conventional believing Christian; he was not in any sense of the term a real son of the Church. It is true that he was baptized and educated a Catholic, and that at death he received the Last Sacrament, but throughout his life his religious convictions were never founded upon traditional, revealed re?ligion, nor even upon Christianity alone. Neither was he a religious or philosophi?cal thinker, investigator, or scholar. Beethoven was first and always an artist, and if in his Mass he did not further sanctify Christianity, he at least humanized it. He who cannot understand Beethoven's intentions from a personal and artistic point of view can never really comprehend the true meaning of this work. What Goethe achieved in the second part of Faust, Beethoven accomplished in the
Thayer, op. cit.
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Missa Solemnis, for it is a powerfully dramatic and intensely personal work in which the musician Beethoven assumed supreme command over the form, and in asserting his right as an artist, created not a Mass but his Mass. Here Christi?anity, especially in its Catholic garb, is not considered as religion itself, but as a manifestation through sacred symbols of Beethoven's own religious ideals. His Missa Solemnis, like his religion, is neither Catholic nor Protestant, it is not even ecclesiastical; it is not a Mass at all in the real sense of the term, for it does not lend itself to divine service either externally, because of its compass and diffi?culty, or intrinsically, because of its intensely personal and individual expression and conception.
Beethoven's religion was an amalgam from sundry sources. He read widely, and was remarkably susceptible to the intensification and expansion of his own feelings experienced through his reading. Thus the lofty impulses of Immanuel Kant, the magnanimity of Shakespeare, and the passionate optimism of Schiller, to mention only a few, were transformed into his own religious credo. This personal creed can be guessed from transcripts in his own hand, from the great literature of his period, which he kept always before his eyes. There was for instance this fragment from Kant: "The moral law is in us and the starry heavens above us." Or a paragraph translated from the Hindu by J. G. von Herder:
God is immaterial since he is invisible. He can have no form, but from what we observe in His works we may conclude that he is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The Mighty One is He who is free from all desire. He alone; there is no greater than He.
Or again from Schiller's essay in Egyptology, Die Sendutig Moses, Beetho?ven copied, framed, and kept upon his table these words, "I am that which is,-I am all, what is, what was, what will be; no mortal has lifted my veil. . . . He is only and solely of Himself, and to this only One all things owe their exis?tence."
Among his sketches is one which reads:
In order to write true Church music, look through all of the monastic Church chorals ana also the strophes in the most current translations and perfect prosody in all Christian-Catholic psalms and hymns generally. Sacrifice again all the pettiness of social life to your Art. God above all things! For it is an eternal providence which directs omnisciently the good and evil fortunes of human beings. . . . Tranquilly will I submit myself to all vicissitudes and place my sole confidence in Thine unalterable goodness. O God! Be my rock, my light, forever my trust.
To this personal God, Beethoven addressed his Mass. Every note was a recon?ciliation of his deepest convictions with a traditional religious form. His attempt to bring about this reconciliation resulted in a work of unrelieved tensions and unexpected individual delineations of the text. During its creation he worked like one possessed. Annoyed by the world, worried and ill. troubled and disap?pointed in the extreme, Beethoven sublimated the dreadful agitations of life into artistic expression. In the Mass he gave his own soul drama its extrinsic being. The fervor for his subject grew directly from his intense preoccupation with himself at the moment, and in that moment he forgot all obligations to his
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patron the Archduke, to the Church, to ecclesiastical conventions, and to the traditions of his craft when employed in their services. He became, as an artist, a law unto himself. Schindler has described him during the creation of the Mass as "truly the boisterous, heaven-storming giant, and more particularly in the autumn when he wrote the Credo with the exceedingly difficult fugue." Visiting him in the fall of 1819, he recorded the following:
It was four o'clock in the afternoon. As soon as we entered we learned that in the morning both servants had gone away, and that there had been a quarrel after midnight which had disturbed all the neighbors, because as a consequence of a long vigil both had gone to sleep and the food which had been prepared had become unpalatable. In the living room, behind a locked door, we heard the master singing parts of the fugue in the Credo, singing, howling, stamping. After we had been listening a long time to this almost awful scene, and were about to go away, the door opened and Beethoven stood before us with distorted features, calculated to excite fear. He looked as if he had been in mortal combat with the whole host of contra?puntists, his everlasting enemies.
Here, in a vocal score, Beethoven remained the symphonist, employing a style that was pithy and focused. While Bach in the B-minor Mass wrote with amplitude, Beethoven, accustomed to symphonic thinking, wrote with all the forcefulness that terseness can command. There is an absence of broad effects to catch casual attention; he does not drive home a point by lingering--he makes it with direct thrusts. His personal and inner convictions forged a style that was unique in its variety. With imperious disregard for purity of style, he turned to whatever means the text suggested to him, irrespective of its tradi?tional treatment, the result being a mosaic of styles that are mysteriously held together in an overpowering unity by the sheer domination of personality over art. Everything was transfigured by his personal feelings and formed with dra?matic immediacy.
In program notes for the New York Philharmonic Society, Lawrence Gilman wrote:
Beethoven paid scant attention to the rubrics, to institutional traditions and properties, to liturgical formulas. The Missa Solemnis is far more than a traditional setting of the text of the Mass. For Beethoven, as he proceeded in his treatment of the moving and marvelous words, responded more and more unrestrainedly to their emotional and imaginative suggestions, fixing his attention less on ecclesiastical or ceremonial decorum than on the human implications of the missal text. He remembered the grievous, unconquerable souls of men, suffering, fearing, longing, pleading, hoping, worshipping, praying. And at the thought of the timeless drama of human agony and aspiration, the sanctuary opened before his all-embracing vision, and be?came the peopled earth and all mankind, and above them was a strangely echoing sky, and beyond, the break of day.
Indeed, it could be said of Beethoven in this universal and compassionate music, as it has been said of St. Francis, that his imagination did not falter "until it held the world."
The Beethoven whom we meet in the greater pages of the Missa Solemnis--in the Benedictus and in the close of the Agnus Dei--anticipates the Beethoven of the last phase: the Beethoven who speaks to us in the mystical and otherworldly pages of the last sonatas and quartets; Beethoven the brooding and clairvoyant dreamer, the self-communing seer.
As we sit before the Prelude to the Benedictus, with its hushed and rapt and fathomless
Anton Schindler, Biographic von Ludwig van Beethoven (Munster, 1860).
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contemplation--in which, as d'Indy said, Beethoven has raised silence into sublimity: as we listen to the ineffable serenity and the superearthly beauty of the Benedictus--we know that this is the ultimate and essential Beethoven; that we have plumbed as deeply as we ever shall the mystery of a great spirit. We know that for Beethoven the tragical and passionate dreamer, so simple of heart, so racked by the task of living and by the spectacle of human conflict and frustration, this music of embracing humanity, of boundless tenderness and pity, was a solvent and a miraculous release. We know that, as he set it down, the prophecy of Isaiah must have come true for his turbulent and anguished spirit, and that the eyes of the blind were opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
The penetrating analysis of the music of the Mass which follows is by Vincent d'Indy:
Kyrie
From the beginning of the Kyrie one receives an impression of grandeur which finds an equal only in that given by the similar entry of Bach's B-minor Mass. It is the entire human race that implores divine clemency. The tonality is speedily inflected to the relative minor; a sort of distressful march shows us the Son of God come down to earth; but the word Christe (quartet) grounded on the same music as Kyrie, symbolizes the identity of the two Persons in one God; whereas the third Kyrie (chorus), representing the Holy Ghost, the third Person participating in the same divinity as the two others, is based upon the third harmonic function, the subdominant, as a bond of union for the three representations of the single God.
Kyrie eleison!
Christe eleison! Kyrie eleison!
Lord, have mercy upon us!
Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!
Gloria
The Gloria enters with impressive brilliancy in a trumpet fanfare confided first to the con?traltos, then to the tenors of the chorus. After the shout of glory, all suddenly grows calm on the words pax hominibus, etc., and one can already trace the sketch in its essential features, of the grand theme of peace with which the work ends. We cannot dwell on each phrase of the Gloria; but we shall mention, in passing, in the Gratias agimus tibi, the emergence of a melodic design later to be cherished by Richard Wagner, principally in the Meistersinger and the Walkure. The trumpet signal which serves as a pivot for the whole piece, is almost con?stantly in evidence; every time, at least that the words imply an appeal to force or a symbol of power.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra
pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te, benedicimus te,
adoramus te, glorificamus te. Gratias agimus tibi propter
magnam gloriam tuam. Domine Deus, Rex coelestis! Deus Pater omnipotens! Domine, Fili unigenite, Jesu
Christe! Doraine Deus! Agnus Dei! Filius
Patris 1
Glory be to God on high, and peace on earth to men of good will.
We praise Thee, we bless Thee,
We adore Thee, we glorify Thee.
We give Thee thanks for Thy great glory.
O Lord God, O heavenly King!
O God, the Father, Almighty!
O Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son!
0 Lord God! Lamb of God! Son of the Father!
Philadelphia Orchestra Programs, Ninety-third Season, April 25, 193S.
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Qui tollis peccata mundi!
miserere nobis;
suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris,
miserere nobis.
Quoniam tu solus sanctus, tu solus Dominus tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe!
cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris.
Amen.
O Thou, who takest away the sins of
the world!
have mercy upon us; receive our prayer. O Thou, who sittest at the right
hand of the Father! have mercy upon us. For Thou alone art holy.
Thou alone art Lord, Thou alone art most high, O Jesus Christ!
together with the Holy Ghost, in
the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Credo
With the Credo we enter the cathedral. And what is this Credo, even plastically considered, but a real cathedral divided into three naves, the central nave ending with the sacrificial altar Et homo jactus est The architectural arrangement is a marvel of construction, a miracle of harmonious, nay, mystical equilibrium. Judge for yourselves.
The Credo is planned in three grand divisions, following the trinitarian system customary in a great number of liturgical works. The first division, an exposition of faith in one God, in itself comprises two affirmations: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty," and "in one Lord Jesus Christ." Both are established in the principal key of B-flat major with a transition to the subdominant; after which the two Persons are reunited, on consubstantialem Patri, in the tonic.
The second division presents the evangelical drama of Jesus descended to earth. It consists of three acts: the "Incarnation," going over to the tonality of D major (which is that of the synthesis of the Mass) on the words Et homo jactus est; the scene of the "Passion Crucifixus" beginning in D major and progressing in depression on the words of the burial; and the "Resurrection," which of a sudden soars upward to the luminous, dominant F major.
The third division is consecrated to the Holy Ghost. Like the first it contains two subdi?visions: the affirmation of belief with regard to the Holy Ghost and the dogmas of the church; and the celebration of the mystery of eternal life. All this last part does not leave the tonality of the piece.
Credo in unum Deum,
patrem omnipotentem,
factorem coeli et terrae
visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Credo in unum Dominum Jesum
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; consub-
stantialem Patri,
per quem omnia facta sunt;
24
I believe in one God,
the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the
only-begotten Son of God; and born of the Father before
all ages.
God of Gods, Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial
to the Father,
by Whom all things were made;
SECOND CONCERT
Qui propter nos homines, et
propter nostram salutem,
descendit de coelis, et incar-
natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex
Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis;
sub Pontio Pilato passus et
sepultus est, Et resurrexit tertia die,
sccundum Scripturas Et ascendit in coelum, sedet ad
dextram Patris. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria,
judicare vivos et mortuos;
cujus regni non erit finis. Credo in Spiritum Sanctum,
Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit;
qui cum Patre et Filio simul
adoratur et conglorificatur;
qui Iocutus est per prophetas. Credo in unam sanctam Catholicam
et Apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum Baptisma in
remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem
mortuorum, et vitam venturi
saeculo.
Amen.
Who for us men and for our
salvation, came down from
heaven, and became incarnate by
the Holy Ghost of the Virgin
Mary, and was made man. He was crucified also for us;
suffered under Pontius Pilate and
was buried, And the third day He arose again
according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, and
sitteth at the right hand of the Father. And He is to come again, with glory,
to judge both the living and the dead;
of whose kingdom there shall be no end. I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and
the Son; Who, together with the Father and the
Son, is adored and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets. I believe in one holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the
remission of sins. And I expect the resurrection of the
dead, and the life of the world
to come. Amen.
Sanctus
In the Sanctus, Beethoven, respecting the Catholic liturgy and knowing that, during the mystery of the consecration, no voice should make itself heard, by the might of his genius, has raised silence into sublimity. This Praeludium (orchestra), which allows the celebrant to con?secrate the elements, is to our mind an'inspiration infinitely loftier in conception than the charming concerto for violin and voice which follows. This Praeludium is admirable in every aspect! What grandeur of religious art! and obtained by means so simple as to be astonishing, enthusiasm in this case did not overwhelm astonishment.
Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cocli ct terra gloria
tua. Osanna in excelsis!
(Praeludium--Orchestra) Benedictus qui venit in nomine
Domini! Osanna in excelsis!
Holy is the Lord God Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy
Glory. Hosanna in the highest!
(Prelude--Orchestra) Blessed is he who cometh in the
name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!
Agnus Dei
We have now reached the Agnus Dei, that division of the work which we should consider the finest and the most eloquent of genius had not the Credo preceded it.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
It is here, and in the prelude for the consecration, that Beethoven's religious feeling is most clearly in evidence. The whole long entrance section, wherein mankind implores the pity of the divine Lamb, is of a beauty still unequalled in musical history. The accents of this appeal rise brokenly toward the throne of the Lamb, the victim of hate; it beseeches Him for peace, "peace within and without," wrote Beethoven; the theme of Peace emerges, calm and lumi?nous, out of the irresolute key of B minor and gives us back the tonality of D major, that of Faith and Love, that key wherein the love of all mankind is enwreathed in the Ninth Sym?phony. This theme takes on a pastoral character which gives the impression of a walk in the fields; for peace is not in the city.
Suddenly, after a fugal exposition of the theme of peace, distant drums and trumpets twice announce the army of Hate. The soul is anew seized with dread; it begs for promised peace. "We must pray," wrote Beethoven in his sketches. The theme of peace is transformed, the conflict in the human heart is introduced in the orchestra Presto in which the peace motive turns upon itself in a self-annihilating struggle brought to a close by a victorious fanfare.
This mood gives way again to the theme of Peace. While far away drums are beating the retreat of the spirits of evil, there spreads for the last time from the height of its upraised stem the brilliant bloom of the four incomparable measures, as if to exhale heavenward the perfume of the grateful soul's act of faith.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem.
26
O Lamb of God, that takest away
the sins of the world, have mercy upon us, grant us peace.
THIRD CONCERT Saturday Afternoon, May 7
Overture to Donna Diana........von Reznicek
Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek was born in Vienna, May 4, 1860; died in Berlin, August 5, 194S.
Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek was a popular and prominent composer of opera in Vienna up to the advent of Hitler. He was born to the nobility; his mother was a princess, and his father a general in the Austrian Army. After a period of musical training in Leipzig Conservatory he became known throughout Germany as a conductor, a prolific composer, and a teacher of theory and composition in a conservatory in Berlin, where he ultimately settled in 1901. He died a quarter of a century after he had retired from public life, in 1919, recognized as one of the leading operatic composers of his period. Today, there is little acknowledgment of his talent, and his compositions have sunk into almost complete oblivion. We know of him only as the composer of an overture to the most popular of his eleven operas--Donna Diana (Prague, 1894).
The trifling plot revolves around the courting of a haughty princess by three suitors. One of them wins her heart by returning her disdain with his own in?difference.
Evidently the libretto, written by Reznicek and based upon a German version of the famous Spanish comedy, "El Desden con el Desden" ("Disdain Met with Disdain") by Moreto y Calafia (1618-1669), furnished him with the necessary inspiration to create an overture that is genuinely witty, ironic, and deft in its construction.
Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 2976,
for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, and Orchestra . Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Janu?ary 27, 17S6; died in 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 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 thirty-six 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
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
have been so copious and yet so controlled, or have so consistently sustained throughout their creative lives such a high level of artistic excellence.
Mozart was born at a time when chamber music and the symphony were not as clearly differentiated as they are today. The term Sinfonia was the Italian name for symphony, and, in the early Baroque period, it had no fixed form or style. In the general realm of chamber music, symphonies that stood alone, without being attached to a cantata, suite, or larger work, came to be known later as "Concert Symphonies." Just before the middle of the eighteenth century, the Sinfonia was pretty well denned by its function. Thus in Johann Adolph Scheibe's Der critische Musicus we read that symphonies are really of three types; they are used, namely, for church events, for theatrical and other vocal pieces, and, finally, also as spe?cial instrumental pieces not related to vocal pieces. Thus there were spiritual, theatrical, and chamber symphonies. The chamber symphony, Scheibe continues, was governed almost entirely by "the fire of the composer--thus vivacity and genius for inventing, expounding and animating a melody are the only guides he must follow."
The term concertante was one of several eighteenth-century terms used to designate pieces in which several solo instruments participated after the manner of their forerunner, the earlier concerto grosso of Corelli and his imitators. Alfred Einstein describes the concertante more colorfully than any musical dictionary defines it when he writes:
When to the competition of two or more instruments, the orchestra is added as another participant in the dazzling tournament--a participant that usually opens the occasion and retires, leaving the center of attention to the combatants, mostly accompanying or comment?ing upon their activities, and returning to the foreground only when they are tired and must rest a little--we are squarely in the concertante domain.t
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the concertante had assumed a more or less specific stylistic meaning, due in a great measure to the famous Mannheim School of Composers, of whom Johann Stamitz (1717-57) was the most promi-nent.t He joined the Mannheim orchestra, became its conductor, and inaugu?rated a unique style of composition and performance that spread the fame of this organization throughout Europe. If the Mannheim School cannot be given full credit for having established the foundations for the symphony, as later found in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, it did codify many of the principles and formulas that were later to characterize the style of these great masters of the form. Through them, Germany finally triumphed over Italy in instrumental composition.
In September of 1777, Mozart, then twenty-one years of age, set out for Paris, but because of the inclement weather spent the winter in Mannheim where he often heard the famous orchestra and became intimately acquainted with its members, particularly with Christian Cannabich, its conductor, himself a distinguished composer. In the spring of 1778, when Mozart finally arrived in
Adolph Scheibe, Der critische Musicus (Leipzig: 1745).
t Alfred Einstein, Mozart, His Character and His Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945). X Other composers identified with the school were Ignaz Holzbauer, F. X. Richter, and the younger genera?tion, including Anton FilU, Franz Beck, Christian Cannabich, and Andre and Karl Stamitz, sons of Johann.
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Paris, he found several members of the Mannheim Orchestra vacationing there. At the suggestion of one Joseph Le Gros, director of the Concert Spirituel, Mozart wrote a Sinjonia Concertante, in the Mannheim manner, for four of the players. In a letter to his father, dated April 5, 1778, we read about his plan for this composition and who was to perform it. "I am now going to compose a Sinjonia Concertante jor flute, Wendling; oboe, Ramm; horn, Puntoj; and bassoon, Ritter."i
This work was never performed, and the MS, which had been given Le Gros to be copied, was lost and has never been recovered. It survives, however, in the version heard on this afternoon's program, in which the oboe and clarinet replace the flute and oboe. This arrangement was made by an unknown arranger who evidently did not alter the essential character of the work.
Later in his career, Mozart made a sharp distinction between such works as this Sinjonia Concertante jor flute, Wendling; oboe, Ramm; horn, Puntoj; and instrument to develop along solo lines. He departed from the concertante style more and more as he matured, or perhaps it is more to the point to say with Einstein that "he separated its ingredients, developing the symphonic elements in ever purer form in the orchestral symphony, and the concertante elements in the concerto for solo instruments.?
In this Sinjonia Concertante, Mozart is already searching for a new freedom. In the true concertante tradition, it is written with zeal and animation but it is deeper in concept and broader in form. To quote Einstein again, "It is not a sym?phony in which four wind instruments have prominent solo parts; nor is it quite a concerto for wind instruments. It is between the two. It is planned entirely for brilliance, breadth and expansiveness--in all its movements, especially the last, it is concerned with exhibiting the ability of the four wind players.")
Whatever its classification, it is music that constantly delights the ear and soothes the spirit with its gentle and incomparable beauty.
The Concert Spirituel was founded in Paris by Philidor and continued from 1725 to 1791. It became the model for eighteenth century concerts.
t Giovanni Punto (a pseudonym for Johann Wenzel Stich, 1746-1803) was an eminent horn player for whom Beethoven wrote his Horn and Piano Sonata, Op. 17.
X The Letters of Mozart and His Family, ed. Anderson (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1938).
5 Einstein, op. cit., p. 274.
Ibid., p. 275.
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VIENNESE FOLK AND ART SONGS
Edited and translated by Marguerite V. Hood Orchestrated by Marion E. McArtor
Hunting Song..............Folk Song
Oh ho! awake you hunters, In the east a light can be seen.
Come now, we're off to the forest, O'er the fields and heather green.
The sleepy birds in the tree tops, Are chirping soft and low,
But soon their morning concert Will echo to and fro.
Tri-di-he-jo, di he jo Di he-di he-di-o tri-di-o,
He-jo di he-jo Di tri-di-o, tri-di-o.
And when we reach the hill top, The wild deer will be there.
And all the graceful creatures, That breathe the forest air.
Oh, off we go a hunting, A hunting we will go,
A hunter's life is jolly, We love to sing, Oh, ho!
The Linden Tree.......Adapted from Schubert
(The melody sung by the chorus is only a part of the famous Schubert art song. This melody by itself has become so familiar everywhere that it has acquired something of the status of a folk or popular song. The original song is from the Winterreise.)
Beside the gate and fountain There stands a linden tree;
Beneath its spreading shadow, Sweet dreams have come to me.
I carved upon its branches The names I love the best;
In days of joy or sadness It gave me peace and rest.
Now some times as I wander I think I see that tree;
I close my eyes and listen, And then it speaks to me.
Though far away and lonely, I hear it as I roam;
I think its rustling branches Are calling "Now, come home!"
Enchanting Bells from The Magic Flute
Mozart
That chiming enchanting That chiming so rare
La, ra, la, la, la, la, ra, la, La, la, la, ra, la.
I ne'er heard such magic As floats on the air!
La, ra, la, la, la, la, ra, la, La, la, la, ra, la.
The Magician..............Mozart
A story now I wish to tell-This is the way to cast a spell.
A maid once met a handsome lad, He gazed at her with eyes so sad;
One look, and then her eyes no other lads could see! A great magician he must be!
And while she looked her heart would race; Then she would blush and hide her face.
Poor lass, he had bewitched her so That all she said was yes or no!
She stammered yes and no and yes and no you see. A great magician he must be!
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Still, Still, Still.............Folk Song
Still, still, still, While the baby slumbers, be still!
The angels sing their songs so holy While he sleeps in manger lowly,
Still, still, still, While the baby slumbers, be still!
"Sleep, sleep, sleep, Oh, baby, sweetly sleep."
We hear the song so soft and mild. Mary soothes the little child:
"Sleep, sleep, sleep, Oh, baby, sweetly sleep."
Sanctus
Schubert
This is a part of a mass which Schubert wrote to be sung in German rather than in the usual Latin.
Holy, holy, holy, Holy is the Lord.
Holy, holy, holy, Holy and adored.
Everlasting Father, Great eternal One.
Source of hope and comfort Since life was begun.
Holy, holy, holy, Holy is the Lord.
Holy, holy, holy, Holy and adored.
Wonderful and loving, Blessed is His word,
Holy, holy, holy, Holy is the Lord.
The Pinzgauer Song...........Folk Song
The folks from Pinzgauer went on a journey one fine day; They carried heavy sacks and they sang along the way:
Zacha-hi! zscha-he! zscha-ho! As down the road we go!
Now ev'rybody, ev'ry, ev'ry, ev'ry, ev'ry, ev'ry, Ev'ryone sing a song, hi ho,
Yes, sing a song, hi ho!
They loved to chant their Songs as they travelled here and there; They really couldn't sing, but they didn't seem to care; Zscha-hi.....
Frohe Botschaft--The Message........Folk Song
Sung in German dialect
Kommt a Vogerl geflogen; Setzt sich nieder auf mein Fuss.
Hat a Zetterl im Goscherl Und vom Dirnderl an Gruss.
Liebes Vogerl, flieg weiter; Nimm an Gruss mit und Kuss!
Und i kann di nit begleiten, Weil i hier bleiben muss.
See the wee bird come flying, On my foot let him rest!
He has brought me a letter From the one I love best.
Little bird, fly back quickly, Take a kiss to my dear.
Though I'm longing to see her, Tell her I must stay here.
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM Cradle Song..............Folk Song
Oh, heidschi, bum bcidschi, now sleep, dear; May your slumber be peaceful and deep, dear.
The angels who guard you will look down in love; They'll send you a dream about heaven above.
Oh, Heidschi, bum beidschi, bum, bum; Oh, heidschi, bum beidschi, bum, bum.
Oh, heidschi, bum beidschi, sweet dreams, dear; Above in the sky the moon beams, dear.
See that angel so small on a white horse there too-And his lantern that glows where a star's shining through.
Oh, Heidschi, bum bcidschi, bum, bum; Oh, heidschi, bum beidschi, bum, bum.
The Question..............Folk Song
When day is bright I start on my way. Where have you been--Say
I meet my girl-Oh, don't you love me any more"
What does she say I answer, "Now my dear, on a day
Why, when she sees me, she asks me: "He! Like this bright day,
Say will you come You must be gay."
Why must you go And then she smiles at me and says "He!
Now answer yes-Say will you come .....
Please don't say no!
Symphony No. 8 in B minor ("Unfinished") . . . 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
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 thirty-one, 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.
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At the end of 1822 and early in 1823, Schubert's illness was developing at a rapid pace. His increasing poverty and the continual failure to interest publishers and the public in his compositions had left him deeply discouraged and full of despair. Yet nothing could stop the flow of his music which he continued to write with little hope of ever having it sold or performed. From his period of physical suffering and mental distress came some of the richest products of his genius-Rosamund, the Schone Mullerin cycle, such immortal songs as "Du bist die Ruh" and "Der Zweig," and the "Unfinished" Symphony.
Why Schubert failed to complete the B-minor Symphony will always remain one of the major unsolved mysteries in the history of music. Whether his inspira?tion ran out, or he lost interest after becoming absorbed in other works, or whether the rest of the manuscript was carelessly destroyed--there are countless explana?tions--we will perhaps never know with certainty.
These facts we do know, however. He composed the symphony as a gift for the town of Graz in Styria, Austria, which had elected him an honorary member of its Mustkverein. The following letter of acknowledgment was written by Schubert, September 20, 1823:
Honored Musical Society:
I sincerely thank you for the Honorary Member's Diploma which you have been so good as to send me, and which, on account of my long absence from Vienna, I received only a few days ago. May my devotion to the art of music succeed in making me worthy one day of this distinction. In order to express my liveliest thanks in music, I will make so bold as to present your honored Society at the earliest date with the score of one of my symphonies.
With the deepest respect, I remain The Society's most grateful and devoted servant,
Franz Schubert
He had begun the symphony in September of 1822 at the age of twenty-five, and after completing two movements and sketches for a third, he gave it (August, 1824) to his friend and champion, Josef Hiittenbrenner, to present in the Graz Musical Society. Josef delivered the manuscript to his brother Anselm in Graz with Schubert's request. For some unknown reason, it never reached its destina?tion, and for forty years no trace of it was found. In March, 1860, Josef Hiitten?brenner wrote to Johann Herbeck, then conductor of the Vienna Gesellschajt der Musikjreunde urging him to perform a work of his brother Anselm, remarking incidentally that Anselm had in his possession the manuscript of a Schubert Symphony in B minor which he considered "equal to any one of the symphonies of Beethoven." It was not until 1865, five years later, that Herbeck finally visited Anselm at Graz, ostensibly to get his permission to perform one of his works, but no doubt using this means to acquire the Schubert work. Among the piles of yellow manuscripts, he found inscribed in Schubert's handwriting "Sinfonia in H moll von Franz Schubert. Wien, den 30 Octob. 1822."
With Anselm's permission, he took the symphony with him and two months later, on December 17, 1865, conducted the first performance at a Gesellschajt concert in Vienna. Thus, forty-three years after its creation, and thirty-seven years after the death of its creator, one of the world's most cherished and beloved works was given to the world.
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Concerto No. 5, K. 219, for Violin and Orchestra . . . Mozart
In keeping with his custom of going into a subject thoroughly, from its very foundation, and gaining proficiency by continuous work in one direction, Mozart, between April and December, 1775, composed five concertos for the violin.. These works are by no means slight, fugitive attempts but carefully conceived works of considerable compass. As Mozart made a practice of entering the day of the month and the year in which he finished his works, it is possible to assign the exact date to this concerto in A major. On the manuscript score there stands the following inscription: "Concerto di violino di Wolfgango Amadeo Mozart Salisburgo li 20 de Decembre 1775." Unlike Mozart's divertimenti, the violin concertos are less complicated works, making little demand upon virtuosity yet striving continuously for a newer freedom of form and expression. Under the guidance of his father, a famous violin teacher, Mozart had become familiar with the brilliant concertos of such great Italian masters as Vivaldi, Corelli, Tartini, Geminiani, and Locatelli. On his visits to Italy, he heard the more contemporary music of the younger generation of composers, particularly that of Nardini and Boccherini, music in which the former galant style, strict in form and full of technical effect, was giving way to a more elastic and sensuous one. The transi?tion can easily be detected from the traditional Vivaldiand Corelli-like writing of the first two concertos (B-flat, K. 207; D, K. 211) to the more direct and per?sonally lyrical quality of the last three (G, K. 216; D, K. 218; A, K. 219). In these Mozart reveals a new profundity and fluency of expression for which there is no factual explanation. Within the three months that separated the second and third concertos, Mozart, for some reason unrevealed by the researcher's probe, gained an artistic maturity and insight that lifted the last three concertos to the creative level of his most characteristic works. "Suddenly," writes Einstein, "there is a new depth and richness to Mozart's whole language."!
The A-major concerto, the last of the five, was written when Mozart was nine?teen years of age and is, according to Alfred Einstein, "unsurpassed for brilliance, tenderness and wit. The first and last movements are full of surprises ... in the first movement, the half improvisation way in which the violin makes its appear?ance, ... the alternation between gracefulness in march tempo, good natured roughness, and cajolery; in the last movement, instead of quotation such as had occurred in the rondos of the two preceding works, a humorous outbreak of sound and fury in 'Turkish' style--it is in duple meter and contrasts as naturally as it combines with the irresistible tempo di minueto of the first portion of the movement."!
? There are two later violin concertos, one in D (K. 271a) and one in E-flat (K. 268), both unaulhenticated. t Einstein, op. cit., p. 280. t Ibid., p. 281.
34
FOURTH CONCERT Saturday Evening, May 7
Overture and Allegro from "La Sultane" . Couperin-Milhaud
Francois Couperin was born in Paris, Novem?ber 10, 1668; died there September 12, 1733.
Taken as a whole, the definitive, manifold, and complex art of "Couperin le grand," as he was respectfully referred to by his contemporaries, forms a kind of compendium of the activities of French instrumental music in the eighteenth century. It embodies its purest and most characteristic qualities. Climaxing, as did Johann Sebastian Bach, a family of musical distinction famous for over two centuries, Francois Couperin wrote in all of the musical forms known to his period except opera. With his rapidly increasing publications after 1713, his fame as a composer spread throughout Europe. Already recognized as a most distinguished and brilliant performer on the harpsichord, he won further fame in 1716 as the author of a famous technical treatise, L'Art de toucher de clavecin. In all of these capacities, as performer, composer, and author, he influenced many of the great names of his period, especially Johann Sebastian Bach, who adopted his methods, taught his compositions, and used him as a model while composing the French Suites.
Nietzche, who protested so strongly against "romantic disorder--the hodge?podge of tones, with its aspiration after the elevated, the sublime, the involved," would have delighted in Couperin's circumspect workmanship and lack of re?dundancy. Here is the art he yearned for, "buoyant, fluid art, divinely artificial --that coruscates like a clear flame in a cloudless sky."
The prelude and allegro on tonight's program are the first two movements of a six movement "Sonade en quatuor," a quartet for strings and clavecin con-tinuo, scored for the modern orchestra by Darius Milhaud at the suggestion of Vladimir Golschmann.
"Thy Glorious Deeds Inspired My Tongue" from Samson . Handel
Georg Friedrich Handel was born at Halle, Febru?ary 23, 1685; died in London, April 14, 17S9.
From the beginning of his career, Handel was the "People's Composer." No doubt this was because of the cosmopolitan training he received in Germany, Italy, and England, and to the fact that he chose opera as his medium--in the eighteenth century the most popular and spectacular form of musical entertain?ment. But there was also something inherent in his music that could account for
A "Sonade" is a suite of several movements for an ensemble of several instruments. This work is to be found in Volume X of Maurice Cauchie's twelve-volume edition of Couperin's works (1932-33), the publication of which was sponsored by Mrs. Louise B. Dyer.
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the position he gained in the hearts of the public in his day; his expression was direct and simple, with no ostentatious display for its own sake. His music had little of the introspective quality that was characteristic of his greater but less popular contemporary, Bach; and it was this nonsubjective quality that made his style irresistible in its appeal to the masses.
Handel, known to the public today largely as the composer of Messiah and frequently performed suites such as the Water Music, was to his generation the outstanding composer of Italian opera in Europe--as famous and admired in Italy itself as in his native Germany or in England, the land of his adoption.
In 1741, Handel's fortunes were at their lowest ebb. His last Italian operas, Itneneo and Deidamia, had failed to attract the public. Ignored by the fickle London society that had so lionized him during the height of his success but who now spoke of him as a burned out fire, Handel withdrew from all social and pro?fessional activity. In spite of the fact that Pope, Steel, Hogarth, Fielding, and others of their group had declared unceasingly that he was the greatest composer of the day, the public had, from 1735 on, turned from his operas to more divert?ing entertainments. Ignored by his public and in debt from his failures, Handel, in desperation, fled London for Dublin. Before he departed, however, he had com?pleted the glorious Messiah (September 14, 1741) and the mighty Samson
During the nine months he remained in Ireland, Messiah had its first and sen?sationally successful performance (Dublin, April 13, 1742). Upon his return to London, he was surprised to find public opinion completely changed from scorn and neglect to recognition and respect. Perhaps the success of Messiah in Dublin had something to do with it, but Pope's famous passage in The Dunciad (Book 4) extolling Handel's greatness was the real cause for the change of heart. Warning the London public that it had been seduced by the wanton Italian opera, and was now in the chains of the Empress of Dullness, he had written these magnifi?cent lines:
But soon, ah, soon, rebellion will commence,
If music meanly borrows aid from Sense:
Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands;
To stir, to rouse, to shake the Soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars' drums.
Arrest him, Empress, or you sleep no more--
She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian Shore.
And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown,
And all the nations summon'd to the Throne:
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
Encouraged by his friendly reception, Handel produced Samson at Covent Garden on February 18, 1743. At the second performance, King George and all London society were present, and Handel was once again acclaimed the master.
With the exception of one aria "Let the Bright Seraphim," and the following chorus "Let Their Celestial Concerts," which were completed October 12, 1742, upon his return to London.
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FOURTH CONCERT
His ultimate triumph came sixteen years later, when at death he was placed in Westminster Abbey to lie among England's literary immortals.
The aria on tonight's program is sung by Manoah, father of Samson. It occurs in Act I, Scene III, at his entrance. He looks upon his son, blinded and in chains, and in a recitative grieves at seeing him "ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound, thy foe's derision, captive, poor and blind." In the aria which follows, he recalls the joy he found in his son's glorious and heroic deeds and voices his grief as he tunes his "song to sorrow" and sets his "harp to notes of woe."
Two Songs from Vier ernste Gescinge......Brahms
"O Tod wie bitter bist du" "Wenn ich mit menschen"
Only those who have reached the intimate and confidential Brahms of the chamber music and the songs can wholly understand and love him, for all of his great humanity is contained in them. The austere intellectuality sensed in many of his symphonic movements disappears in the abundant, warmly breathing corporeality of the songs. In the space of four or eight bars he can say things it takes a proud symphonic movement to express. Everything a lonely soul has felt--anxiety, bliss, desire and renunciation, self-reproach and remorse, incredu?lous happiness and boundless woe--find expression in the dark rich beauty of the Lieder. Unlike the songs of Schubert and Hugo Wolf, those of Brahms show a closer intertwining of vocal and piano parts. There is a greater elaboration of instrumental background, no longer a mere accompaniment but reflecting the nature and mood of the poetry and at the same time blending into thematic unity with the voice. The vocal line usually lies embedded in instrumental ramifications, and grows with them into symphonic oneness.
Brahms wrote about two hundred songs. Like all great song writers, he often turned to inferior poets and poems, seeking not literary value but mood and feeling which he could elucidate and sustain by means of music. His choice was prompted usually by purely musical considerations, but he seemed particularly inspired by folk poetry and scriptural words. Although Brahms was a member of the Lutheran Protestant church and of a deeply religious nature, he did not sub?mit to a particular dogma. His love for the Bible was implanted in him early, and nurtured by his simple, God-fearing parents. It consoled him in the deepest sor?rows (Deutsches Requiem); it sustained his constant hope for a better world (Begriibnisgesang); and it gave tongue to his thoughts at approaching death (Vier ernste Gesiinge).
The Vier ernste Gesdnge ("Four Serious Songs") is the last published work of Brahms, the very essence of his inner nature, and composed in his truest and most profound manner. "All that is immortal in Johannes Brahms," writes Specht, "is here enshrined like a talisman which discloses to the initiated a clue to the myster?ies of the Universe. Here is the loftiness of his sublime and deeply emotional
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inspiration, his inexplicable art that is revealed only to those who listen carefully to these symphonic, Biblical, yet pagan songs, his wrestling for the highest things, and his humanity purged in the fires of sorrow. Only in Bach's Passion music, in the last quartets of Beethoven, in Tristan, in Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, and in Bruckner's adagios, are there moments that take us so close to the secret of all things human, and suddenly unfold an answer to every question." A heavy, somber tone of resignation and profound weltschmerz underlie this lyrical work of his last years. Like Arnold Bocklin, whose self-portrait pictured Death fiddling at his shoulder, Brahms, in these heart-rending songs, is preoccupied with thoughts of his own death. The first of the four songs (omitted) is from Ecclesi-astes 3, and sings of transient and mortal man; the second (omitted) is from Ecclesiastes 4 and exalts the dead above the living. The third, "O Tod wie bitter bist du," from Sirach 41, begins with the terrible indictment, "O Death how bitter Thou art," and continues in a tone of deep compassion for him "whose strength doth faileth," and for him to whom death comes as a deliverer from pain, and ends with the resigned "O Death how welcome Thou art." The fourth and last song, "Wenn ich mit Menschen," is from I Corinthians 13 and is a wonderfully touching apostrophe to death. It turns in bitterest need to love, hope, and faith as man's escape from the torturing labyrinth of life--a firm beatific faith in God and the all-embracing power of His love.
These songs, so monumental, yet so simple and unadorned, are the deeply heartfelt "swan song" of a great artist, whose life was one of care and toil, yet to whom death came not as to the needy, the poor, and the infirm--a beneficent savior--but as a grim pitiless destroyer of a life still rich with promise. In their profoundly moving and deeply personal expression, Brahms reconciles death with his steadfast faith in the Divine Power.
"0 Tod, wie bitter dist du"
O death, 0 death, how bitter, how bitter art thou unto him that dwelleth in peace, to him that hath joy in his possessions, and liveth free from trouble, to him whose ways are pros?perous in all things, to him that still may eat! O death, O death, how bitter, how bitter art thou !
O death, how welcome thy call to him that is in want and whose strength doth fail him, and whose life is but a pain, who hath nothing to hope for, and cannot look for relief! O death, O death, how welcome is thy call.
"Wenn ich mit Menschen"
Though, I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, then am I be?come as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I can prophesy, and understand all mysteries, and am powerful in knowledge and though I have the gift and can move the moun?tains, and have not charity, yet am I nothing worth.
And though I give my worldly goods to feed the poor, and though I give my fleshly body, my body to be burned, and have not charity it profiteth me nothing.
For now we see thru a glass darkly, but then face to face; but then shall I know even as I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Richard Specht, Johannes Brahms, trans, by Eric Bloom (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1930).
33
FOURTH CONCERT Epigraph...............Dello Joio
Norman Dello Joio was born in New York City, January 24, 1913.
Norman Dello Joio is one of America's most distinguished composers. He de?scended from an Italian family who, for three generations, produced musicians. His early musical training was received from his father, a church organist, and his godfather, Pietro Yon. He was twenty-five years of age before he gave up his two conflicting activities, leader of a jazz band and a semiprofessional ball player, to devote his life to composition. After receiving the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award for a trio, he studied with Paul Hindemith in the early forties and won the Town Hall Composition Award for his Magnificat (1942). Since then he has been honored with two Guggenheim fellowships (1942, 1946), a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1946), and an award from the New York Critics' Circle (1949). His major compositions, "Concertante" for clarinet and orchestra, an orchestral suite "New York Profiles," Three Symphonic Dances, Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, Concert Music for Orchestra, an opera, "The Triumph of Joan," and a "dramatic cantata" for baritone, "The Lamentation of Saul," have all had successful performances and have added to his significance as a developing, creative artist of the first order.
"Epigraph" was commissioned by Mrs. Frederic H. Douglas of Denver, in memory of her brother, the late A. Lincoln Gillespie, Jr., a native of Philadelphia and patron of the arts. It was written for Paul Caston and the Denver Symphony Orchestra and had its first performance January 29, 1952.
"My fipigraph," wrote Mr. Dello Joio at the premiere of the work, "is simply a piece written in memory of a man. It is at best a musical inscription that is con?ceived in terms of my own imagination as to what Mr. A. Lincoln Gillespie is like. It is musically in form a three-part song. I did not feel compelled to write a dirge-like type of music, but a music that sang, maybe roughly at times, and maybe with humor--because I suspect that is what Mr. Gillespie would have wanted."
Five Old American Songs.....Arr. Aaron Copland
"The Boatmen's Dance" was published in Boston in 1842 as an "original banjo melody," by Old Dan. D. Emmett, who later composed "Dixie." From the Harris Collection oj American Poetry and Plays in Brown University.
"The Dodger" was sung by Mrs. Emma Dusenberry of Mena, Arkansas, who learned it in the 1880's. Supposedly it was used in the Cleveland-Blaine presi?dential campaign. It was published by John A. and Alan Lomax in Our Singing Country,
"Long Time Ago" was issued in 1837 by George Pope Morris, who adapted the words, and Charles Edward Horn, who arranged the music from an anony?mous, original "black-face" tune. It is also found in the Harris Collection.
By permission of Boosey Hawkes, Inc.
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"Simple Gifts" was a favorite song of the Shaker sect, from the period 18377. The melody and words were quoted by Edward D. Andrews in his book of Shaker rituals, songs, and dances, entitled The Gift To Be Simple.
"I Bought Me a Cat" is a children's nonsense song. This version was sung to the composer by the American playwright Lynn Riggs, who learned it during his boyhood in Oklahoma.
Concerto for Orchestra...........Bartok
Bela Bartok was born at Nagyszentmiklos in Hungary, March 25, 1881; died in New York, September 26, 1945.
The work on tonight's program is the quintessence of the art of Bela Bartok, the most complete musician of our period, and as time may well decree, its most significant composer. He was distinguished in every sphere of the art he served so conscientiously and selflessly; no creative artist in any field was ever so com?pletely dedicated to his art, or lived such a life of self-denial in its interest. The extent of his musical activity as composer and scholar is staggering to contem?plate; to even begin to recount his manifold achievements would quickly consume the space allotted to this whole program.
In brief, his music retains, ten years after his death, a powerful individuality and refreshing originality seldom encountered in our day. It offers perhaps the greatest challenge known to contemporary musical thought and will no doubt do so for some time to come. In the 1920's his idiom became the standard of "modern music" everywhere in the world; he was the inventor of one of the most experimental and widely practiced styles of the period between the two wars. From this era of spiritual atrophy, moral stupefaction, and prevailing sterility, he emerged not only a continuing experimentalist to the end of his life but an artist of the most exacting standards. From a relentless harshness and baffling complexity, his art matured and mellowed into something warmly human and communicatively direct, without sacrifice of any of its originality, certainty, or technical inventiveness. He seems to have realized, as Oscar Wilde once ob?served, that "nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly."
Bartok was equally distinguished as a musical scholar; with his encyclopedic knowledge of folk music, he became one of the leading authorities of our time. The profundity of his scholarship was unique among creative artists. He not only in?vestigated the music of his native Hungary, of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugo?slavia, and French North Africa with the authority and thoroughness of the most meticulous scientist, but as a composer he subjected it to a complete artistic transformation and distillation. It was never used as an exotic element for spicing up his own musical language in the manner of Franz Liszt and Brahms, who with their so-called "Hungarian" rhapsodies and dances misled generations of musi?cians as to the true nature of real Hungarian folk music. A nationalistic or racial artist like Bartok or Bloch has to do more than merely transcribe literally the
See notes on Bloch, pages 55-56.
40
FOURTH CONCERT
music of his people. It is not the task or the aim of an original composer merely to make arrangements of a few folk songs. He has to be so permeated with the spirit of the music of his people that its characteristic features are woven into the texture of his score almost unconsciously. Thus, as in Bartok and Bloch, a personal style becomes so blended with the racial or national ideas that to dis?tinguish between the two is impossible. With Bartok, it became the very sub?stance of his musical thought and the substratum of every score he created.
Bartok wrote four major works during the last four years of his life which he spent in America. The first of these was the Concerto jor Orchestra on this eve?ning's program; the second, a violin solo sonata dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin; the third and fourth, a piano concerto (No. 3), and a viola concerto which remained unfinished at his death. The Concerto jor Orchestra was composed for the Kous-sevitzky Musical Foundation as a memorial tribute to Natalie Koussevitzky and was first performed by the Boston Symphony in Boston, December 1, 1944. It was written during his convalescence from a serious illness to which he finally succumbed a little over a year later. As time passes, it emerges as perhaps the most successful of Bartok's scores. It is astonishingly fresh and spontaneous and unburdened by any of the exotic expression or pedantic intellectuality that marred his earlier work and that tended to isolate him from his audience and fellow artists. Its wide rhythmic variety and potency, bold and striking counter?point, and daring color effects are directly impressive without sacrificing its essen?tial lyricism and complete eloquence. Although it was created under conditions of mental depression and physical pain, only occasionally do its pages reflect nostalgic or melancholy brooding. Its total effect is one of strength, exuberance, and certitude.
Intimate glimpses into the conditions surrounding its composition are provided by H. W. Heinsheimer:
In the spring of 1943, the sickness that had gripped Bartok for some time seemed noticeably worse. He was running a temperature. He became weaker, more irritable, even more difficult to approach. He had to cancel lectures and instructed us not to book him for any recitals any more; he was sure he would be unable to appear in public again. He turned down a scientific assignment in spite of the fact that the university that made the offer explained that he was welcome to the honorarium and could begin work at any time, no matter how indefinite, in the future. But so deeply was he filled with his sense of responsibility that he was unwilling to accept as long as he was not absolutely sure that he would be able to deliver his part of the bargain. Sometimes it was very difficult to have to deal with such a stubborn display of prin?ciples, which to him were inviolable.
Serious as his physical condition already was, it seemed to be aggravated by the growing feeling of solitude and bitterness that had taken hold of him. He saw himself as a neglected stranger, away from the main flow of musical activity in America. Once in a while he remem?bered with bitter nostalgia the days of his European past. The artists and conductors who played his music in America were, to a large extent, old acquaintances, many of them former Hungarians. Only a few of the great stars showed interest in his music, and when Yehudi Menuhin played his "Violin Concerto," Bartok was so deeply moved by the unexpected attention of a great artist that he wrote a new sonata for Menuhin.
But now all this was forgotten as the composer was brooding, sick, poor, in the enforced inactivity of a hospital room. We had little to cheer him up. Small things didn't matter. There were no big ones to report.
41
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
It was then, in the summer of 1943, that something happened in the room in Doctors Hospital in New York that strangely and mysteriously resembles an event in another sick?room, 152 years earlier: the sudden appearance of the "mysterious stranger," who had come to commission the dying Mozart to write the "Requiem." This time, in streamlined New York, the messenger was no mystery man. He was a well-clad, elegant gentleman of very aristocratic bearing. His name was Serge Koussevitzky.
The visit came as an unexpected surprise to the sick man. Koussevitzky was one of the conductors who had never played any of Bartok's important scores. I don't think that the two men had ever met before. The conductor was alone. He took a chair, moved it close to the bed, and began to explain his mission. He had come to offer Bela Bartok a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation--a commission carrying $1,000 and the assurance of a first performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The composer was free to choose any form of music he cared to write. There was just one condition: the score was to be dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Natalie Koussevitzky, the conductor's wife, who had died a few years earlier and in whose memory the foundation had been established. It was to be a requiem, after all.
Koussevitzky himself later told me the details of the conversation and as he recalled it he seemed genuinely moved. Bartok, touched without doubt by the personal appearance of the conductor, who could have sent a letter or have had the message delivered by one of his countless disciples, declined. He was much too sick. He could not commit himself. He could not accept money for a work he might never be able to write.
The conductor had been prepared for just this situation. Before the foundation had de?cided to give the commission to Bartok, friends of the composer (Fritz Reiner and Joseph Szigeti, among others) had approached Koussevitzky and the members of his board of trus?tees, urging that Bartok be chosen. They had explained his precarious circumstances and the difficulty of helping the proud man with anything he might consider as charity. It had to be a real commission, even if, due to Bartok's delicate health, nothing whatever came of it.
Koussevitzky explained that he was bound by the trustees' decision. A commission, once decided upon, could not be taken back. The money was given to the composer, no matter whether he was willing or able to deliver the piece. These were the terms of the covenant. He had, in fact, under the rules of the foundation, already brought with him a check for $500 which he was obliged to leave with Bartok, together with an official letter stating the terms of the commission.
Bartok made no reply. He suddenly began talking of other matters. He asked the conduc?tor, almost urgently, to stay on. The two men had a long talk. Bartok did most of the talk?ing, unburdening his troubled mind. He covered many subjects and became flushed with a new and very touching confidence in life. It was almost an hour later that the nurse came in and the conductor took his leave.
Undoubtedly the learned specialists, who attended Bela Bartok in his sickness that two years later consumed what was left of him, will have more logical explanations for the in?credible recovery that set in almost immediately after Koussevitzky's visit. All we know is that soon they found him to be so much better that they released him from the hospital. He left New York for Asheville, North Carolina. He found a quiet room in the outskirts where neither traffic lights nor radios interfered with the absolute concentration that he craved. At last he smelled fresh air again, saw the sky, felt the soil. The Hearst Building, the Fisk Build?ing, the entrance to the Independent Subway station, the newsstand, the assortment of sweat and dirt he had viewed from his window on 57th Street were replaced by flowers and trees. And the constantly tormenting screams of auto horns and police sirens were drowned in mem?ory by the concert of birds. Their cries and calls can be heard in the second movement of Bartok's "Third Piano Concerto," which he sketched in Asheville and completed, with the exception of seventeen bars, in a grim race with death in the summer of 1945. Here he had returned to the sources of nature. In the last pages he ever wrote, the Hungarian, the Euro-
Bela Barl6k played his First Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky, February 17, 1928--J.N.B.
42
FOURTH CONCERT
pean, the great citizen of the world set a small lovely monument to the birds of North Caro?lina. . . .
He was happy again. "Don't send me special delivery letters or telegrams," he wrote us, a few days after he had arrived in Asheville. "I get all my mail only once a day. Everything is delivered at the same time--mail, papers, special deliveries, wires. Here, time makes no differ?ence." He had no piano. Once in a while his room was very cold. He went for walks, always alone. There was nobody to talk to, only one family where he occasionally took a meal and where he would practice the piano from time to time. He asked us to send them a selection of his music as a token of his gratitude.
His letters, deviating strangely from the austerity we had come to expect, sounded almost elated. He included short health bulletins, giving us a graph of his morning and night tem?peratures with slightly ironic but not all pessimistic comments. Most important of all, he asked for music paper--lots of it. Then, suddenly, he wrote that he had completed a major part of a new work he was writing for Serge Koussevitzky. He was sending us the score to be copied. Soon a second and a final third batch arrived. It was the "Concerto for Orchestra."
He did not return from Asheville in time to be present at its tumultuous premiere in Bos?ton in December, 1944. But he observed its immediate success, its acceptance as one of the great masterpieces of our generation. He knew that this time he had touched the hearts of his audiences, and he was present to hear it and take many of his gentle, very touching, terribly serious bows when the work was played in New York. A few months later he was dead.
Shortly after Bartok's death a memorial concert of some of his chamber music, given at the New York Public Library, was attended by a company of his friends and colleagues. On that occasion the musicologist Curt Sachs discussed some aspects of his work and his personality:
Bela Bartok was one of the greatest composers and one of the greatest teachers of our time. But this does not tell all. He was one of our greatest scholars, too. He spent his life collecting, transcribing, and evaluating thousands of melodies of the people of Hungary, of Romania, of Yugoslavia, and of the Arabian countries. We would be wronging him were we to stress only these multifarious activities--composition, teaching, research--and brand them virtuosity. In a universal genius such as he, these things go to make up the whole. Bela Bartok's creative, intellectual and educational powers were merely the multiple expression of an all-embracing personality.
Again we would be wronging him were we to stress only his superlative musicianship. This he achieved because as a human being he was so honest, so pure and so affectionate. No one who has not looked into his bright and knowing eyes, who has not plumbed the depths of his loving heart, who has not felt the warmth that permeated his whole being can do full justice to the man and the artist.
It is this very universal quality of the man that does not permit us to call Bela Bartok a Hungarian nationalist as critics have been prone to do until now. True, he was profoundly rooted in his native country and he had great affection for its folk melodies. Although his roots were deep sunk in the fertile soil of Hungary and although he drank richly of her sap, he grew to such stature and sent his business so far beyond her horizons that we can rightfully say he belongs to the world. In his struggle to free himself from degenerate romanticism and to attain a new classicism, a struggle in which all the masters of his generation participated, he, like his friend and brother-in-arms, Zoltan Kodaly, found his best inspiration in the vigorous melodic lines and rhythms of folk music. For him this music was not a foreign folk lore and a stimulating exoticism as it was to Liszt and Brahms; it was a language which he spoke without affectation and which he was able to oppose to the accepted idiom of his time. Therefore, we say once again, Bartok is not to us an honored guest from Puszta, but a beloved citizen of the world and of our own country as a part of that world.
H. W. Hcinshrimer, Boston Symphony Programs, Season 1949-50, pp. 1954-61.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
It is in the spirit of such kinship that we are gathered here ... in celebrating Bela Bartok this evening we do not mourn the dead, but we honor, lovingly and gratefully, the ever-living.
Bartok's popularity with the public was slow in coming, for he made no con?cessions whatever to popular taste and was in fact disdainful of immediate suc?cess. He was fearless and obdurate to his own disadvantage while he lived, and the world consequently treated him unjustly. It is a tribute to the sincerity, profundity, and richness of his art that he is emerging slowly but surely from the oblivion and neglect he experienced during his life, to be received affection?ately by sincere audiences eager for new and exciting musical experiences. All honor to an artist of Bartok's uncompromising integrity and modesty who could survive the conscientious paranoia of our time, and emerge from the unhealthy morass of our day with such dedication and sustaining strength of purpose.
At the premiere of the work in Boston the program book contained the follow?ing matter concerning the Concerto, contributed by the composer:
The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement and lugubrious death-song of the third, the life-assertion of the last one.
The title of this symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat the single instruments or instrument groups in a "concertant" or soloistic manner. The "virtuoso" treatment appears, for instance, in the fugato sections of the development of the first move?ment (brass instruments), or in the "perpetuum mobile"-like passage of the principal theme in the last movement (strings), and, especially, in the second movement, in which pairs of instruments consecutively appear with brilliant passages.
As for the structure of the work, the first and fifth movements are written in a more or less regular sonata form. The development of the first contains fugato sections for brass; the exposition in the finale is somewhat extended, and its development consists of a fugue built on the last theme of the exposition. Less traditional forms are found in the second and third movements. The main part of the second consists of a chain of independent short sections, by wind instruments consecutively introduced in five pairs (bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes, and muted trumpets). Thematically, the five sections have nothing in common. A kind of "trio"-a short chorale for brass instruments and side drum--follows, after which the five sections are recapitulated in a more elaborate instrumentation. The structure of the fourth movement like?wise is chain-like; three themes appear successively. These constitute the core of the move?ment, which is enframed by a misty texture of rudimentary motifs. Most of the thematic material of this movement derives from the "Introduction" to the first movement. The form of the fourth movement--"Intermezzo interrotto" ("Interrupted Intermezzo")--could be rendered by the letter symbols "ABA--interruption--BA."t
Philadelphia Orchestra Programs, Season 1947-48, pp. 513-15. t Boston Symphony Programs, Season 1944-45, pp. 606-8.
44
FIFTH CONCERT Sunday Afternoon, May 8
Carmina Burana..............Orff
Carl Orff was born in Munich, Germany, July 10, 189S.
Until a few years ago, the name of Carl Orff was almost totally unknown in America. Long recognized in Europe as a famous coach and conductor in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt as well as a distinguished composer of choral works, his music in any major proportion had not appeared in our concert halls. With the performance of "Carmina Burana" in San Francisco in 1953, and in Cin?cinnati in 1954 under the direction of Thor Johnson, Orff's success with Ameri?can audiences was sensationally immediate. By the end of this season practically every major choral society in the country will have performed the work given on tonight's program.
The reasons for its sudden popularity are not difficult to explain. It elicits the most spontaneous and vigorous response from an audience by virtue of its start?ling novelty and contagious vitality. Its originality, moreover, does not stem from the customary, but to many often austere and repellent devices of con?temporary music; there are no shocking or extended dissonances, no atonality or any of the more advanced musical idioms used to create its impression. The immediate effectiveness of the work is due, in fact, not so much to its purely musical means, as to unexpected and unique sound effects such as shouts, grunts, sighs, whispers, chatterings, and unnatural vocal tricks. Whether or not the un?questioned freshness and theatrical fascination of this score will assure its per?manence in the great choral repertory is a question, for the score reveals little that is of intrinsic musical value. Its rhythms are fundamentally basic, its harmo?nies diatonic and only occasionally modal, its tonality well-defined. There are few melodies but many melodic fragments that, in their incessant repetition with?out modification, tend ultimately toward monotony, and there is practically no manipulation or development of any of its musical materials. The effect of this music for a time is one of stunning elemental simplicity, but it soon tends to be?come incidental to the fascination of the text which dominates and, at times, subjects the music to a position of servitude. Orff's own statement concerning the relationship between words and music indicates his artistic intention. "Melody and speech belong together, I reject altogether the idea of pure music." Perhaps in this abjuration of his own art, Orff has, like countless other aesthetic theorists before him, doomed his work to ultimate oblivion. In an article on words and music in the New York Herald Tribune for November 28, 1954, Paul Lang wrote: "It is quite significant that whenever a word-begotten musical style has ap?peared, it has been short-lived, because the conventional, that is, purely musical melodic idiom of the times soon forced it to compromise and then to accept terms.
45
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Carl Orff's new, at the same time very old, attempt to compel music to surrender practically unconditionally to the words, while a most interesting experiment, will be no more successful than other similar attempts have been across the cen?turies ... we must realize that as long as music is merely a vehicle, and has no independent value beyond its ability to follow the text, it cannot be the subject of musical aesthetics."
But program notes are really not the medium for critical or oracular pronounce?ments. The fact remains that Orff's originality of thought and purpose is every?where evident in this exhilarating yet simply motivated and clearly organized score.
Orff's major work is a triptych which he calls The Triumphs of Aphrodite. The first of the three is the "Carmina Burana," completed in 1936, literally translated as "songs of Beuron," so named for the old Bavarian monastery at Benediktbeuron in southwest Germany where the poems were found in 1803 by Johann Andreas Schmeller and published in 1847. The collection contains ap?proximately two hundred sacred and secular poems dating from the thirteenth century and written in Vulgar Latin or in colloquial provincial dialects then cur?rent with goliards. This motley society of wandering scholars or young ecclesi?astics, who had left their orders and traveled from university to university, played an important, if at times indecorous, part in the cultural life of the period between the later tenth to early thirteenth centuries. Evidently the poems, which in their subject matter cover an almost complete range of human experi?ences from unabashed worship of the physical pleasures and appetites to the most contemplative kind of religious devotion, came into the hands of disapprov?ing Benedictine fathers and were buried in the walls of the monastery where they remained unknown to the world until excavations in the early nineteenth century brought them to light.
Orff selected twenty-four short poems which lament the turning of fortune's relentless wheel (Prelude--Fortune, Empress of the World); welcome the com?ing of spring (Part I--In Springtime); sing of the pleasures of wine, women, and gambling in the tavern (Part II--In the Tavern); and declare the joys and torture of love (Part III--The Court of Love).
In many instances, the goliard poems were found accompanied with staffless neumes (early musical notation) which cannot today be deciphered.! rfi, fortu?nately, has in no way made an attempt to pedantically reproduce the musical idiom of a past period but by the use of pseudo-Gregorian recitation, vocal melismas, and suggestive instrumentation does at times evoke a kind of archaic medieval atmosphere.
The Abbey was founded in the eighth century by Benedictines, destroyed in the tenth, rebuilt by Augus-tinian monks, who occupied it for a long period and finally abandoned it. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was again established as a Benedictine Monastery and is known today as Beuron.
t The major goliard collections include, in addition to the collection "Carmina Burana" from Benedikt?beuron and now at Munich, an eleventh century MS at Cambridge, England; another in the British Museum, ascribed to Walter Mapes, who is supposed to have helped shape the Arthurian Legends; and MSS at Berne, Florence, Rome, and other places. The only decipherable melody of a goliard song is that to the tenth century lascivious poem "O admirabile Veneris ydolum" found in the Cambridge MS.
46
FIFTH CONCERT
An English translation of the text follows:
PRELUDE----FORTUNE, EMPRESS OF THE
WORLD Chorus
O Fortune,
variable as the moon,
always dost thou
wax and wane. Detestable life,
first dost thou mistreat us,
and then, whimsically, thou heedest our desires.
As the sun melts the ice,
so dost thou dissolve both poverty and power.
Monstrous
and empty fate, thou, turning wheel,
art mean,
voiding good health at thy will.
Veiled
in obscurity, thou dost attack
me also.
To thy cruel pleasure I bare my back.
Thou dost
withdraw my health and virtue,
thou dost
threaten my emotion and weakness with torture.
At this hour,
therefore, let us pluck the strings without delay.
Let us mourn
together, for fate crushes the brave.
Chorus
I lament Fortune's blows
with weeping eyes, for she extorts from me
her gifts, now pregnant
and prodigal, now lean
and sear.
Once was I seated
on Fortune's throne, crowned with a garland
of prosperity. In the bloom
of my felicity I was struck down
and robbed of all my glory.
At the turn of Fortune's wheel,
one is deposed, another is lifted on high
to enjoy a brief felicity. Uneasy sits the king--
let him beware his ruin, for beneath the axle of the wheel
we read the name of Hecuba.
I. IN SPRINGTIME Small Chorus
The bright face of spring
shows itself to the world, driving away
the cold of winter. Flora reigns
in her colorful robes, praised in the canticle
of sweet-sounding woods.
Phoebus laughs
in Flora's lap again. Surrounded by flowers,
Zephyrus breathes the fragrance
of their nectar. Let us compete
for the prize of love.
The sweet nightingale
begins her song, the bright meadows
laugh with flowers. Birds flit about
the pleasant woods, the maidens' chorus
brings a thousand joys.
Baritone Solo
The sun, pure and fine,
tempers all; a new world is opened by the face of April.
This English translation is printed by special arrangement with the copyright owner, Schott and Company, Ltd., London, and their agent, Associated Music Publishers, Inc., New York.
47
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
The heart of man
rushes to love, and over all
the boyish God rules.
The power of Nature's renovation
in the glorious spring commands us
to be joyful. Spring evokes
the wonted ways of love. Hold fast
thy lover!
Love me faithfully,
feel the constant adoration of my heart
and mind. I am with you
even when apart. Whosoever shares my feeling
knows the torture of love.
Chorus
Behold the spring, welcome and long awaited,
which brings back
the pleasures of life. The meadow
with purple flowers is a-bloom,
the sun brightens all things. Now put all sadness aside, for summer returns,
and winter's cold withdraws.
Ice
and snow melt away,
the frost flees,
and spring
sucks the breast of summer. Miserable is he
who neither loves
nor frolics under summer's spell.
Those
who vie for Cupid's prize
taste the sweetness
of honey. Let us, proud and joyful,
be ruled
by Venus. Let us emulate Paris.
48
ON THE LAWN
Orchestra
Chorus and Small Chorus
The noble wood
is filled with buds
and leaves.
Where is my lover
He rode away on horseback.
Alas, who will love me now
Everywhere the forest is in bloom;
I am longing for my lover.
If the wood is green all over,
why does my lover not return
He has ridden away.
Woe is me, who will love me
Soli (Sopranos) and Chorus Shopkeeper, give me color to paint my cheeks, that young men may not resist my graces. Young men, look here, do I not charm you
Make love, good men and gracious women. Love will ennoble you, and you will stand in high respect. Young men, look here, do I not charm you
Hail, o world
so rich in joys. I will obey you always, and accept your bountiful gifts. Young men, look here, do I not charm you
Orchestra Chorus
Here are maidens
in a circle;
they'd like to be without a lover
all the summer through.
Small Chorus
Come, come, my pretty maid,
I wait for thee,
I wait for thee. Come, come, my pretty maid.
FIFTH CONCERT
Sweet rosy mouth,
come and heal my longing.
Come and heal my longing, sweet rosy mouth.
Chorus
Here are maidens
in a circle;
they'd like to be without a lover
all the summer through.
Chorus
Were the world all mine, from the sea to the Rhine,
I should gladly forsake it for the Queen of England in my arms.
II. IN THE TAVERN
Baritone Solo In rage
and bitterness I talk
to myself; made of matter,
ash of the elements, I am like a leaf
which the wind plays with.
If a wise man
builds his house
upon a rock, I, fool,
am like a gliding river which follows
no straight path.
I am swept away
like a pilotless ship, like a bird floating aimlessly
through the air. No fetters, no locks
hold me; I am looking for my like,
and I join the depraved.
The burdens of the heart
weigh too heavily on me. Jesting is lovely
and sweeter than the honeycomb. What Venus commands
is suave labor; love never dwells
in cowardly hearts.
On the broad road I move along
as youth is wont to do. I am entangled in vice,
and unmindful of virtue. Greedy more for lust
than for welfare, dead in soul,
I care only for my body.
Tenor Solo and Male Chorus The roasted cygnet sings: Once I dwelt in the lakes, once I was a beautiful swan.
O miserable me!
Now I am
roasted black!
The cook turns me on the spit, the fire roasts me through, and I am prepared for the feast.
O miserable me!
Now I am
roasted black! I am borne upon a platter and can no longer fly. I catch sight of gnashing teeth.
O miserable me!
Now I am
roasted black!
Baritone Solo and Male Chorus I am the Abbot of Cucany, and I meet with my fellow-drinkers and belong to the sect of Decius. Whosoever meets me in the tavern over dice loses his garments by the end of the day, and, thus denuded, he cries: Wafna, wafna!
what hast thou done, o infamous fate Thou hast taken away all the pleasure of this life.
Male Chorus
When we are in the tavern, unmindful of the grave, we rush to the gaming tables over which we sweat. If you want to know what happens in the tavern (where money gets you wine), then listen to my tale.
Some men gamble, others drink, others shamelessly indulge themselves, and of those
40
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
who stay to gamble, some lose their garments, and others are in sackcloth. There no one is in fear of death, throwing dice for Bacchus:
First, the dice are thrown for wine, which the libertines drink. Then they toast the prisoners twice, then they toast the living thrice. Four times wine is drunk for Christians, five times for the faithful departed, six times for the boastful sisters, seven times for the forest soldiers.
Eight times for the sinful brethren, nine times for the dispersed monks, ten times for the navigators, eleven times for men at odds, twelve times for the penitent, thirteen for the travelers. We drink for Pope and King alike, and then we drink, we drink.
The mistress drinks, the master drinks,
the soldier and the clergyman.
This man drinks, that woman drinks,
the servant and the maid.
The quick man drinks, the lazy drinks,
the white man and the black.
The sedentary drinks, the wanderer drinks,
the ignorant and the learned.
The poor man drinks, the sick man drinks,
the exiled and the unknown.
The youngster drinks, the oldster drinks,
the Bishop and the Deacon.
The sister drinks, the brother drinks,
the old woman and the mother.
Women drink and men drink
by the hundreds and the thousands.
Six hundred coins are not enough
for this aimless
and intemperate drinking.
Though our drink is always gay,
there are ever those who nag,
and we shall be indigent.
May they who nag us be confounded,
and never be inscribed among the just.
ni. THE COURT OF LOVE Soprano Solo and Boys' Chorus
The God of Love flies everywhere and is seized by desire.
50
Young men and young women are rightly joined together.
If a girl lacks a man
she misses all delight;
darkest night
is at the bottom
of her heart: This is bitterest fate.
Baritone Solo
Day and night and all the world
are opposed to me,
and the sound of maidens' voices
makes me weep. Alas, I am filled with sighing
and fear.
0 friends, amuse yourselves and speak as you please. Spare me, a sad man,
for great is my grief. Counsel me,
by your honor.
Thy lovely face
makes me weep a thousand tears
because they heart is made of ice.
Thy single kiss would bring me
back to life.
Soprano Solo
There stood a maid
in a red tunic; when it was touched
the tunic rustled. Eia!
There stood a girl,
like a rose; her face was radiant,
her mouth bloomed. Eia!
Baritone Solo and Chorus
My heart is filled with sighing.
1 am longing for thy beauty. My misery is great.
Manda liet, manda liet, my sweetheart does not come.
FIFTH CONCERT
Thine eyes shine like the sun's rays, like lightning flashes in the night.
Manda liet, manda lict, my sweetheart does not come.
May the Gods look with favor
on my desire
to undo the bonds
of her virginity.
Manda liet, manda liet, my sweetheart does not come.
Soli (3 Tenors, Baritone, 2 Basses)
When a boy and a maiden are alone together,
happy is their union. Their passions mount,
and modesty disappears. An ineffable pleasure pours through their limbs, their arms, their lips.
Double Chorus
Come, come, do not let me die. Hyrca, hyrce, nazaza, trillirivos . ..
Pretty is thy face, the look of thine eyes, the braids of thy hair;
0 how beautiful thou art!
Redder than the rose, whiter than the lily, more beautiful than all the rest; always I shall glory in thee.
Soprano Solo
1 am suspended
between love and chastity,
but I choose
what is before me and take upon myself the sweet yoke.
Soli (Soprano and Baritone), Chorus, and Boys' Chorus
Pleasant is the season,
o maidens; now rejoice,
ye lads.
Oh, oh,oh,
with love I bloom
for a maiden, my new, new love,
of which I perish.
Yielding
gratifies me; refusing
makes me grieve.
Oh, oh.oh,
with love I bloom
for a maiden, my new, new love,
of which I perish.
In winter
man's desires are passive; the breath of spring
makes him lascivious.
Oh, oh.oh,
with love I bloom
for a maiden, my new, new love,
of which I perish.
My maidenhood
excites me, but my innocence
keeps me apart.
Oh, oh,oh,
with love I bloom
for a maiden, my new, new love,
of which I perish.
Come, my mistress,
come with joy, come, my beauty,
for I die.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Oh, oh,oh,
with love I bloom
for a maiden, my new, new love,
of which I perish.
Soprano Solo
Sweetest boy, I give my all to you!
BLANZQXOR AND HELENA
Chorus
Hail to thee, most beautiful,
most precious gem, hail, pride of virgins,
most glorious virgin. Hail, light of the world,
hail, rose of the world. Blanziflor and Helena,
Venus generosa!
FORTUNE, EMPRESS OF THE WORLD Chorus
O Fortune, variable as the moon,
always dost thou wax and wane.
Detestable life,
first dost thou mistreat us,
and then, whimsically, thou heedest our desires.
As the sun melts the ice,
so dost thou dissolve both poverty and power.
Monstrous
and empty fate, thou, turning wheel,
art mean,
voiding good health at thy will.
Veiled
in obscurity, thou dost attack
me also.
To thy cruel pleasure I bare my back.
Thou dost
withdraw my health and virtue,
thou dost
threaten my emotion and weakness with torture.
At this hour,
therefore, let us pluck the strings without delay.
Let us mourn
together, for fate crushes the brave.
Concerto No. 3 in C major.........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 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 Post-Impressionists, 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.
52
FIFTH CONCERT
In this idiom he attained, around 1918, an enviable reputation as a composer, with the orchestral work Scythian Suite, the ballet Chout, and the ever-popular Classical Symphony. These works, with their driving energy, clear designs, bright colors, and ironic overtones, won him a position of first importance among Rus?sian 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); Partisan Zhelezmak; Antiutak; the music he composed for children, Peter and the Wolf (1936); the incidental music to the Russian film, Alexander 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 later composition there was to be noted a new emo?tional value, an almost romantic richness of melody, and the fulfillment of a latent lyricism, 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 he was at the very height of his creative powers. He had become infinitely more than a clever composer who delighted in the grotesque; his music is, according to Leonid Sabaneyev and many other critics, the most original and valuble that Russian art of this century has produced.
The first sketches for the third piano concerto were made at St. Petersburg (Leningrad) in 1917; the work was interrupted by his visit to America, and was not completed until October, 1921. Like all the other compositions of this period, it electrifies with its audacious and almost insolent effects; the piano part is a brilliant tour de force.
Prokofiev provided the following analysis:
The first movement opens quietly with a short introduction, andante, 4-4. The theme is announced by an unaccompanied clarinet, and is continued by the violins for a few bars. Soon the tempo changes to allegro, the strings having a passage in semiquavers which leads to the statement of the principal subject by the piano. Discussion of this theme is carried on in a lively manner, both the piano and the orchestra having a good deal to say on the matter. A passage in chords for the piano alone leads to the more expressive second subject, heard in the oboe with a pizzicato accompaniment. This is taken up by the piano and de?veloped at some length, eventually giving way to a bravura passage in triplets. At the climax of this section, the tempo reverts to andante, and the orchestra gives out the first theme, ff. The piano joins in, and the theme is subjected to impressively broad treatment. On resum?ing the allegro, the chief theme and the second subject are developed with increased brilliance, and the movement ends with an exciting crescendo.
The second movement consists of a theme with five variations. The theme is announced by the orchestra alone, andantino.
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
In the first variation, the piano treats the opening of the theme in quasi-sentimental fashion, and resolves into a chain of trills as the orchestra repeats the closing phrase. The tempo changes to allegro for the second and third variations, and the piano has brilliant figures, while snatches of the theme are introduced here and there in the orchestra. In Variation Four, the tempo is once again andante, and the piano and orchestra discourse on the theme in a quiet and meditative fashion. Variation Five is energetic (allegro giusto). It leads without pause into a restatement of the theme by the orchestra, with delicate chordal embroidery in the piano.
The Finale begins (allegro ma non troppo, 3--4) with a staccato theme for bassoons and pizzicato strings, which is interrupted by the blustering entry of the piano. The orchestra holds its own with the opening theme, however, and there is a good deal of argument, with frequent differences of opinion as regards key. Eventually the piano takes up the first theme and develops it to a climax.
With a reduction of tone and slackening of tempo, an alternative theme is introduced in the woodwind. The piano replies with a theme that is more in keeping with the caustic humor of the work. This material is developed and there is a brilliant coda.
54
SIXTH CONCERT Sunday Evening, May 8
Concerto Grosso No. 2 for String Orchestra.....Bloch
Ernest Bloch was born July 24, 1880, in Geneva, Switzerland; now living in America.
Ernest Bloch is the most solitary figure in contemporary music; he has stood by himself in splendid isolation above all the conflicts and confusions of modern?ism. Throughout his career he has never forsaken his artistic credo--to avoid the eccentric, and to express with sincerity, originality, and unerring truthfulness what he felt as an artist compelled to express, irrespective of the fashions, cults, and changing ideologies of modern art. "Art is the outlet of the mystical emo?tional need of the human spirit; it is created rather by instinct than by intelli?gence, rather by intuition than by will," he once wrote. He has always had a distaste for cerebral creations hatched from algebraic theorems and has remained coldly aloof from all the experimentation and striving for the novel, spectacular, and fashionably smart that has produced so much puerile music in our day. "Un?like those who have strained to be up to date more than to be artistically com?municative, Bloch never succumbed to the aesthetic gangrene of his time," wrote John Hastings. "He had no interest in fashions, cults, isms, formulas or systems. And he had no use for the sensationalism that was the crutch of many a precarious celebrity. For these reasons his music, while it has steadily consolidated its grip upon a growing audience, has never been in vogue; and therefore it has been snubbed by that sector of the critical fraternity that follows every mode like a housemaid with a dust pan after a shedding dog--his music has shown the spon?taneous forthrightness that, in most of his contemporaries' arbitrary theorizing, has strangled in its bassinet. His, indeed, is the miracle of whole genius which, occurring so seldom in any generation, transcends the cocoon of 'conditioning factors,' of which it is never essentially a part."f Bloch believes that music should be an experience and not a formula, an art, not a craft, but that it is a whole spiritual expression involving on the part of both composer and listener "not the use of the microscope and the seismograph, but the exercise of the mind undivorced from the heart and the activation of the spirit unalienated from the pulse."$
The question of Judaism is always foremost in any discussion of Bloch, for, from the beginning of his career, he expressed himself in a peculiarly Jewish idiom such as no other composer of his religion had done before him, and at a time when such an idiom was practically unknown to modern music. According to Guido Gatti, Bloch should be considered the first, perhaps the sole, Jewish musi?cian that the history of music affords us. He fashioned early a modern musical expression that conveyed something akin to deep sorrow and noble exaltation of Judaism as it is found in the Old Testament. In such early works as the Psalms
Joan Chissell, "Style in Bloch's Chamber Music," Music and Letters, XXIV, 1 (January. 1943) p. 31. t John Hastings, "Ernest Bloch and Modern Music," Music Review, X, 2 (May, 1949) p. 115. X Ibid., p. 117.
55
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
(1912-14), Trois Poemes Juifs (1913), Schelomo (1915), Israel (1912-15), and Baal Shew, (1923) he gave complete and conscious utterance to his Hebraic spiritual inheritance. Of this period he has written, "I have but listened to an inner voice, deep, secret, insistent, ardent... a voice which seemed to come from far beyond myself--a voice which surged upon me on reading certain passages in the Bible--this entire Jewish heritage moved me deeply, it was reborn in my music." As he matured and developed, his own rugged and impetuous person?ality exerted its control over his religious feelings with the result that a new music began to emerge that was an amalgamation of both. The Jewish quality of his earlier idiom was never achieved superficially by the adaptation of Hebrew melodies, the authenticity of which he himself doubted, aware that most of them were borrowed from other nations. He wrote:
It is not my purpose nor my desire to attempt a "reconstitution" of Jewish music, or to base my work on melodies more or less authentic. I am not an archaeologist. I hold it of first importance to write good genuine music. It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul that I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; . . . the freshness and naivete of the Patriarchs; the violence of the Prophetic Books; the Hebrew's savage love of justice; the despair of the Ecclesiastes; the sorrow and the immensity of the Book of Job; the sensuality of the Song of Songs. All this is in us, all this is in me, and it is the better part of me. It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music: the venerable emotion of the race that slumbers way down in our soul.t
The qualities of his art do not belong exclusively to any ethnic or religious group. The universality of appeal that it now enjoys repudiates any arbitrary lines of demarcation. He was simply gifted by nature to give expression to racial currents that flow in his veins but his idiom is now his own and reflects himself as well as his race.
In Irwin Edman's Philosopher's Quest, the author, in an imaginary conversa?tion with Schopenhauer, has him speak of our contemporary music thus:
Perhaps modern music does peculiarly catch the note of reality. Its discords and dissonances, its broken melodies, its shattered harmonies--these are the very essence of the nature of things, the blind frustrations of the reasonless desire, the futile reiterations of the will always doomed to futility. Perhaps the music of your day is something like the music I have been waiting for. But, from the little I have heard of it, there is something missing: the touching quality of song, the poignance of feeling. It is the geometry of tragedy rather than the heart?break of it that these cerebral young composers have caught. But if ever the great musician comes, he will have caught the very tone of world sorrow itself and of human fatality, and in listening we will become one with it, and our own little tragedies will find their fulfillment in transfigured union with the tragedy of all things.t
No one could have painted a better word portrait of Ernest Bloch and his achievement than that stated in the last sentence of the above paragraph. Ernest Bloch may not be producing the "music of the future" but he has demonstrated noble qualities of mind and heart and has asserted a spiritual in?tegrity and aspiration both in word and deed desperately needed in the world today.
David Ewen, Book of Modern Composers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942) p. 251.
t Chissell, op. cit., p. 31.
I Irwin Edman, Philosopher's Quest (New York: The Viking Press, 1947) p. 138.
56
SIXTH CONCERT
The Second Concerto Grosso was written between April and July of 1952 and had its first performance by the B.B.C. Orchestra in London, April 11, 1953.
"Divinita infernal" from Alceste........Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck was born July 2, 1714, in Erasbach; died November IS, 1787, in Vienna.
Gluck's reputation as the great reformer of opera rests upon the beauty and strength of six of his one hundred and seven operas. Orjeo (1762), Alceste (1767), and Paride ed Elena (1770) to Italian texts; Iphigenie en Aulide (1774), Amide (1777), and Iphigenie en Tauride (1779) to French texts.
These works embody many of the characteristic features of French opera from the time of Rameau (1683-1764), i.e. comparative subordination of music to drama, avoidance of vocal display, a similarity of style in recitative and aria, general simplicity of subject matter and treatment, and a generous use of chorus and ballet, both associated closely with the dramatic action. These ideas were not original with Gluck, they were in the main those of the Italian originators of the opera in the early seventeenth century. But during the swift develop?ment and popularization of the form throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, abuses had crept in which finally drew the attention of serious minds to the necessity for reform. The reclamation of the opera came from a period alive with ideas of social correction. With the slow disintegration of absolute monarchy and the loss of faith in divine institution, there grew, increasingly, a critical attitude toward the arts. The "Return to Nature" move?ment, too, ultimately gave rise to an impulse for reform, and, in music, that impulse was aimed at the most popular, of all musical forms, and the one closest associated with the dying social order, opera. These social movements gradually exposed the artificialities of the opera and revealed the abuses from which it had suffered at the hands of singers, overly ambitious to display their vocal prowess, and of composers who had become over indulgent to their demands and to those of a public grown avid for excitement. The writings of the Encyclopedists Grimm, d'Alembert, Rousseau, and especially Diderot, on music were concerned chiefly with the problems of reform. Their suggestions became the basis of a work by Francesco Algarotti, who pointed out in his essay on opera every reform sug?gestion made by Gluck. No doubt these French-inspired ideas came to Gluck directly through his librettist Raniero di Calzabigi, who had received them in turn from Algarotti. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Encyclopedists to music, aside from popularizing the new theoretical ideas of Rameau, was to pre?pare the way for the Gluck reform. In Gluck they recognized a composer who was in sympathy with their ideas and could carry them to complete and practical fulfillment. "A wise man was formerly a philosopher, a poet, and a musician," wrote Diderot, "these talents degenerated when they were separated from one another. The field of philosophy has shrunk, poetry lacks ideas, and song needs energy and force. ... A great composer and a great opera poet would soon repair
Conte Francesco Algarotti, Saggio sofira Vopera in musica (2d ed., Leghorn, 1763).
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
all this damage. . . . Let him appear then, this man of genius who will place the true tragedy and the true comedy on the operatic stage. Let him cry out . . . Adducite mihi psaltem 'Bring me a composer,' and he will create the true opera." That composer was to be Gluck and that "great opera poet," Calzabigi. Grimm, after the advent of Gluck, quoted in his Correspondence litteraire for May, 1777, a passage by Marmontel which summarizes Gluck's position:
Gluck made musical declamation move more swiftly, forcefully, and energetically. By exaggerating its expression he at least avoided the pitfall of boredom. He used harmony with excellent effect, forced our singers to observe the same measure as the orchestra, fused the chorus into the dramatic action, and linked the dances to a suitable scene. His art is a com?posite work, in which German taste prevails, but in which is implied the manner of con?ciliating the outstanding characteristics of the French and Italian opera.t
The opera Alceste, with its text by Calzabigi, was performed for the first time in Vienna, December 16, 1767. In the French version, performed at the Opera in Paris on April 23, 1776, Gluck wrote the following preface, explaining his aims and reflecting the ideas of his French contemporaries:
When I undertook to compose the music to Alceste, my intention was to rid it of all those abuses which, introduced either through the mistaken vanity of singers or the over-indulgence of composers, have so long disfigured Italian Opera, and turned the finest and most pompous spectacle into the most ridiculous and tedious. I wished to reduce music to its true function, which is to second poetry in expressing the emotions and situations of the play, without inter?rupting the action or chilling it with useless and superfluous ornaments, and I believed that music ought to be to poetry what vividness of colouring and well-managed contrasts of light and shade are to a correct and well-composed drawing, serving to animate the figures without marring the outline. I accordingly have wished neither to stop an actor where the dialogue is at its warmest, in order to let the orchestra play a tedious ritornello, nor to hold him back on a favourable vowel in the middle of a word, that he may either show off the agility of his fine voice in a long roulade or wait for the orchestra to give him time to take breath for a cadenza. I have not thought proper to pass rapidly over the second part of an air, even when it is the more important and passionate, so as to repeat the words of the first part the regulation four times, and end the air where the sense perhaps does not end, to give the singer an easy oppor?tunity to show that he can capriciously vary a passage in as many different ways; in fine, I have sought to banish all those abuses against which common sense and reason have so long pro?tested in vain.
I have deemed that the overture ought to apprize the spectator of the action to be repre?sented, and, so to speak, constitute itself the argument; that the cooperation of the instruments should be determined proportionately to the interest and passion of a scene and that no sharp contrasts between air and recitative should be left in the dialogue, so as not to stunt the period out of all reason, nor inappropriately interrupt the vigour and warmth of the action.
I have believed, furthermore, that my greatest efforts should be reduced to seeking for a beautiful simplicity, and have avoided making a display of difficulties, to the prejudice of clearness; the discovery of a novelty has not seemed admirable in my eyes, except in so far as it was naturally suggested by the situation, or helpful to the expression; and there is no rule of form which I have not thought best willingly to sacrifice to the effect.
Such are my principles. Fortunately the libretto lent itself marvellously well to my pur?pose; the celebrated author, having imagined a new scheme for the drama, had substituted the language of the heart, strong passions, interesting situations, and an ever-varied spectacle for flowery descriptions, superfluous metaphors, and cold and sententious moralizing. . . .
Denis Diderot, Dorval et mm (Paris: 1875-79), VII, 1S6-S7.
t Alfred Richard Oliver, The Encyclopedists as Critics oj Music (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1947).
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SIXTH CONCERT
In the story of Alceste, the people of Pherae are told that they must prepare for the death of their beloved King Admet. Alceste, his wife, appears in the temple of Apollo to plead for his life. The oracle decrees that Admet may live, if another will cross the river Styx in his stead. Alceste resolves in this aria, which closes the first act, that she herself will go in his place.
"Adieu, Forets" from Jeanne d'Arc .... Tchaikovsky
Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky was born at Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840; died in St. Petersburg, November 6, 1893.
"To refrain from writing operas," Tchaikovsky once wrote, "is the act of a hero and we have only one such hero in our time--Brahms. Such heroism is not for me. The stage with all its glitter attracts me irresistibly."
In spite of his strong attraction for and attempts at writing operas, Tchaikov?sky was invariably unsuccessful in handling the form. He seemed to have a fatal propensity for plunging into opera texts with fervor and excitement, but the essentially lyrical nature of his art did not permit him either to sustain enough interest throughout, or to achieve the necessary intensity and breadth of expres?sion that his rather melodramatic texts demanded. Only in Eugen Onegin and Pique-Dame, adapted from Pushkin, was he eminently successful.
The composer of opera, like the dramatist, must be able to identify himself with his characters and approach them with a variety of sentiments and breadth of sympathy; he must possess a subtle adaptability to all kinds of situations and emotions other than his own. Tchaikovsky, with his romantic and melancholy temperament, was never able to view life objectively enough, or to control his feelings sufficiently, to create convincing characters on the lyric stage. His music was too intensely personal to express the variety and complexity of emotional states demanded by opera.
In spite of his inherent limitations in this direction, there are moments in his scores that do not fail to exert a peculiar charm or to cast a unique spell over the listener. Such is the case in the aria on tonight's program, wherein Joan of Arc bids farewell forever to her beloved countryside. In it Tchaikovsky has displayed his customary power in depicting violent contrasts in mood, hopeless melancholy, and dramatic outbursts of passion.
"Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" from
Samson and Delilah.........Saint-Saens
Camille Saint-Saens was born in Paris, October 9, 1835; died in Algiers, December 16, 1921.
Camille Saint-Saens was not only a composer, he was also a distinguished pianist, organist, conductor, and author. During his long life of eighty-six years, he was the recipient of many honors. In 1868 he was admitted to the Legion d'honneur and in 1913 won the Grand Cro'tx. Cambridge University conferred upon him the Doctor of Music in 1892. His literary productions were consider-
50
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
able and of a high quality. He published a book of poems, three comedies, and several scientific studies.
As a composer, he displayed a command of the technical processes of expres?sion, including every aspect of form, extreme readiness of thematic develop?ment, and superb orchestration. His genius, great and varied as it was, falls short of the highest achievements in profound feeling and conviction, however.
The subject of this opera is woven around the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. The first act is laid in the city of Gaza where the Israelites are suffer?ing under the oppression of the Philistines. Samson, burning with indignation, admonishes them to battle, trusting in God as their help. The Israelites, catching fire from his ardor, rise in insurrection. Abimelech, Satrap of Gaza, is slain by Samson, who leads his countrymen to victory.
In Act II, Delilah, a Philistine woman of irresistible beauty, is importuned by the High Priest of Dagon to lure Samson to his destruction. With tears and pro?testations of love, Delilah accomplishes her mission and delivers Samson into the hands of the Philistines. No further comment concerning this most familiar and hackneyed of all operatic arias seems necessary.
"Habanera" and "Seguidilla" from Carmen.....Bizet
Georges Bizet was born in Paris, October 25, 1838; died at Bougival, near Paris, June 3, 187S.
Very few biographers of Bizet present him as he really was, a gifted man with many shortcomings, and a composer of undeniable talent, whose Carmen stands in strong and strange contrast to all his other works and also to his per?sonality, as revealed by his letters and the judgments expressed by those who knew him well. That the composer of such a trifle as La Jolie fille de Perth within a few years could create a Carmen is as strange and inexplicable as that Emily Bronte could have written Wuthering Heights after a few insignificant poems. Of Bizet's artistic personality, which began to assert itself in Carmen, we know abso?lutely nothing. He was always essentially a "bourgeois"--practical, humdrum, and colorless. He did not live long enough for us to have any clue as to the change that took place within him. During the early part of his career, he had no sense of, and no liking for, dramatic music, to which he preferred music of a light facile order. His teacher, Carafa, once wrote to Merchandante, "Monsieur Bizet will never be a dramatic composer, he is utterly lacking in the needful enthu?siasm." Was it Wagner who aroused this in him Or perhaps the drama emanat?ing from Merimee's story kindled the flame of inspiration. It was indeed Bizet's misfortune never to have happened upon an author who fully appreciated his ideas and had the talent for writing a libretto in accordance with them until at last Meilhac and Halevy provided him with a libretto, of which Nietzsche said, "It is a dramatic masterpiece to study for climax, contrast and logic." Bizet responded by revealing a hitherto entirely unknown artistic personality, and this real inspiration produced the brilliant Carmen.
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SIXTH CONCERT
The arias on tonight's program are too familiar to audiences to warrant any critical comment. In the "Habanera," Carmen, attempting to attract the hand?some Corporal of the Dragoons, Don Jose, sings:
Love is like a wild bird--hard to lure and hard to tame. If you love me not--I love you, and if I love you, beware!
In the "Seguidilla," she faces Don Jose after her arrest for stabbing one of the cigarette girls. With her hands bound behind her, she sings as she dances be?fore him:
Near by the walls of Seville at the Inn of Lillas, Pastia, we'll dance the gay Seguidilla. And who loves me, him will I love.
At the end of her seductive song, she offers Don Jose her bound hands, which he quickly frees.
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36.....Tchaikovsky
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 soul-life of the age bore the stamp of this man for whom "sorrow was knowledge"; he was, in truth, the eponymous hero of an epoch.
The age was literally infected by Byronism. Under one form or another the wave of his influence mingled with the current of French, German, and Slavonic Romanticism; his own soul was incarnate in his Manfred who reflected an in?creasing egoism in the expression ofmelancholy. 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, pain?fully I drag my boredom about with me, and so my whole life is a yawn." Lamartine in his Meditations poetique carried emotionalism to the extreme of poetic sensibility. De Musset sang in his self-conscious 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 "superfluous" theme. Pushkin, the "Russian Byron," in his Eugen Onegin, and Lermantov in the Hero of Our Time created dramatic young men
The Meditations poltique became the inspiration (or Liszt's Les Prdudcs in 1848.
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
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 greeny-gold growth, glittering and seductive, but filled 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 over-fertilized emotional soil grew a prolific school of com?position. The supersensitive Chopin cried out his longing in languorous noc?turnes, Berlioz in his Symphonie jantastiquc pictured the narcotic dreams of a young artist who, because of an unrequited love, had attempted suicide by taking opium. W'agner, expressing one side of the Industrial Revolution in the imperious force and merciless drive of his music, nevertheless allowed his desire-sick soul to long for death as the only release from the world. The "renunciation" motive is the basis of his great dramas. Senta renounces life for the salvation of the Dutch?man, Elizabeth dies for Tannhiiuser, 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 characterized this feeling in Germany. "People," he said, "practiced renunciation and modesty, bowed before the invisible, snatched at shadow kisses and blue-flowered scents." This unnatural and unhealthy mental attitude led to a great deal of self-contemplation and introspection which tended to substitute futile or morbid imaginings for solid realities of life. The over-introspective and supersensitive artist cuts himself off from a larger arc of experience and is prone to exaggerate the importance of the more intimate sentiments, and when, as in the nineteenth century, such a tendency is widespread, a whole school may become febrile and erotic.
Tchaikovsky, like Byron, was a 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 self-
See notes on Brahms, pages 15-17.
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SIXTH CONCERT
cultivated 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 penchant 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--paint him in the framework of his age. "And if bereft of speech, man bears his pain, a God gave me the gift to tell my sorrow," wrote Tasso. Of this gift, Tchaikovsky had his share.
A Russian to the core, Tchaikovsky was nevertheless criticized severely by those self-styled nationalists, "The Five," for being too strongly influenced by German and French methods and styles to be a true exponent of Russian music. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, found much to admire in their art, and was very enthusiastic in his praise of Rimski-Korsakov in particular. Nevertheless, he resented the assumption of superiority and the canons of judgment laid down by this coterie. He turned rather to Beethoven and to the scholarly technique ex?hibited in the construction of his symphonies; at the same time he was not im?mune 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 un-equaled 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 un-resisted 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 no organic union between the separate episodes." In fact, Tchaikovsky's faults embrace his virtues, and this is the enigma of his genius.
Searching through words to make his emotional meaning explicit, he wrote to Mme von Meek a detailed account of his deepest feeling while creating:
It would be vain to try to put into words that immeasurable sense of bliss which comes over me as soon as a new idea awakens in me and begins to take a definite form. I forget everything and behave like a madman. Within me everything starts pulsing and quivering; scarcely have I begun the sketch when thoughts tumble one on the heels of the other. In the midst of this magic process, it often happens that some trivial interruption wakens me from my somnambulistic state--the door bell rings, the servant enters, a clock strikes--re?minding me that it is time to quit. Such interruptions are terrible. They often break off the train of inspiration for a considerable time, so that I have to search again, often in vain. In
Rimski-Korsakov, Cui, Moussorgsky, Balakirev, and Borodin.
63
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
such cases, calm headwork and technical knowledge have come to my rescue. ... If that state of mind and soul which we call inspiration were to persist too long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument would be shattered to bits. . . .
Then follows his attempt to give verbal meaning to his Fourth Symphony:
Our symphony has a program. That is to say, it is possible to express its contents in words, and I will tell you--and you alone--the meaning of the entire work and its separate move?ments. Naturally, I can only do so as regards its general features.
The introduction is the germ, the leading idea of the whole work. This is Fate, that inevitable force which checks our aspirations towards happiness ere they reach that goal, which watches jealously lest our peace and bliss should be complete and cloudless--a force which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs perpetually over our heads and is always embitter?ing the soul. This force is unescapable and invincible. There is no other course but to submit and inwardly lament. This sense of hopeless despair grows stronger and more poignant. Is it not better to turn from reality and lose ourselves in dreams 0 joy! A sweet and tender dream enfolds me. A bright and serene presence leads me on. How fair! How remotely now is heard the first theme of the Allegro! Deeper and deeper the soul is sunk in dreams. All that was dark and joyless is forgotten. Here is happiness! It is but a dream; Fate awakens us roughly. So all life is but a continual alternation between grim truth and fleeting dreams of happiness. There is no haven. The waves drive us hither and thither until the sea engulfs us. This is approximately the program of the first movement.
The second movement expresses another phase of suffering. Now it is the melancholy which steals over us when at evening we sit indoors alone, weary of work, while the book we have picked up for relaxation slips unheeded from our fingers. A long procession of old memories goes by. How sad to think how much is already past and gone And yet these recol?lections of youth are sweet. We regret the past, although we have neither courage nor desire to start a new life. We are rather weary of existence. We would fain rest awhile and look back, recalling many things. There were moments when young blood pulsed warm through our veins, and life gave us all we asked. There were also moments of sorrow, irreparable loss. All this has receded so far into the past. How sad, yet sweet, to lose ourselves therein!
In the third movement no definite feelings find expression. Here we have only capricious arabesques, intangible forms, which come into a man's head when he has been drinking wine and his nerves are rather excited. His mood is neither joyful nor sad. He thinks of nothing in particular. His fancy is free to follow its own flight, and it designs the strangest patterns. Sudden memory calls up the picture of a tipsy peasant and a street song. From afar come the sounds of a military band. These are the kind of confused images which pass through our brain as we fall asleep. They have no connection with actuality, but are simply wild, strange, bizarre.
The fourth movement; if you find no reason for happiness in yourself, look at others. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity. A rustic holiday is depicted. Hardly have we had time to forget ourselves in other people's pleasures when indefatigable Fate reminds us once more of its presence. Others pay no heed to us. They do not spare us a glance nor stop to observe we are lonely and sad. How merry and glad they all are! All their feelings are so inconsequent, so simple. And will you still say all the world is immersed in sorrow Happiness does exist, simple and unspoilt. Be glad in others' gladness. This makes life possible.
After this futile attempt to utter the unutterable, Tchaikovsky concludes:
.... For the first time in my life I have attempted to put into words and phrases my musical ideas and forms. I have not been very successful. I was horribly out of spirits all the time I was composing my symphony last winter, and this is a true echo of my feelings at the time--but only an echo. But there lies the peculiarity of instrumental music; we cannot analyze it. "Where words leave off, music begins," as Heine has said.
64
THE UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Organized in 1879. Incorporated in 1881.
PRESIDENTS
Henry Simmons Frieze, 1879-1881 and 1883-1889 Alexander Winchell, 1881-1883 and 1889-1891 Francis W. Kelsey, 1891-1927 Charles A. Sink (Executive Secretary, 1904-1927), 1927-
MUSICAL DIRECTORS
Calvin B. Cady, 1879-1888 Albert A. Stanley, 1888-1921 Earl V. Moore, 1922-1939
CONDUCTORS
Thor Johnson, 1939-1942
Hardin Van Deursen, 1942-1947
Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947-
Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor, 1947-
THE ANN ARBOR MAY FESTIVAL
Maintained by the University Musical Society and founded by Albert A. Stanley and his associates in the Board of Directors in 1894
MUSICAL DIRECTORS
Albert A. Stanley, 1894-1921 Earl V. Moore, 1922-1939
CONDUCTORS
Thor Johnson, 1940-1942 Hardin Van Deursen, 1943-1946 Thor Johnson (Guest), 1947-
ORGANIZATIONS
The Boston Festival Orchestra, Emil Mollenhauer, Conductor, 1894-1904
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock, Conductor, 1905-1935; Eric De Lamar-ter, Associate Conductor, 1918-1935
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, Conductor, Saul Caston and Charles O'Con-nell, Associate Conductors, 1936; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, 1937, 1938; Eugene Or-mandy, Conductor, Saul Caston, Associate Conductor, 1939-1945; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, Alexander Hilsberg, Associate Conductor, 1946-1952, and Guest Conductor, 1953; Eugene Ormandy, Conductor, 1954
The University Choral Union, Albert A. Stanley, Conductor, 1894-1921; Earl V. Moore, Conductor, 1922-1939; Thor Johnson, Conductor, 1940-1942; Hardin Van Deursen, Con?ductor, 1943-1947; Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor, 1947-; Lester McCoy, Associate 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, 1925-1927; Juva N. Higbee, 1928-1936; Roxy Cowin, 1937; Juva N. Higbee, 1938; Roxy Cowin, 1939; Juva N. Higbee, 1940-1942; Marguerite Hood, 1943-
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MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
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 Jose Iturbi (Philadelphia), 1937
Howard Hanson (Rochester), 1926, 1927, 1933, Georges Enesco (Paris), 1939
1935 Harl McDonald (Philadelphia), 1939, Felix Borowski (Chicago), 1927 1940, 1944
Percy Grainger (New York), 1928
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, 1955
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125--1934, 1942, 1945 Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust--1895, 1909, 1920, 1952 Bizet: Carmen--1904, 1918, 1927, 1938 Bloch: "America," An Epic Rhapsody--1929 Bossi: Paradise Lost--1916 Brahms: Requiem, Op. 45--1899 (excerpts), 1929, 1941,1949
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 Chavez, Carlos: Corrido de "El Sol"--1954$ Delitjs: Sea Drift--1924 Dvorak: Stabat Mater, Op. 58--1906 Elcar: 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
World premiire
66
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Haydn: The Creation--1908, 1932
The Seasons--1909, 1934 Heger: Ein Friedenslied, Op. 19--1934t Holst: A Choral Fantasia--1932f
A Dirge for Two Veterans--1923
The Hymn of Jesus--1923t
First Choral Symphony (excerpts)--1927t Honegcer, Arthur: King David--1930, 193S, 1942 Kodaly: Psalmus Hungaricus, Op. 13--1939 Lambert, Constant: Summer's Last Will and Testament--1951t Lock wood, Normand: Prairie--1953
McDonald, Harl: Symphony No. 3 ("Lamentations of Fu Hsuan")--1939 Mendelssohn: Elijah--1901, 1921,1926, 1944, 1954
St. Paul--1905
Mennin, Peter: Symphony No. 4, "The Cycle"--1950 Moussorcsky: Boris Godounov--1931, 1935 Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, K. 427--1948
Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626--1946 Orff, Carl: Carmina Burana--1955 Parker: Hora Novissima, Op. 30--1900 Pierne: The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928,1931 Ponchielli: La Cioconda--1925 Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78--1946 Rachmaninoff: The Bells--1925, 1938,1948 Respighi: La Primavera--1924t Rlmsky-Korsakov: The Legend of Kitesh--1931t Rossini: Stabat Mater-1897
Saint-Saens: Samson and Delilah--1896, 1899,1907, 1912, 1916, 1923, 1929, 1940 Schuman, William: A Free Song (Cantata No. 2)--1945 Sibelius: Onward Ye Peoples--1939, 1945 Smith, J. S.: Star Spangled Banner--1919, 1920 Stanley: Chorus Trimphalis, Op. 14--1897, 1912,1921
Far Land of Freedom--1919
Hymn of Consecration--1918
"Laus Deo," Choral Ode--1913, 1943
A Psalm of Victory, Op. 8--1906 Stock: APsalmodic Rhapsody--1922,1943 Stravinsky: Symphonie de Psaumes--1932 Sullivan: The Golden Legend--1901 Tchaikovsky: Episodes from Eugen Onegin--1911,1941 Thompson, Randall: Alleluia--1941
Vardell, Charles: Cantata, "The Inimitable Lovers"-1940 Verdi: A'ida--1903, 1906, 1917, 1921, 1924 (excerpts), 1928, 1937
La Forza del Destino (Finale, Act II)--1924
Otello--1939
Requiem Mass--1894, 1898, 1913, 1920, 1930, 1936, 1943, 1951
Stabat Mater--1899
Te Deum--1947 Vivaldi-Casella: Gloria--1954
Vllla-Lobos, Heitor: Choros No. 10, "Rasga o corac.ao"--1949 Wagner: Die fliegende Hollander--1918
Lohengrin--1926; Act 1--1896,1913
Die Meistersinger, Finale to Act III--1903,1913 ; Choral, "Awake," and Chorale Finale to Act III--1923
Scenes from Parsifal--1937
Tannhduser--1902,1922; March and Chorus--1896; "Venusberg" Music--1946 Walton, William: Belshazzar's Feast--1933, 1952 Wolf-Ferrari: The New Life, Op. 9--1910, 1915,1922, 1929
World premiere
t United States premiere
67
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Festival Youth Chorus
Abt: Evening Bells--1922 Anonymous: Birds in the Grove--1921 Arne: Ariel's Song--1920
The Lass with the Delicate Air--1937 Barratt: Philomel with Melody--1924 Beethoven: A Prayer--1923 Benedict: Sweet Repose is Reigning Now--1921 Benoit: Into the World--1914, 1918 Boyd, Jean: The Hunting of the Snark--1929 Brahms: The Little Dust Man--1933
Lullaby--1931
Eleven Songs--1954
Britten, Benjamin: Suite of Songs (Orchestrated by Marion E. McArtor)--1953 Bruch: April Folk--1922 Busch: The Song of Spring--1922 Caraciolo: Nearest and Dearest--1923
A Streamlet Full of Flowers--1923 Careys: "America"--1913, 1917, 1918, 1920 Chopin: The Maiden's Wish--1931 Coleridge-Taylor: Viking Song--1924
DeLamarter, Eric (orchestrator): Songs of the Americas--1944, 1948 English, Granville: Cantata, "The Ugly Duckling"--1934 Farwell: Morning--1924
Fletcher: The Walrus and the Carpenter--1913,1917,1926,1942, 1950 Folk Songs--Italian: The Blackbirds, Sleep Little Child--1921
Scotch: "Caller Herrin"--1920
Welsh: Dear Harp of My Country--1920
Zuni Indian: The Sun Worshippers--1924 Gaul: Cantata, "Old Johnny Appleseed"--1931
Cantata, "Spring Rapture"--1933,1937 Gillett: Songs--1941 Gounod: "Walz 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: Selection from Hansel and Gretel--1923 Hyde: Cantata, "The Quest of the Queer Prince"--1928 dTndy: 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 Kjerulfs: Barcarolle--1920 Madsen: Shepherd on the Hills--1920,1922 McArtor, Marion (orchestrator): Songs--1940
Folk Song Fantasy--1943
Suite of Songs (Britten)--1953
Viennese Folk and Art Songs--1955 Mendelssohn: On Wings of Song--1934
Spring Song--1924
Mohr-Gruber: Christmas Hymn, "Silent Night"--1916 Moore, E. V.: "The Voyage of Arion"--1921, 1927 Morley: It Was a Lover and His Lass--1921,1938
Now is the Month of Maying--1935
World premiire t American premiire
68
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Mozart: Cradle Song--1930
The Minuet--1922 Myrberc: Fisherman's Prayer--1922 Pierne: The Children at Bethlehem--1916,1936
The Children's Crusade--1915
Saint Francis of Assisi--1928, 1931
Planquette: Invitation of the Bells from Chimes of Normandy--1924 Protheroe: Cantata, The Spider and the Fly--1932 Purcell: In the Delightful Pleasant Grove--1938 Recer: The Virgin's Slumber Song--1938 Reincke, Carl: "In Life If Love We Know Not"--1921
O Beautiful Violet--1924
Rowley-James: Cantata, Fun oj the Fair--1945 Rubinstein: Thou'rt Like Unto a Flower--1931
Wanderer's Night Song--1923 Sadero: Fa la nana bambin--1935 Schubert: Cradle Song--1924, 1939
Hark, Hark the Lark--1930
Hedge Roses--1934, 1939
Linden Tree--1923, 1935
Serenade in D minor--1939
The Trout--1937
Whither--1939
Who Is Sylvia--1920
Schumann, Georc: Good Night, Pretty Stars--1924 Schumann, Robert: Lotus Flower--1930
Spring's Messenger--1929
The Nut Tree--1939 Scott: The Lullaby--1937 Strauss, Johann: Blue Danube Waltz--1934 Strong: Cantata," A Symphony of Song"--1930 Sullivan: Selection from Operas--1932 Thomas: Night Hymn at Sea--1924 Tosti: Serenade--1933 Van der Stucken: At the Window--1920 Wagner: "Whirl and Twirl" from The Flying Dutchman--1924 Wahlstedt: Gay Liesel--1922 Weber: "Prayer" from Der Freischiitz--1920
The Voice of Evening--1924
THE UNIVERSITY CHORAL UNION
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor Lester McCoy, Associate Conductor
Jane Decker, Pianist Arthur D. Berg, Manager
FIRST SOPRANOS
Aprill, Virgina A. Bradstreet, Lola Mae Burroughs, Elizabeth Colish, Faith Crawford, Nancy Joy Davis, Patricia Ann Fisher, Mary Jane Folsom, Barbara A. Frederick, Marilyn D. Gebhard, Ruth U. Gibson, Barbara Lee Gidley, Betsy Green, Gail Lynn Hanson, Gladys M. Huber, Sally A. Irving, Priscilla A. Jaquith, Mary D. Jenkins, Cecil C. Keller, Lillian B . Jennings, Mary E. Kraushaar, Doris Krimm, Marilyn M. Lock, Inez Jeanette Long, Ardis Rosalie MacLaren, Helen L. Malan, Fannie Belle McDonald, Ruth M. Melling, Megan E. Miller, Veronica Newell, Dorothy Post Patton, Beatrice Pearson, Lily-Ann Peters, Lynette Ann Pott, Margaret F. Robinson, Anne V. Rosenzweig, Elva V. Schrock, Charlene M. Sherman, Constance M. Tannel, Lynn Paula Tarboux, Isabelle N. Tjotis, Ralian J. Varley, Elizabeth V. Warren, Eleanor Watt, Susanne Jane Wehner, Nancy Sharon
SECOND SOPRANOS Barnes, Judy E.
70
Berberian, Balig Berger, Beatrice D. Bilakos, Christena Boice, Mary C. Brater, Betsy B. Byron, Rachel Ann Campbell, Colleen S. Chapman, Ardis E. Clevenger, Doris I. Cohen, Judith Naomi Cooley, Anne Elizabeth Da foe, Emma Tate Datsko, Doris Mae Dodge, Thelma I. Dolby, Freida Farris, Diana Mae Godshalk, Donna P. Grayson, Barbara M. Groves, Kathryn M. Haas, Sally Lee Hahn, Ruth Marie Hakken, Jane Heft, Priscilla Ann Johnstone, Patricia Kellogg, Merlyn L. Koval, Alice Ruth Maynard, M. Elaine McCrum, Shirley R. McLaughlin, Georgia M. Miller, Nandeen Nutley, Jean M. Puglisi, Elizabeth A. Rankin, Carolyn M. Rourke, Audrey M. Sakofsky, Edith R. Schonfeld, Eleanore 0. Selby, Ruth M. Semmler, Ruth Helen Skaff, Diana May Swinford, Georgiana Vlisides, Elena C. Waltz, Ingrid P. Wells, Jeanne L. Westbrook, Alice Fay Whealey, Lois D. Williams, Lydia M. Winchell, Janet G. Winney, Patricia A.
FIRST ALTOS
Andersen, Jeanne M. Andrews, Joyce M. Barth, Dolores Ruth Birch, Dorothy Boice, Irene Brehm, Beverly J. Cyms, Mary Margaret Dames, Katherine M. Darling, Persis Ann Davidson, Constance M. Elliott, Ruth Dona Fell, Patricia French, Alice E. Griffith, Erma R. Hardie, Margaret A. Hardy, Emily Haugh, Helen Howe, Nancy Jean Jacobson, Barbara K. James, I. Lucille Karoly, Barbara Dean Kime, Frances A. Kirchman, Margaret M. Lane, Rosemarie M. Lester, Betty Bates Lunsford, Ann Maes, Barbara J. Marsh, Martha M. McPherson, Mary Alice Meiss, Harriet R. Monroe, Helen DeVoss Mueller, Louise K. Palmer, Anna W. Pearce, Carol Ann Potter, Marijane F. Pressley, Norma Joan Reck, Linda Mering Rouillard, Elizabeth L. Schncttler, Marilyn V. Steenhusen, Sally Tucker, Phyllis M. VandeKieft, Ruth M. von Glahn, Lorainc B. Weaver, Beverly Ann Wiedmann, Louise P. Wilhelm, Charlotte Worrall, Louise Zeeb, Helen R.
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
SECOND ALTOS
Ames, Julaine A. Bailey, Marian K. Barnes, Barbara Bayar, Zeborah C. Beaudoin, Rita M. Bergen, Marion T. Birk, Allene A. Bogart, Gertrude J. Bolt, Phyllis Mae Boughton, Helen Ann Brown, Mary Katherine Cohen, Karen Louise Crossley, Sarah-Lou Crossley, VVinnifred M. Davis, Marilyn V. Decker, Jane Enkcmann, Gladys C. Flanders, Ruth Carol Fowler, Gloria Joan Granger, Beverly Jean Haffner, Edith A. Hardy, Mary Ruth Haswell, Judith Ann Hondorp, Barbara Jean Hoover, Mary Lou Huber, Judith Ann Huey, Geraldine E. Ironside, Ellen M. Johnson, Olga Ball Kempe, Ann Louise King, Jean L. Lichterman, Carole J. Loeweke, Eunice L. Long, Marguerite I. Mastin, Neva M. McBride, Sarah E. Newell, Pat A. Okey, Ruth Anne Rice, Betty Lorraine Roeger, Beverly B. Scholl, Barbara J. Schwartz, Virginia M. Smith, Joyce E. Stewart, Lenoir B. Sudo, Reiko Tolman, Ruth Stevens Trytten, Barbara Q. Volkmann, Lois Jean Wright, Erma Ardelle Zumstein, Marguerite R.
FIRST TENORS
Edmiston, James C. Fisher, Charles R. Forman, Sidney Harold George, Emery Edward Gerrard, Allen George
Halpern, Marvin Noel Hartman, Richard E. James, Dr. William S. Jennings, Ernest W. Lowry, Paul T. McGi'll, Wilbur Michel, Arthur Henry Monroe, John Bland Pressley, Dan Nelson Schaafsma, Henry M. Schrock, Marvin E. Senter, Albert W., Jr. Stasiuk, Robert F. Terry, Clifford T. Tomion, Jack Walter Wagner, Herbert P. Whitehouse, Dr. Frank, Jr.
SECOND TENORS
Brown, James H. DeHaan, James Dow, David Sontag Farrell, John M., Jr. Greene, Frank P. Haswell, Max V. Hennes, Dr. Allen R. Ilgenfritz, Robert H. Ironside, Roderick A. Kamp, Charles Hudson McCormick, John P. Rizzo, Frank Albert Roland, Charles B. Rosenzweig, Frederick Schwartzberg, Burton G. Scruggs, David Milton Smith, Jerry J. Sterrett, David R. Straight, Sidney F. Stringer, Lyle Hugh Vandenberg. Edw. L., Jr. Victor, Karl N.
FIRST BASSES
Allen, Kenneth M. Ashley, Emery Barratt, James F. Beach, Neil W. Beatty, James Calhoun Becker, Paul Vincent Berg, Arthur D. Berner, Robert A. Brubaker, J. Lester Cathey, Arthur J. Clemens, Earl Daley, John Grannes Dalton, Roger Keith Ferguson, Charles W., Jr.
Francoeus, Donald T. Friedman, James P. Grauer, Richard David Haddow, Thomas M. Haggerty, Alvin W. Huber, Franz E. Hurshburger, Alfred W. Kays, J. Warren King, John C. Komar, Norman Nicholas Loring, Eugene C. Loveless, Owen Robert MacDonald, John A., Jr. Maxwell, William E. McDermid, L. David Michaud, Ted Corneille Padwe, Gerald Walter Pierce, Kenneth W. Rice, Wilbur Z. Sanders, David Lewis Trow, William H. Van Antwerp, Malin Weaver, Robert Bradley
SECOND BASSES
Allyn, Donald William Archambeault, Norman W. Arentz, Richard E. Bailey, Douglas B. Bass, Dolf
Bassett, Clark Lodge, Jr. Beam, Bradley Marion Belinky, Solomon, Jr. Boice, Harmon E. Brown, E. Cowan Burd, Robert M. Clark, Philip Maclean, Jr. Clugston, George Alan Dafoe, Charles Albert Fraley, Frederick W., Ill Gordon, Stewart G. Haan, Robert Lee Hantula, James N. Johnson, Paul Gordon Karoly, Andrew James Kalloff, Richard H. Kritzer, Patrick Neal Mastin, Glenn G. Patterson, Robert W. Rivkin, Charles T. Sprague, John Frederick Stegenga, Fred Steinmetz, George P. Upton, John H. Wiles, Philip Arlen Wilhelm, James K. Wolfstein, Ralph S.
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UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY ORCHESTRA
Lester McCoy, Conductor
Thor Johnson, Guest Conductor
Arthur D. Berg, Manager
FIRST VIOLINS Dale, Nathalie,
Concertmaster Wear, Louise B.,
Concertmaster MacDonald, Diana S.,
Assistant Concertmaster Carney, Sara B.
Assistant Concertmaster Barron, Barbara J. Beebe, Elizabeth J. Breen, Seeley E. Carter, Mary Ellen De Feo, Gloria Fisher, John Fryer, Robert E. Jaeger, Carol D. Ketcham, Warren A. Krencicki, Carole A. McKenzie, Sheila A. Perlman. Marilyn Sanford, Kenneth V. Sloan, Mary K. Streicher, Janet B. Van Dyke, Betty
SECOND VIOLINS
Wise, Carolyn, Principal Atkinson, Kathleen,
Principal Alkema, Dale Boyd, Byron J. Bredendiecht, Dina Endsley, Nancy L. Hennipan, Dr. Leo P. Hiten, Edith A. Hornby, Nancy C. Kennedy, LaDonna McLaughlin, Elaine Petry, Delano L. Ripley, Donna M. Shapoe, Virginia M. Whitmire, Rene D. Zimmerman, Lynn M.
VIOLAS
Hayes, Alice C, Principal Berry, Helen J. Commons, Barbara A. Cool, Grace L. Dutcher, Alice M. Fenn, P. T., Ill Honl, Jean E.
Mason, Dr. Stephen C. Papich, George Rickman, Robert L. Smalla, Joanne L. White, Anderson
VIOLONCELLOS
Lewis, Joan B., Principal Allen, Anne W. Allen, Robert D. Becker, Eleanor A. Blood, Robert O., Jr. Breitmayer, Helen G. Corrello; Clyde L. Dunscombe, Harry W. Keydel, Kurt R. McCullough, Marilyn Rode, Phyllis Springett, Diana J. Stevenson, Charles L. Trow, William Clark Wales, Beverly Ann Zimmerman, Gilbert G.
BASSES
Patterson, Benjamin,
Principal Hall, Reginald H. Hamilton, Ralph E., Jr. Hammel, Virginia Jenkins, Providence E. Patrick, Chester F. Williams, James J., Jr.
FLUTES
Baird, Sally J. Hauenstein, Louise Hauenstein, Nelson Martin, Patricia J. Stewart, Sharlene E.
OBOES
Heger, Theodore E. Sherman, Sylvia Y.
ENGLISH HORN Rogers, Edmund Stenberg, Patricia J.
CLARINETS
Bauer, John H., Jr. Lawless, Jerrold Legband, Rolf Levey, Marilyn
BASS CLARINET Course, Thomas V.
BASSOONS
Becker, Eleanor Mason, Janet B. Weichlein, William
HORNS
Epstein, Ruth A. Howard, Howard T. Knops, Darlene A. Mumma, Gordon E. Reynolds, H. Robert Ricks, Robert Stillings, Frank
TRUMPETS
Head, Emerson W. McComas, Donald E. Measel, Wesley W. Straub, Jack
TROMBONES Bryan, Paul R. Groner, Earl F. Harrington, James T. Moore, Joseph R.
TUBA
Heier, James O. TIMPANI
Roberts, Ralph L. PERCUSSION
Ekstrom, Peter
Gard, Wayne
Moore, James L.
Salmon, James D.
Thurston, Richard E.
PIANO
Rice, Betty Thompson, Robert P.
HARP
Milks, Margery J. Mueller, ThereseJ.
ORGAN
Stubbins, Mary McCall
LIBRARIAN
Patterson, Benjamin A., Jr.
Combined list of personnel who participated with the Choral Union in the two Messiah performances and in preparation of the May Festival choral works this season.
12
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
Eugene Ormandy, Conductor
Donald L. Engle, Manager
Joseph H. Santarlasci, Assistant Manager
FIRST VIOLINS
Krachmalnick, Jacob, Concerlmaster
Madison, David,
Assistant Concertmaster
Reynolds, Veda
Shulik, Morris
Lusak, Owen
Simkins, Jasha
Zenker, Alexander
Aleinikoff, Harry
Costanzo, Frank
Henry, Dayton M.
Weinberg, Herman
Simkin, Meyer
Gesensway, Louis
Goldstein, Ernest L.
Sharlip, Benjamin
Putlitz, Lois
Schmidt, Henry W. SECOND VIOLINS
Rosen, Irvin
Eisenberg, Irwin I.
Wigler, Jerome
Brodo, Joseph
Di Camillo, A.
Stahl, Jacob
Gorodetzky, A.
Miller, Charles S.
Schwartz, Isadore
Black, Norman
Dabrowski, S.
Dreyfus, George
Bove, D.
Roth, Manuel
Kaufman, Schima
Ludwig, Irving VIOLAS
Zaratzian, Harry
Cooley, Carlton
Mogill, Leonard
Braverman, Gabriel
Ferguson, Paul
Frantz, Leonard
Primavera, Joseph P., Jr.
Kahn, Gordon
Bauer, J.K.
Epstein, Leonard
Greenberg, William S.
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
Arian, Edward
Maresh, Ferdinand
Batchelder, Wilfred
Gorodetzer, Samuel HARPS
Costello, Marilyn
de Cray, Marcella FLUTES
Kincaid, W. M.
Cole, Robert
Terry, Kenton F.
Kreli, John C. PICCOLO
Krell, John C. OBOES
de Lancie, John
Morris, Charles M.
Di Fulvio, Louis
Minsker, John ENGLISH HORN
Minsker, John CLARINETS
Gigliotti, Anthony M.
Serpentini, Jules J.
Rowe, George D.
Lester, Leon
BASS CLARINET
Lester, Leon SAXOPHONE
Waxman, Carl
BASSOONS
Schoenbach, Sol Angelucci, A. L. Shamlian, John Del Negro, F.
CONTRABASSOON
Del Negro, F. HORNS
Jones, Mason
Hale, Leonard
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 V.
Cole, Howard
Harper, Robert S. BASS TROMBONE
Harper, Robert S. TUBA
Torchinsky, Abe TIMPANI
Hinger, Fred D.
Bookspan, Michael
BATTERY
Owen, Charles E. Bookspan, Michael Valerio, James Roth, Manuel
CELESTA AND PIANO Smith, William R. Putlitz, Lob
ORGAN
Smith, William R.
ASSISTANT TO CONDUCTOR
Smith, William R.
LIBRARIAN
Taynton, Jesse C.
PHOTOGRAPHIC PUBLICITY Siegel, Adrian
PERSONNEL MANAGER
Schmidt, Henry W. STAGE PERSONNEL
Hauptle, Theodore, Mgr.
Hauptle, Frank
Betz, Marshall
73
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY PROGRAMS 1954-1955
The University Musical Society, in addition to the annual May Festival, provided the following concerts during the season of 1954--55.
76TH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
ROBERTA PETERS, Coloratura Soprano y Samuel Pratt, Flutist
Warner Bass, Pianist
October 4, 1954
Jauchzet Gott in alien Landen . . J. S. Bach Not All My Torments . . . Henry Purcell Shepherd Thy Demeanor Vary . Thomas Brown
Cantata..........Scarlatti
Sausle liebe Meurte "j
Moreen I . . . Richard Strauss
Ich schwebe
Amor J
Mad Scene from Hamlet .... A. Thomas
Fetes galantes.........Debussy
L'Heure exquise........R. Hah
La Cigale .........Chausson
When I Was Seventeen.....Folksong
Silent Noon.....Vauohan Williams
Remember...........Crist
Sure, On This Shining Night .... Barber
Love's Wisdom .........Gibbs
Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammcrmoor . Donizetti
@@@@SOC1ETA CORELLI
October 15, 1954 Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 1 ... Corelli
Arie Antiche..........Vinci
Introduction, Aria and Presto . . . Marcello Concerto for Violoncello in E minor,
Op. 14, No. 5.......Vivaldi
Sarabanda, Giga, and Badinerie . . . Corelli Simple Symphony for Strings .... Britten
? BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Charles Munch, Conductor October 20, 1954
Suite No. 4 in D major......Bach
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, pp. 95 . Dvorak Excerpts from "Romeo and Juliet,"
Dramatic Symphony, Op. 17 . . Berlioz
THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA fS George Szell, Conductor
November 7, 1954
Overture to The Bartered Bride . . . Smetana Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 3 . Henry Cowell "La Mer," Three Symphonic Sketches . Debussy Symphony No. 5 in E minor,
Op. 64........Tchaikovsky
JORGE BOLET, Pianist November 15, 1954
Andante con variazioni......Haydn
Sonata in E-fiat major
("Les Adieux")..... Beethoven
74
Sonata in B minor........Liszt
Scherzo No. 1 in B minor. Op. 20
Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31 I Chopin Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 39 [ Scherzo No. 4 in E major, Op. 54 J
LEONDARD WARREN, Baritone Willard Sektberg at the Piano
November 21, 1954 Aria di Floridante from Floridante . . Handel
Maledetto sia 1'aspetto.....Monteverdi
Amarilli...........Caccini
L'Esnerto nocchiero......Buononcini
Les Berceaux..........Faure
Chansnn a boire.........Ravel
Madrigal...........d'Indy
Agnus Dei...........Bizet
Ford's Monologue from Falstafi .... Verdi "Avant de quitter ces lieux" from Faust . Gounod "Largo al factotum" from
The Barber of Seville.....Rossini
The Donkey.........Hageman
There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind . Dello Joio
When Lights Go Rolling.....Ireland
Mister Jim..........Malotte
VIENNA CHOIR BOYS
Gerhard Track, Musical Director
January 16, 1955
Pueri Concinite........J. Callus
Una hora.........DA Vittoria
Ave verum..........Mozart
Panis angelicus.........Franck
Mensch, steh still.......W. Bloch
"Schubert's Practical Jokes"
(a light opera)......Schubert
Der Braiitigam.........Brahms
Humoresque..........Dvorak
Heidenroslein.........Folksong
Das Muhlrad.........Folksong
Jiiger aus Kurpfalz.......Folksong
An der schonen blauen Donau . . . J. Strauss
@@@@ ZINO FRANCESCATTI, Violinist
Artur Balsam at the Piano
March 7, 1955
Sonata in A major, Op. 11.....Brahms
Sonata in C major........Bach
Sonate............Ravel
Berceuse.........Konstantinoff
Folguedo campestre........Valle
"Carnaval de Venise"
(arr. by Francescatti) .... Pacanini
, BERLIN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Herbert von Karajan, Conductor
March 15, 1955 Symphony in D major ("Haffner") . . Mozart
MAY FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Prelude and Love-Death from
Tristan and Isolde......Wagner
Symphony No. 1 in C minor .... Brahms
EV YORK PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY Dimitri Mitropoulos, Conductor
May 22, 1955 Overture, "Colas Breugnon" . . . Kabalevsky Show Piece for Orchestra . . Morton Gould
Greek Dances........Skalkottas
Symphony No. 10 in E minor . Shostakovich
NINTH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES
ELEANOR STEBER, Soprano
James Quillian at the Piano
October 10, 1954
"Non mir dir," from Don Giovanni . . Mozart
Standchen
Schlagende Herzen
Freundliche Vision
Richard Strauss
Du meines Herzen's Kronelein
Befreit
"Un bel di" from Madama Butterfly
Musetta's Waltz Song from La Boheme r Puccini
"Vissi d'arte" from Tosca J
Villanelle "I
Absence V.........Berlioz
ZaVde J
"Hello, hello" from The Telephone . Menotti Long Time Ago (Ballad) "1 . CopLANO
Simple Gifts (Shaker Song) ? ? Arr" CopLAND Nancy Hanks .... Katheeine K. Davis "September Song" from
Knickerbocker Holiday . . . Kurt Weill "Csardas" from Die Fledcrmaus . . J. Strauss
CONCERTGEBOUW ORCHESTRA OF
AMSTERDAM Eduard Van Beinum, Conductor
October 27, 1954 Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major,
Op. 60.........Beethoven
Prelude a l'apres d'un faune . . . Debussy Musique pour l'esprit en deuil . Rudolf Escher Suite fiom The Firebird .... Stravinsky
the robert shaw chorale concert"ensemble
Robert Shaw, Conductor December 6, 1954
0 Vos Omnes........DA Vittoria
Christ Rising Again........Byrd
Fa una canzona.........Vecchi
Jesus, Dearest Master.....J. S. Bach
Dixit Dominum (Psalm 110 ?)
Laudate Dominuni (Psalm 117) V . . . Mozart
Laudate Pueri (Psalm 113) J
Nachthelle (Clear Night) ]_ Schubert
Standchen (Serenade) J ' ' ' SCHUBEET
Tom O'Bcdlam.......Avshalomoff
Choruses from Die Fledermaus . . J. Strauss
ISAAC STERN, Violinist
Alexander .akin at the Piano
February 10, 1955
La Folia...........Cokelli
Sonata in A major.......Franck
Concerto No. 3 in G major, K.V. 216 . Mozart Four Roumanian Dances . . . . . . Bartok
La Fontaine d'Arethuse .... Szymanowski
La Campanella........Paganini
WALTER GIF.SEKING, Pianist
March 22, 1955
Sonata in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2 . Beethoven Capriccio in F-sharp minor, Op. 76, No. 1 Capriccio in B minor, Op. 76, No. 2
Intermezzo in B-flat major, Op. 76, No. 4
Brahms
Intermezzo in B major, Op. 116, No. 6 Rhapsody in G minor, Op. 79, No. 2 Impromptu in B-flat major, ""j
Op. 142, No. 3 L . . . Schubert
Impromptu in A-flat major, f
Op. 90, No. 4 J
Cipressi......Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Ballade -
Xocturne .......Debussy
Valse romantique J
Six Preludes from Second Book . . . Debussy
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
HANDEL'S MESSIAH
December 4 and 5, 1954
Lucine Amara, Soprano
Lillian Chookasian, Contralto
Charles Curtis, Tenor
Donald Gramm, Bass
University Choral Union
University Musical Society Orchestra
Alice Lungershausen, Harpsichordist
Lester McCoy, Conductor
15TH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
BUDAPEST STRING QUARTET
Joseph Roisman, First Violin Alexander Schneider, Second Violin
Boris Kroyt, Viola Mischa Schneider, Violoncello Robert Courte, Guest Violist G-friday, February 18, 1955
Quartet in", Op. 77, No. 1.....Haydn
Quartet No. 1..........Lees
Quartet in A minor, Op. 29 ... Schubert Saturday, February 19, 1955
Quartet in D, K.V. 499.....Mozart
Quartet No. 2.........Denny
Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2 . Beethoven Sunday, February 20, 1955
Quintet in C, Op. 29.....Beethoven
Quartet Op. 7, No. 1......Bartok
Quintet in G, Op. Ill......Brahms
75
CONCERTS FOR 1955-1956
SEVENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES
Zinka Milanov, Soprano..........Tuesday, October 11
Boston Symphony Orchestra,
Charles Munch, Conductor.......Monday, October 24
The Cleveland Orchestra,
George Szell, Conductor........Sunday, November 6
Nathan Milstein, Violinist........Monday, November 14
Robert Shaw Chorale and Orchestra,
Robert Shaw, Conductor........Tuesday, November 22
Vienna Choir Boys............Sunday, January IS
Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
Sir Ernest MacMillan, Conductor . . . Wednesday, February 22
Artur Rubinstein, Pianist.........Thursday, March 1
Virtuosi di Roma.............Tuesday, March 13
Walter Gieseking, Pianist..........Monday, March 19
TENTH ANNUAL EXTRA CONCERT SERIES Obernkirchen Children's Choir,
Edith Moller, Conductor........Monday, October 17
London Philharmonia Orchestra,
Herbert von Karajan, Conductor . . . Wednesday, November 9 Boston Pops Tour Orchestra,
Arthur Fiedler, Conductor........Sunday, January 8
Myra Hess, Pianist...........Wednesday, February IS
Teresa Stich-Randall, Soprano........Friday, March 9
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS
Messiah (Handel)...........December 3 and 4, 1955
Ellen Faull, Soprano Donald Gramm, Bass
Lillian Chookasian, Contralto Choral Union and Orchestra Howard jARRATT,Tenor Lester McCoy, Conductor
SIXTEENTH ANNUAL CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Budapest String Quartet........February 17, 18, 19, 1956
Joseph Roisman, First Violin Boris Kroyt, Viola
Alexander Schneider, Second Violin Mischa Schneider, Violoncello Assisted by Robert Courte, Viola
SIXTY-THIRD ANNUAL MAY FESTIVAL
Six Concerts..............May 3, 4, 5, 6, 1956
The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor; Univer?sity 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.
76
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY